Begin stream of consciousness:
Utopia is a state of perfection. I don't particularly believe in such a thing. I've been trained by a philosophy course or two to imagine that Utopia is impossible, unreachable, nonexistent. It is nothing, so how can it be? Or something.
But ok. So if there is perfection, what is it? This state of overwhelming bliss? How do I reach it? When do I feel that? It is only moments here and there, isn't it?
I think of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. The narrator watches Tyler Durden on the beach for hours, pulling heavy logs upright and pushing them into the sand just so. As the sun sets, he sits in what has become the palm of a shadow-hand, until it warps by the movement of the sun. "One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."
So perfection is brief, fleeting. It is the way your lover's neck smells early in the morning when he is still asleep and you rest your head on his chest. It is the exhilaration at 6 AM in Rome, at Dissonance '07, when Ellen Allien has been playing for an hour and a half and you realize that the reason you can see the intoxicated crowd around you (instead of feeling them blindly coursing around you in a frenzy caused by drugs and beams of light and techno) is that the sun has risen and is gracing the city outside with the first pale light of tomorrow. Perfection is climbing into the very center of a down comforter and pulling the rest around you like a cocoon, a stomach, a womb, a cloud. Perfection is blanket forts and Laffy Taffy and Sundays where you can stay in bed until 1 PM and watch cartoons with someone who loves you. Perfection is silence, or drum and bass, or a cello echoing in the subway. Perfection is charcoal covered hands and feet after three hours of figure-drawing in the summertime. Or footprints crossing a blank field of snow. Or spiral game and jell-o and Blue Drink. Or Tappan Square in October when it is inexplicably 70°. Or 11:15PM, November 4th, 2008 at the bandstand. Or lying in the middle of North Fields, or the fields at Smith College, or Polaski Park, or Tappan Square, or anywhere, and staring at the constellations dancing overhead.
Maybe it's sitting on linoleum in a patch of warm morning sunlight, talking to your mother on the phone about how much you like the boy who is making you pancakes in the next room. Or walking alone in the half-rain on the way home from anywhere. Or realizing you don't care about the mean thing someone said to you, because you love yourself just the way you are. Maybe it's grilled cheese and tomato soup. Or sushi lunch at Osaka in Northampton, MA on a Tuesday afternoon.
Or Mom calling home over the summer when it is just us and asking how I feel about fajitas tonight, and answering my response of, "How do you feel about margaritas tonight?" with "Decadent!"
Or finally kind of completely being head-over-feet for the place where you have found yourself upon waking for the last two years.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan is an incredible Graphic Narrative author. He wrote The Arrival—if you can call it writing; the story has a clear plot and character development, but no words, just the beautiful soft images he is known for. It is magnificent and sad and wonderful.
I've been caught up in this short story of his.
I've been caught up in this short story of his.
sourcebook. things i have been looking at.
In considering our Utopia project, I've been trolling through a lot of the past blogs looking at previous projects. I'm completely enamored with Erika Raberg's project (not her Utopia project, but what appears to be an assignment from last spring).
Her images show an eerie world which intermingles overwhelming solitude and childhood iconography.
I can't actually think about anything else. These images are like utopia for me. Cupcakes and bathtubs and dresses and balloons? That sounds like me. I played alone a lot when I was little and... I don't know. I relate to these images a lot. I guess I'm trying to wrestle with how to do something similar but in my own way, but more likely I'll have to go in an entirely different direction for fear of imitation.
I'm also super amused by her Utopia project, where she photographed mundane activities—underwater. Thereby creating an amusing situation, and changing our perspective about this silly tasks which have been rendered useless by this change in scene.
Her images show an eerie world which intermingles overwhelming solitude and childhood iconography.
I can't actually think about anything else. These images are like utopia for me. Cupcakes and bathtubs and dresses and balloons? That sounds like me. I played alone a lot when I was little and... I don't know. I relate to these images a lot. I guess I'm trying to wrestle with how to do something similar but in my own way, but more likely I'll have to go in an entirely different direction for fear of imitation.
I'm also super amused by her Utopia project, where she photographed mundane activities—underwater. Thereby creating an amusing situation, and changing our perspective about this silly tasks which have been rendered useless by this change in scene.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Chuck Close is a baller
Chuck Close does photo-realistic paintings in really cool ways! He uses photography. He's pretty much my favorite ever.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Emulation....
