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Photographer: Ryan Christopher Jones

Project: NO ESTUVE AQUÍ

Ryan Christopher Jones is an Mexican-American photographer from Central California that currently resides in New York City. His work has been featured in The New York Times and his work has also been featured in The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, ProPublica, The Washington Post, The Intercept, The Guardian, and others.

No Estuve Aqui is not a deep dive that attempts to represent an entire culture; the scenes are quiet observations about a country. He draws attention to the perception of Mexico vs reality.

I like this research project because he was going back to his family background and using photos to show the world his grandparents' upbringing. Hopefully I am able to go back to my parents and grandparents neighborhood and photograph what it is like before it's torn down.

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Photographer: Neil Leifer

Project: Boxing 60 years of fights and fighters.

Neil Leifer is one of the most known sports photographers of all time. For 50 years he has photographed some of the most iconic moments in sports history. Born in New York, he has always enjoyed taking photographs of sports. Many of his photographs are framed and sold for money. Leifer's images have regularly appeared in many major national magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post, Look, LIFE, Newsweek, People and, most often, TIME and Sports Illustrated.

His most famous image is the picture of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston to reclaim the world’s heavyweight title. He has many iconic photos of Ali and many other artists across the world such as Pele, Willie Davis, President John F. Kennedy, Sylvester Stallone in Rocky in Rocky II.

This research post is the most intriguing to me because I never knew he was responsible for so many iconic moments and he was reliable to get the closest to capturing the moment as you can get. You can feel the energy in the picture and can imagine the atmosphere.

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Photographer: Gordon Parks

Project: The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950

Gordon Parks is one of the most influential photographers of the 1900’s. His goal was to bring social justice at the time to light. Parks was born on November 20, 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas. The midwest region at the time was a dark spot in the country not because of the things that were happening there, but the fact that there were no sought after cities in that area.

His projects during the 1940s to the 1970s showed important aspects of American culture, and he became known for focusing on issues of civil rights, poverty, race relations and urban life. In his project, The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950,  Parks explores the early years of his career as an influential photographer who captured the essence of the civil rights movement and to show the breaking barriers for African Americans during that time.

His pictures were usually in black and white and I appreciate that because black and white are used for more grim or serious events and I feel like his work was much needed and pivotal to creating light for social justice issues during that period. My favorite quote from him is “A guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.”

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Photographer: Matt Black

Project: American Geography

Matt Black is from the Central Valley of California. Black has traveled across the county for different projects such as American Geography, Mixteca, and The Valley. In his project, American Geography, he took pictures that expanded the project to encompass the United States and completed his first cross-country trip, a three-and-a-half-month journey visiting dozens of communities across 28 states.

American Geography initially started in 2013 when Black started photographing the isolated cities in California’s Central Valley, the rural, agricultural area where he lives. He has taken pictures of places like Pixley. His goal was to bring isolated cities to light. It then evolved to him showing landscapes across the United States as a whole and the different cities across different regions of the U.S.

"These hierarchies of power are what the work is exploring, who gets what and when and where, and who gets to say what America is. And that's what I'm talking about. America from the ground level is very different." said Black

His work is interesting because I am from a big city in Chicago and I assumed that those cities were only like that in movies because of how little buildings there were there. I like the black & white type of pictures, it gives it such a old school feeling as if the pictures were taken decades ago.

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Photographer: Carrie Mae Weems 

Book: Kitchen Table Series 

Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953. She is considered to be one of the most influential American artists. She uses her time to investigate family lifestyles, political systems, class, sexism, and the consequences of power.

In her book, Kitchen Table Series, she photographs different events through a woman’s perspective. The book has 20 pictures at a kitchen table and the most noticeable common thing about the pictures is that the light source is just a light hanging above the table. The pictures show the couple at the table doing various activities such as eating dinner, the husband reading the newspaper while the wife is smoking a cigarette, and the couple just conversing about their relationship which is talked about in text in between the photos about their conversation. The husband then exits the room, leaving the wife alone at the kitchen table. She then seems to be stressed out about the situation and starts drinking.

The next series of photos were with the wife and what is perceived to be with her friends explaining how she just wants to be a “good woman, a pal, a compadre, and working. Yet he asks for more. She also said that she is tired of him talking to her however he wants about what type of woman he wants. 

She has numerous accolades for her work including Prix de Roma, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Alpert, The Anonymous was a Woman, and The Tiffany Awards. In 2012, Weems was presented with one of the first US Department of State’s Medals of Arts in recognition for her commitment to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program

Her work is interesting to me because she goes into an idea that I am not familiar with. I personally will never truly understand struggles that women may go through due to the fact that I am a man. With that being said, she does a good job explaining through just pictures. If I was to never look at the text in between the pictures and look solely at the photos. I could still get an idea on what she was trying to do. I plan on using her method of storytelling in this upcoming paper and many photo essays in the future.

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Photographer: Dawoud Bey

Book: Class Pictures

Dawoud Bey is a photographer born and raised in Queens, New York in 1953. He is most known for his portraits of children in various cities and their relationship with the city. In his book, Class Pictures, he uses 40 different portraits of students from cities from all across the United States.

With each of his subjects, Bey has a 45 minute session. In that time, Bey gets to know them and the subject was to write a one page reflection which is published in the book next to the photos. Bey's goal with this book is to “to create a compelling and significant contemporary portrait of American youth in its various social and human dimensions. I believe that such a group of photographs-with the attendant texts-will constitute a significant record and examination of our time... Rather than viewing young people through a lens of social problematics that generalizes the individual, I intend to make a rich and complex description of these subjects.” After he took the photo he didn’t read their descriptions until the subject left after the picture.

Personally, I enjoy his portraits and I like his idea of going around different cities and asking the kids about their experiences and allowing the kids to give their view on what it's like living in their specific neighborhood. Many of the stories read on here are relatable to the average black child's childhood growing up. I personally don’t enjoy taking portraits but I enjoy looking at them with the right context behind them.

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Texture

Photo 1: The texture of the upper leather on the “All Star Chameleon” 6′s 

Photo 2: (blue and white): The stitching across the letters of the Hockey Jersey.

Photo 3: The stitching of the All Star LeBron James jersey.

Photo 4: The tear along the retro Toronto Raptors jersey.

Photo 5: The fabric on the toe box of the Jordan Off-White “Sails” 5′s.

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Symmetrical Balance 

Photo 1: Symmetrical balance between the 2 tall bushes, sidewalks, and trees along the sides.

Photo 2: Symmetrical balance with the roads in this photo.

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Welcome to my blog! I am a student at Fresno State with a MCJ-Mulitmedia Major . I was born and raised in Chicago,Illinois. My goal with this is to be involved with sports, whether it's reporting for a specific NFL or NBA team, sports journalism, or broadcasting for a sports network. My main interest is music, shoes, clothes, and sports. I will also be the first male to enter and graduate college.