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Roddy MacInnes's Photos - Nina Weiste's Photographs. 1917 |
http://www.facebook.com/photo
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
JR, Winner of the 2011 Ted Prize
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| Face2Face - 2007 |
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| Women are Heroes - Favela Morro Da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro - 2008 |
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| Women are Heroes - Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya - 2008 |
View more of JR's work at
JR exhibits his photographs in the biggest art gallery on the planet. His work is presented freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.
JR’s career as a photographer began when he found a camera in the Paris subway. In his first major project, in 2001 and 2002, JR toured and photographed street art around Europe, tracking the people who communicate their messages to the world on walls. His first large-format postings began appearing on walls in Paris and Rome in 2003. His first book, Carnet de rue par JR, about street artists, appeared in 2005.
In 2006, he launched “Portrait of a Generation,” huge-format portraits of suburban “thugs” from Paris’ notorious banlieues, posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in JR’s photos.In 2007, with business partner Marco, he did “Face 2 Face,” which some consider the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR and a grassroots team of community members posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on both sides of the security fence/separation barrier.
He embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition “Women Are Heroes,” a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. In 2010, the film Women Are Heroes was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long standing ovation.
JR is currently working on two projects: “Wrinkles of the City,” which questions the memory of a city and its inhabitants; and Unframed, which reinterprets famous photographs and photographers by taking photos from museum archives and exposing them to the world as huge-format photos on the walls of cities. It asks the question: What is the art piece then? The original photo, the photo “unframed” by JR or both?
JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.
After these local exhibitions, two important things happen: The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there.
As he is anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passerby/ interpreter.
This is what JR is working on: raising questions…
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Blog 7
New Photography 2010
Alex Pranger
Susie and Friends. 2008
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/newphotography/
New Photography 1985
Judith Ross
Untitled, from Eurana Park, Weatherly, Pennsylvania
http://moma.org/collection
I chose the first photo by Alex Pranger because I have always found the advertisement of alcohol companies like that of Budweiser to generate this feeling that beer can deliver you from reality and transport you to a perfect land of beautiful people with no problems and worries. This position of happiness is a striking opposition to the realities I have experienced in my own life when alcohol becomes a way of life.
I chose the second photo by Judith Ross because I feel like it's socially awkward, that feeling like something is off or strange about the relationship of the people within the photo. This may be from the striking size difference of the man to the children.
Both of the works shown create a mode that is personified by the notion of an idealized reality. The first photo by Alex Pranger has the look and feel of a beer add where the women are created in the idea of what a woman should be as shown by the identical hair and body type, they all appear happy and enjoying the situation as if this one moment in time is the greatest moment and you can only join if you drink beer. The second work by Judith Ross show the extremes of body type as a very large man sits next to two young children who are very skinny, they sit on a park bench the two children in bathing suits the older man maybe in his 20s waers jeans and a plaid shirt. The photo seems almost to be looking at adults pressuring children to grow up, or maybe the embarassment of acting like a child when you are older. The children look as if they want to leave the photo and go back to what they enjoy.
Both of the photos are of people and both show a social situation in which people are socially engaged, the first photo it is with one another and in the second it is with the camera as the people in the second photo are looking back at the camera.
Karen Rosenberg is wrong?
In the post modern idea on authority of authorship as stated by Barths and Foucault allowed for a reconsideration of photographic practice and discredited pictures of the kind deemed original by virtue of individual expression. Based on these writings the idea of appropriation of the ready made work became a movement within the photographic community. The new photography exhibition that resulted from this movement is now 25 years past and again there is a "New Photography" show at MOMA. The writings in the New York Times by Karen Rosenberg about the show at first look to be sound but upon further consideration there appears to be holes in the ideas that are presented within her critique of the show. The first point I find interesting is the notion that there is no transgression with the new works, to me that alone is a statement of complacence, the idea that there is no further need to question photography and accept it for what it is. In a sense, though I feel that the artist may have accomplished this because the new show appears to be copy of the original 1985 show under the same name, re-introducing ideas that have long passed. It seams to me that although the artist may not realize the total nature of what they are doing within the construct of photographic history, because there are many similarity between the two bodies of work. Rosenberg makes a statement about the artists caring about visual literacy and not theory, this is a bit hard for me to wrap my head around, the whole notion of visual literacy is rooted in the idea or the notion of the photographs relationship to the real, and the discourse that is created from this relation, its ability to tell us something about a certain place in time. This idea of reality allows for the photograph to transcend its physical presence and instead be something that tells us information about the subject. The work in the show, as stated in the article by Rosenberg, wants the viewer to realize the photograph as an object or as she states the physical presence of the photographic object, speaking about the color of the work and the open idea of nostalgia. This is fine in and of its self but you cannot forget the photographic subject, and further the idea that these are appropriated images, it seams to me that all photographs are appropriations of reality or abstractions of it, and to take a photograph and represent it is not telling us something new about the subject with in the picture, but instead just removing it further from its orgin and recreating a new or different meaning. This is also an elaboration of the how images are consumed and then re-used over and over. Because of the original intentions of the New Photography Show in 1985 and comparing it to the 2010 show I don't find there to be a huge separation of concept from one show to another and instead seems to be a further elaboration of the original intention of the 1985 show, it is not telling us something new about photography nor is it telling us something new about the subjects presented (at least not in the extreme that it appears in Rosenberg's description).
