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Light Drawing and Pixel Manipulation

We experience most photographic images today in the form of pixels, a grid of pixels, each point is a light source with a brightness value ranging from 0 to 255. I believe it is because my eyes are trained on these harsh pixels that when I developed a photo myself, the experience changed me.

At the beginning of this class, we were introduced to an analog camera whose controls include shutter speed, aperture and ISO. The variety of images we can get from the same physical reality is overwhelming. I wondered how a photograph might look if we took away all these controls; what if we focus on the direct interactivity between light and paper? With this I began to study the pinhole camera. As I started exploring this simple technology more and more, I felt very humbled by the act of photography, not only the concept of capturing a physical reality, but the act itself.

It was the moment of capturing the image. The long hours of exposure, standing in the cold, adapting to the sun and making decisions in real time. It was the moment I wait for the print to develop, giving up control to the chemicals and light. It was the moment I realise the chemicals I was collapsing time, the whole hour in one single frame. And lastly, it was the moment I realise that silver prints don’t react linearly to light. It has its own life. It is not pixel by pixel. The light leaks and bleeds on the paper, and it’s how you interact with them that creates the end image.

Going back to a digital image, I try to create something for people to experience the camera as a process. There is a wait time. There is only so much you can control. And each image captured, each pixel has a life of its own.

This project is a series of experiment, an attempt to reconcile my understanding of photography in the most analog and synthetic form; and all the messy transition between the two ends.

Nuntinee

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An overshare is a series of photos which examine the everyday and the fragmented. I present my whole vulnerable self and all the incoherent thoughts and feelings that come with me. Floating images and memories drifting in and out, evoking emotions- some of which are identifiable, some of which are not. In this series I piece together my thoughts and feelings by pairing images with experts of writing. The writing may or may not directly correspond with the subject matter of the image itself, but reflect the thoughts that were going through my head at the time. Photos are like memories, they can be accurate portrayals of a moment, but can also be distorted by time and space. This series is meant to depict the process of thinking and feeling- without a final conclusion. The photos and texts are taken out of context as to mimic the nature of my thought process. Themes and connections can be made but only after some contemplation. -kayla gartenberg

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I did not intend to take any of these photographs. The subjects did not intend to be photographed either. They weren’t near for the sake of a photo. They weren’t posed for the sake of a photo.  They weren’t dressed for the sake of a photo. It feels like every day is a costume party when you’re queer living in New York City. No labels, just living. No plan, just life. This is my life and my community. This is my life in New York City. 

Mac Gladych

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James Haggis

I use photography as a way to hold on to, and reconstruct the past. Unlike any other art form, photography is able to perfectly freeze and record a slice of time and space. As such, the most common use of a photograph is to document a piece of what will soon be the past, for the sake of remembering it in what will come to be the present. What I wanted to do with this project is reverse that process. To take pictures of the present in order to record the past.

The subjects of these photographs are the remnants of my childhood home. They are the bits and pieces that my parents choose to take with us across the country when we moved, and that were then separated in my parents’ divorce. Each photograph was taken in such a way to evoke the way I remember the objects being back then, and then have been placed into their original places on top of a drawing of what I remember my houses’ layout being. In this way I am putting back together a memory, a house, a family, that only exists in the past, from what still exists in the present.

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Samon Siripanichgon, Statment

This project is a series of photographs about objects and textures that remind me of home. I moved to New York about two and a half years ago, and I go back home to Thailand once a year. The more years I am away from home, the more distant I feel from my family. In this collection of images, I hoped to capture some of what I’ve missed through the objects and textures that I have featured in this series. Behind every photograph is a connection to my mom, my sister, my dad, or my homeland, Thailand.

Because these photographs highlighted specific objects, I used shallow depth of field to separate itself from the background. I tried to also shoot when there was hard sunlight coming through the windows. This created unique shadows along the floors and walls to juxtapose the light and dark. I included these images because I felt shadows are reminiscent of remnant sentiments that I had towards home that may no longer exist, but effects still linger.

I chose to print the images small and put them in a book because I thought it was a little more rustic and I wanted to make it feel approachable, homey, and intimate.

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Samon Siripanichgon, Mini Research Paper

Gregory Crewdson’s, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, photography career began in college and was able to lead him into his ongoing career as a photographer. Some of his earliest work out of graduate school was Natural Wonder series (1992-1997) which was shown in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Some of his other series include Twilight (1998-2001) and Beneath the Roses (2004-2008). Crewdson often spends weeks scouting a location before shooting, and brings on a crew of 40 people to work on a single photograph. Much like a film crew, actors get into costume and make up, the location is dressed and lit in preparation for the photograph to be taken. Some of the lighting is so theatrical that some of his photographs look like paintings. 

