Monday, November 18, 2013

Adam Fuss


I really like this photograph by Adam Fuss. It is a very pretty image, but also seems to have some meaning behind it. The baby looks like it is floating around in a womb. The picture was probably taken by putting a baby on a glass table or some sort of transparent material. Then the photographer put water on top of the material and just took the picture from below the glass. The baby looks like a frog or tadpole swimming through water, it makes the baby look very primordial. The photograph makes me realize that a baby is still an animal and looks just as weird as all the other new-born animals. The cuteness goes away and the baby just looks weird.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Miro Slovik



This photograph was made by Miro Slovik. It looks very experimental, the process behind the must be interesting. I don't know how to feel about the photograph itself, I don't really like it, but how he made the photograph is interesting. He probably exposed 3 different negatives onto the photo paper: the woman, the stack of books and the thing she is running on. The silly pose is a critique on society in that the books she is carrying are all the books she needs for school. Society forces us to do certain assignments that we end up rushing for without thought which is signified by her running stance. Her bowing pose makes it look like she is a slave to the work she has to do.

Abelardo Morell



This image by Abelardo Morell is very interesting. The photographer combined his wall and a landscape. I liked the process he used to make the picture. Making and using a camera obscura seems to be really difficult and patience testing. Since it is a landscape too it makes it even harder because in general landscape photographers spend a lot of time setting up a picture, especially if they use a large format camera. The camera obscura for a landscape picture adds to the frustration of the process. The photograph itself is very interesting, the shapes in the room get filled with the landscape, it makes me want to explore the photograph.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Robert and Shana ParkHarrison



This image by Robert and Shana ParkHarrison is very interesting because there are people attached to clouds floating over a landscape. The men in the clouds seem to be fishing for people to bring up to the clouds with them. I imagine the men to be angels and they are looking fishing for good souls to bring up into the afterlife. Its obviously not real but the picture is very convincing and well done.  The process of this photograph is really interesting as well. The photographer must have layered the negatives onto photographic paper. He probably exposed the landscape with clouds onto the paper. Then he exposed the man attached to the ropes on to every cloud.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Philip-Lorca diCorcia - Street Studio



This photograph is by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. He took this picture by setting up studio lights on a street and he just waited for people to walk past the lights. He would wait for an interesting person and hit the shutter. The result showed how he caught people's natural faces with a studio lighting effect; getting a natural face in a studio would normally be very difficult to do. The picture itself is just of a man's face and its kind of interesting, but what makes me interested in the photograph is the process of how he took it.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Christopher Thomas


This photograph is from Christopher Thomas' series 'new york sleeps'. It is a picture of a ice cream parlor in Ridgewood, Queens. The website says its Brooklyn, but the website is wrong. I live two blocks from that parlor, and it is most certainly Queens. I like the picture, but it shows a nice contrast between the past and the present of the parlor. You can see how the ice cream parlor used to look before it closed or was bought out, but there is a Carvel sign on top. The picture pokes fun at corporate stores buying out smaller stores and then just adding a little sign to prove it. The picture itself is very dramatic because of the use of lines and strong angles. The lines of the road and power lines separate the picture into neat sections which make it easy to see what the picture is about, the ice cream parlor. The sharp angle of the parlor makes it pop out of the picture make it even more obvious as to what the picture is about. I also walk by that building often, so its cool to see in the series, I've actually bought an ice cream cake from there before.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Early Humans


This photograph is by Hiroshi Sugimoto. It is a picture of a display of early humans in the museum of natural history. This photograph is part of a set of many pictures Sugimoto took in the museum. I think this is an amazing photograph because of how real Sugimoto makes the display early humans look. The picture is playing with reality because obviously there is no way Sugimoto actually took a picture of early people, but the picture looks real. Its playing with our eyes and how we view photographs; people like to think that a photograph shows reality. Sugimoto is saying that a photograph can pretend to show reality. For the first couple of seconds of looking at it, it almost looks like the picture is of reality and that Sugimoto had his camera with him in the time of early humans, but after a few seconds it all the little details that make it look fake slowly show. The use of black and white makes the display look real because it hides the off colors that would be shown if the photograph was in color. Sugimoto is playing with how reality is depicted in this picture and how people view reality.