Still Life: Classic to Contemporary

Portrait Assignment: Fanny

The Photographer: Edward Weston

“Most of us know how to point a black box at the things that give us pleasure.” Much of this short film still holds true today. Why and for what market did they make this film? It’s a fascinating subject handled in a very odd way. Part philosophy lesson, part photographic basics primer, part ode to whom I previously knew only as “the pepper guy,” this film delves into who Edward Weston is and how he photographs. I found it interesting that they only hint at his upbringing and education and focus on what the viewer can learn from him in the then-present.

The film was presented in a very poetic way. It showcases Weston as a rugged individual capturing the shapes and forms of our rugged, individual country. Then it transcends Weston’s work into the philosophy of capturing images and creating art. As the film says, “to open the gates around our heart, so that we may feel freely; to open the clutter of our minds, so me may think clearly.” It delves into much of the unknown that our class explores – how to teach intuition and seeing that goes beyond words and into the realm of physiological reactions. While we can perfect technique and focus on composition, it is the feeling of a photo that is unteachable. The film alludes to this when it takes about teachers being unable to teach were to look and how to look. Yet we still have much to learn from Weston. It’s remarkable to see him in the field, to venture under the drape-cloth and see the viewfinder as he saw while composing his images. He understood the camera’s power and limitations and stripped back our reality to create images that evoke form and shape without telling the full story. He exploited the interplay between what we see and what we think we know. Through abstraction, his photos evoke memories and feelings; in their specificity, they say more with less.

IIT Campus Shoot: Radio Today with Da’Booth

Holy Mahogany!

What at time to be an ID student. It was wonderful to visit this exhibition and feel like I was hanging out in Laszlo Mohloy-Nagy’s brain for a few hours. From my readings on Moholy-Nagy, I’ve come to most appreciate his understanding of just how much technology influences our modes of viewing and understanding the world. Getting to see his artwork in person was a important part of rounding out my understanding of our dear founder and also of solidifying the belief that I made the right decision in choosing to switch careers and to study, in particular, at the Institute of Design.

His early paintings reinforced a quote I read from Vision in Motion: “The renaissance painter constructed the scene to be painted from an unchangable, fixed point following the rules of the vanishing point perspective. But speeding on the roads and circling in the skies has given modern man the opportunity to see more than his renaissance predecessor. The man at the wheel sees persons and objects in quick succession, in permanent motion.”

 

               

I could just be an ignorant dolt, but Moholy-Nagy’s writings on the progression of art in the twentieth century have helped me understand modern art in a way I’ve never before felt. His readings have helped me relate to his experiments in shape and form that I would have been felt estranged to in an earlier time. Now, I see a stripping away of anything accidental or literary in his work. He is creating form in the purest way possible in order to reflect new modes of living and being. This cubist painting made me laugh a bit, since Moholy-Nagy has said that in his early years, he tended towards Expressionism because he didn’t really understand Cubism or Dadaism. I guess we all try to emulate the cool kids when we start out.

                                          

It was especially interesting to see photos and photograms in person that I had seen so many times on the Internet. The hand photogram was the perfect example of Moholy-Nagy’s disregard for the difference between fine and commercial art.

I was especially taken with this photogram of unknown materials and this photo of the sea that’s printed in such a way that the water becomes almost like a crepe fabric.

I knew that Moholy-Nagy was a renaissance man in terms of the various forms and mediums in which he worked, but to see it all in one exhibition was astounding.

                    

The Human Subject: Roy Stryker and Diane Arbus

I have been struggling with this latest assignment and these videos in relation to it. Arbus seemed to enjoy the aspects of photography that give me the most anxiety. For her, the moment of the unknown at the beginning of a shoot was the most enjoyable aspect. In my experience, this is the part of this class that keeps me up at night and makes me dread even picking up the camera.While Arbus found that the camera intervened between herself and her subjects and made both parties nicer, I find the camera to be an alienating machine – one that adds distance to a situation. Perhaps it is the ubiquity of cameras and images in our current reality and the increasing ability for one to meticulously craft a persona that creates distance between the subject and photographer. When we can control how we are seen, is the photographer still invited to provide another perspective?

