R03 Contemporary Photographer

http://www.salon94.com/artist/takeshi-murata


Takeshi Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL and currently lives in Saugerties, New York. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A.

Takeshi Murata produces extraordinary digital works that refigure the experience of animation. His innovative practice and constantly evolving processes range from intricate computer-aided, hand-drawn animations to exacting manipulations of the flaws, defects and broken code in digital video technology. Whether altering appropriated footage from cinema (B movies, vintage horror films), or creating Rorschach-like fields of seething color, form and motion, Murata produces astonishing visions that redefine the boundaries between abstraction and recognition.

Murata has developed painterly techniques for processing video using glitches and errors. Conjuring digital turbulence from broken DVD encoding, he carefully tends bad video compression to generate sometimes sinuous, sometimes violent flows of digital distortion. With a powerfully sensual force that is expressed in videos, loops, installations and electronic music, Murata's synaesthetic experiments in hypnotic perception appear at once seductively organic and totally digital.

I.Popeye. Video. 6min. 2010

001, print, 2007

004, print, 2008

R03 Historical Photographer

LAURA GILPIN. Church of San Lorenzo, Picuris, New Mexico, 1963.

Laura Gilpin was born on April 22, 1891, in Austin Bluffs, Colorado. In 1903. She was educated at eastern boarding schools, including the New England Conservatory of Music, and some institutions in New York.

She believed the year 1904 was a critical point in her life. Her mother sent her to visit her closest friend and Gilpin's namesake, Laura Perry, in St. Louis where the World's Fair was being held. Perry was blind, and it was Gilpin's task to describe every exhibit to her in detail. She later said "The experience taught me the kind of observation I would have never learned otherwise." So fine details showed in her photos become one of the most famous and impressive characteristics of her compositions.

Gilpin was interested in the land as an environment that shaped human activity. She thought it was a peopled landscape with a rich history and tradition of its own, an environment that shaped and molded the lives of its inhabitants. Gilpin developed her point of view on her own by the photos.

Sleeping Ute, Mesa Verde

Playground At Day School, Colorado Springs

Montezuma Valley, Mesa Verde National Park

Door at Ranchos de Taos Church

Mission Church, Taos

A02

I used the sprots mode to catch series of photos. I tried several times and finally picked this one which is not blurred. I want to show the contrast between the girl and the busy people in a big city. In order to make the portrait focus on the girl, I used the adjustment brush to blur the background and reduce the contrast value of the background. The classmates suggested me to make a series of this photo, it is an interesting idea and I will try to catch a continuous series of this jumping girl. Also I will try to zoom out a little bit to include more backgrounds into the frame.

The car in the photo is one of my favorite car RollsRoyce, I encountered with one when I was walking on the street.  I supposed to show that I was standing with something I like. In such a big city, there was only me and something I like in the frame. To make the person outstanding, I adjusted the value of sharpness and contrast on the person much more than orignal. Next time I will try to catch a moving car behind the person, to make it a little blurred and has more contrast with the person.

For the intimacy topic, I chose to shoot some pictures of my best friends. I cropped the original picture to enlarge the two figures in the frame. The sky was getting dark when I was taking the pictures, so I use the adjustment brush to make the two people brighter than in the original photo. My classmates could read the "intimacy" topic for this picture, but they gave me suggestions about the framing. They suggested that the two people should be little smaller but not to big and occupied to much of the whole space. If I reshoot this photo, I will make the the two people smaller in the frame.

I took several pictures of the figure in the place with  such less light. I was wondering if there were some portraits could be randomly shoot but still very surprising. This photo was one of those ones. I used the adjustment brush to make the person's face clear and her hand much blurred. Also, I put more light on her hand and chest to make a contrast between dark and bright areas. The situation on Empire State helped me a lot to play with shadow and lights. If I retake this photo, I will try to focus on the girl's hand instead of her face, and put the new one together with this, to see what is the difference between those.

Blog Prompts Week 3 (#11-18)

#11____Memory of a Place: Try to imagine a place from your past. Do you have pictures of this place? Describe this place as you remember it. What might a photograph look like of this place if you were to go back and photograph it? What would it look like in the past? What would it look like to you today? Where are you standing in this place? What other items are in this place? What colors do you see? Are there other people or are you alone? Make a “written photograph” of this place using words/description.

