Digital Nonsilver • Major Project #2

Paul Strand, Bowls, 1916 (from Google Images–this is why Google Images is simultaneously good and terrible)

ART 21! History Reimagined

MAJOR PROJECT #2 : Revisioning and Revisiting History

Rephotographic Survey Project | Mark Klett | New Topographic Movement

The Photographic Work of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/assets/essays/Szymanowicz.pdf

This

KRISTAN HORTON
Interview in Canadian Art | Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove in the Morning News

AI WEI WEI

Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995).

ART 21 (forward to about 35minutes to see the Ai Wei Wei segment)

Artists mentioned in the readings for Major Project #2
(listed totally out of order)

STEPHEN BERKMAN

MARK OSTERMAN also at Artists and Alchemists

LIZ DESCHENES | MIGUEL ABREU GALLERY | article in Bomb magazine | Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston | Brief review in E-Flux |

JAYNE HINDS BIDAUT | website | at Joseph Bellows gallery

McDermott & McGough | website

DEBORAH LUSTER  | One Big Self

JOHN COFFER | Tintypes

Mike Ware | Artist website | photo gallery and video at Pictorico

Mark Kessel | Artist website

Jesseca Ferguson | Museum of Memory

Bryon Brauchli | Artist website |

Moyra Davey | Copperhead Grid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | at Murray Guy gallery

Center for Creative Photography | Spotlight on Platinum Palladium prints

James Welling | Artist Website | at David Zwirner gallery | Interview in Bomb magazine (artists in conversation series )

The Subversion of Images: Surrealism, Photography and Film | Article at E-flux |

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Interventions | Text and Image and TV

Mark Morris Dance Group

The Hard Nut, a reinterpretation of The Nutcracker!
Part One | The Party Scene | New York Times article about a regular production of the Nutcracker (adorable children) versus The Hard Nut (drunken adults).

Mark Morris explaining The Hard Nut

Danger Mouse

The Grey Album: Wikipedia
Encore, from The Grey Album

Brian Burton (Danger Mouse) is quoted as saying:

A lot of people just assume I took some Beatles and, you know, threw some Jay-Z on top of it or mixed it up or looped it around, but it’s really a deconstruction. It’s not an easy thing to do. I was obsessed with the whole project, that’s all I was trying to do, see if I could do this. Once I got into it, I didn’t think about anything but finishing it. I stuck to those two because I thought it would be more challenging and more fun and more of a statement to what you could do with sample alone. It is an art form. It is music. You can do different things, it doesn’t have to be just what some people call stealing. It can be a lot more than that.^[2]

Nikki S. Lee

From the Creator’s Project

A critical response to her interventions

 

The Whiz!

An all Black cast (yay!!!) reinterprets of The Wizard of Oz (both the 1939 movie and the original 1900 children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). The Whiz starts in Harlem.
Staring Dianna Ross, Michael Jackson and Nipsy Russell

The Original Trailer

 

Christian Bök

At MIT

The poet reading Eunoia

 

Barbara Kruger

On Art 21, Part of the Discourse

At The Broad Museum (Los Angeles)

 

David Levinthal

Hitler Moves East | Bad Barbie

 

Hells Belles!

Thunderstruck | Thunderstruck

 

I can’t believe I’m listing this

1962: Sabrina The Teenage Witch appears in Archie’s Madhouse #22

1996-2003: Live action series with Melissa John Hart as Sabrina, lives with 500 year old aunts/witches (Hilda and  Zelda) in a suburb of Boston.

2004: Manga version of Sabrina

2009: 4 issue spin-off mini-series about Salem the cat who was actually a young boy before he became a cat

2017: Riverdale TV series

2018: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina The Teenage Witch

Sherrie Levine

At Guggenheim | After Walker Evans (Metropolitan Museum, NY) | Mayhem at Whitney | At David Zwirner

 

HELLSONGS

Jump | Jump

 

Kara Walker

On Art 21 |A Subtlety, Domino Sugar Refinery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
(A project of Creative Time.)