Crewdson’s series, Twilight, began in 1998 and completed in 2002. This series included forty photographs involving North American domestic suburbia and the whimsical, and sometimes terrifying imagination. In this series, Crewdson uses street lamps, house lamps, and light from the sky to motivate lighting. The lighting is very intense and artificial, but always perfectly exposed. The scenes that are his photographs have a lot of narrative embedded within them. The characters are always positioned in a way that suggests some kind of conflict or rising tension in the atmosphere. There is a big contrast between two looks in the series that bounce back and forth between each other. Half the photographs are lit and dressed in a way that seems like a plausible scenario, and others are lit and dress in the most dramatic and theatrical way.

In another series of Crewdon called Dream House that was exhibited in 2002, there was also a focus on the North American domestic life. More specifically he highlights the darker underbelly of living the Suburban life. This series shows a lot of married couples and their struggling relationships. Sometimes in the bedroom and sometimes with the kids at the dinner table. The way in which this project came to be, is that he stumbled on an empty house ranch, where the owner had passed away four years earlier. The objects in the house were untouched; everything was in the condition that it was left in. One of the largest differences between this series to Twilight and his past works is his introduction of celebrities into his photographs. These celebrities included the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Tilda Swinton, and philip Seymour Hoffman, and several others.

In comparison between Twilight and Dream House they tackled similar visual motifs. They both take place in the suburbs of North America which play a big part in the look and mood of the images. We also see vehicles a lot in both series’. Sometimes they are in the parked, big, in the foreground, or small, in the background. Lighting is very dramatic and very unrealistic. Nonetheless a lot of the eerie and unsettling mood and tone is communicated through the lighting. Crewdson mixes color temperatures, the warm house lamps to the street lamps outside and the blue of the night time sky, to create a mood and tone of tension.  

 Works Cited

Fletcher, Kenneth R. “Gregory Crewdson's Epic Effects.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 June 2008, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/gregory-crewdsons-epic-effects-48744461/.

“Gregory Crewdson.” Guggenheim, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gregory-crewdson.

“Gregory Crewdson's Twilight Photos - Eerie & Intriguing.” Public Delivery, 13 May 2019, https://publicdelivery.org/gregory-crewdson-twilight/.

“Gregory Crewdson: Twilight: Photography: Anxious Objects |.” Contemporary Art, http://www.marthagarzon.com/contemporary_art/2011/01/gregory-crewdson-twilight/.

Helmore, Edward. “Gregory Crewdson, Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour, V&A, London.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Oct. 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/04/photography.

“Portfolio; 'Dream House'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Nov. 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/portfolio-dream-house.html.

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creating light​ ​(2019)        

fiona north 

We have made a smaller version of ourselves. He runs through the house in slippers, and dances in circles. He talks to bananas and chickens and dogs. He feeds fake food to fake friends and understands nothing. he understands everything. He touches our faces, and kisses us when we are sad. he is perfect, and we are confused. We remember everything we’ve known, and then forget.

I introduce him to a tiny house built by his great-great-grandfather, and take my time with the pieces, like I did when I was young. The wallpaper peels, the sizes, again, are all wrong. yet again, there is perfection.

As parents, we speak each other’s words and sometimes mourn the loss of ourselves. but we wouldn’t trade the love for any amount of anything. And so, looking in from the outside, and looking out from within, we share in the most beautiful journey of all, and rejoice in the light.

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Reflect

Alex Zeren

“Reflect” is about what it means to look in the mirror and how we see ourselves within them every day. If you go back far enough in time, few people could even afford a mirror, and those that had the means to were left with polished metal that was often distorted, unable to provide a perfect image. Today, however, we see ourselves almost constantly. Every time we go to the bathroom or pull out our cell phones, or even walk past the glass windows of a building, we are faced by our reflection looking right back at us. For this reason, I tried to incorporate a varied range of mirrors and situations throughout the work, shooting indoors, in the dark, and outside in the bright sun or under clouds. This was important because, as stated previously, we see our reflection in all manner of situations every day.

I drew inspiration for this project from one photograph by Duane Michals. Titled “Heisenberg’s Mirror of Uncertainty”, it features a woman holding a circular mirror and staring back at the camera through it. While the viewer can tell she is doing this, the image is also distorted rather significantly. The result is a twisted reflection of an otherwise beautiful face. When I saw this image originally, it made me think about what we really see when we look in the mirror. From a literal sense it may just be our reflection, but from a deeper perspective, what lies within the confines of that reflective surface is your entire being. Every feature you hate about yourself, alongside every feature you love. When you look in the mirror, you see who you have been, who you have become, and who you wish to be. So while you look at these fifteen images, I want you to Reflect on that idea, and take a moment to look deeper into the mirror, and into your self.