Arbus’ work was the act of seeing those who went unseen. The directness of subject in her photographs creates a sense of undeniable emotion. In their specificity, they seem to portray universal themes. Yet I keep returning to the idea of intention. Arbus wanted to shock her audience. I think she wanted to break assumptions and disrupt norms, but I’m not sure how that affected the relationship between her subjects and herself. I still have yet to decide whether she was portraying those who were ignored or whether she was exploiting the discriminated for shock value. Roy Stryker’s intentions were exploitative, too. Yet his intentions of documenting the unprecedented effects of the Depression and drought are easier to write off as benevolent marketing.

While in appearance, Stryker’s approach to capturing human subjects differed from Arbus, in reality, they were essentially the same. He gave his photographers rigid instructions for what to capture; Arbus chose a subject and then its meaning unfolded as she went. Both chose the subject first and let the experience dictate the meaning. I’ve been trying to keep this in mind as I’ve photographed this past week.

Color Assignment

Dude Loves Quaaludes: The “Perfectly Banal” Photography of William Eggleston

The Colourful Mister Eggleston

The photographer

• Pioneer in the field of artistic color photography
• Product of a southern upbringing

The work

• Captured the banal/unexciting moments of life
• Focused on shopping malls and suburbia (southern gothic vibes)
• Decontextualized objects and moments
• Heavily influenced by Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank
• Introduced and used dye transfer technology to print his photos (gave photos a more vivid look)
• Simplicity of images belies the complexity of form and composition that are the foundation of Eggleston’s work

My thoughts

• The act of photographing democratically is a delightfully unpretentious way of transforming life into art.
• Capturing the dark underbelly of America seemed to stem from an understanding of the darkness within himself.
• There’s an eeriness to Eggleston’s photographs that captures not what you see but what you feel in the experiences he captures. There’s a sense of the unresolved within his work.
• Eggleston lives his life outside of traditional expectations. Many of the people interviewed in the video remarked that this “incredible sense of freedom” is reflected in both his work and life. Though he brought an outsiders perspective to both art photography world and most likely to the dynamics of his own family and southern community, it seems like an omission to not recognize that this sense of freedom was aided by his wealth and privilege.

Learning from Robert Frank

Leaving Home, Coming Home – A Portrait of Robert Frank begins its story with an older, more learned and jaded version of Robert Frank. Though many years have passed since his seminal photo book The Americans was published, he still seems drawn to similar topics – America, New York City, and the act of living. While he shares his strong opinions, he knows that they are not representative of everyone. Like his photographs, his opinions are acknowledged to be subjective units, expressive conduits of feelings that play loose with reality and facts. As the film moves through Frank’s photographic work, it struck me that he would have been at home in the Bauhausian tradition of photographic experimentation. His photos evoke emotion less through their order and more through their lines and form. The blurs, contrast, and portions left out of focus craft a mood that unites Frank’s body of work. The broad interests within the Americans – lunch counters, parks, jukeboxes, and cars are evident. Did Frank’s perspective on them make them quintessentially American or would they have inherited their status anyways?

Either way, this is clearly a body of work where photographic “mistakes” are used intentionally. There’s a spontaneity and affection for the subjects of these images. They are clearly images crafted with opinion and perspective rather than pure documentation, yet how I specifically can identify that, I don’t know. As the film progresses past this time in his career, it is clear that Frank continued his spirit of experimentation in film, photography, and how he led his life. Observing Frank over the course of the film, the importance of learning rules and guides in order to be able to break those rules struck me most. His work and life are not a series of lucky mistakes but rather a keen understanding of where to break from the pack in order to fulfill a vision.

Photogram (Updated)