Sunday, May 23, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Maspeth is America, Pete Slusarski
Pete,
I really enjoyed seeing the finished product of your project.The book looks great. The hardcover, standard landscape format worked for your photographs, and the photographic paper really showed them off well. With the 5 x 7 size of each photo, you did not lose any detail, but I wondered how they might have looked if printed larger on the page (especially with more expansive scenes, such as the coke trucks in the parking lot). My only other hesitation was about the dedication page, which seemed to interrupt the beginning of the series. Otherwise, the two single photographs in the middle and the solitary ending photo served as nice breathing points.
As we talked about sometimes in class, it was impossible for you to "photograph Maspeth" or represent it in its entirety, but you really gave the viewer a wide ranging glimpse of this town, including street scenes, backyards, storefronts and interiors, homes, residents, and even pets (the black dog is one of my personal favorites!). Through these images, one can clearly see a strong control of the frame, a symmetry, and deliberate sense of order in your style of shooting.
I know you were also concerned about portraying Maspeth as an ugly place or in some negative light, but I think you accomplished quite the opposite. There is a distinctly quiet, eery beauty in your photographs, whether it appears in the setting sunlight on an old gas station, an empty house filled with balloons, or a garage adorned with lucky horseshoes paired with a dark hearse. Your book allows the viewer to explore Maspeth, as you did while photographing, and to get an intimate sense of how life is lived in this place.
You can be very proud of this body of work. Good luck to you and fellow photographers, and thanks for a great class this semester!
I really enjoyed seeing the finished product of your project.The book looks great. The hardcover, standard landscape format worked for your photographs, and the photographic paper really showed them off well. With the 5 x 7 size of each photo, you did not lose any detail, but I wondered how they might have looked if printed larger on the page (especially with more expansive scenes, such as the coke trucks in the parking lot). My only other hesitation was about the dedication page, which seemed to interrupt the beginning of the series. Otherwise, the two single photographs in the middle and the solitary ending photo served as nice breathing points.
As we talked about sometimes in class, it was impossible for you to "photograph Maspeth" or represent it in its entirety, but you really gave the viewer a wide ranging glimpse of this town, including street scenes, backyards, storefronts and interiors, homes, residents, and even pets (the black dog is one of my personal favorites!). Through these images, one can clearly see a strong control of the frame, a symmetry, and deliberate sense of order in your style of shooting.
I know you were also concerned about portraying Maspeth as an ugly place or in some negative light, but I think you accomplished quite the opposite. There is a distinctly quiet, eery beauty in your photographs, whether it appears in the setting sunlight on an old gas station, an empty house filled with balloons, or a garage adorned with lucky horseshoes paired with a dark hearse. Your book allows the viewer to explore Maspeth, as you did while photographing, and to get an intimate sense of how life is lived in this place.
You can be very proud of this body of work. Good luck to you and fellow photographers, and thanks for a great class this semester!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Elizabeth Dausch's On The Road
Elizabeth's book immediately caught my attention with the brilliant colors that not only filled the cover page, but that filled each photograph within her book. The richness of each photo that represented the people of Fordham road made me feel that this was a place characterized by a vivacious inhabitants. The journey of her book begins in the morning, which is apparent by the first photograph where the sunlight seems it is about to be blinding. The photos progress into the evening, a time that Elizabeth shows us is still bustling with life. What I enjoyed about this book is that it completely drew me into the places of Fordham road that I would have never imagined to be so detailed and unique. Elizabeth chose to make the photos a medium size, which I found to be beneficial to the work as a whole because if they had been too large one might feel overwhelmed by every detail since there are so many. Elizabeth managed to create a book that gave me a sense of experience, meaning I felt I had been there too, that I had seen these places and people this intimately as well. I was also very impressed with how she framed each photo, because I found it to be sophisticated yet unexpected. Overall this book brought me closer to a culture I had always seen at a distance, a culture that is embedded in its embellishments. At times I felt intimidated, such as the photo where the man is staring don at the camera at a slightly different angle and yet I felt comforted by the people who remained unaware of the camera's presence, who expressed themselves completely on the open street. I very much appreciated what Elizabeth wanted to show us about this particular location.