David Carson

Interviews with David Carson in Magenta | David Carson Design |

TED TALK:

https://embed.ted.com/talks/lang/en/david_carson_on_design

Kristan Horton

Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove | In Reframing Photography | Artist’s website

 

Rachel Whiteread

At TATE Modern |

 

Guerilla Girls

Website |

 

Ann Hamilton

Tropos | Indigo Blue

 

Public Art Interventions

Werner Reiterer, Street Chandelier
Itay Ohaly, Elevated Bench
Carmichael Collective, Urban Plant Tags

Yasumasa Morimura

At Saatchi Gallery | Luhring Augustine |

 

Christian Marclay

The Clock | Article in The Guardian | The artist explains the work | The TATE modern explains the work | A snippet of the work, Just After 3pm

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Nonsilver | Project One

Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault
Brewer’s Yeast, 1844
Daguerreotype, 9.5 x 12.7 cm (3 3/4 x 5 ins)
Société Française de Photographie
This plate was included in the exhibition “The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855”.
The above  image was found on Luminous-Lint. com

WHAT IS A PHOTOGRAPH?
“You feel like the cord to the mother ship has been cut,” she said, “and now you’re floating in space.” Carol Squiers, curator of the exhibition, What is a Photograph?

Artie Vierkant’s “Image Object Friday 7 June 2013 4:33PM, 2013.”
Higher Pictures, New York

 

FROM THE READINGS
The Batchen article is from the catalog for What is A Photograph? , an exhibition curated by Carol Squiers at the International Center of Photgraphy (ICP) in New York City.

• Here is a brief description/analysis of the exhibition written by Lyle Rexler for TIME magazine’s photo blog, LIGHTBOX

Recommended reading: Thinking about the future of photography |

ARTISTS and EXHIBITIONS
ALISON ROSSITER | artist website | At Stephan Bulger gallery | Interview in BorderCrossings | Article in Canadian Art | Article at Lightwork.org

THOMAS RUFF
Photograms for the New Age | At Gagosian Gallery | At David Zwirner Gallery | Article about Jpegs | Video about Jpegs | Aesthetic of the Pixel | My Best Shot

INFORMATION, the exhibition curated curated by Kynaston McShine. At MoMA from July2-September 20, 1970. Exhibit summary (with additional links). Link to the exhibition’s archives.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN WALEAD BESHTY and EILEEN QUINLAN
Bombsite magazine website

WALEAD BESHTY
MOMA | Architectural Digest | It’s Nice That | Thomas Dane Gallery | The Guardian | interview (it’s a .pdf) | Petzel Gallery-images and press | Video at MOMA | Abstract Art or Photography

SAM FALLS
Artist website | Review in FRIEZE | Who and Whom

TALIA CHETRIT
Sies + Hoke | Interview in Interview |

MICHELE ABELES
Saatchi Gallery | MOMA

SARAH VANDERBEEK
Interview at Aperture Magazine | At Saatchi Gallery |  Altman Siegel | ArtForum 2014 review

MOYRA DAVEY
Grange Prize | Interview in Aperture | Review in ArtForum

ERIN SHIRREFF
Ansel Adams | artist website | Art 21 video | interview | Canadian Art: Three Essential Works | AIMA award

CARTER MULL
At Marc Foxx gallery

DANIEL GORDON
website | exhibition at New York Hortcultural Society of New York

ADAM BROOMBERG and OLIVER CHANARIN
website | The Day Nobody Died | Interview | At MOMA in the New Photography Show

SARA ANGELUCCI
website | Artist in Residence (2014) at the AGO

LORI NIX
Clamp Art | Artist website

PENELOPE UMBRICO
Article about Penelope Umbrico

JOHN HOUCK

VIK MUNIZ
website | film | At MIT | Video at ICP

JESSICA EATON
website | Also search this blog, there are several interviews with her.

MARCO BREUER
At Yossi Milo Gallery | Interview in St.Lucy

2013 Le Mois de la Photo a Montrea

EXHIBITIONS

• New Photography 2013 at MOMA

• New Photography 2012 at MOMA

• New Photography (2009) at MOMA |

 

• PHOTOGRAPHY INTO SCULPTURE
Exhibit Press Release
Review/article from Aperture
New York Times review/article about a contemporary re-staging at Hauser & Wirth Gallery of the original 1970s exhibit.
Photography Into Sculpture, panel discussion. Video!

 

• Review of (the restaging) The Photographic Object, 1970• What Is A Photograph? | Exhibition at International Center of Photography.
NYTimes Review

• THE NEXT BIG PICTURE: With Cameras Optional, The new directions in photography?  Good slide show with this one!

• Lost and Found Project (Tsuamni)

• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art | Is Photography Over?

