Avedon

Richard Avedon is an inspiration to say the least. After watching his video and seeing and looking through all of his photographs, it has become very clear that he is extremely innovative and unique when it comes to taking portraits. I am especially fond of all the photographs he takes of women; he seems to capture their personality and the nature of the women to a t. All of his subjects seem to be wearing outfits that are very expressive and show every movement that they women take. One of my favorite photos that Avedon does is “The new look of Dior” in Paris, August 1947, a young women is walking down what seems to be a man’s world in a dress, hat, and gloves that is appropriate for the time. She appears in her outfit that she wants nothing else but to be taken serious however at the same time she is twirling her skirt, showing her true personality. There are small little things that put an extra ordinary took on Avedon’s pictures

Flatness

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images/489/215898.jpg

Spacial Hierarchy

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2221/2396556926_9fc2de6b11.jpg?v=0

THE PORTRAIT ASSIGNMENT

Please vote and comment on which of the following Photographs best exemplify the issues concerning the PORTRAIT assignment.

TINA

MICHELLE

MEGAN

GRACE

DANA

CATHY

BART

5. Consider the term “spatial hierarchy” – what does that mean?

Post your photographic example here.

3. Vantage point is the key to Flatness – it can solve the picture more than compose one.

Post your Photographic example here:

Spatial Hierarchy

This photo illustrates spatial hierarchy. The viewer's eye is drawn to the skier, then the slope he's on, then the mountains in the background, and finally the sky.

Flatness

This photograph illustrates flatness. The photographer could have been closer to capture only the rock, but chose this vantage point to include the trees.

Work for Tuesday 11-18-08

Flatness









Spatial hierarchy

"I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible" Richard Avedon

Portraiture has never grabbed my attention like it did when I saw Richard Avedon's work. While no one can fill the void left after Avedon's death, we can all study his work to gain a better understanding of the relationship between a photographer and his subject.

I have avoided portraiture in all aspects of my passion for photography, and now I finally realize what I have missed. Superstitions led me to believe that landscapes were at the pinnacle of great photography: they don't talk back, they are very patient, and you usually don't have to ask their permission for anything. Our recent immersion in Richard Avedon's portraiture makes me reconsider my aversion to putting the lens in someone's face. Understanding now, what a portrait is all about, I can boldly pursue subjects that fascinate me.

If every portrait is truly a self portrait of the photographer, as Avedon suggested, I should take portraits with the same confidence with which I look in mirror. What I see may surprise or disgust me, but as I look more carefully, I shall see what many often miss.

Avdedon's simple methods are admirable and prove that what often is hidden from chaos of the public eye can be revealed in the clean environment of a photo shoot.

Richard Avedon, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Monks, 1998

In 1979, Richard Avedon was commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum to photograph the people of the American west. Instead of photographing the high rollers whom he was normally attracted to, he photographed normal people - miners, cowboys, drifters, and so on. Avedon photographed these people in an unusual setting for them - a white background. He used an 8x10 view camera and tried to provoke people into showing him a different side of their personality that wasn't normally captured. He developed these 125 photographs into a large format that distinguished him from other photographers. From his six year project, he produced a book and traveling exhibit, In the American West. The exhibit was both praised and criticized for showing these people in a different light, a light normally reserved for celebrities and politicians.

Richard Avedon Response

Richard Avedon was an original photographer who saw his entire life through a unique lens. Avedon’s career touched the lives of many people, both those that were and still are able to see his photography and those with whom he worked directly in his photographs. As Avedon was fascinated by the world, he had a general interest in people that allowed him to portray his subjects accurately (as “all photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth”) and beautifully in his photos. It is said that Avedon was not only a photographer, he was an active participant in his works, inspiring his subjects to be alive. One of the aspects of Richard Avedon’s photography that intrigues me is his interest in the complexity of the human face which allowed for interesting and artistic photographs of many of his subjects.

It is often said that Richard Avedon’s subjects were never in control. Avedon took it upon himself in his often brief photography sessions to show through his lens what the subjects revealed about themselves in terms of his given guidelines. The complexity of the human face only adds to this artistic value. The more texture a face has, the more interesting it seems to be to Avedon. This can be seen in his portrait photographs, one in particular (I cannot remember what it is called) really highlights the wrinkles in an elderly mans face. This image is incredible… it is extremely detailed, but not too dark. It is as if Avedon was able to burn only the fine lines of wrinkles, still allowing it to look natural.

