Passing Pulses

     When I look through my camera roll on my iPhone, I see so many pictures that I have sent in text messages to family and friends, quick selfies or snapshots of my surroundings. With a few exceptions, my first thought is that I need to take the time to go through and delete them to open up more memory. Far removed from analog photography where each print is a precious artifact, my usage of photography often serves more as a shorthand, visual language. Clearly I'm not the only one, since many of my peers use the app "Snapchat" which has its niche precisely in the transient existence of images. I titled this post "Passing Pulses" because today check up on how family/friends are doing, and share our own "vitals" within a decentralized community via texting, email, and social media. I see this shift as both a blessing and a curse; with family that is out-of-state now that I am in school I enjoy sharing humorous snippets of life to make them smile, yet it can only serve as an augmentation, not a substitute for deeper connection. As far as photography itself is concerned, I still enjoy taking casual snapshots enabled by my smartphone, but I also enjoy the satisfaction of working for the perfect shot with intention.
     
   

 

Sunset Sand

     Expanding on an earlier post on "Lighting and 'Reframing Photography'," it might sound redundant to say I am mesmerized by photos that beautifully show off light. Last year I found the series Broken Mirror/ Evening Sky by Bing Wright, and his images stayed with me.
 

  

    Along a similar vein, water reflects light much like mirrors. Thinking back to Bing Wright's photos, I took these pictures during a sunset in San Diego this spring break. I used the wet sand clouds, two very different states of water to appreciate the hues of a sunset more abstractly. I shifted how I normally frame a sunset (no sun or centered horizon in sight), and as a result I enjoyed taking the following photos:

Candid Photography

     During my last two family vacations, I have enjoyed sitting at the beach or from our balcony and taking candid photos of other guests with my camera that I bought for its longer zoom capability. When I read Roland Barthes text Camera Lucida for my Intro to Photo course last fall, I enjoyed thinking about how power dynamics play into photography. I think everyone is familiar with the challenge of putting family and friends at ease in front of the camera. People may project withdrawn self-consciousness or a fake persona, but either way the presence of the camera is interfering with how the subjects naturally appear. For these reasons,  I really enjoy capturing candid photos for their authenticity. Here are some I took over spring break:

    With all this in mind, I was eager to hear what would be presented in our lecture on copyright laws. Candids fall into the gray area of "personality rights" are contained in the First Amendment that allow individuals to control their image and likeness for publicity. It also contains the flip-side, the right for privacy, which prohibits any public display. To be clear, I am only interested in photograph in public space; I'm not a stalker, I promise. The issue is fuzzy because you can take a photograph of a place, which happens to have people in it, but you can't photographs of the people. However, in addition to these personality rights coexists the freedom of speech and the press.
    To tie this all back to the Roland Barthes, I think that its clear that these issues of personality rights are complicated because our relationship with cameras is also a complicated balance of power. I still haven't fully decided how to negotiate the issue. For now all I know is that my intent is not to malign these individuals, but rather celebrate them and appreciate serendipitous moments captured from a far.

Artist Presentation- Karl Blossfeldt

   

     In my Introduction to Media Studies course we briefly studied Walter Benjamin's writing. Our lecture quickly introduced the artist Karl Blossfeldt as an example of Benjamin's theory of the optical unconscious: "It is through photography that we first discover the existence of this optical unconscious through psychoanalysis. Details of structure, cellular tissue, with which technology and medicine are normally concerned-all this is in its origins more native to the camera than the atmospheric landscape or the soulful portrait. Yet at the same time photography reveals in this material the physiognomic aspects of visual worlds which dwell in the smallest things, meaningful yet covert enough to find a hiding place in waking dreams...Thus Blossfeldt with his astonishing plant photographs reveals the forms of ancient columns in horse willow, a bishop's crosier in the ostrich fern, totem poles in the tenfold enlargements of chestnut and maple shoots, and gothic tracery in the fuller's thistle." (59)