Exhibition at International Center of Photography | NYTimes Review

What are we talking about when we talk about photography? (with apologies to Raymond Carver).A copy of the catalog for WHAT IS A PHOTOGRAPHY is available for browsing in the digital lab.

 

THE EDGE OF VISION
The Edge of Vision, Revisited.
The Edge of Vision VIDEO INTERVIEWS with most of the artists!!
Lyle Rexer explains the book’s concept

HILLMAN PHOTOGRAPHY INITIATIVE
Maybe you’re thinking about the life cycle of images? Hillman Photography Initiative.

The Hillman Photography Initiative at Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) investigates the lifecycle of images: their creation, transmission, consumption, storage, potential loss, and reemergence. Technology accelerates the pace of this cycle, and often alters or redirects the trajectory of an image in unexpected, powerful ways.

The Hillman Photography Initiative is an incubator for innovative thinking on the photographic image. The Initiative centers around four projects that, taken together, investigate the boundaries and possibilities of photography through the way that an image travels. Conceived through an open, discursive process, unique in a museum setting, these projects include live public events at the museum, a pop-up reading room in the galleries, two collaborative web-based projects, and a series of commissions, including documentary videos, art projects, and writing. This website is designed to foster public conversations around the larger story that these four projects tell, and knit them together in a single experience.

**

The Hillman Photography Initiative has so many cool projects: Orphaned Images, The Invisible Photography, I’m especially excited for the upcoming issue about Physics and photographic processes! (nerd), and This Picture, which asks people to stop, look and respond to one image at a time. One image at a time—how we should all be looking. Looking, not swiping through SnapChat and Instagram.

 

TECHNIQUES and TOOLS
Before drones (and projects like Dronestagram) were used for photographic surveillance, people relied on balloons, kites and pigeons.  The camera in the above image was large enough to shoot large format film and required 9-17 kites to lift it.

San Francisco Bay, 1906
Read the rest of the article and see more images here.

Dronestagram. And while we’re talking about drones, the theme of this year’s Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal was Drone: The Automated Image. Search the site for better yet, download the program.

DRONESTAGRAM |
description of project
TREVOR PAGLEN (the artist who started Dronestragram)

 

PIGEON CAM!

A selection of images and pigeon cams | more about the origins, history and application | uses during war | The Pigeon Spy |

Bruno Ribeiro’s absurdist interpretation of Instagram.

CAMERA LESS PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

GARY FABIAN MILLER
website | In Camera-less photography at V&A musuem

CAMERA-LESS PHOTOGRAPHY at the Victoria and Albert Musuem
Directory of Artists (videos) |  Camera-less photography techniques

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DNS: Rethinking photography

Time • Motion
The eye is limited; technology is not.

Eadweard Muybridge:
The Atlantic
Time Magazine, 100 Most Influential Photos of all time
Muybridge.org (All 11 volumes of “Animal Locomotion”)!!
Review of his biography (good piece in The Guardian)

Harold Edgerton

100 Most Influential Photos

Edgerton Digital Collection

The Man Who Froze The World

The Hubble!

Hubblesite. org

Hubble 25th anniversary, best photos

Hiroshi Sugimito

Theater series

Photography is flat and prints are pristine and you must always make your own imagery.

Sara Angelucci

Artist website

John Stezaker

At Saatchi Gallery

Erik Kessels | 24 hours of Flickr

Flore Gardner | Textile Artist

Penelope Umbrico | Artist website | Interview in A Photo Editor

Walead Beshty | Regen Projects | Thomas Dane gallery | MOMA New Photography

MOMA New Photography 2009:. Excellent resource for multiple lens-based artists.

Annette Messager
My Vows (MOMA) | google images link

Boy Barefoot Rider (2013) Holly Roberts

Horse Resting (2014) Holly Roberts

 

FOAM AMSTERDAM (blog, magazine, gallery, all around awesomeness)

 

 

The New Decisive Moment?

Artists to consider:

Jeff Wall
Lori Nix
Adad Hannah

 

 

Cyanotpes!

