Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson

Is one of the strange figures of the photography community in USA the last thirty years, his style is always strict and he characterize him self as a perfectionist. In the biggest range of his work Crewdson explores the every day life of the American middle class suburban. In his pictures he explores obsessively the moments as an unseen viewer and after he recreate this moments in highly controlled environments and succeeds to present pictures with the exact same filling which we would have only if we had witnessed a scene of an unnatural event. He always works with a huge crew of assistants, helpers, and several other technicians. And this is who gives him the ability to give the biggest attention on the smallest details in his set ups, like, chairs, windows, lights, toilets, birds, pillows, and so many other tiny tiny things, that we can ask a ourselves if these things have a meaning not only for the characters in the pictures but for the photographer as well. Gregory Crewdson as most of the photographers of his age and period, start loosing ground acknowledgment. This happened when he started to use popular actors and actresses in his strange set-ups. This move seems that take of from his pictures the curiosity that had created to the viewers about the fillings that they had used to see to appear on the faces of the unknown actors that he used to use in his strange images. But he always will be a muster of photography and maybe one of the best cinematographers that we will ever see.

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz, a true maverick of the photographic arts, began her journey during a period of cultural and economic revolutions. It was at that point that she, as an artist, began to blossom conceptually. She studied at the San Francisco School of Art where painting was her preferred medium. It was later that she became interested in photographic arts.
Today she is one of the most respected woman photographers, her work has been exhibited in several museums and galleries around the world, and is easy recognizable as hers. Within the years she evolve a personal style whish we could name it as dramatic, with the sense of mystery. And that is true; when I am looking her pictures I feel that there is a whole story behind the image. It is like this image is the beginning of a story and in the same time is the end to. The story it self is left to unfold in the viewers mind. And as each viewer has his own mind has his own story. It is not accidental that Leibovitz had reproduced several scenes of well-known fairytales and middle age legends. By that way she succeeds to reach and bring back some of our earlier memories, when our parents were reading to us the same fairytales and our imagination was traveling to new unexplored worlds. These is the success of Annie Leibovitz she travels us back to these forgotten worlds.

Arnold Newman

When I was younger I was always staring the world with the maximum curiosity, and I always found very interesting images. After that the need to share this images with the people around me came and then I realized that photography was the medium that will help me to do that.
When I was doing the research for the blog I came up on Arnold Newman’s words “We do not take pictures with our cameras but with our hearts and minds” a phrase that explains the source of my love for photography and I suppose for Newman as well.
Arnold Newman started his career in Miami as a painter, after a point in his life moved to New York and started taking pictures to raise some money. The medium of photography attracted him and he decides to open a photographic studio and started to work as free launcher for several well-known magazines. His passion was to take pictures of people as he called it. The word portraiture sounded strong as his stated in one of his interviews. His very famous portraits of the very famous people that photographed in his life are instantly recognizable as his work. By the time he evolve a new style that came to be known as “environmental portraiture” which placed the subject in a carefully composed setting, most of the times this was the work environment of the subject, to capture the essence of their life and work. With his stick attitude he posed his subjects until a relaxed expression indicated to Newman that the subject was approaching the look of permanence that he was striving for. So his work is not only recognizable as his, but stays interesting and powerful through time.

Lytro a new technology http://www.lytro.com/

Lytro

A new technology is about to come out; the company’s name is Lytro. Their promotion communicates that they will change the way that we capture and view images. The motto of the company is “shoot first, focus later” basically this new technology does exactly what the motto says. They develop a new camera, which is able to shoot in seconds, the photographer has just to switch on the camera and press the button. Later on the computer or even on the camera, the user is able to click on deferent areas of the image and the special software that the company has developed focusing on the image on the selected spot. The whole idea appears to have numerous applications on many deferent kinds of photography, but not to all of them. Speaking as an artist I fill like someone is taking of my hands a powerful feature of a camera, that some times makes the deference between a good or a bad picture, this is the ability to focus.
As conclusion I believe that this new technology will truly improve the way that we interact with photography only if it delivers everything that so generously promises.

