Week Ten: Project Direction

After loosing my way with the direction of my concentration, I think I have finally come to purest explanation of my focus. The idea of chaotic consumerism is overly present in our daily and fortunate lives. When entering any vast space of people and goods, the want, desire, and need for these items is apparent in facial, body, and linguistic expressions. My goal is to capture the franticness that comes with the overwhelming amount of choices that are present in markets, stores, and towns. However, it is within the wide spaces, I want to maintain the human form. For if that figure isn’t there, I believe the importance of the overpowering consumer driven world will not be depicted clearly.

I have already collected a large amount of images that expand on this concept and focus of chaotic consumerism. Stretching from an Asian Market in White Plains to China Town in Manhattan, I have greatly explored the traditions of a specific culture that also blends and emphasizes the world of human and material. With shelves fully packed and the faces and silhouettes of the individuals that are not only the buyers but the worker as well, the full perspective of this specific scene can be depicted in a well-rounded form.

I believe that the use of a wider lens with each of these pieces has aided in creating this description of chaotic consumerism in the pictures I have been making. As I began to use this lens in China Town, not only was I able to capture the environment of a filled place of business, but the individuals that encompass it. The most recent image that I have taken that falls into the category of my concentration is an untitled piece that was taken during a mass at St. Peters Church in Manhattan while under construction. With the use of the wide-angle lens I was able to enclose the details of the church’s environment as well as the hundreds of individuals that sat side by side. Even though this composition is incredibly different from my other works and will be very different from my further pieces that fall under this focus, this piece makes an excellent addition to the collection due to it not only holding the silhouettes of so many unknown faces, but also how religion has always been and will remain as a consuming concept of our human lives.

As I scrolled through American Suburb X, I recognized an artist that has been the inspiration for the recent pieces I have been making. I have also discovered two new artists that have given me some inspiration and guidelines to follow in my capturing of the chaotic lives we live. Andreas Gurksy’s work, though all photoshopped to intensify its expansive and wide feel, has been my source for attempting to create a broader vantage point in my work. The leading lines he displays in his pieces are also characteristics that I look for to create additional description in my pictures. The other two artists collections that I came across come from Fred Herzog and Joel Meyerowitz. The images taken by these two photographers display a clear representation of what street photography should consist of. The unknowing or all knowing individual set in the daily setting of the hustle and bustle city life we reside in. The most inspirational component that I took away from these two artists mostly came from Herzog’s storefront connection. This is an idea that I would like to see if my direction of chaotic consumerism could follow. By viewing the individual either behind the glass or looking in, the outside and inside perceptive of the consumer world can be captured.

Week Nine: Personal Project Progress

Untitled Two 

After using the same camera for five years, the idea of changing the static features of my Nikon FG was not one I was overly willing to take on.  I honestly wasn’t aware that these settings could be altered and that they would bring more to my work. By changing the lens on my camera and exploring the mechanical deception that can occur from altering the ISO of the camera compared to the film it holds, has truly allowed me to perceive my work before releasing the shutter in a completely different manner.

Learning to push film was the most enlightening. As someone one who prefers to create an image containing a strong contrast between black and white, pushing film has allowed for me to add an additional characteristic to my signature work of taking photos of people. I noticed an increase in the amount of grain in the photos that I have been developing that were taken on four hundred ASA film, but pushed to eight hundred ASA. For me, by discovering this method of “fooling” the film, I have grown within the field of shooting inside a location, which I never used to do. I was quite biased in only shooting outside with natural light. I have expanded with using artificial light sources, especially with the change in ISO of the film, and the products have produced an even larger amount of detail.

Untitled Three

Switching the lens on my camera, was in all honestly, incredibly eye opening. After shooting my last four rolls in China Town and surrounding areas in Manhattan, I have never seen a clearer difference in camera perspective. I have used the same lens for the past five years on my 35mm camera, but after shooting two rolls right after another, and doing the switch for the third roll, I wasn’t aware on what a wide-angle lens would provide for one singular image. The images, Untitled Two, Untitled Three and Untitled Four, were all taken using a Nikon 24mm lens. The wide angle provided by this lens allowed for me too not only have my focus, a human subject, in the frame, but also provide a large amount of detail in the surrounding environment of that subject. This concept behind these images taken with my wide angel lens is the core concentration of my personal project. 

Untitled Four

After exploring the unfamiliar territory that comes with the Asian culture and the distinguished cosine that is sold in their markets, the stranger’s assignment has allowed for me to grow as a photographer. After only shooting portraits of individuals that I know and are not only comfortable around me, but I am also comfortable around, pulling away to photograph a stranger has given me an entirely new vantage point towards to individuals that I pass on an every day basis.

I felt that after expanding my photographic eye in the first Asian market that I went to, which can be seen in the image, Untitled One, I should continue with this common theme. Not to objectify this culture, but to understand and explore it from an outside perspective. While in China Town, with the use of the wide angle lens and going in and out of shops, butchers, and fish markets, I was able to take away images of the regular routine of this culture not only for the workers, but also the patrons.