ANNA ATKINS

Exhibition at Rijksmuseum [Amsterdam]

Mike Ware’s essay, In Defence of Alternative Processes

Cyanotype video from the awesome George Eastman Museum.
George Eastman Museum Youtube | website | Research resources

 

 

Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works in Cyanotype,
New York Public Library, 2018

• Review of the show | Musée

• Another review in the New York Review of Books

 

ARTISTS responding to Anna Atkins

• Eric William Carroll | Blue Line of Woods

Ellen Ziegler | Chemistry Is The Emotion of Matter

Meghann Riepenhoff | Littoral Drift

Susan Degeres | Danziger Gallery

Ulf Saupe | Res Navalis

• Kunie Sugiura |  At MOMA | The Kitten Papers

• Erica Baum | Guggenheim | Aperture Magazine | Ubuweb | Frieze

• Letha Wilson | web | Grimm gallery | Galerie Gaillard |

Maria Martinez-Canas | FGT photogram | Traces of Nature | Smithsonian Video  |Julie Saul Gallery |

Katherine Hubbard | Bend the Rays More Sharply |

• Penelope Umbrico | Screens, Scans, Suns | web

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Photographic Satire on Social Media

“The rules of satire are such that it must do more than make you laugh. No matter how amusing it is, it doesn’t count unless you find yourself wincing a little even as you chuckle”

– Some wise guy

What is satire?

The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Elements of Satire – irony, sarcasm, parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, double entendre

4 Techniques – irony, incongruity, exaggeration, reversal

 

Irony

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, replica 1964

The use of words to convey something that’s opposite of the literal meaning of the word.

Taking the piss – PHRASE BRITISH IMPOLITE – to say something to try to make someone look silly

take the piss out of: 

“His friends were taking the piss out of him”.

 Duchamp takes a utilitarian, industrial   object and presents it as art.

 

Incongruity

Banksy, Rage the Flower Thrower (2005)

To present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to its surroundings.

 

 

 

 

Reversal

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)

“Elle a chaud au cul,”(She has a nice butt)

Giving Mona Lisa a moustache and goatee, Duchamp plays with gender role reversal.

 

 

 

 

 

Exaggeration & Parody

Exaggeration – a representation of something in an excessive manner.

Parody – work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work.

Sacha Baron Cohen (b. 1971)

Is a British actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer. He is best known for creating and portraying many fictional satirical characters, including Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno, Admiral General Aladeen, Erran Morad, and multiple others. Like his idol Peter Sellers, he adopts a variety of accents and guises for his characters and rarely appears out of character.

Who Is America? is an American political satire television series created by Sacha Baron Cohen that premiered on July 15, 2018, on Showtime. Baron Cohen also stars in the series as various characters and executive produces.

Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD, a far-right conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed citizen journalist

Erran Morad, an Israeli anti-terrorism expert, member of the Israeli military, and former agent of Mossad

Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a far-left lecturer on gender studies at Reed College, co-principal at Wildfields Poly-Ed, and a Democratic activist who wishes to “heal the divide” in America between conservatives and liberals

Who is America Preview (interview starts 1:01)

 

 

Baron Cohen utilizes a wide variety of satirical techniques to make his work successful. He employs two distinct approaches to satirizing political and social issues. One, where his character will highlight the follies, stupidity, or vices of the people he is talking with. This is the case with the clip above. Another tactic he uses is to play an absurd character that parodies, exaggerates and characterizes an idea, social, or political group (see Billy Wayne Ruccick & Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello). By making a fool of himself, he is satirizing his target group.

Baron Cohen’s mesmerizing but terrifying infiltration of these communities is what makes his satirical approaches to these issue so effective. The fact that the ridiculous and obviously fake characters (at least to the viewer) are able to deceive and manipulate their targets is what promotes introspection, and critical thought of current social and political circumstances.

The key is to have the target of the satire be completely unaware that they are in fact being satirized.

Social Media & the Cliché

an interesting article on travel photography cliché on instagram: https://www.fieldmag.com/features/instagram-trends-outdoor-cliche-photography

“As in any creative realm you use inspiration of people who’ve already taken that path. And I think in photography, as long as you use it to improve yourself as an artist, and then transition out of that into your own space, I think it’s fine. It’s when you stay in that realm of just riffing off of other stuff, that when it becomes a problem.”

– Mackenzie Duncan, BC based commercial & travel photographer, 17.2k followers

“People eat it up, they love it. Whatever people are into is going to keep happening.” – @youdidnotsleepthere

What are the problems?

