rbrittainphoto-blog

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Final Project Critiques

Colin’s portrait project was a fun examination of expressions and experiences. He captured a range of expressions from people, most of which are pleasurable. Two of the images still feature the object the person was experiencing, which takes away a little of the experience of the photograph. However, the way everyone is posed, most of whom are avoiding eye contact adds to the awkward, unexpected, and unconventional feel of the portraits. This project could be expanded upon and continued to create a larger series. 

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Catalyst: CVA Review

          Kristyn Shafer created an installation addressing what it means to be a woman in modern society. In her artist statement she discusses the rituals that women follow to maintain an imposed standard of beauty and expectations of women as a sexual object, the reason for these rituals. She references women’s bodies as viewed as abject, and the relationship between women in the public eye and in private, but the installation focuses on the private life of women. At the end of her statement Shafer states her intent to embrace all aspects of womanhood and seems to aim to empower women.

            The installation itself featured items that are typically associated with women, nail polish, make up, hair accessories, mirrors, a hope chest, and stitched panties to resemble blood, and shelves featuring other items that are neatly arranged and decorated. The left half of the installation featured items more focused on women’s appearance; make up, mirrors, brushes and the right half was items that spoke more to the biological functions of women. Panties that were stitched to resemble menstrual blood and jars filled with small objects that seem abject, but were decorated and presented in a way to make them seem more appealing.

            Shafer’s installation addresses the issues of women’s physical appearance in relation to the public sphere and in private. However, the abject was mentioned in the artist statement multiple times, but that sentiment wasn’t reflected in the installation. When I think of abject I want the work to be pushed beyond limits that put the artist and the viewer in a state of discomfort and forces them into confronting reality.

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Show Your Work

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The Art of Design: Platon

The Art of Design’s episode on photographer Platon gave insight into his artistic process. What was most striking for me was the way Platon approached his subjects and spoke with them before photographing them. He is careful not to exploit his subject and make them feel used. There is genuine care in his photos for people. His portraits are an exploration of celebrity culture as well as the human condition. During the film we were able to see him prepare a shoot and photograph Colin Powell and then travel to Africa and photograph a doctor and his patients who were victims of sexual abuse.

           During the shoot with Powell he approached him with friendliness and respect. He began a conversation with him to help him relax and become comfortable in front of the camera. Comfort between Platon and his subject is important because of the close distance that Platon shoots from. However, the conversation with the women in Africa was very different than the way he interacted with Powell. He was careful not to invade the space of the women and was mindful of their experiences while interacting with them, and reminded his assistants of that as well.

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MOP Review - Dikeou Collection Lecture

Lisa Kereszi and Benjamin Donaldson each gave a lecture at the Dikeou Collection art gallery. Kereszi started the lecture by talking about her series on her father’s auto business, haunted houses and abandoned spaces, and the new burlesque movement. Her work is reactionary to her surrounding environment, while she spoke of her work in a broad sense she related it to the work she has on exhibition at the gallery. The work up at the gallery revolves around addiction, which she drew inspiration from where she grew up. This lead into her more recent works about her father’s business, and work she’s done for the new burlesque movement and strip clubs. 

Ben Donaldson also spoke about his work and a lot of his philosophical views on the art of photography. However, he admitted to not being a conversationalist and read his speech, which was made more difficult to engage in what he was saying and relating to the images he was showing. He is a straight photographer and shoots in large format film, showing incredible detail and technical skill.

Both photographers spoke about their artwork as well as their commercial work. Being able to hear about both sides of their work and hearing the type of commissions they receive was insightful onto the reality of being a working photographer. 

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#6 International Photography Festivals - Focus

Focus Festival, Mumbai, India

This festival is held every two years, starting in 2013. The purpose of the festival is to make photography accessible by utilizing multiple spaces to present work; galleries, museums, cafes, and city streets. The festival revolves around a theme, 2017′s theme was memory. The entries are juried by curators and directors from multiple countries and the festival organizers strive to showcase of variety of perspectives and styles every show. 

http://www.focusfestivalmumbai.com/

Artists:

Tsutomu Yamagata

http://tsutomuyamagata.com/web/

Anastasia Bogomolova 

https://anabogomolova.viewbook.com/

Galleries:

http://tarq.in/

http://www.bdlmuseum.org/

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#5 - Technical

*Technically* this is printmaking, but it’s photography related and still cool.

