New Yorker: "Pixel Perfect" - Pascal Dangin

Pascal Dangin has a lot of control. Lauded by so many celebrities and media honchos, you can almost say that so many of the advertisements and media that you look at today, was in fact, done by him. Sure, he might not have created the idea behind the advertisements, but he sure did tweak and alter little things and present them to what us, commoners, see. That's a lot of power.

Lauren Collins' paints a very different picture of Pascal Dangin. There are airbrushers, and then there is Pascal Dangin. Of course, he bloops out the pimples on celebrities, but it seems that he does more than that. What I liked about what was written about him, was how he seemed to see through the superficial aspects of the picture (sort of ironic, I guess), and he could tell what needed to be changed so that it didn't seem -too- perfect. 

It's funny because we always rag on how celebrities look too fake, but at the same time, a photograph is something that you want to look at for some time, and I don't necessarily want to look at scraggly old blue veins. Dangin also knows when to stop, he seems to know when a woman looks too much of something. I never saw touch ups as a form of art, but when you think about it, photographs, advertisements, media is an art in itself and Dangin treats it like one.

Free Shoot - Kent Island in my bedroom

I took Meg's "I guess you can take landscape photographs in your house" a little seriously. These were taken from the different rooms in my apartment at different times of the day. Though, the day doesn't look that different when there's remnants of a hurricane coming your way.

Think Green

"Support local farmers"

Diptych Response

Without a doubt, I had a lot of difficulty with this project. I didn't exactly know where to start because I was very stuck on other people's examples and ideas. It also took me some time to get into the 'dialogue' between the two. I googled a bit and looked at flickr's diptych pool, which helped. The problem with me is, the project would have been easier/aesthetically pleasing if I were matching photographs together. The most difficult part for me was to create things, and not exactly know how it would turn out. I think my favourite one out of the pack is the one of the kayaks and colour pencils. This isn't because it matched up well, but because the colour pencils did not come out as expected. I moved them around and I really liked the outcome. It wasn't something that I had planned or thought extensively about, which was the case for the others.

I am very interested in making diptychs, or triptychs. I think it's fun to be able to find relationships with other photographs, it is definitely something that I would look into in the future. For this project, however, the problem as mentioned earlier, was the ability to create the picture from scratch. Not having it there for me to see, but having to picture it in my head. The examples I saw on flickr were also all of photographs, so although it gave me more of an idea of what I could do, the hard part still went back to the creation of the scanogram.

Landscape Artists

I admit, I'm not the biggest fan of landscape photography. I think it's mostly because I can't seem to take any that I like. But, at the same time, I have to say that most landscape photographs that I see that I enjoy are of places that I have never been to, let alone heard of.

Secondly, back to an earlier question in our class - what makes a good photograph? I now have to say that not only is it a photograph that I want to keep looking at, it is something that I wish I had taken (sort of like when people ask you if you had a song that you wished you had written), and of something that I wished I knew how to take. It makes me wonder, how did they do that?

So, that being said, I was very struck by Arno Rafael Minkkinen's work. The best part about how he incorporated landscapes was the focus on portraits. I am a huge fan of shooting portraits, so that definitely piqued my interest.

This photograph, titled Laurence, is a great example. I couldn't stop staring at it because I kept wondering how he took it, where the subjects were lying, how they were lying. Is that her arm? Someone else's leg? I can't seem to tell. I am transfixed by this photograph. Most importantly though, it seems as if Minkkinen uses his subjects as a way to pay homage to nature.

This photograph, titled Self-portrait with Olivia, hinted at what Minkkinen seemed to be doing. Although body parts and faces were on the foreground of the photograph, there are times where it seems to simply be a decoration to the landscape it is in. I also liked the fact that there was no clothing in his photographs because it suggests that the bodies were part of nature.

Another artist I really enjoyed was John Pfahl. Though I wasn't as taken with all his work as I was with Minkkinen, I did like his "scrolls" set. The way it was formatted really demonstrated the connection between sky and earth.


This photograph, aptly titled "the sky below", suggests what I mentioned earlier. It's difficult for me to really like landscape art, which is why I prefer looking at them in interesting or different formatting. This might also be why I am not commenting on Ray Metzker's work as there is no real yay factor for me (aside from the fact that there are pieces that look like they could have been painted).

diptychs: kodachrome vs scanograms

Vinalhaven, ME

Carver's harbor in the morning, day, sunset and night.

Mornings

The ferry

5 (+2); Texture

New Yorker: "Remember This?" -- Gordon Bell

Wilkinson's article touches a bit on Gordon Bell's life and a lot on the project, MyLifeBits, that he has been working on -- one that is, technically, never-ending. Bell's objective is to record everything, scan all documents and photographs that were ever part of his life and record the present with SenseCam. It's to record everything and to try to make it accessible. Though, the accessibility part seems to be an issue. A lot of things happened in his life.

On one hand, it seems practical to be able to have everything digitalized and stored. Never again will you have to spend hours finding a LLBean receipt of a purchase made 8 years ago, only to discover that it was thrown out on your last move. On the other hand, too much is too much. It's obsessive. Bell seems to be living in his past. The fact that he believes that one day houses will be window-less and instead of a view of your garden, you will be presented with a view of the Orient Express -- it just seems to me that he doesn't want to live in the present. To focus on what happened in the past instead of appreciating what is happening now, just seems to be such a waste. 

Though I do have to agree with Bell, although the examples and MyLifeBits is a bit too much for me, humanity does seem to be heading into having every event of our life logged. Time stamped. Think: blogging, twitter.com, facebook, chatting via text on your iPhone -- knowing what you are doing or did at exactly what time. It's a small part of what he is doing. And it's part of the technological culture that we are in. It's almost as if we're walking up a ladder, slowly step by step, yet Bell is already on top. He's past time stamping everything in his life, he's accepted it. I, on the other hand, am doing it, without realising it. Without consciously thinking that there are bits of information on my computer, or on the internet, about the last time I played a song on my iTunes.

The part that struck me the most, however, was the part about memory. I've constantly thought about past memories that I have had and how many of those memories were due to the fact that I actually remembered them, or because I saw a photograph and it reminded me of a time. Although it hasn't really, the picture just showed that I was there and it was a proof that whatever I was doing at that time happened. Does that actually make it a memory? I remember looking at the picture. I guess it translated to it happening in my mind. Perhaps the picture made it into a memory. I guess that is how I remember now. 

Alec Wilkinson, "Remember This? A Project to Record Everything We Do in Life." The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/28/070528fa_fact_wilkinson?currentPage=all

Farmers Market

Vegetables, cheese and alpacas!

Shadows

Speaking of photographs on shadows, here is one I found whilst googling - by Lubomir Bukov, titled 'shadows of past'; a good b&w and digital example.