Unoriginality and a facade of innovation

Photographers’ unawareness of their role in keeping clichés thriving

Cookie cutter formulas for success

A subsequent hesitancy to do something different

The Goal

To identify trends and clichés that have seeped into visual culture. To satirize the Instagram portrait community by employing irony, burlesque, incongruity, and exaggeration. To bring a more conscious awareness to our image making and image consuming on online platforms. To highlight the uniformity and contrived nature of highly successful (most liked, shared, copied) image concepts. To expose the visual inaccuracies that are prevalent in popular Instagram portraiture.

 

Final Project Research

ERIK LEVY

“Creation is an uncontrolled muscle” according to Arik Levy (born 1963).

Artist, technician, photographer, designer, video artist, Levy’s skills are multi–disciplinary and his work can be seen in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide. Best known publicly for his sculptures – such as his signature Rock pieces –, his installations, limited editions and design, Levy nevertheless feels “The world is about people, not objects.”

Hailing originally from Israel and moving to Europe after his first participation in a group sculpture exhibition in Tel–Aviv in 1988, Levy currently works in his studio in Paris.

His formation was unconventional where surfing, as well as his art and graphic design studio, took up much of his time back home. Following studies at the Art Center Europe in Switzerland he gained a distinction in Industrial Design in 1991.

After a stint in Japan where he consolidated his ideas producing products and pieces for exhibitions, Levy returned to Europe where he contributed his artistry to another field – contemporary dance and opera by way of set design.

The creation of his firm then meant a foray back to his first love, art and industrial design, as well as other branches of his talents. Respected for his furniture and light designs on all continents, Levy also creates hi–tech clothing lines and accessories for firms in the Far East.

Considering himself now more of a “feeling” artist, Arik Levy continues to contribute substantially to our interior and exterior milieu, his work including public sculpture, as well as complete environments that can be adapted for multi use. “Life is a system of signs and symbols,” he says, “where nothing is quite as it seems.”

 

I enjoy his work because the materials he uses distort what you are looking at. I find he uses his materials in different forms whether it being a closed form or a bunch of planes stuck together. I enjoy his pieces outside and love how they change throughout the day due to lighting.

SEBASTIAN MAGNANI

Born 1985 in a small village in Canton Valais, Switzerland, surrounded by mountains, Sebastian Magnani discovered photography whilst training as a media designer in 2006. After 5 years as a creative in an advertising agency, he decided 2011 to turn his passion into a profession. Since then he has been making a living as a photographer, based in Zurich Switzerland. He currently works on various subjects and several free projects, like the «Underdogs» and «Undercats», where got a lot of media attention and been published on many newspapers, magazines, websites and tv-shows around the globe.

I enjoy his work because it takes one thing (the sky) and puts it somewhere else (the ground) which kind of makes you question what you are looking at and trying to imagine the environment. I feel like it causes a 2D photo experience to be more immersive as you actually what to know what is happening outside the frame.

DENISE RIESEN

Denise Riesen is an award-winning photographer with more then 16 years experience. Her work has varied in style and has evolved as she travels both physically around the world, and through the stages of her own life. Her work expands and alters that of a traditional scene into a complex visual interest. She enjoys the constant challenge of new ways of seeing and the creative output of self expression.

Denise has both studied and photographed extensively throughout the North America and Europe through personal travel and professional involvement. Her work has been shown in a number of galleries within the United States and Mexico. Denise has worked as a photo editor, and curator for a number of exhibits both in Chicago and New York City.

Denise currently works primarily as a freelance photographer and artist based in the Chicago area.

She gave me the idea of water being a reflective surface or a material to distort the surroundings for my photographs.

Final Thoughts

With ideas from these artists I also want to try working with tin foil, glass, mirrors, water, acetate, and cutlery to create a distorted perception of what the viewer is looking at while also creating a visually beautiful image.

Inventive Photography?

Final Project.

I would like to pursue the creation of inventive/surreal photographs that are based off of my own personal drawings, thoughts and experiences. Here are a few artists that inspire me to follow the direction I have chosen. These artist inspire me because of how they work and what they create.

Christopher Mckenney
American Photographer, well known for his “horror photography”. He creates quite interesting, dark and surreal images which often portray people, nature, horror and beauty. Some images appear to be edited, however the use of natural light and recognizable human form have an effective way of delivering an unsettling yet mesmerizing experience for the viewer.

