Week 9 activities+homework

Mohamed Bourouissa:

1.      The main message here is about African-American culture. Some of it is good, however some of it has to do with police brutality.

2.      This is conveyed mainly through the expressions on the faces of the subjects. In some pictures the subject is crying, in others, they are smiling.

Anton Kusters:

1.      The series is about the expressions of pain of those who were present in the Nazi concentration camps of WW2. The pictures are of the blue skies at significant concentration camps. It offers a contrast between the innocence of the blue sky and the cruelty of the concentration camps.

2.      This is only conveyed with an explanation, however the coordinates of each photo are given so technically the viewer can find the meaning with research.

Mark Neville

1.      These photos are about the conditions of life for farmers in Britain. It was taken shortly after the vote for Brexit, so it intends to justify the vote for leavers.

2.      Again, this message can’t be directly gleamed from the photos; you have to have a description to know what they mean. However you can tell a lot just from the quality and age of the things in the photos: they are old and damaged. These people aren’t doing well financially.

Clare Strand

1.      This series is about the reception of information in the digital age. The artist takes typical images, and blocks them with either boxes filled with numbers of typical pixilation.

2.      This series does a better job of sending the message than the previous one, however it still struggles to and needs an explanation/description to really deliver a message. The only thing she does special here that actually contributes to the message is the pixilation/boxing of the photos.

Ultimately, I believe Kusters should win. His photos do something that none of the others do: they stand on their own. Although it isn’t strong, since you have to look up coordinates to figure out the message, once you do, the message is clear.

Photographs analysed:

Clare Strand:

Mark Neville:

Anton Kusters:

Mohamed Bourouissa:

My Photo:

Caption 1: Gym, condition: used
Caption 2: Just finished a long, hard workout!
Caption 3: So many choices for workouts, I'll spend more time picking one than actually working out!
Cropped version (cropped to the tv stand in the middle left of the original):

Caption: We can't even afford a tv!

       I care very much about the gym and working out, even moreso since being quarantined to the house with nothing else to do. The first caption (the best one), references two ideas: the gym is clearly messy, and the gym has clearly been used. This photo could be put into a series highlighting the life of me under quarantine and the caption would be perfect. The other two captions both build on the idea of a messy gym, but in different ways. One uses the mess to imply that many things were done during the workout, while the other uses the mess to display the many things that can be done in the gym. This photograph did not leave much room to crop it and completely change the meaning, however, since everything I've done with the photo builds upon the idea that the gym is of high quality (for a homegym), it is a nice contrast to point something out that is clearly lacking. We used to have a tv for the tv stand but we gave it away. The room hadn't gotten much usage since then so we had no need to replace it. 

Week 8 Homework

By: Elliot Erwitt

A.   This is a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a picture of him hitting a front double biceps pose in the same clothes in the same room. He is also flexing while holding the photo.
B.   There is minimal use of light, since there are so few shadows. However it does appear that there is a window to the left due to Arnold's left side being brighter than his right side.
C.    There is no mood to the photo. It appears bleak, but Arnold has a slight grin on his face.
D.    This is a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a photo of himself.
E.     The photo appears to be a photo about who Arnold is. He is flexing in the smaller photo, and he is the GOAT bodybuilder, so this is definitely a portrait of Arnold himself.



Recreation:

Response:

Creating the recreation was easily the funnest time I've had making a photograph in this class. I consider myself a bodybuilder so not only is the recreation effective at mimicking the original photo, it stands true to me. It took me about an hour to get this photo thought because I had to build a tower of chairs to balance my phone at eye level. Lighting was impossible to get right and I had to zoom in on this photo to get some furniture out of the photo. Besides that I think this photo came out really well.

Week 5 Photographic Series

So I did not take a picture of a series presented in class so I chose one from online. I think this one captures the spirit of the assignment well. 

Last impressions (typing it since I had a lot of thoughts)- Looking at the picture, you not only see a reflection of what she went through over the course of her life, but you also get a glimpse of how she is dealing with it. In her age 24 and 39 photos you see the face of someone who is in pain. When looking at photos of her when she is older, you still see the pain, but you also see some restraint in her face. It is almost as if in her 40's she internalized the idea that the pain won't stop; she had to accept her situation, no matter how bad is seems to her. This also implies that she has a reason to put forward the persona of someone who isn't in pain. Potentially for her children?

Photography Week 4 Portrait analysis

Week 4 Self-Portrait

I chose this Mayotte Magnus portrait as inspiration for my own. In her photo, she is being shown in two different mirrors, with two different expressions on her face. Also, it appears that the mirrors are cracked. The cracks can be implications upon her mental state at the time of the picture. My photo was taken very spontaneously. I was walking in downtown Dusseldorf, Germany when I ran into this mirror near a parking garage. The mirror is not a regular mirror, because it distorts the image and makes it appear wavy. On top of this, the image itself isn't very high in quality. Both of those aspects of the photo push the idea that I still don't know who I am yet, and the image I have of myself is very wavy and grainy and unclear. Unintentionally there are lots of lines in my photo, but those don't actually contribute anything to or against the message that I am trying to send with my portrait.

Week 4 Exhibition Analysis

The first two photos are the ones I chose. They both are heavily influenced by colour. The first one uses it cleverly to highlight the environment around the children, while the second one uses it for aethetic purposes. Both photos also highlight the environment around the subject, but in different ways. The description of the first photo states that the photographer wanted to contrast the playfulness of the boys and the building (which is associated with poverty). The second photo attempts to reflect the happiness of the photographer at traveling, due to his mom taking him a bunch of places when he was younger. The first photo did a really good job sending its message, while the second one did not, along with not having a very good message in the first place. I liked the first one much more.

We decided that the third photo was the winner, because it uses colour, lighting, and the entire environment functions well as a subject. The woman in the center is clearly sad about something, and the colours+lighting reflect that along with her expression. It was the one that most used the entire photo to send the message, which alone was a very strong message.