Untitled One

I am not exactly sure where to go with my project. I am slightly stuck on making progress. I now have a large collection of images surrounding the Asian culture that are displayed in a very broad and spacious outlook. However, I feel if I go back to China Town I will just be taking the same, pre-existing images again. I could switch from this wide framing, containing a person, and attempt to get closer portraits with an additional lens I have, a Nikon 135mm. However, I was greatly enjoying straying from my norm and extending my singular viewpoint that is present within all my past photographic works. The image, Untitled Five, is what has me stuck. I am absolutely in love with this photo. To me it displays a wide angle of an environment, which is a key component to my concentration. However, it does not contain a subject. I wonder if I should continue down the path of the style that is being depicted in Untitled Five, or try to continue with exploring the Asian Culture that I am so foreign to me.

Untitled Five

Week Eight: Tod Papageorge - An Essay on Henri Cartier-Bresson

Tod Papageorge

After making such a bold statement in the opening line of his essay, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Two Lives, I agree with writer and photographer, Tod Papageorge. “I’m going to speak today about Henri Cartier-Bresson, arguably one of the greatest photographer who’s ever lived.” As Papageorge begins his talk about photography at Yale, he leaves no room for argument, interpretation, and examination. With the photographs produced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Papageorge provides a powerful analysis that allows for him to make this daring assessment, that Cartier-Bresson’s work and him, as an artist, is truly, not just one of the best, but the best.

When we look at a black and white image, we try to examine it for the simple elements that make up the image. We look for a subject or object, and once we move past those steeples in the image, we begin to consider vantage point, shadows, highlights, framing, and positing. At the bottom of this list, comes to story that all these different components make up within the single structure. I believe this is exactly why Papageorge singles out Cartier-Bresson as being the most talented photographer our world of artists has ever seen. I came to this conclusion by viewing a few pieces of Papageorge's and immediately seeing the similarities between his work and Cartier-Bresson. These similarities that can be seen between these two distinguished collections of photographs, are in actuality, the basis for creating a successful picture, in general. Thus the presence of these themes in Papageorge's work and Cartier-Bresson proves that these qualities in composition make the most pleasing image to view.

In this essay Papageorge points out the technical’s that makeup Cartier-Bresson’s works, but he also acknowledges, the impact of the feelings and emotions that can be translated through his works as well. This also sparked Papageorge's, examination of what category of work and artistry that Cartier-Bresson truly falls under.  “On the heels of producing an unprecedented body of photographic poetry, Cartier-Bresson begins to inflect the deeply focused energy that had been required for what he had accomplished by cross-cutting it with extra-personal, political, and artistic concerns…this ardent photographer-poet assumed another identity.” Identity is crucial for not only an artist, but for that to be translated through the work. This ties into my understanding of Papageorge's utmost respect of Cartier-Bresson as an artist. The poetry and identity that Papageorge speaks of coincides greatly with all of the different pieces that make up a single photograph. It is the combination of those essentials that allow for the poetic interpretations to be perceived, and the identity of the photographer, which allows for a consistent theme within collections of work, to be recognized.

In both collection of works by Papageorge and Cartier-Bresson, the portrait is the most featured piece. Both of the artists focused on taking photos of the individuals that they have come across. Shooting post World War II, Cartier-Bresson captures the aura of each human he came in contact with. By traveling all over the world, Cartier-Bresson presents street photography as a wide range of images that not only show bodily and facial features, but also an environment that resonates as unfamiliar to a certain audience. By composing each one of these images the way he did, Cartier-Bresson proves to fall into this category of poetry and identity by creating a feeling of mystery within each one of these places that he photographed, but by doing so he proved the identity of each of his subjects. These being crucial components of his work, ties into not only allowing him to create a “free” identity and the artistic method of poetry as a comparison, but also allow him to define his work in these manners, as Papageorge interprets.

Week Seven: Garry Winogrand

After examining the works of the contemporary photographer David Hilliard, last week, I decided that this week I would view the works of Garry Winogrand By viewing such vastly different collections of work between these two artists, the ability tor recognize time within a photograph has become more abundant within my analysis of photography. With Winogrand's work, the essence of the 1950’s in black and white is clearly being depicted, but unlike other collections by other photographers from the same time period, Winogrand’s work has a much more lighthearted and joyous feel.

My fascination with photography as an art form comes from the specific style of street photography. I enjoy creating my own stage and setup and can also recognize when it is done incredibly well in professional shoots, but for me, nothing compares to taking a candid photography while walking around place that becomes so familiar day after day. I didn’t truly start to understand and appreciate street photography until I came across the incredibly large collection of photographs by Vivian Maier. Learning of her story and her anthology of undeveloped negatives, I was absolutely fascinated to experiences the essence of the 1950’s that was captured and then buried in storage. It’s this concept of capturing an era in time that not only does photography permit, but particular street photography. It allows for the citizens living at the time to display the features, the wardrobe, the expressions and the environment at one, natural concept, because at that time, it was natural for them. To me, there is something very special about the idea of being a witness through an image that was taken via the eye of another individual. Especially when it was taken almost seventy years previously.