I'm thinking about the apartment I lived since I was born to my age of 11. I only have some pictures taken inside that apartment, in my home, but nopictures taken from outside. If I have a chance to go back there, I would take a photo of it from outside. I haven't go bak there for several years, so I don't know what is it look like now. There was a small yard in front of the building's entrace, where I always play with my friends when we were very young. There were some lilac trees and some other trees with yellow flowers which I don't know the name in that yard, so in my mind that yard was colorful and beautiful and full of the scent of lilacs. I was playing with my friends in that yard and my mother was calling me from our balcony on the third floor. 

#12____Memory of a Photograph: Which photograph from your past do you remember most? Describe this photograph. Describe how it makes you feel when you remember/think about this photograph. How have you changed? How has the place in this photograph changed? What would a reenactment of this photograph look like? Would you act or look differently if you reenacted this scene today?

My graduation photo in elementary school is one of the most impressive photos in my memory. When I see that picture it reminds me many of the annecdotes happened when I was in elementary school, also I always want to call my classmates in elementary school after I see that picture. My elementary school has changed a lot by several times of rebuilt, the buildings looked totally different now. Also my classmates and me, after nearly ten years, changed a lot, too. So I would gather everyone again at the same place, make a photo with same people and same place in it, but has tota;lly diffenrent look.

#13____Human-Made Space: In the past, photographers who were interested in how humans impacted the natural landscape grouped together to form the New Topographics. “"New Topographics" signaled the emergence of a new photographic approach to landscape: romanticization gave way to cooler appraisal, focused on the everyday built environment and more attuned to conceptual concerns of the broader art field.”http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibTopo.aspx

In addition, at the same time in history artists created (and still do create) “land art” in which they use materials found in the landscape to make sculptures that remain in the landscape. Many of these works now only exist as video recordings and photographic documents.

Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.

I want to try use water to make some patterns. In order to show the contrast, I want to make a fire or flames pattern on the beach, not by colors, but just poor water on the sand to make that pattern. Water is one of the most flexible material I have ever seen, which is the most appropriate one for a piece of "land art" I guess.

 

#14____Unknown vs. Familiar Space: When photography was invented, it became a way to document and reveal the specific aspects of both familiar and faraway places. Imagine a familiar place. Imagine a faraway place. How would you use photographs to convey the difference? Can you imagine any places that have been “touched” very little by humans? How might you photograph them?

When talking about a familiar place, I will imagine the places I had been before in my life. For the unknown place, I'm thinking about those places that all human beings are not familiar with. If I take a picture of the familiar place, I would make it clearly-focused and fully sharpened; for the unknown places, I will make the picture blured with slow shutter speed.

#15____In-Camera Collage: Collage brings together two or more items that were previously separate. The resulting piece usually visually references the fact that they were once separate entities. Imagine an important place in your past. Imagine an important place in your present. Imagine who you were in both of these past and present places. Describe how you might use a slow shutter speed and/or double exposure to capture two moments in one image that tell a new narrative about these important places and how they relate to who you are and were.

I will use slow shutter speed to present a sence of movement from past to now. So if I catch the place in the past with a figure in it use a slow shutter speed and then catch the same figure in a present place, and finally make them into a collage, it will show a movement from past to present.

#16, 17, & 18 Please respond to three of the following quotes.

“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” Duane Michals

I can partly agree with this stateent. I guess photograghs should be provocative sometimes, but they also can be some normal pictures which include some unforgetable moments. They don;t have to be that provocative all the time.

“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” Duane Michals

This statement is definitely true. The probability of imagination is infinite, always. So we always have something new to explore with, which could make our life more interesting. That "new" things are more important and valuable.

“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” Berenice Abbott

The statement is interesting because I have never think about this before. When the photo was being took, it is a catch of that moment, which represented the "present" of that time, so it is presenting the present. But when we look back from now to see that picture, it already become an old one which is representing the "past".

Blog Prompts Week 2 (#5-10)

#5 Give your thoughts on one or both of the following quotes.
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.” ~Edward Steichen

Photography is a very effective way to record human feelings, or something which are important to people. It built a bridge between the photographer and the viewer. It helped the photographer to tell what hi was going to say via the images.