August Sander Young Soldier (1945)

The obsession of Sander with the faces that were surrounding him was going on for years after the war in his already destroyed country. In a period whish every photographer would like to record scenes of concrete truth from the war, scenes of distraction and misery. Sander focuses on the face of a young soldier who survived. With an almost fake countryside background from a farm, which probably is the place that he comes from. With a simple and symmetric frame. With the image of a uniform synonymous with violence. With clear war symbols. The image however leads us directly to the living-deed look of the young soldier who staring us with out never answering our questions. With the beautiful, expressionless face, which doesn’t projects, neither sadness, joy, fear or pride. Sanders remain one of the biggest manipulator of emotions with minimum means.
August Sanders, lived in a small town next to Colonia Germane, he worked as a professional photographer in the middle war. His work was basically well made portraits of the high society. But in a point he realized the discretional power of photography and then he started a huge personal photographic project, with misleading name: Man of 20th century.

History’s Shadows

History’s Shadows
History’s shadows is a project with great interest and resonance in several sociological and anthropological sciences as history, art and civilization. Here art is used as medium and for one more time succeeds to make us feel awe in front of the human evolution. The artist David Maisel photographed several x-rays of ancient sculptures and pottery from two big civilizations of human history, the Roman and the Chinese.
Someone could say that these x-rays are not art and in the first place were made to observe technical details. But I believe the idea that lays behind the exposure of these x-rays as pieces of art succeeds to set us able to see beyond the obvious results of the original objects, it set us able to see in side and through them, directly to the artist soul. Also it travel us back in time (which is basic idea of photography) and stimulate our imagination. The artist him self see these photographs as expressions of the artists and artisans who created the original objects centuries ago, he releases the messages that stayed unchanged with the completion of the centuries. And in the end he wonders what are the lessons that these ancient civilizations have to teach us for our current position as Humanity

Boonstra Rommert Untitled

Cones or chimneys from an old industrial world order fragment and topple against a misty background of crumpled paper. A flame gutters, and an eagle stretches its wings. Boonstra an exponent in the 1980s of staged photography which made use of painted models and back –projections, liked to imagine the last days of civilization abandoned and swept by storm and fire. Staging allowed him to call up memories of the Liost City of Atlantis and the Tower of Babel, producing pictures, which had a dramatic sense of catastrophe. Boonstra was one of a new wave of Rotterdam artist who established that city as the capital of Dutch photography as well as an Amusment Park of Culture. He participated in the vey important Fotografia Buffa exhibition of constricted photography in Groningen in 1986-an exhibition, which summed up the achievements of Dutch installation photography in the 1980s

Richard Avedon Dovima with Elephant 1955

As I was getting familiar with photography I started reading about the greatest photographers. Richard Avedon was one of the photographers that made me admire photographic art and push me to decide to study photography. In this picture which is may be the most famous of his, we see Dovima one of the most well known models in her age, to pose between four circus elephants dressed with one of the dresses of the new collection of Christian Dior. The motion of the elephants seems to be as delicate as the motion of the model, the minimalistic frame matches with the design of the dress. And the image refers to a glorious event. The photograph is so perfectly structured that makes the viewer to feel that the whole set up will tern from a photograph to a video and the objects in it will resume their movement. Richard Avedon was well known for his revolutionary shite, and as he said he was always interested about how his camera was capturing the personality and the soul of his models, here we see everything very clear. The elegant silhouette of Dovima and the gigantic figures of the elephants bounding together in picture that was meant to set the path for fashion photography.




