Ch 7 Notes ~ The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton

Chapter 7 Notes

ART 240

Ch 7 – Revived and Remade

• ·         Photos are the processes of signification and cultural coding
• ·         Modernism: sees photos in terms of authorship and aesthetic and technical developments of medium
•          Postmodernism: examines medium in terms of production, dissemination, and reception
• ·         Seen as signs that acquire their value from their place within a larger system of cultural coding
• ·         Roland Barthes – Michel Foucault à influences
• ·         The meaning of the image is not of its author’s making – determined only by reference to other images
• ·         Experiences that hinge on our memory à family memories, magazine advertising, films, surveillance, old photographs, etc
• ·         Cindy Sherman à widely written about à 1990s Untitled Film Stills à69 photos of  a woman in a scenario of charged moments
• ·         She’s both subject and creator
• ·         All part of the viewer’s experience
• ·         Yasumasa Morimura à Self-Portrait as Art History à 1985
• ·         Nikki S. Lee à research and preparation is greatly included à The Hispanic Project
• ·         Trish Morrissey à Seven Years à link of family experiences through personal photographs
• ·         Jemima Stehli à After Helmut Newton’s Here They Come
• ·         Muniz à uses illusions created from typical simple objects (wire, chocolate, soil, spaghetti)
• ·         Schorr à responses to Helga paintings with critical twists on gender dynamics
• ·         Aleksandra Mir à First Woman on the Moon à constructed fake lunar landscape in Holland
• ·         Cornelia Parker à photographs manifestations of history’s most important events and figures
• ·         Objects are visually transformed into abstractions
• ·         Susan Derges à used the process of light-sentitized paper to show movements of river and seawater
• ·         Color depends on ambient light from towns and villages and the temperature of the water
• ·         John Divola à archive of continuity photographs made on film sets
• ·         Susan Meiselas à American à photojournalistic projects à first Persian Gulf War à First World War à history of Kurdistan and relationship with west
• ·         Tacita Dean à British à The Russian Ending
• ·         Joachim Schuid à German à salvages discarded photos and recycles their meaning à Pictures from the Street
• ·         Represents personal memories and active rejection
• ·         Thomas Ruff à pornographic images from the internet à creates ones that depict remoteness
• ·         Shows idealization
• ·         Vibeke Tandberg à Norwegian à Line à intimate professional and detached relationship with subject

Mountain Edits

Ansel Adams

Horror Movie

No Mountain.

Ch 3/4 of The Photograph As Contemporary Art ~ Charlotte Cotton

Ch 3 & 4 Notes

Ch 3 – Deadpan

• ·         Deadpan Aesthetic: cool, detached, sharp photography
• ·         Not an obvious meaning behind the images
• ·         First popular in the 1990’s
• ·         Contemporary art
• ·         Locations: industrial, architectural, ecological, and leisure areas
• ·         ‘Germanic’
• ·         Bernd Becher of Dusseldorf, Germany
• ·         Showed social and political issues
• ·         Gursky – monocular perspective of the world à not just stepping back a large distance
• ·         A dominant position
• ·         Analyzing the world through thoughtfulness and precision
• ·         Bridget Smith à architecture in Las Vegas
• ·         Takashi Homma à newly built suburban houses
• ·         Jacqueline Hassink à Mindscapes à investigations of architecture
• ·         Lewis Baltz à ‘New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape
• ·         Style has capacity for capturing the wonder of the man-made world
• ·         Naoya Hatakeyama à heavy industrial spaces
• ·         Toyo Ito à engages with conceptual thinking
• ·         We engage with depiction of passing seasons or memories
• ·         Certain angles make a perspective or experience more evident
• ·         Landscapes can be used as metaphorical meaning
• ·         Clare Richardson à Sylvan series à farming communities in Romania
• ·         Ruff à portraits of no emotion à inhibits lots of emotions in us
• ·         Diijkstra à newborns with their mothers à vulnerability in the Netherlands

Ch 4 – Something and Nothing

• ·         David Weiss à Quiet Afternoon à table-top assemblage
• ·         Gabriel Orozco à impossible, witty images oc sculptures, or animated conversations
• ·         Jason Evan à New Scent à weather conditions effect the physical image
• ·         Details are given subtle visual intrigue
• ·         Nigel Shafran à Sewing Kit à balancing act of domesticity
• ·         Jean-Marc Bustamante à Something is Missin gà taken in many cities  to show landscapes on edges
• ·         Architecture Is most interesting in abandoned and deteriorated places
• ·         “what they’ve left behind”
• ·         Subtle details can change the way we begin to look at life
• ·         Roe Ethridge à confident and diverse à twists in image types
• ·         James Welling à infinite possibilities à intellectural substance
• ·         Must see things from several vantage points to know them

Project Proposal

For the project of Gatherer, I will be taking a series of photos involving reflection. Whether this will be reflection through water, class, or metal, I will be searching for interesting compositions and subjects represented indirectly. 

Morning, Noon, and Night

Lightroom Practice