3 Works by James
Custer State Park, SD
I chose this image because I have been interested in the idea or syndrome of what I like to call speed tourism, in this photo the man is looking to the side of the road as he works his way through the park but yet he does not stop, a few seconds of nature is all he will need to satisfy his desire to experience the magic of this place. It is at one end the American ideal of the road trip but at the other it is the speed of a culture that will not stop to fully understand anything.
Fort Robinson, NE.
This photo is of one of the guides on an "authentic" chuck wagon dinner, he was a good entertainer and the food was good, this photo is one that reminds me of that night and the fun we had up there. I also love how disengaged the two elder people in the photo are both from one another and from the festivities
Mount Rushmore, SD
This was speed tourism at its best only this time it was us doing the speeding, 30 min in and out, although I found the tourist there more interesting than the rock carving itself. This is one of the photos I took of random tourists, the girl holding the mountain, others looking at there LCD screens on there cameras, there was thousands of us there all in our bubbles ignoring everyone else, but than again I doubt that people are this crazy in "normal" places so for the observant it is a place of vast entertainment.
Susie and Friends. 2008
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/newphotography/
New Photography 1985
Untitled, from Eurana Park, Weatherly, Pennsylvania
http://moma.org/collection
I chose the first photo by Alex Pranger because I have always found the advertisement of alcohol companies like that of Budweiser to generate this feeling that beer can deliver you from reality and transport you to a perfect land of beautiful people with no problems and worries. This position of happiness is a striking opposition to the realities I have experienced in my own life when alcohol becomes a way of life.
I chose the second photo by Judith Ross because I feel like it's socially awkward, that feeling like something is off or strange about the relationship of the people within the photo. This may be from the striking size difference of the man to the children.
Both of the works shown create a mode that is personified by the notion of an idealized reality. The first photo by Alex Pranger has the look and feel of a beer add where the women are created in the idea of what a woman should be as shown by the identical hair and body type, they all appear happy and enjoying the situation as if this one moment in time is the greatest moment and you can only join if you drink beer. The second work by Judith Ross show the extremes of body type as a very large man sits next to two young children who are very skinny, they sit on a park bench the two children in bathing suits the older man maybe in his 20s waers jeans and a plaid shirt. The photo seems almost to be looking at adults pressuring children to grow up, or maybe the embarassment of acting like a child when you are older. The children look as if they want to leave the photo and go back to what they enjoy.
Both of the photos are of people and both show a social situation in which people are socially engaged, the first photo it is with one another and in the second it is with the camera as the people in the second photo are looking back at the camera.
Karen Rosenberg is wrong?
In the post modern idea on authority of authorship as stated by Barths and Foucault allowed for a reconsideration of photographic practice and discredited pictures of the kind deemed original by virtue of individual expression. Based on these writings the idea of appropriation of the ready made work became a movement within the photographic community. The new photography exhibition that resulted from this movement is now 25 years past and again there is a "New Photography" show at MOMA. The writings in the New York Times by Karen Rosenberg about the show at first look to be sound but upon further consideration there appears to be holes in the ideas that are presented within her critique of the show. The first point I find interesting is the notion that there is no transgression with the new works, to me that alone is a statement of complacence, the idea that there is no further need to question photography and accept it for what it is. In a sense, though I feel that the artist may have accomplished this because the new show appears to be copy of the original 1985 show under the same name, re-introducing ideas that have long passed. It seams to me that although the artist may not realize the total nature of what they are doing within the construct of photographic history, because there are many similarity between the two bodies of work. Rosenberg makes a statement about the artists caring about visual literacy and not theory, this is a bit hard for me to wrap my head around, the whole notion of visual literacy is rooted in the idea or the notion of the photographs relationship to the real, and the discourse that is created from this relation, its ability to tell us something about a certain place in time. This idea of reality allows for the photograph to transcend its physical presence and instead be something that tells us information about the subject. The work in the show, as stated in the article by Rosenberg, wants the viewer to realize the photograph as an object or as she states the physical presence of the photographic object, speaking about the color of the work and the open idea of nostalgia. This is fine in and of its self but you cannot forget the photographic subject, and further the idea that these are appropriated images, it seams to me that all photographs are appropriations of reality or abstractions of it, and to take a photograph and represent it is not telling us something new about the subject with in the picture, but instead just removing it further from its orgin and recreating a new or different meaning. This is also an elaboration of the how images are consumed and then re-used over and over. Because of the original intentions of the New Photography Show in 1985 and comparing it to the 2010 show I don't find there to be a huge separation of concept from one show to another and instead seems to be a further elaboration of the original intention of the 1985 show, it is not telling us something new about photography nor is it telling us something new about the subjects presented (at least not in the extreme that it appears in Rosenberg's description).