#6 In your opinion, when is it beneficial, ethical, or appropriate to digitally alter photographic portraits? When do you think it is inappropriate or ethically wrong?
I guess most of the time it is appropriate to digitally alter the portraits, no matter to make it looks better, more beautiful, funnier, or anything else. But there is a very important premise -- the people in the portrait should know all about these. If the people in the portrait doesn't know about the changes of his portrait, everything but make the portrait looks better seemed to be inappropriate.

#7 Pay close attention to the types and number of photographic portraits you see in one day. Where did you see them? How do you think that the content of the portrait changes based on the context in which you see the image (news, facebook, magazine, advertisement, television, youtube, etc)? In other words, what is the difference between the portraits you see on facebook vs. those on the news? What is the difference between the “viewpoint” of the photographer in each situation? What is the difference between their “intents”?
The portraits in magazines or newspapers are useful tools which helped us know better about the articles and the news, they were not considered as the focus when I was reading the magazine. But, they are still very essential and they are vital needs in magazines or newspaper. For the photos in FB, they are always the focus when I was searching the website. I was trying to get informations from the photos which I considered as the focuses and then let the word descriptions as the tools. Same as me, I guess the photographers of the photos in FB wanted to show everything in his photo. But the photographers of the photos in newspapers were only concentrating on parts of the scene which could help the articles.


#8 “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” ~Richard Avedon.

Photographers love to put their own feelings, emotions, or affections into the frame. So the portraits were shoot in different angles, light situations, or backgrounds to show how the photographer think about the people in the portrait. If a man is sitting there waiting to be shot by a camera, totally different portraits of him will be created by different photographers.

#9 “You don't take a photograph, you make it.” ~Ansel Adams
(Actually I'm confused about this one…) I guess Ansel Adams was saying that a photographer can be the god of his compositions, his is the controller of everything. As the camera was in his hand, everything will be shot in the frame were under his domination.



#10 “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.” ~John Berger


I am definitely agree with this. Paintings always shows what the artist want and they are more subjective. Unlike paintings, the photograph are more objective and actual. Although as I said before the photographer is the controller of his frame, but everything is there already, they are what/who they are.

R02

 

Untitled, 1930.

Marlene Dietrich phones her little daughter in Berlin from Hollywood.

by

SALOMON, Erich

b. 28 April 1886; d 7 July 1944

Salomon was a German photographer and one of the pioneers of modern photojournalism.
He first worked as a carpenter, later reading Law at Munich. His interest in photography was aroused by the development, by Oskar Barnack of the 35mm miniature camera. Unlike its predecessors, this new format enabled one to take photographs by available light.
He revelled in taking pictures in situations where cameras were not allowed, and of taking pictures of celebrities when they were off their guard, revealing expressions which they themselves might not wish to reveal in public. His camera was concealed in an attaché case.
He became well known when he published pictures taken secretly at a murder trial. These proved so successful that he became a full-time professional, specialising in pictures which showed the human qualities of celebrities and politicans of his time. He had quite a knack of gate-crashing, to the extent that one premier of France, Briand, once commented that meetings would never be deemed to be important unless Salomon was there.
Salomon also worked briefly in England and in the United States, and in 1931 published a book called "Celebrated Contemporaries in unguarded moments" - containing photographs of some one hundred and fifty dignitaries and celebrities of the time.
During the second World War he went into hiding, but was eventually arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he died.



Recreation

The original photo was showing a communication between a daughter and her mother who was living in another country. She was using an old telephone, which was the best and most popular way to communicate with people far away. So I chose to show this scene in a modern way, combine with many modern communication tools. Although the tools we use for communication are changing dramatically, the fact of communication between us and the others is staying the same. The facial expression indicated that the person was happy when she was making that phone call.

Contemporary Photographer

YeeLing Tang
鄧綺玲
http://www.yeelingtang.com

Tang was born in Hong Kong, China. She moved from her native with her mother and brother to the Netherlands when she was only four to join her father. She did not talk for two years, while her brother relatives haven little or no traumatic memory of the move. Perhaps her early experience of disconnecting from verbal expression provided a framework for her highly articulate sense of visual expression. Through her works we could find an exploration of the Western stereotype of young Asian women, and also the life of a migrant family through generations.