Photographers that I found in the PhotoNow folder on the computer in the lab:
Bérubé-photographs of children. whimsical lighting. holga! for dreamlike quality.
Chamberlin-images of people interacting with technology. captivated by screens. eerie. still.
Connell-photoshopped images. same model twice in same location. interactions with self. social norms/preferences?
DuBois-family. relationships. play of emotions. passage of time. not routine. just moments.
Glickman-dc metro. :) awkward interactions. taboo. strangers who know each other.
Hanasik-relationships between close people. how you are allowed to be yourself with room for growth.
Heykants-pop art. pop culture. views of women. hmmm. i don't know how i'd do this but the images are ace.
Pinney-moments. family. passage of time. if you take pictures long enough you get something truthful/mysterious.
Rinnhofer-renaissance images. christian idols with pop culture references today? maybe i could do things vaguely renaissance but add odd little things: ipod headphones, a cell phone, whatever. something to be like oh wait it's today.
Skarbakka-constant state of falling.
Smithson-whistler's mother. lmao. i could pick another painting or continue with this. very interesting. pliable.
Bérubé-photographs of children. whimsical lighting. holga! for dreamlike quality.
Chamberlin-images of people interacting with technology. captivated by screens. eerie. still.
Connell-photoshopped images. same model twice in same location. interactions with self. social norms/preferences?
DuBois-family. relationships. play of emotions. passage of time. not routine. just moments.
Glickman-dc metro. :) awkward interactions. taboo. strangers who know each other.
Hanasik-relationships between close people. how you are allowed to be yourself with room for growth.
Heykants-pop art. pop culture. views of women. hmmm. i don't know how i'd do this but the images are ace.
Pinney-moments. family. passage of time. if you take pictures long enough you get something truthful/mysterious.
Rinnhofer-renaissance images. christian idols with pop culture references today? maybe i could do things vaguely renaissance but add odd little things: ipod headphones, a cell phone, whatever. something to be like oh wait it's today.
Skarbakka-constant state of falling.
Smithson-whistler's mother. lmao. i could pick another painting or continue with this. very interesting. pliable.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Offensive Image 1: John Paul Caponigro, I detest you.
It's not that it is a particularly distasteful image, for reasons either cultural or aesthetic. It's that I do not, under any circumstances, agree that this man should be considered a photographer, or his images photographs. They have nothing to do with documentation, light, or a wonder at the way things really are, which tends to be my basis for photographic inspiration, and something I see other photographers inspired by. They wish to capture something. Interest is sparked and recorded. Like Pipo quoted on our syllabus, "I photograph things to see what they will look like photographed."
John Paul Caponigro's images have nothing to do with any of that. They are his self-indulgent Photoshop ejaculations. He is an artist, to be sure. Some of his images are quite striking, but they are not photography, and to call them such degrades the entire medium.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Photographer #6: Julia Fullerton-Batten
Julia Fullerton-Batten (http://www.juliafullerton-batten.com/)
Photographer #5: Angela Strassheim
Angela Strassheim (http://www.marvelligallery.com/Strassheim1.html)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Photographer #3: Ma'ayan Plaut
Ma'ayan Plaut
Once upon a time, on April 20th of my first semester here, Miss Ma'ayan Plaut called me and asked me whether I would like to be a dead hooker in the background of the publicity shots she was taking of an Oberlin-alum improv duo, Irish Mutts.
What self-respecting girl would say no to that?
Three days later, having forgotten all about the dubious photoshoot I found in a room tucked away at the Oberlin Inn, I received a message from Ma'ayan with a link to this image.
They photoshopped my top off.
(I still laugh.)
Photographer #2: Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman (http://www.cindysherman.com/)
Cindy Sherman is a crazy person. Sometimes she is other crazy people. Sometimes she is hanging on a wall in the Louvre. Sometimes she is doll-parts in dirt, sexy and unabashed.
I love her. I want to make the things she makes. I want to be other people. I might be a crazy person.
The 1st of 10 photographers: not a new one, but I had to.
Abelardo Morell (http://www.abelardomorell.net)
My father and I stumbled across Morell's work three or four years ago at the Chicago Art Institute. We'd been visiting several schools in the area on my wild college search and wandered into the museum for a nice break from interviews and info sessions. As I was thoroughly disgusted with the organization of the Modern Art wing, my father led me into a gallery filled with large photographs that immediately drew the two of us in with their intricacies. My father used to teach photography at Suffield Academy in Connecticut, and I had pursued a passion for photography in my high school's lab (which rivals most colleges') for several years.
