Photo Arts 3 RIT 2010, Fuji 4x5 instant film
As a new quarter begins here at RIT, I pull out my favorite first day assignment for beginning photography classes. We check out 7 or 8 Sinar 4×5 cameras and some Fuji instant film backs and I let the students go. They interact with each other, the camera and the light, and I watch as intimidation turns into instant gratification.
Above is the picture I made while demonstrating how to load and expose the film.
I photogrpahed some interesting stories last week. Both had to do with legal matters. Here are my outtakes and links to the story. The first is who was Freddie Peacock, exonerated of rape after 28 years, and photographed him for The New York Times
Freddie Peacock, exonerated after 28 years, The New York Times
The second is Carol Tonzi, who who invested in another person’s life insurance policy and saw no return.
Life Settlements, The Wall Street Journal
Nanjing, China, 2000
Nanjing, China, 2000
Bus Stop, Rochester, NY, 2010
I just finished a two-month long annual report with the Rochester Transit Authority. More thougts on this to come as I make an edit of images. I have to say, it was a nice break from the the day-long assignments that I am used to..
Best on Earth, Best on Mars
- The Best on Earth. / The Best on Mars. [Black and white advertisement], c. 1985
- Unidentified photographer
- Ink on paper 1 item, 11″ x 17″
- National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Archives Center - NMAH
- Nike Advertising Oral History & Documentation Project
- Reproduction restricted due to copyright
- Image No. 03044801.tif (AC Scan)
Is there always a need for both in a successful body of work? Photographs by Richard Misrach made in Hawaii from the balcony of a hotel room with an 8×10 camera give a God’s eye view swimmers and sunbathers on the beach. The perspective and environment in combination with the zen-like moments create an interesting and almost disturbing sense of vulnerability of the subject. But, aside from the fact that these images were made shortly after 9-11, what, if anything do they have to do with it? Can’t they simply exist as open-ended images completely detached from the context of an event that occurred thousands of miles away?
“I was drawn to the fragility and grace of the human figure in the landscape,” Misrach wrote of the series. “My thinking about this work was influenced by the events of 9/11, particularly by the images of individuals and couples falling from the World Trade Towers, as well as by the 1950s Cold War novel and film, On the Beach. Paradise has become an uneasy dwelling place; the sublime sea frames our vulnerability, the precarious nature of life itself.”
-Richard Misrach
Similarly, but less poetic, are Jill Greenburg’s End Times images. Children crying, some after having candy literally taken away from them, are meant to represent the artist’s feelings about the Bush administration. I don’t see the connection. I think they just look kind of cool.
I saw this little girl who’d come to a party with her mom, and she was beautiful, so I thought it might be interesting to photograph her. When they came to my studio, the mother brought along her toddler son, and I decided to shoot him too. We took off his shirt because it was dirty. He started crying on his own, and I shot that, and when I got the contact sheets back I thought, this could go with a caption, ‘Four More Years,’” like he was appalled at George Bush’s reelection. The images have a real power—they immediately get under your skin. The emotion you see is just so compelling, yet they’re beautiful at the same time. That was one of the things that interested me about the project—the strength and beauty of the images as images. I also thought they made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country. Sometimes I just feel like crying about the way things are going.
Maybe the statements for these projects are given to enhance the relevance or timeliness of the work in an historical context. Why can’t a photograph or an idea be given merit solely based on its formal qualities without having to be about a huge issue? There’s no questions that these are two very good artists doing unique and influential work, but I think that sometimes leaving the meaning of the pictures up to the viewer ok, and profound statements about politics and current events are best left out of it.
Massimo Vitali’s work is allows the viewer to be invisible. You can walk through a crowd of people and stare at everyone for as long as you want. His website provides possibly the most effective web experience that I have seen for a photographer using a large format.
Massimo Vitali
The web site allows, through a flash logarithm, the viewer to pan the image, simulating a close-up inspection one might make in a gallery or museum. The inspection works perfectly for this type of work because it is all about the details, interactions and voyeurism of Vitali’s prints.
detail
The panning image is by no means a new development in Flash, and by now the avid computer user is very used to this panning effect. It is a common effect in the Iphone’s interface, it is sometimes used in the 360 degree images, etc, etc. But the use in Vitali’s case is perfect.
An example of the code for the effect is:
- constrainedMove(bg_mc, 4, 1);
- }
From what I can gather, the coordinates of the mouse are translated into a decimal corresponding to a percentage (45% = .45) and then divided by 100. When you divide an number less that one by 100, the result gets closer and closer to zero, and the result id translated into the speed of the effect.
The result is an easing slowdown of the pan that is un-computer-like and very natural for viewing a large print
San Francisco Earthquake, 1906. Magnitude 7.9
Great Kanto Earthquake, 1923. Magnitude 8.3
Cook Inlet (near Anchorage), Alaska, 1964. Magnitude 9.2
Kobe Earthquake, 1995. Magnitude 6.8
Haiti, 2010. Magnitude 7.0
In class today my photojournalism students and I had a nice discussion about the Haitian Earthquake, the media and photographs of suffering and destruction in general. To give this recent event some perspective we looked back at our recent and not-so-recent collective memories for images of other infamous natural disasters and decided that the Haitian Earthquake is and will be one of the most photographed disasters of all time. Below is a list of websites through which you can donate money to aid the relief efforts.
A classroom is a perfect place to collectively reflect and talk through a tragedy like this. It was interesting to hear people’s opinions on the media and the role of a journalist, and it is inspiring to listen to the next generation of journalists make intelligent, empathetic and thoughtful statements.
Handball Walls, New York, 2009
I heard about the conceptual designer of the classic video game The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, and his approach to exploring. As a series of leisurely walks, Miyamoto tended to wander through the streets of a new city with no praticular goal except discovery. And what is the best way to discover something new? Go where you have never been.
I have been exploring places that I have never been for that past couple of months and, while I have been to Brooklyn before, this summer was the first time I had time to explore the way that Miyamoto would. Mostly by bike or on foot, I spent a good chunk of the summer taking exploratory concentric walks around my home base in Williamsburg. The resulting typology was my simplest answer to an overwhelming place.
I think that what struck me was the percieved lack of relative variation compared to the surprising lack of similarity.
detail