Consume Me, by Marti Eisenbrandt
I really enjoyed Marti's book, Consume Me. It is an 8x10 softcover landscape with 11 color pictures and an excerpt from a poem by Walt Whitman. Her pictures are not straight photographs; they are actually collages created using pictures she has taken. Almost all of the pictures include a photograph of the same girl; however, in every picture she looks very different. In her introduction, Marti wrote about how advertisements and magazines transport her from reality to somewhere else, and I think that the poem and the pictures capture this dream-like place very well.
I think that the pictures show a young woman who is struggling to understand and create her identity amidst all of the advertisements and images from magazines that she is bombarded with. Every picture seems to show a different aspect of this girl, and a different part of her identity. The collages seem to be very influenced by the look of magazines and the way that the girl portrays herself in many of the photographs seems as though it is influenced by the type of photography that one finds in a magazine. The choice to make the book softcover, like a magazine, reinforces how important images from magazines are to this work.
I also liked Marti's decision to intersperse a part of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass with the photographs. I felt that the text went very well with the photographs and that a lot of care was taken in matching particular photographs with lines from the poem. This made the book flow very well. The poem is somewhat ambiguous, which I felt went well with the photographs. To me, the poem seems to be about individuality and being yourself, which I think is an important aspect of the book. The girl in the photographs seems to be trying to find out who she is and attempting to be that person without apology.
Overall, I felt that this book was very thoughtfully created and I am glad I had the chance to see it.
I hope everyone has a great summer!
I think that the pictures show a young woman who is struggling to understand and create her identity amidst all of the advertisements and images from magazines that she is bombarded with. Every picture seems to show a different aspect of this girl, and a different part of her identity. The collages seem to be very influenced by the look of magazines and the way that the girl portrays herself in many of the photographs seems as though it is influenced by the type of photography that one finds in a magazine. The choice to make the book softcover, like a magazine, reinforces how important images from magazines are to this work.
I also liked Marti's decision to intersperse a part of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass with the photographs. I felt that the text went very well with the photographs and that a lot of care was taken in matching particular photographs with lines from the poem. This made the book flow very well. The poem is somewhat ambiguous, which I felt went well with the photographs. To me, the poem seems to be about individuality and being yourself, which I think is an important aspect of the book. The girl in the photographs seems to be trying to find out who she is and attempting to be that person without apology.
Overall, I felt that this book was very thoughtfully created and I am glad I had the chance to see it.
I hope everyone has a great summer!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Art is dead. Marina Abramović (and those of her kind) killed it.
If one day I become a famous photographer, would you take few seconds, minutes, or even hours to sit across from me without being able to move or interact with each other?
That's what The Artist is Present is about. People wait in line just so they can "feel her presence" (and of course the quotation marks are a mockery). What is the point of that? What part of this performance (if you may call it so, because I am personally bothered by it) is considered art (assuming that MOMA embraces its name fully)? Sitting across an artist while engaging in a meaningful conversation is delightful way of spending the hours, but Abramovic's "performance" is no such thing. I don't have to sit across from her to experience her persona. True artists exist in every photograph they produce, and if they don't...well, they failed as artists.
I think The Artist is Present is pointless and a waste of money, not to mention that Abramovic must think too highly of herself (narcissist would be too harsh) to expect people to "feel her presence" (I suddenly feel the urge to laugh).
As of her actual exhibit...A lesser disappointment than The Artist is Present, but a disappointment nevertheless. The nude installation felt out of context. They were poorly pieced together and absolutely not artistic (What's so artsy about a naked guy on a table with a skeleton on top?). I think she tried too hard to create something original (what's original these days?) and she ended up becoming a stereotype.
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