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Perception - Sean An

This project attempts to capture the moments we use our perception to gain knowledge. To gather information on a certain object, one is to observe individually the parts to the object, then piece them together to form a holistic picture. In doing so, one’s perception is constantly being challenged and reshaped. To be more specific, in Chapter One of Perception, nine detailed features of a dog is being presented one by one. Upon seeing the first image, one makes a conjecture about the appearance of the dog based on its paws. As one sees the second image, he or she may have a slightly different image of the dog. It is not until one observes the last picture in Perception that this process of breaking and forming new conjectures of the dog stops. This process was what I experienced when I met my friend’s dog, Haven. I first pictured the dog based on the descriptions my friend gave me, then through pictures, and finally seeing the dog in person. Each time, my perception of the dog would be reconstructed. This idea is very interesting to me, especially after realizing that we perceive almost everything in the world in this manner. I try to replicate this experience through this project.

Perception is to be presented in two chapters. The first chapter gives features of the dog that can be used to construct an initial image of its appearance. The second chapter consists of activities the dog performs, providing the audience with context that would reshape and complete their pictures.

Perception is inspired by the African American photographer Decarava and pet instagram page Ruby Schmank. In his work Backstage, Decarava uses contrast to create a powerful image. The method in which different layers of darkness juxtapose and emphasize details was revolutionary. In an attempt to create a similar effect, the photographs in Perception, were taken in-doors and slightly overexposed to establish darker tones. Schmank, in her image of the feet of her dog, draws attention to the relationship between parts and wholes. Fusing these two ideas with that behind Perception, I created this project. Different from the work of Decarava, I use exposure to hide certain things from view. For instance, in Eyes and Eyebrows; Chapter One, I manipulated the exposure to “delete” the rest of the dog’s body except for what is intended for the audience to see --- the eyes and brows. This technique allows me to control the variables and to more effectively convey my message. 

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Portrait Assignment, Sean An

A simple, candid portrait with my suite mate. I manipulated the lighting toward the back of the photograph with the effect being that the wall is disappearing into the light. 

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Cotton Reading, Sean An:

The Cruel Diary of Youth is a series of two photographs by the Chinese photographer Yang Yong. In the pictures, two girls are dressed in fashionable clothes in pursuit of their dreams of becoming models. Through these two photographs, Yang Yong narrates objectively the societal issues revolving the younger generations in China in the early 21st century. With the increase of globalization in Shenzhen, the city where Yang Yong lives in after graduating college, teenagers face a world where open-mindedness is no longer an unreachable goal. However, the sudden taste of freedom in contrast with the traditional Chinese lifestyle in the 1980s set the teenagers into a state of confusion. As Yang Yong puts it, they wander around the city, searching for fun things to do. This is the state of mind Yang Yong tries to capture through these two photos.

It is particularly heart-breaking to see that freedom becomes something that the youth cannot afford to appreciate. The sudden lack of strictness in laws and traditions that China has endured in the 20th century cause discomfort in the younger generations as they struggle to find their identities. It is very interesting how Yang Yong nonchalantly captures the loneliness and confusion of these girls. The fashionable outfits and expressions appears to be weaker when juxtaposed with their tired gazes.  

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Long Road to New Mexico

A family road trip from Los Angeles to Albuquerque for Thanksgiving 2019. My mother’s side of the family congregated to my grandmother’s home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My grandmother’s worsening dementia makes it difficult for her to travel to California where our Thanksgivings are often held. The thought of driving straight from Los Angeles to Albuquerque offered an opportunity for me to capture the landscape, my family, and various oddities along the way.

Driving through Interstate 40, formerly known as Route 66, there is an endless amount of forgotten stops and small attractions aged by decades of sun and dirt. There was a time when this road between Los Angeles and Chicago acted as a spine for the American road-tripper. No road in America brings to mind so many iconic stops and nostalgic imagery. In the 1940s and 50s, people from all over the world would flock to the middle of the desert in the hopes of creating their own little piece of history. Landmarks emerged for truckers and travelers alike to witness along the long barren stretches of dirt and sky.