Another aspect of Avedon’s photography that really interests me is the movement in most of his fashion photos. The movement adds an element of surprise to his photos. Whenever a woman is wearing a beautiful dress, the dress is always in motion. There are fantastic images of women with their hair flying about as well. The motion that is implied in each of Avedon’s photos allows for another level of excitement as well. It is amazing how detailed his photos still remain despite the fast motion of the subject.

Richard Avedon is an inspiration to photographers everywhere. His plain subjects always reveal something about themselves through the expression on their faces, body posture, etc. Richard Avedon is able to add to this with his camera angles, lighting and distance between him and his subjects. After seeing Avedon’s work and listening to a lecture about him, I am excited to apply these new ideas to my own photography.

PLEASE POST AVEDON RESPONSES HERE

Have these posted by Thursday's class.

Photography Quotations and Musings

Please post your responses here.

Paul Spranklin Response to Roland Barthes

I really like the quote by Roland Barthes because it is a great example of a very common and exciting use of photography. He describes in his quote an example of using photographs as a way to keep a memory or a moment in time captured forever. He describes looking at pictures of his mother after she has passed away and the pictures are his way to keep her alive with him.

Roland Barthes was born on November 12, 1915 in Normandy, France. He was a literary critic, literary and social theorist, and philosopher. He was very influential in the development of schools of theory including structuralism, existentialism, and Marxism.

Milan Kundera via Michelle

This quote is fascinating because its true. Not only have I done this, but I have seen others do it as well. We try to run away or walk slowly in an attempt to leave the past or to hold on to it. We are all familiar with "not wanting this moment to end" and our favorite way to try and trap this "moment" is by not moving, as if our stillness can still time.

Milan Kundera was born in 1929 to a Czech musicologist. Milan learned to play the piano and his interest in music as well as his father's, influenced his future work. Although he began living in France in 1975, he did not become a citizen until 1981. While he is most known for his work "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Milan did have several other influential works including "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and "The Joke." For his various writings he has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize, The Austrian State Prize for European literature, the International Herder Prize and the Czech State Literature Prize.

Emily

Quote and Response

Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record.

The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in choice of subject. The painter’s way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks made on the canvas or paper.

            -John Berger, from Ways of Seeing

 

            I decided to pick this quote because of the first couple lines. “Every image embodies a way of seeing…for photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record.” This part of the quote really has a great deal of meaning behind it, because the photograph that is taken by the photographer was picked and there is meaning and a reason why the photographer took that particular picture. Just like the reason why a painter paints certain images, ever picture that a photographer takes is intentional and has significance behind the photograph. John Peter Berger was born on November 5, 1926 in Highams Park, London, England. Berger made a living by being a painter, novelist, an art critic, as well as a novelist. John Berger wrote this essay Ways of Seeing on art criticism in 1972. 

Tina Giordano - Jeanette Winterson

I think this quote is emphasizing the true importance and the pureness art holds in a society that is mostly centered around the economy, banking systems, greed, power, and controlled media. Winterson is arguing the point that without art, we would be lost in a world with no creativity of thought and no freedom of expression which would leave us with an unconnected feeling. I agree with this quote and I too believe she summed it up perfectly when she wrote that art stands for the genius of the human spirit.

Jeanette Winterson was British novelist who wrote about gender polarities, sexual identities, and about testing the limits of imagination and physicality of human nature. She has won literary awards and her some of her work has been adapted to television and also on to the stage.

Katerina Traeger- robert bresson

What I like about this quote is what he is saying about the subject. When you take someones picture and they know about it its always what they see as their best side or best look. When you take their picture and they do not know about it what you get is real. I think that's what he is saying when he says "what they hide from me" because in away most of the time we hide what is really there with a smile. I feel like he is also saying that the subject can give you something that you where not expecting and something they did not know was their. Like when you take a picture of two people who like each other and they do not know it, you make get a look of pure love that even the subject did not notice. 