With born New Yorker, Garry Winogrand’s compilation of photos that he took during the postwar decades all over the United States, we see something a little bit different with his street photography style then compared to Maier’s work. This clear depiction is what sparked interest in me of Winogrand’s work. It is not only seeing that one specific style can display so many different traits and characteristics, but also show, what I would almost say, two different sets of populations. It is clear that across the board American is surrounded by an incredible difference in socio-economic class, and to see that displayed in Winogrand’s work, emphasizes many ideas that are distinguished within his works.   

It is clear that with each one of Winogrand’s well framed shots, that he is harness the world of a certain group of individuals that at this time in history, weren’t expressing the struggles that one can come across in the complicated lives we lives. A great picture can be made, I believe, by featuring a strong human that is clearly depicting a powerful facial expression of true emotion. With these elements featured in one singular photograph, the viewer can be drawn closer in, in order to resonate with that feeling being depicted. This is usually done with images that show suffering, sadness, anger, or curiosity. I was immediately pulled into the photographic work of Winogrand because his images depict happiness, which is something that sometimes a viewer looks to and can also need to connect to when understanding a photographic piece of art.  

Week Six: David Hilliard

Between David Hilliard and Martin Parr, two photographers addressed during my critique in class on Wednesday, I chose to analyze Hilliard’s work more closely. As I view collections from both photographers, I concluded that it is Hilliard’s work that not only applies slightly more the work that I have created and intend to continue to create, over Parr's images, mostly due to the idea of space over content.

Parr’s work features the strong presence of people in their natural environments, dealing with everyday tasks within their career or daily lives. The images show perspective, but do not provide enough clarity or detail in portraying these individuals as the center of the pieces. Not only the people around them consume them, but also by the backdrop that doesn’t aid in providing a context that makes the subject all the more intriguing. I found myself becoming distracted by the other surrounding subjects, including other human presences and cropped sections of background environment.

As I clicked the tab next to Parr’s work, I was immediately consumed by the work of David Hilliard. Before I begin to break down Hilliard’s vast collection of pieces spread out over a numerous number of years, I would like to briefly acknowledge the “artist impact.” This is an idea that I would describe and emphasize as a crucial component to not only the distinguished eye of the viewer, but also the power, skills, talents, and abilities of the said artist, photographer. I believe it is beyond recognizable when a viewer can be so instantly drawn to one artists work over another. I viewed Parr’s work and in comparison to Hilliard’s, I did not feel the same attachment, interest, and over all feeling of beauty that I felt when I made my way through Hilliard’s website. Perhaps this is due to my personal preference, what I prove to be aesthetically pleasing, which can then relate to how to artist presents his or her work, or it can be a clear depiction of a single artistic component of decisions that creates an identifiable barrier between one photographers work next to another’s, especially when they seem to be focusing and representing the same form and shape of ideas.

With that being said, Hilliard’s work, I find to be the most well represented, well rounded, symbolization of the idea that not only I have decided to express as a concentration in my photographic work, but also in his. Expanding my interests in portrait photography, I have decided to concentrate not only on the subject of my photograph, but also the environment that surrounds them and allows the essence of the subject to grow and become well embodied. By not only making the artistic decision to create one image via a break down of separate images, ranging from two to five, Hilliard’s eye allows for him to see the whole in all of its parts. This is an idea that I find incredibly crucial to photography. One can never be sure how a viewer will perceive an interpret the work, they might just chose one singular section and have that be the focus of the work than then the piece in its entirety. With Hilliard’s method he is creating that process already for the viewer.

Many of Hilliard’s pieces, from 1993-2012, contain one singular or a multiple of different human forms, however, with these wide, almost panoramic vantage points, nothing is being over powered, where the focus of the piece would vanish. These images are visually beautiful as a whole, and when I find myself covering up the other section of the piece, I am not discouraged or turned off. It becomes its own piece of art that tells its own story. By slowly revealing the rest of the sections, the viewer has to ability to have their own story unfold. After viewing these astounding pieces, I have been inspired to expand my very close and clear focal point. This was something that I attempted and succeeded in doing within my Asian Market series; however, I have made a more concrete decision on how to expand with the ideas I have been exploring in my latest works. My goal is to keep the human form as the subject, but like Hilliard, I have recognized that the environment can enhance the perception of the individual and create a more diverse image that can evoke a more question filled analysis. By using a wider lenses and expanding my foreground of the human form to the background of the outside world, I can create a more insightful, thoughtful, and extensive image.