     
     For some background information, Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was raised in Schielo, Germany and as a young child enjoyed walking and collecting flowers and plant cuttings, which he then arranged into small gardens. He began work as a sculpturing and iron casting apprentice, and then received a scholarship to study at the Royal Arts and Crafts Museum. For several years he toured Europe with his professor of ornament and design, Moritz Meurer. Rather than collect plant specimens for models, that would quickly wilt, he began taking photographs for a reference. In 1899 Blossfeldt became a professor of modeling at the same Institute of Royal Arts and Crafts Museum, a position he held for 31 years. He continued to collect pictures for his teaching, on which Hans Christian Adam comments "He did not consider his photos an artistic achievement in their own right. For him, the camera served only to bring out and reproduce plant details that hitherto had been ignored owing to their tininess."

    Blossfeldt is considered to be one of the leaders of the movement, "New Objectivity" (neue sachlichkeit). As a reaction to World War I, this style is characterized by a cool, detached approach. The MoMA defines it well as, "a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism." Blossfeldt's work is objective and cool by removing the plants from their original context, placing them against a blank white background instead. Though I would often say that I am drawn to the sentimentality of the romantic era, visually I often am drawn to clean, elegant lines.

    Blossfeldt's "breakthrough" took place when art dealer Nierendorf approached him and wanted to publish his work, Art Forms in Nature (1927). The couple who archives Blossfeldt's work, Ann and Jurgen Wilde, found collages of photographs that were never published by Blossfeldt himself and stated the following: "Nierendorf played an important part in the reevaluation of Blossfeldt's photographic work, not only as a 'discoverer,' and as an initiator of Art Forms in Nature, but also as author of the book's introductory essay. Nierendorf's role as the 'engineer' of Blossfeldt's success is often mentioned in the related literature. However, as the working collages have established, Blossfeldt himself was actively involved in the publication of his book, and various factors indicate that between 1926 and 1928 Blossfeldt used the collages in planning Art Forms in Nature."

     In a later work, Magic Garden of Nature (1932), Blossfeldt himself commented on how he viewed his work which again echoes the relationship of his work to architecture. It also highlights how Blossfeldt was not concerned with his own artistry, rather, in keeping with "new objectivity," he viewed himself as a simply the facilitator to showcasing the art inherent in nature: "The plant may be described as an architectural structure, shaped and designed ornamentally and objectively. Compelled in its fight for existence to build in a purposeful manner, it contracts the necessary, practical units for its advancement, governed by the laws familiar to every architect, and combines practicality and expedience in the highest form of art, but equally in the realm of science, Nature is our best teacher."

Sources:

"Karl Blossfeldt: 1865-1932." Adam, Hans Christian.
"Working Collages." Blossfeldt, Karl (edited by Ann and Jurgen Wilde).
"A Short History of Photography." Benjamin, Walter.

Project #1

Project #1 challenged us to anonymously exchange photos from our archive and use them as our prompt, somehow still incorporating the original photo we received. It was amazing to see how much responses and prompts varied, but also how in many cases the recipient picked up on emotions/intent that the original photographer held in their photo. The photo I received was the one below:

Being a Colorado native, this prompt brought to mind a rich store of images I associate with the mountains. I chose to focus on one aspect, the way that mountains are layered, that I always find captivating. Also, I wanted to use this project as an opportunity to explore Photoshop for the first time, and learn how to create "layers" within that software. The content of each layer is a texture that I would find on a hike in the Rocky Mountain National park. Playing on perspective, I looked for patterns on a small scale that would mimic the ridges of mountains. Here are some of the images that I took before processing that were used in this piece:

 
 

   

 



I arranged them in Photoshop and gave them a blue cast to mimic the atmosphere's effects, but then I printed each layer separately and stacked the physical prints. I felt like this added a sense of more depth than if I had printed just the one flattened image from Photoshop. The final installation that I think would be best would be for it to be matted on a blank, white piece of paper. My artist statement that accompanied this piece is as follows:

"I have always loved the mountains, I am from Colorado after all, but I never realized how much I appreciate their strong, regal presence as a daily backdrop until I left for college. What often mesmerizes me most is the way the blue layers face as they recede. The second set of images that come to mind are the textures of pine trees, snow, and rocks when I am in the mountains themselves. Technically, I wanted to use this project as my first foray into Photoshop and play with the "layers" to blend these macro and micro perspectives. Additionally-since my seed of inspiration was another person's photograph which has been nested in as a layer, this work layers meanings and memories-those of mine and those of the original photographer." 