Robert Bresson was born in France. He is a famous french film maker; his works are said to be largely influenced by his Catholicism, his training as a painter, and by his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II

Grace Meredith- Response to John Berger

I find John Berger’s quote most interesting because it strikes me as that most representative of how I’ve come to think of photography in just these first couple weeks of class. Berger distinguishes photography as more than just a “mechanical record”; he talks about it as an art medium, relating it very effectively to painting. Photography, I’ve realized, like all mediums, is a means whereby the artist can depict their interpretation of the world around them. I also appreciate how he emphasizes the individual creativity that is involved in the creation of imagery that is art. No two people see alike and, as Berger points out, this is evident in photographic imagery just as it is in painting and other art forms.

Berger talks about photography as something different than how we may think about it everyday. I’m not sure I agree entirely with his immediate dismissal of it as a “mechanical record,” for in truth it can function as such, and often does. I think however that the distinction Berger makes between photography’s everyday uses and photography as an art form is a very important one that is often not recognized because of the ever-present role photography plays in the modern day.

John Berger is an English art critic, painter, novelist, and author. He was born in the mid-1920s.

Megan Kelly-- Thomas Bernhard

This quote interests me because I have never thought of photography as "the greatest disaster of the twentieth century." In reality, this quote does have a lot of truth about people in photographs as "nothing but pathetic dolls, disfigured by recognition, staring in alarm into the pitiless lens, brainless and repellent." This is the same for many cliché landscape photos which have no depth or meaning behind them other than a pretty place. I feel that many photographs do this, but then it makes me think of the distinction between art and a mere cheap photo taken without thought. Although Bernhard feels that photographs distort reality and that this false reality will take over the world, he still cannot help but see the truth underneath of the distortion, which shows that the photograph has done some kind of justice to the subject. This quote also reminds me that photographs can never be the real thing and that it is important to spend more time being present, rather than trying to capture everything on film, because a photo can never fully portray a person place or event.

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian writer. He wrote about death, social injustice and human misery. He was pessimistic about modern civilization. One of his works, "Woodcutters" was seized by police for ridiculing a public figure and another one of his works brought about violent protests. Bernhard died in 1989 in his home in Austria and his house is now a museum full of a lot of his shoes.

Dana Gittings

I don't agree with Bernhard's hatred of photography and dismissal of it as an art.  It seems to me that Bernhard would have a problem with all forms of art, for they are only representations, what he calls" distortions" of reality.  He only likes to see the world exactly as it is, through no medium but his own senses.  However, everyone's perception of reality is not the same, and it is one of the beauties of art (including photography) that it can capture a specific perspective on reality.  What Bernhard sees as "distortion" is really the artist's unique angle on the reality that he/she observes.  One person will capture nature or a person or anything in a completely different way than another person will, and the eye of the camera gives the viewer an eye into the mind of the artist.  If we were only to observe reality as our individual selves, we would never expand ourselves and open our minds to the perspectives of other people.  We would also be blind to ways of perceiving the subject that might not have come to us naturally, but that with a photograph enrich our understanding the subject.

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian playwright and novelist who lived from 1931 to 1989.  He had a very unhappy life from its beginnings as an illegitimate child and having lung disease (sarcoidosis) at a young age.  He had a negative view on life that was conveyed in his works and is famous for saying, "Everything is ridiculous, when one thinks of death."  His misanthropic and negative view of the world may have contributed to his hatred of photography.

Dana Gittings

I chose this photo because the shark is framed by the ocean wave and a surfer, which gives the shark a terrifying presence.  The edge of the wave appears sharp, adding to the feeling of danger as the wave pushes the shark toward the surfer.  The surfer also serves as framing because he is facing inward, he is very close to the shark, and his alert stare at the shark draws the viewers eyes to it.

Jenny Metz

Milan Kundera, from Slowness

Kundera's quote can be applied to photography through the simple idea that we attempt to slow down time by capturing moments on film that become our memories. Those memories that we do not want to have, we simply do not photograph them. In this way, we attempt to speed through our life without the materials to remember an unpleasant experience, while still keeping the memories we cherish most.

Kundera was born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia. While still in his teens, he was influenced by World War II, joined the Communist Party and was expelled for the second time for "anti-party activities" in 1970. He was committed to reforming Czech communism until 1975, when he gave up and moved to France.

"In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like the photographic print left in the developing bath too long." -WG Sebald

I enjoy this quote because my favorite part of developing is seeing the image emerge from the paper. It really does take you back to the memory that was created.