Some of his work:

 

 

Joel-Peter Witkin

Creates dark controversial photography that often deals with allegory, death, corpses and religion. He started taking unsettling photographs that depicted his childhood. He was drafted and enlisted as a combat photographer for three years and recorded on film the bodies of soldiers who have died during training  or committed suicide. Witkin claims that his vision stems from when he was a child he witnessed a car accident which included a young girl being beheaded.

“It happened on a Sunday when my mother was escorting my twin brother and me down the steps of the tenement where we lived. We were going to church. While walking down the hallway to the entrance of the building, we heard an incredible crash mixed with screaming and cries for help. The accident involved three cars, all with families in them. Somehow, in the confusion, I was no longer holding my mother’s hand. At the place where I stood at the curb, I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it – but before I could touch it someone carried me away.”

Some of his work:

 

Daniel Richter

Richter is a German artist. Richter often paints in an expressionistic way. He creates art based off his experiences of reality and is also widely known for his large paintings inspired by contemporary culture and mass media. His work has evolved from corybantic abstractions to more  politically driven and representational images.

Some of his work:

Exhibition View Daniel Richter – Lonely Old Slogans Photo: © Belvedere, Vienna, 2017

Lonely Old Slogans: Daniel Richter

 

Claude Cahun

Widely known for her self portraits where she takes on many different personas. Claude once explained “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”  Claude stood against the way male surrealist artists viewed women, (as objects) and created images of herself which challenged the idea of gender.

some of her work:

 

 

This is a bit of an early stage of research for me in terms of my final project, having said that these artists inspire me for different reasons, furthermore each artist and their work get my ideas flowing and challenge me to think of ways to overcome road blocks which I continue to encounter when thinking about photography and creating surreal images especially ones based off of my personal experiences and drawings.

 

https://christopher-mckenney.format.com/work

http://www.artnet.com/artists/daniel-richter/

http://www.soskine.com/attachment/en/54077be34aa62c246f6eea8c/TextTwoColumnsWithFile/573490a27cc1384d25dfd619

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/claude-cahun-untitled-c-1921/

Photography is not Reality

Erik Johansson:

Conceptual Methodologies

Johansson thinks that traditional photography is not based off of talent, but is about being at the right place at the right time. Anyone can do this. Therefore, he is inspired by creating something where the process of the image starts when you press the trigger. His images have an unexpected twist, but they still retain elements of photographic realism. This is accomplished by creating something that cannot exist in the real world, but appears as it could have been captured as a photograph. These are not photographs that are realistic, but what we think looks realistic. With these, a brief moment is required for the viewer to understand the “trick” in the image; therefore, the importance is more focused on capturing an idea, rather than capturing a moment.

In his TED Talk, he relates his images to optical illusions. This is because they do the same thing as the most important part of his photographs; that is, they combine different realities. Here is the example of the optical illusion that he shows in his TED Talk:

Technical Methodologies

In order to make his photographic ideas come to life, Johansson uses Photoshop to combine elements from different photographs.  Erik Johansson includes three rules when creating his photographs to achieve a realistic result:

1. Photographs combined should have the same perspective
2. Photographs combined should have the same type of light
3. Seamless photographs: make it impossible to distinguish where the different images begin and end

Johansson matches colour, contrast, and brightness in order to make an image compressed of hundreds of different layers look like one singular image.

Formal Methodologies

In contrast to taking a good photograph by being in the right place at the right time, Johansson’s images require lots of planning. As a result of the heavy Photoshop editing that are contained in his images, the more he plans out the idea, the more realistic his image becomes. He starts this process by beginning with a sketch of an idea. Once he takes the photographs, the next step is combining them with Photoshop.

There is often informal balance in his images. The following are great examples of what I am interested in for my final project:

“All of the tools are out there, the only thing that limits us is our imagination”. 

–  Erik Johansson

Pol Úbeda Hervàs: I’m Not There (Series)

Conceptual Methodologies

Each image has the same pair of shoes placed perfectly, then a shadow of a man wearing the shoes. These suggest a sort of “ghost-like” quality; similar to the images by Johansson, they are doctored images that appear as if they could exist in reality. They are meant to reference the fact who we are at this moment will disappear, but there will be a trail which remains as evidence of your past existence. This relates to the feeling he has that he is constantly changing. Furthermore, these images focus on photography is often human interaction with its surroundings, while these capture the absence of the human from these surroundings of industrial spaces. These are places that humans have created, enforcing the idea again that even if humans are not inhibiting these spaces, they still leave their mark by creating these spaces in the first place.