Some idiot had decided the photographs required no explanation. My father and I recognized the images for what they were, but the crowd of museum-goers clearly had no photographic experience and assumed the images were just weird and tacky double-exposures. My father and I caught the attention of several people and explained to them how the images worked. Immediately, the viewers were more attentive and curious about the work.
(And then I realized I was kind of a snob about museums, and if I think I can do better, I might as well try. And now I'm an art history major with grand dreams of a Museum Studies degree. Oh dear.)
A year or two later, my high school photo teacher informed me that Morell was speaking at Hampshire College, about twenty minutes away. My best friend and I crammed ourselves into the back of Mr Hing's tiny Corvette and went on our way to see this amazing person speak. His photographs intrigued me because I could relate to his inspiration and curiosity. All of his pictures are about light, which is the very thing that has always amazed me. I'm fascinated by shadows and reflections and refractions, and that is exactly what his artwork deals with. Light is the very subject matter at hand, discussed through the means of capturing the interactions of light with the objects at hand.
The Most Important Photo IN MY LIFE
Because that's not lofty at all.
I had to think for a while about this. There are a lot of photographs that mean very much to me for different reasons, but I think that the photograph of my uncle Kevin holding me at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC is one of the most significant images in my life. In the photo, Kevin is wearing a hat and glasses, and holding me up, below my arms, so I can see the camera, or an exhibit. I'm in the navy corduroy dress with white and red flowers that I wore a lot back then, when I was two or three. I think I'm holding the baby doll I dragged around until it was destroyed, earning its name "Broken Baby" from its (lack of) fingers—uneven holes revealing the hollow insides of her arms in their place.
Kevin passed away from brain cancer on my fourth birthday, and somehow I remember the day with vivid detail. The carpet on the stairs was pale blue, the tile in the kitchen a sunny yellow. I offered him a piece of birthday cake, but he was too weak by then, and I didn't understand because I was four. I wore a white dress with pink flowers... or a pink dress with blue and yellow flowers... See, maybe the details aren't really there at all. But I have this photo, this memory of my mother's brother and me—just the two of us, smiling, in one of my favorite places, in a city that feels more like home than it should, knowing that he is my favorite uncle. (What does a four-year-old know of favorites?)
It is one of the few things I have left of him: my mother's stories, his jacket from the Navy, a belt with a silver dollar in the buckle (I'm wearing it now), the original box set of the Star Wars trilogy on VHS, and this image of a day I can't remember and a man I can't forget.
(I wrote about this photograph for a senior project in creative writing, a series of poems inspired by photographs, mostly of family members. The piece on this image is located here.)
I had to think for a while about this. There are a lot of photographs that mean very much to me for different reasons, but I think that the photograph of my uncle Kevin holding me at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC is one of the most significant images in my life. In the photo, Kevin is wearing a hat and glasses, and holding me up, below my arms, so I can see the camera, or an exhibit. I'm in the navy corduroy dress with white and red flowers that I wore a lot back then, when I was two or three. I think I'm holding the baby doll I dragged around until it was destroyed, earning its name "Broken Baby" from its (lack of) fingers—uneven holes revealing the hollow insides of her arms in their place.
Kevin passed away from brain cancer on my fourth birthday, and somehow I remember the day with vivid detail. The carpet on the stairs was pale blue, the tile in the kitchen a sunny yellow. I offered him a piece of birthday cake, but he was too weak by then, and I didn't understand because I was four. I wore a white dress with pink flowers... or a pink dress with blue and yellow flowers... See, maybe the details aren't really there at all. But I have this photo, this memory of my mother's brother and me—just the two of us, smiling, in one of my favorite places, in a city that feels more like home than it should, knowing that he is my favorite uncle. (What does a four-year-old know of favorites?)
It is one of the few things I have left of him: my mother's stories, his jacket from the Navy, a belt with a silver dollar in the buckle (I'm wearing it now), the original box set of the Star Wars trilogy on VHS, and this image of a day I can't remember and a man I can't forget.
(I wrote about this photograph for a senior project in creative writing, a series of poems inspired by photographs, mostly of family members. The piece on this image is located here.)
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