WG Sebald, born in 1944 and died in 2001, was a famous German author. He wrote a lot about post-war Germany and the Holocaust. He was appointed to a chair of European literature at UEA and, in 1989, became the founding director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.
Sebald's works are largely concerned with the theme of memory, both personal and collective. They are in particular attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people. In On the Natural History of Destruction he wrote a major essay on the wartime bombing of German cities, and the absence in German writing of any real response. His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews.

Bartosz Zienda - Response to Robert Bresson

Perhaps one of the toughest obstacles I've encountered as an amateur photographer has been the great divide between languages, cultures, and a general unfamiliarity with the subjects in my travels. While landscapes will never shy away from the lens, many people find it easy to run and hide when a foreigner with a camera tries to capture something that locals would prefer to keep to themselves.

With this in mind, Bresson's line about people showing "what they do not suspect is within them" reassures me that the best photos to take are not those dime-a-dozen, postcard-style cliches that make their way into every middle-class American photo album. Mr. Bresson's words urge us to break past the thin barrier between locals and tourists, and to graciously capture our subjects in a way that they may not understand at first, but would truly appreciate if they could see the end result.

Bresson's colleagues and contemporaries held him in highest esteem for his ability to retain some sense of humanity in an industry that had all but lost it. Despite the depth of his works, Bresson still relied on money, later proclaiming his own ambitions to be materialistic.

Cathy Brandt

Robert Bresson

This quote caught my attention because the speaker believes pictures to be important because of what they do not show. What the photographs keep hidden in the background asking people to tease it out to expand on it to truly feel what is being shown. When the people see what is being shown they discover "what they do not suspect is within them". Pictures are supposed to be a window to the soul, either the soul of the photographer or the viewer.

Robert Bresson was a french film director with training in painting and photography. He is well known for his artistic and spiritual work.

Emily

I choose this photo because I really love the fact that the clouds frame the picture in general but also the small island in the center of the picture. I also really enjoyed the fact that the clouds then reflected off of the water causing the framing of the island to be more intense and beautiful.

SHauna

WG Sebald Quotation~ drawn from his novel Austerlitz.

This quotation caught my attention because of its direct connection between the relationship of memory and photographs. I like how he describes the process of making a photograph is like how a memory is recalled out of no where. It also makes the process of photo-making mysterious as is the idea of memories. WG Sebald was a German writer. Many of his novels incorporated photographs.

Cathy Brandt

I chose this picture because the child is framed by the piling on the left hand side and by the building on the right hand side. Drawing the viewers attention to his face.

FRAME

Please make your posts here.

Jenny Metz

I like this because the children are very emphasized. The walls, door, and flag around them are all very light, while the children just seem to pop out of the photo. The doorway is also off center but the photo still seems to have balance because the children are in the middle.

Bartosz Zienda

This photo, taken in Daley Plaza in Chicago, not only summons thoughts on the relationship between a mother and her young daughter, but also frames a relatively soft subject with a very bold and imposing structure.

colby

Katrina Traeger

Grace Meredith

I picked this photograph because the shadows give it a unique frame. The shadows bring attention to three different parts of the image making them almost seem separate. They also show a lot about what is surrounding the photograph, but not in the photo itself.

What I love about this picture is that it seems to have several frames. The bridge in the forground frames the bridge in the middleground, and bridge in the middleground frames the hills in the background. I also love the contrast with the vertical lines and the crescent/oval formed by the bottom of the bridge and its reflection.

Hindus lined up for service

I know our class is specially focusing on black&white photographs, but for this assignment I found the framing very interesting. The framing allows the subject of the image to become clear to the viewer. He is the only Indian civilian facing in the direction of the photographer. The photographer included many other people in this frame to help bring out the subject.

I think in this photo, the way the photographer cropped the picture makes it so that your eyes are drawn to the child's face. The photo was framed by the run-down door frame to the right and evened out by the army solider with his gun. I think the photographer cut out of the shot the rest of the solider's face to stress the importance of the child and also the gun next to him.

I like this picture because the small frame and the way it is zoomed in allows you to really focus on the beautiful pattern caused by the leaves of the plant.

SHAUNA - FRAME

Robert Frank