twelve

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.

Jill Greenberg

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:

this.onMouseMove = function() {

constrainedMove(bg_mc, 4, 1);

}

};

function constrainedMove(target:MovieClip, speed:Number, dir:Number) {

var mousePercent:Number = _xmouse/Stage.width;

var mSpeed:Number;

if (dir == 1) {

mSpeed = 1-mousePercent;

} else {

mSpeed = mousePercent;

}

target.destX = Math.round(-((target._width-Stage.width)*mSpeed));

target.onEnterFrame = function() {

if (target._x == target.destX) {

delete target.onEnterFrame;

} else {

target._x += Math.ceil((target.destX-target._x)*(speed/100));

}

};

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.

1. Action Against Hunger
2. American Jewish World Service
3. American Red Cross
4. American Refugee Committee
5. AmeriCares
6. CARE
7. Catholic Relief Services
8. Church World Service
9. Doctors Without Borders – USA
10. International Medical Corps
11. International Rescue Committee
12. Lutheran World Relief
13. Medical Teams International
14. Mennonite Central Committee
15. Mercy Corps
16. Operation USA
17. Oxfam-America
18. Project Concern International
19. Save the Children
20. Salvation Army
21. UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief)
22. World Concern (Program of Crista Ministries)
23. World Vision

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

tree at dusk by JR

I am trying rationalize the value of pictures of trees. I really like pictures of trees, but where do they fit into a “conceptual” project?

Robert Adams came to mind when I was first thinking about this. His photographs are simple and passive, yet powerful comments on ecology and manifest destiny. And I think that is how trees are; passive and powerful.

My buddy and fellow photographer, Matthew Keefe, recently participated in a project called Heroes of Horticulture that seeked

“to honor and help preserve our country’s horticultural heritage, the 2007 Landslide theme: Heroes of Horticulture seeks to highlight significant horticultural features that have stood steadfast in the face of almost insurmountable natural and cultural odds and because of that, born witness to the heritage of our nation.”

The list of artists who participated in this project was very impressive:

Eric Baden
JoDean Bifoss
George Blakely
Roger Bruce
John Divola
Matthew Keefe
Mark Klett
Louviere+Vanessa
Fredrik Marsh
John Pfahl
Eli Reed
Jim Via

Maybe pictures of trees help communicate themes like time and experience, or maybe they simply honor and preserve them.

I have begun to look closely at the vast amount of film that I have from my Summer project in Frenchville, PA. This is the first project that I have done where I feel like I am “doing it right.” I used all the same type of film, none of it was expired, the negatives are being archived carefully, etc, etc, etc. This is a new thing for me, and I must say doing it right feels good.

As I begin to digest the content and relive some of the experiences that I had in those three weeks, the meaning of the pictures as a sequence is becoming clearer. I am so so looking forward to editing these pictures and I am enjoying the proofing process.

I went to Frenchville based upon, what was to me, a rumor about the people there being so isolated for so long that they all spoke French. Before I decided to go I had found out that this was not true, but by that time the idea of spending a considerable amount of time getting to know a “town” of about 300 people had lodged itself into my simple mind.

I stayed in people’s houses, drank at the tavern, hiked the four wheeler trails, swam in the river, made a few unlikely friends and all the while was open to anything with my camera. I will be posting more pictures here and on my flickr page as I continue to proof and work towards a final product.