Technical Methodologies

I could not find anywhere the photographer explains his process, but I assume he had the help of another person, and a tripod. I’m assuming he took two images here, one where he is standing and wearing the shoes, and one where his shoes were placed in the same position where they were when he was standing. Then, I assume he merges the two images together with Photoshop by copying only his shadow in the image he is in, then dragging and aligning it onto the image of just his shoes.

Formal Methodologies

Each image only contains the shoes, shadow, and an empty background within an man-made space. There are no other powerful elements in the image to distract the viewer. There are often leading lines in these spaces, adding more interest for the viewer to allow further looking into the image.

More References Images from Other Artists

 

Photographer: Gustano Terzaghi

Photographer: Laura Greco

Photographer: Lee Materazzi

Collage Maker: Deger Bakir

References

https://www.djdesignerlab.com/2012/06/amazing-photo-manipulation-arts/?:_djdesignerlab_(DJDESIGNERLAB_-_Find_All_Your_Design_Inspirations_From_This_Laboratory)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/degerbakircollage/

https://www.gessato.com/im-not-there-by-pol-ubeda-hervas/

https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/photographs-by-lee-materazzi/

https://petapixel.com/2012/02/15/the-amazing-photo-manipulation-art-of-erik-johansson/

https://trendland.com/im-not-there-photography-by-pol-ubeda-hervas/

https://visualhuesca.wordpress.com/category/laura-greco/

https://500px.com/photo/170936939/paula-by-gustavo-terzaghi?utm_medium=pinterest&utm_campaign=nativeshare&utm_content=web&utm_source=500px

 

2610: A Sense of Place

THINKING ABOUT A SENSE OF PLACE

William Henry Fox Talbot, Lacock Abbey. What is arguably the first and oldest positive from a paper negative.

Image of SATURN, (Saturn, people!) from the Cassini spacecraft.

ANSEL ADAMS

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941

JOHN PFAHL
Moonrise Over Pie Pan, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, 1977

 

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY
Description on The Art Story | Rivers and Tides

Andy Goldsworthy talking about The Stone Sea

SALLY MANN

Scared Tree, from Southern Landscapes
Art 21 Episode about PLACE | Specifically the Sally Mann episode

OLAFUR ELIASSON
The Weather Project at TATE Modern | About the installation | Artist website-The Weather Project |

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO

Indian Ocean, Bali.

Seascapes

MARK KLETT

Timothy O’Sullivan (1872) + Mark Klett (1978)

Third View: The Rephotographic Survey Project
Good article, description of the project | More about Mark Klett
At Pictured Past Future Perfect

Robert Adams on the importance of LIGHT | Art 21 segment.

Vija Celmins | Art 21 segment

Trevor Paglen | Art 21 segment

Andrea Zittel | Art 21 segment

SITE SPECIFIC PLAYLIST : excellent stuff–all different artists and disciplines.

CHRISTINA SEELY

From, Lux.

LIMINALITY

JOHN RAFMAN

Nine Eyes of Google Street View

BILL OWENS

Suburbia |

VICTORIA SAMBUNARIS

Untitled (Tomato Pool), Yellowstone National Park, 2008.

Taxonomy of a landscape | Review and essay at Salon.com | At Albright Knox

Balint Alovits | website

 

 

And finally, a good use of social media:

Dronestagram

March 2nd 2014: A reported drone strike killed three in the village of Al-Shabwan, 5km from Marib, while travelling in or sleeping near their vehicle. #drone #drones #yemen (at Erq al-Shabwan, Marib Province)

Explanation of the project | Tumblr | Instagram

Andrew Wright | Artist website |

Scott McFarland | Artist website

Isabelle Hayeur | Artist website

Letha Wilson | Artist website

Shirin Neshat | At the Guggenheim | At the Hirshorn |  Gladstone gallery | TED talk |

AMY STEIN | Domesticated | npr slide show |

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/renee-c-byer-a-pulitzer-prize-winner-speaks-on-the-art-of-photojournalism

LORNA SIMPSON!
http://www.lsimpsonstudio.com/

BRADLEY PETERS

More Bradley Peters

The Helsinki School

Riita Paivalainen | River Notes

 

Janne Lehtinen | Sacred Bird