3 Works by James
Custer State Park, SD
I chose this image because I have been interested in the idea or syndrome of what I like to call speed tourism, in this photo the man is looking to the side of the road as he works his way through the park but yet he does not stop, a few seconds of nature is all he will need to satisfy his desire to experience the magic of this place. It is at one end the American ideal of the road trip but at the other it is the speed of a culture that will not stop to fully understand anything.
This photo is of one of the guides on an "authentic" chuck wagon dinner, he was a good entertainer and the food was good, this photo is one that reminds me of that night and the fun we had up there. I also love how disengaged the two elder people in the photo are both from one another and from the festivities
This was speed tourism at its best only this time it was us doing the speeding, 30 min in and out, although I found the tourist there more interesting than the rock carving itself. This is one of the photos I took of random tourists, the girl holding the mountain, others looking at there LCD screens on there cameras, there was thousands of us there all in our bubbles ignoring everyone else, but than again I doubt that people are this crazy in "normal" places so for the observant it is a place of vast entertainment.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Blog 6
Zoe Leonard
Drop Off A.M., Pick Up P.M.
1999/2000
Dye transfer print
Image: 8 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches
Paper: 20 x 16 inches
Edition of 6
http://www.tracywilliamsltd.com
Sarah Pickering
White Goods, 2008
http://www.sarahpickering.co.uk
Warrior On Donkey, Longxian, Shaanxi Province
From the series The Chinese
Gelatin Silver Print
1999
http://www.yossimilo.com
How each work relates to my own work.
Each one of these photos relates to my work in some way, the first image by Zoe Leonard is something comical, or interesting about the human condition, it shows a situation that is not out of the ordinary but because of the combination of text on the store front the work makes me laugh. The Second work by Sarah Pickering shows a time forgot, in this case appliances that are part of a past place in time now re-contextualized into a work of art that shows the beauty of something otherwise regarded as trash. The third photo by Yossi Milo also is a comment on society, in this case it goes against the notion that comes to mind when thinking of the discipline and otherwise stern outward appearance of Asia and its art, instead the men fit that role but the donkey is peeing breaking the seriousness of the photos and making it more intimate to real events rather than outer word projection.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Blog 5
DAWOLU JABARI ANDERSON
Frederick Douglass Self-Defense Manual Series, Infinite Step Escape Technique #1: Hand Seeks Cotton, 2005. Ink and acrylic on chocolate, butter paper, builder’s paper, and craft paper, 43½ x 33½ in. (110.5 x 85.1 cm). Collection of the artist
http://www.whitney.org
“LOCALS ONLY!” (Bayonne, New Jersey), 2006. Bronze and acrylic paint, 42 x 30 in. (106.7 x 76.2 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Harris Lieberman, New York
http://www.whitney.org
DEEP DISH TELEVISION NETWORK
Founded 1986; based in New York, New York
Still from The Real Face of Occupation, from Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation series, 2003–5. Video, color, sound; 28 min. This image of an elderly hooded detainee in a house raid by U.S. troops in S¯amarr¯a was broadcast by DDTV before the Abu Ghraib revelations.
http://www.whitney.org
Response: I find that all three of the works shown above are created with the idea or vision of changing or elaborating upon the views of social issues, identifying how the main stream notion of things such as war and race are not always as they seem. The first by DAWOLU JABARI ANDERSON is identifying how race has been simplified and made a commodity of social roles, the second work by Aaron Young works to both demonstrate and critique art’s capacity to aestheticize extreme behavior and the margins of culture extremism. Finally the third work by Deep Dish TV is an open source t.v. network analyzing the mass media and advocating for grassroots social activism. In all three works the intent is to identify a social and political position with main stream ideas, and attempt to inform you of a different point of view.Founded 1986; based in New York, New York
Still from The Real Face of Occupation, from Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation series, 2003–5. Video, color, sound; 28 min. This image of an elderly hooded detainee in a house raid by U.S. troops in S¯amarr¯a was broadcast by DDTV before the Abu Ghraib revelations.
http://www.whitney.org
3 Works by James.
Riley, Maddi, and Emma. York Ne. 2010
I chose this image because it reminds me of what its like to go somewhere and not have a care in the world, it seams to be something I have spent a large part of my life working back toward, although I may never reach it. The carefree moment when the world is there for your taking, with good friends and family to share the joy.
Life at grandmas is always a bit more fun, less rules and more play.
Don't Eat a Pool Toy!
How do you identify with what your wife does for a living? I know very little about the specifics of medicine, but still find both the notion of surgery and the equipment involved to be very interesting, for me that identity comes through the creation of images, one day as I was waiting for her to get off work I shot some photos through the door, this photo I find the most interesting.
Segway Human Transporter.
Confluence Park. Co 2010
I find the irony of this situation comical, how as a society can we justify not being capable of walking to the park, or further not willing, we instead would rather take a form of transportation. I feel this photo comments on the mindset of America and our new found disinterest in exercise, and to some extent blatant laziness. (By the way this devise is $4,950.00 that makes all 4 $19,800.00 to not walk a few blocks.)
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