My mother recalled fond memories of this drive. She spent half her childhood in Southern California, and the other half in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These long-haul drives in her father’s 1960s Oldsmobile conjured deeply nostalgic roadside memories that I had hoped to encounter myself. Having only visited New Mexico a couple times in the past, I hoped to use this road trip to reflect on my mother’s impact on my life and my reverence for the Southwest. Something about the Southwest has always inspired me. Maybe it was my early admiration for cowboys that did it, but as I grew older, I realized my love for driving such long distances and seeing parts of the country that people rarely visit.

Driving through big washes of desert where only cacti and a few stones lay, I like to think about my mother and her drives along the same road as a child in the 60s. The desert stretches for so long it blurs at the horizon. Whenever the drive turns flat towards it, I think about how memory works and how well the desert manifests its strangeness. To think one time my mother passed by the same, glowing white on green signs on her way home. Seeing rounds of nothing on top of nothing before the next indicator of gas or food. What was she thinking, staring at the road? Flickering and stopping maybe for a second before continuing the drive.

The desert is emblematic of the strange and the quiet. It seems timeless. I always preferred the obscurities that seem to appear out of thin air: strange, oddly specific sculptures, untouched diners from the 50’s, or run-down, one-story shacks miles away from a nearby town. Capturing this drive with my family proved to be both fun and nostalgic. The drive to and from Albuquerque was challenging for my mother, having to see her mother suffering from dementia and then leave, again. Encountering these emotions with such tight space in a broken-down Jeep, many of the photos look similar in landscape, but every moment is so different.

-        Austin Perey

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Artist Statement

As a student coming from San Francisco, California, I always found New York City to be such an interesting place filled with interesting people. I would always watch videos about New York City prior to coming to college and noticed how there are so many people packed into this small yet big city. During the portrait project for this class, I found myself enjoying the process of asking a stranger if I could take a photo of them because the interaction was much more than just a picture. I would have conversations about who they are and where they’re from and found myself in awe at how diverse this city is. For this project, I would go to highly popular places throughout the city like Times Square, the Flatiron and Washington Square Park. In doing this, I found myself taking photos of tourists and even local New Yorkers. A lot of my camera work was getting as close to the subject as possible so that there could be a lot of details in their faces. Many of the people that I photographed ended up telling me a story of some sort or tell me about their day and it gave me a lot of insight as to the people in the city. A big inspiration for this project was the Instagram account “Humans of New York”, where they post pictures of random people in New York and find out about who they are. The only problem that I ran into while doing this project is that many people would be weirded out with me asking for a picture and I found much more success when a buddy of mine was with me. All in all, this project gave me a bigger insight into the diverse people that make up this vast city. Each photograph has a unique story behind them and each one reflects the uniqueness of this city.

Ryan Kang

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Conscious

Conscious is an exhibition of portrait diptychs exploring the people around me and where their insecurities lie. Using a 35mm film camera, I sat my subjects down in my dorm room and photographed them idly sitting and chatting with me. When I reached the halfway point in my roll of film, I switched to my digital camera to record a video. I started recording before they were ready to speak, and just let them sit there for a few moments, relaxed. I then asked them, “if you could change one physical aspect of yourself, what would it be?”. I got answers that ranged from specific beauty marks to entire appendages. As soon as they finished speaking, I cut the video and went back to my film camera to shoot the rest of the roll of film, my camera’s focused on that very answer. My subjects were visibly uncomfortable for the second portion of the shoot, and it was exactly what I wanted. I thought that pairing the calm, relaxed portraits with an almost mirrored image of discomfort and self-consciousness would make the exhibition all the more powerful. I wanted their discomfort because the motivation behind my project was to make what an individual is self-conscious about, conscious to the world, which is why I used large glossy paper to really highlight the beauty and idleness of the first image while also taking almost a magnifying glass to their most hated features. I have an audio clip of each of my subject’s answers that compliments the photographs and plays as viewers can really look at the diptychs displayed around the room.

If you Google, “celebrity plastic surgery”, you’ll find hundreds upon hundreds of articles about the celebrities we know and love who have changed even the most minor things about themselves. Musician Cardi B got butt injections, Chrissy Teigen got fat removed from her armpits, Kylie Jenner has lip fillers, Lisa Kudrow had a nose job when she was sixteen, and Cher has calf implants. Hundreds of celebrities have changed even the most minor and seemingly unimportant details because that was their “thing”.

Everyone has a thing they would change about themselves if they could. If money was no object and they could look the exact way they wanted. Through this exhibition I wanted to show that sometimes, even the things we dislike most about ourselves, can be transformed into art. Now, if you could change one physical aspect of yourself, what would it be?

(Megan Taylor)