Photogravure:

Prepare a copper plate: clean, polish, and bevel the edges.

Evenly coat the plate with asphaltum and heat.

Create a positive transparency from a negative that is the same size of the final print.

Make a contact print onto carbon tissue.

Place the tissue over the plate and soak in hot water, this separates the paper base and washes away unhardened gelatin. 

Allow plate to dry.

Put the plate through a series of etching baths.

Wash the plate.

Pour ink over the plate, wipe off excess, place paper over the plate, top with printing felt, and feed through printing press. 

The plate can be reused and should be thoroughly cleaned after printing. 

http://www.photogravure.com/process/process.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogravure

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MOP Review

Carol Golemboski

Hat Trick

2008

Gelatin Silver Print

Carol Golemboski

Disappearing Act

2008

Gelatin Silver Print

Carol Golemboski

Blackberry Birdcage

2008

Anthotype

Carol Golemboski

Blind Bird

2005

Gelatin Silver Print

For the month of photography, the Denver Art Museum is hosting four artist lectures featuring local artists. The first in this series was given by Carol Golemboski. Golemboski is an artist and teacher at UCD, one of her prints from the series That Old Black and White Magic titled Hat Trick is currently hanging in the hallway of the photo lab on campus. Golemboski uses film and darkroom processing in combination with drawing and etching to create images that are based in reality but feature alternative processes and takes advantage of the historical process and developments of photography in her work. Her work revolves around the mystical and mysterious, the first of her series Psychometry was based on pseudoscience practices of the Victorian Era, such as palm reading and phrenology. Her most recent series is about magic and the revealing of secrets behind tricks.

Golemboski's work is unique not only in subject matter but in process. She uses alternative practices such as scratching negatives, printing through drawings, and photograms. The Psychometry  series was the first in which she used scratching of negatives to enhance the images. That Old Black and White Magic uses a combination of scratching, photograms, and printing through drawings to create what appears to be chalk outlines on top of her images. These outlines echo old instructional materials on learning magic that Golemboski references while creating her photographs.

Golemboski's lecture and work is refreshing for it's content and use of alternative photographic methods. While many photographs utilize the camera's natural documentary abilities she uses drawings and photograms to utilize the other half of photography's capabilities and push the concept of photographs as reality.

http://carolgolemboski.com/index.html

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5 Points of Color photography

-1935 Kodachrome is released, first viable commercially available color film

-Few professional photographers used color in it’s beginnings because they felt that is detracted from the overall composition

-Some photographers embraced color film early on, Ferenc Berko, Harry Callahan, and Nathan Benn.

-Color film was strongly associated with commercial and advertising photography, one of the reasons few artists wanted to use it.

-Photojournalists were the next to embrace the use of color photography, Nathan Benn in particular, who used it for his work for National Geographic

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Blog #3, Call for Entries

http://denverarts.org/news/call_for_entries/

http://arvadacenter.org/galleries/call-for-entries

http://www.meininger.com/call-for-entry/

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Blog #2, Technical

Hand tinting photographs began to gain popularity with portrait photography. It’s a blend of painting and photography to add life to a black and white photograph. To hand tint and color a photograph you use photographic oils and q-tips/cotton balls to apply. The quality of the work depends on each person’s experience. I am interested in learning this techniques because I like the aesthetic of hand tinted photographs and am interested in learning historic processes of photography.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/threads/introduction-to-hand-coloring.147257/

http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/HCP/hcp.html

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Samira Alikhanzadeh

Samira Alikhanzadeh, originally a painter whose work has evolved into multi-media works has held solo and group exhibitions internationally since the 1990s. Alikhanzadeh’s early works were collage and mixed media, which evolved into collage and mixed media involving photography and printing on mesh to make transparent images that layer and intermingle with the backgrounds. Her latest work, which were featured at the Center for Visual Art, are photographs printed on transparent Plexiglas over rugs and small mirrors.

           Alikhanzadeh’s work examines the duality of life and death and seeks to resolve simultaneous existence and non-existence through our presence in photographs. She clarifies this conflict through the layers of images. Recent bodies of work, from 2014 on have kept with this same theme but deals closer with presence and absence versus existence and non-existence.

http://samiraalikhanzadeh.com/main/

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