Bibliography:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Fashion_Faux_Paw.htm
Evidence 1944-1974 by Richard Avedon
Woman in the Mirror. 2005,

Arbus Diane Child with Toy Hand Grenade in the central park, New York city. 1962

Diane Arbus lived and worked in New York USA in the middle of 20th century, she is well known for her pictures of strange people, like dwarfs, giants, transsexual, and circus performers. In this picture, “childe with a grenade” she transfer us in the period of the Vietnamese war, when America was sacrificing young people in a pointless war. This picture were taken in the Central Park, in the frame we see a childe around ten years old maybe younger, which is holding a toy grenade. The expiration of the boy is sawing to us that he is in the state of panic we could even say terror. His left hand that looks like a hook, his face, his skinny body predispose for an unpleasant event. The background is unfocused and figures in it seem to move towards the child with means to harm him. The whole set up presents the boy as one of the many young people that fit in the pointless Vietnamese war and die as they were in a suicide mission. Photographer like Diane Arbus succeeded with their photographs to saw to the people the cold true of the war and made to fit for a better world for them and for their children.

bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_with_Toy_Hand_Grenade_in_Central_Park
Arbus, Diane. Diane Arbus. Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1972

Modernism and Postmodernism

The stream of modernism (1860-1960) has occurred in the mid 19th century in Western Europe. Its roots are based on the idea that 'traditional ‘forms of art as literature, painting, architecture, photography, followed by outdated standards. So there was a need for something new. Also modernism was based in previous revolutionary movements, including liberalism and communism.
Post-modernism focuses the period after modernism (1960 and after). There is usually a more narrative quality to post-modern art and photography. It meant to stimulates the mind of the viewer and interpret the message conveyed through the creative use of deferent mediums.

Edward Weston, Nude 1936 Charis Wilson.

Modernism in photography was all about lines, shapes, and high quality images. Also high estimate was given to the composition and framing. Here we see a beautiful nude of Charis Wilson, the position of her body and the shapes that she creates presents to us the naturalistic side of the human body. Never the less this nude body is one of the most iconic human images in the history of photography.

Fox Games by Skoglund Sandy 1989

Skoglund creates surrealist images by building elaborate sets or tableaux, furnishing them with carefully selected objects, a process of which takes her months to complete. Finally, she photographs the set, complete with actors. The works are characterized by an overwhelming amount of one object and either bright, contrasting colors or a monochromatic color scheme. And this makes her one of the pioneers photographers in the postmodernism movement.

In this picture twenty-two red foxes clamber over the tables and chairs in a dining room, playing, scratching and eating, as a waiter pours wine for a couple dressed in grey. A single grey fox carrying a dead creature in its mouth. The arrangement looks flawless and not even the supports and wires are visible. The picture makes us visualize the hall event in our mind. And this is its success.

Robert Frank (1924) Elevator, Miami Beach

This is a photograph by Robert Frank, appearing in the collection Les Americains (The Americans). Jack Kerouac singled this out as his favorite image in the foreword to the American edition of the book. Artists, like ethnographers, train their eyes to see things other people don’t see. They try to present what they see so that we, the audience, can glimpse something where we have looked a thousand times and failed to find anything noteworthy. So in a similar way here Robert frank noticed this young girl and the essence of her presence. The projection in the girls eyes in not about the social reality of the 50’s in USA, but it is about the doubt of her fate, of our fate. So this photograph fails to transmit information about this social event but simultaneously succeeds to elevate the main element of the composition when all the bleary abstract elements stays in the background to charge emotionally the image.
An image, which was taken for journalistic purposes, and that fact, is the reason that makes it on of the best in the book “The Americans”.

Research:
The Americans by Robert Frank
Wikipedia, Elevator Miami Beach.