Lighting and "Reframing Photography"

     Light, especially in photography, is a mysterious and beautiful component that I would love to play with more and more in my own work. In the last year, I have found that I'm very drawn in by creative lighting; for example, in terms home decor I think it is the most undervalued aspect of design, yet it can be an amazing tool for transforming the feel of a space. Within photography, light is an essential component in the material process, but beyond that light aesthetically plays with creating depth and contrast in a photo. You could never say that light isn't present in a photograph, but I am captivated by photographs that somehow showcase light. When I came upon Reframing Photography's Artists' Gallery, I zeroed in on the videos that were listed under Light & Shadow.  Two videos that stood out to me- the first was Rebecca Cummins: Another Light, and the second Force Field by Lindsay Page.

     Within Rebecca Cummin's video, I specifically liked the project Simply Smashing where she turns landscapes upside down "by converting a red wine goblet into a lens." With the shot of her larger installation that used 870 goblets, I thought it was really interesting that her work creates a mosaic of images that occupy space but still are an "image" of the space they reflect, much like traditional photography.  However as the sun sets and rises, the image is in a perpetual state of change.

http://www.reframingphotography.com/artists/rebecca-cummins

I imagine that Lindsay Page's project was a very engaging installation, and I was appreciative of the efficacy of the illusion it seemed to create. Every year Disney Imagineers (the designers and engineers that create their theme parks) host a competition for an internship opportunity, and recently my best friend and I (who are both Disney-philes) have begun brainstorming what kind of ride we would create if given limitless resources for our application. I liked this project because it successfully suspends disbelief, and it got me thinking of more ways one could play with the same materials she used. Towards the end of the video, when I read "Endlessly looping, the birds encapsulate the figure emphasizing the tension between flight and capture" the work took on a different association for me. Suddenly, the uncertainty of the dark was a source of some anxiety with this reading of "no way out." Additionally, I thought that tension was added by the only auditory component of the constant grating sound of the projectors running.

http://www.reframingphotography.com/artists/lindsay-page-0

All in all, I enjoyed seeing the work of both of these artists who effectively and creatively installed images, and played with the importance of light.

"What is photography for you?"

Photography, for me, makes the most sense when it is thought of as an art that extends from the universal human eye. It is of course a way of seeing, both literal in its capture of an image via light and metaphorical in its meaning which depends on individual perspectives. What I took away most from reading "Photography's Expanded Field" by George Baker was thinking of photography's placement between extremes, and the tension and ambiguity that is created in so doing. For example, the reading set up the extremes of stasis vs. motion, and how those dichotomies at first correlate to photography and cinema, but once "film stills" and "still films" are introduced each genre is expanded. Perhaps I enjoyed thinking about this spectrum because I am currently enrolled in both Expanded Photography and Introduction to Video Art; I am looking forward to exploring how my previous exposure to photography will help inform my foray into video and discovering more about how the two mediums relate to one another. Additionally, thinking back to the human eye, our vision records fluid continuous visual information (like video?), yet memory for me is often encapsulated in frozen images. This I think perhaps explains my initial inclination to describe photography as the capture of moments in time (be they real or imagined.)

Here's a "film still" from a video I produced with my best friend in high school. While the image is "hidden" in the video footage indiscernible to naked eye, it captures the energy of the day and the fun we remember. It is simultaneously "still," yet charged with memories and explicit meaning of motion.