Julia Margaret Cameron The kiss of peace (1869)

It is almost impossible for someone to determine what is this that gives the impact to a photographer’s images. However in Cameron’s pictures I would dare to say that it is the combination of visual presence with absolute narrative hints. A combination that makes the theatricality a dominant element of her pictures. But the appearance of theatricality is not enough to stimulate the emotions. The viewer has to convinced for the tragically of her characters. The models gaze is lost to one another and to us. The title speaks for a kiss, but kiss there is none. The lips passively seek, but the gaze escapes. The title speaks for peace, but peace looks like a death how is expected. Everything is hinted, because Cameron knows that what is declared disappears. Whether it is sadness, happiness or love.
Cameron was the first and well-known photographer with coherent and conscious artwork. Her work is consists of three types of portraits. Those of her famous artist, scientist and friends, those of close friends from her surrounding environment and those that she did for the illustration of the poetic book of her friend Alfred Tennyson with name of Knights of the table Stroggylis.

Blind photography

"The whole trajectory of modern art for the last 100 years has been toward the concept of mental construction, and blind photography comes from that place. The very concept sounds like an oxymoron" (by new York Times). When I first read about this man I felt awe, and a power that made me appreciate the gifts that I have, the gifts that most of us have. Pete Eckert is a blind photographer and he doesn’t have these gifts, but obviously he has some others. His artwork is not only recognized but he won one of the biggest photographic competitions in the world, Artist Wanted “Exposure” competition, New York, NY, 2008. By looking at his work, we see something simple, something clear, something that goes directly to our harts and we understand that the person who did these pictures is special. By combining help form sighted people and his extraordinary ability of visualizing the world around him, he is creating images in his head — really elaborate, fully realized visions — and then bringing some version of that vision into the world for the rest of us to see how he imagine our world and what he wants to communicate as an artist. As he stated he want to create bridges between the two worlds. And I think he succeeds exactly that.

Time stoppers by SFINA

http://vimeo.com/9151474

Time-stoppers

This project was made by one of the razing Photographic teams of Thessaloniki, an idea which combines the new technologies and the basic idea of photography; the freezing of the time and the imprinting of the image on one piece of paper, succeeding by that to move photography one step forward. With this project the team is setting possible to the viewer to observe the same frozen moment from several different points of view. By using 100 connected cameras and merging the images in a computer they were creating super 180o degrees 3D images and some of the most realistic ones. It is worth telling that even the medium, which has been used, is photography, it is impossible to see these images printed on a peace of paper, so the use of technology (screen) is again necessary. A very interesting project, which literally travel us back to the immortalization of the moment and stimulate our imagination of what else we are going to see in the future!

Feminism . photography by Helmut Newton. They are coming.

They are coming.

The title, Sie kommen, sounds portentous in German, as if these girls are vanguard elements in an invading army. It is similar with the way that feminism invades in the western society in that period. They wear their skin as if it is a costume to which they are more or less indifferent. They care only to dominate our minds, and our every day life, with their beauty, and style. Newton was one of the first that understood, feminism. We see in his work a sense of worshiping the female body, and the understanding of its power.
Another problem which performers and major public artist faced in the 1970s and 80s was that of appearing in public without being used up by the event, this picture is a very good example of that; here the powerful models absented themselves as personalities and used the event to pass the message. “We are coming”. Thus Newton’s major models put themselves on show as impassively as it they were.
So their portraits become specimen pictures, anthropological and anatomical studies.

Semiotics Goldfish in a glass

A Goldfish is swimming in a glass bowl. In the background the sun is setting across the sea. The setting is the Greek island of Santorini. According to List, the fish in the bowl symbolizes the human spirit trapped within the material world. It cannot escape from that setting into whatever lies beyond. This very famous picture it works so well, that it makes it difficult to stop thinking about it, he used semiotics in a way that even if we don’t fill trapped in our own world, we start filling trapped in his grade image, sometimes we can even fill sad about the goldfish which is unable to live in its natural environment. And then we get to wonder if we live in our natural environment or if there is something else out there. This picture historically expresses the new romantic spirit abroad in European art in the mid 1930's. It was a spirit marked by melancholy and acutely conscious of human vulnerability and isolation.