Review: Traud, Heller, Bell eds (2006). Education of a Photographer. NY: Allworth Press. Section One: Reflections on the Medium:What It Means to Photograph

This book is part of series for students of the visual arts, including volumes for aspiring Illustrators, Graphic Designers, Typographers, and Comic Book Artists, among others, from Allworth Press.

The book consists of 53 excerpts of essays, interviews, and other texts from a number of prominent photographers and writers on photography, organized into four sections:

1. Reflections on the Medium:What It Means to Photograph
2. How Others See Them:Considering the Photographer
3. Finding an Audience:Working with the Professionals
4. Guides for the Uneducated:Higher Education and Photography

What follows are notes from the first third of Section One.

Review: Nachtwey, James. Inferno. Phaidon Press: 1999.

Having finished Linfield’s Cruel Radiance, in which James Natchwey was the subject of an entire chapter, I was inspired to investigate Inferno, his tome to suffering in the 1990s, with a particular eye on my emotions.  Linfield argues that many of us are dishonest to our feelings when discussing images of cruely and suffering.  They make us feel uncomfortable and so we call for the images to be banned or restricted, or accuse the photographer or media of being pornogrpahers.  What we rarely do is ask how to resolve the situation depicted in the photographs, or how to deal appropriately with our feelings.

Romania:  The pain from having to sleep on cots with no mattresses, only wires to hold blankets.  The cold.   The poor food.  No empathy.

Minor White - Blankness of Mind

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Mark Lewis's Algonquin Park Series

The tutor suggested I also have a look at this series of short videos, but as yet I have been able to find only very small copies that don't really do justice to the work.  Like Misrach, Lewis shows us the tinniness of the human in the landscape.  Lovely stuff.  I only wish I could see it better!

Mark Lewis at the Center for Digital Art:  http://www.digitalartlab.org.il/ArchiveArtistPage.asp?id=59

Clara Mac & Carles Asensio have posted what might be most generously called an homage:  Mark Lewis Was Here:  https://vimeo.com/114825863

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On the Beach by Richard Misrach

In response to the last of my Assignment 2 images, my tutor recommended this series by Richard Misrach.  I was quite taken with them as they do something I admire:  depicting the scale of individual human experience and existence.  These images of lone people or lone couples on a beach speak to how tiny our experience is in relation to our environment.

And perhaps inspired in me a new series, shot from my rooftop.  Let's see.

In one of my recent reads, Susie Linfeld argues that photographs are. like every other representation of reality, incomplete.  They are only a glimpse of our experience, and to be completely understood, they have to be properly contextualized.  When I read about Misrach's work here, though, I was disappointed to find the writer - and even the photographer - ascribing something sinister to these images, a hovering, lurking, anonymous presence.  They were made, it seems, shortly after the events of September 2001, during which time Misrach was in New York to visit his son.

Suburb @ Lenscratch

Navarino Bay Golf Resort, Peloponnese Penninsula, Greece ©Robert Harding Pittman

Peter Carter over at the OCA Student FB page pointed me to a wonderful website called Lenscratch and Dave Jordano's work in Detroit suburbs, Unbroken Down:  http://lenscratch.com/2014/02/dave-jordano-detroit-unbroken/

Did a [suburb] search of the site and came up with more interesting work, including:

http://lenscratch.com/2015/05/robert-harding-pittman-anonymization/

http://lenscratch.com/2015/02/lloyd-degrane-domestic-issues/

http://lenscratch.com/2014/08/review-santa-fe-jiehao-su-borderlands/

http://lenscratch.com/2014/04/william-mebane-empire/

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P&P: Exercise 23: Selective Processing And Prominence

From the course notes:

Select one image that you have already taken for an earlier project, an image in which the issue is the visual prominence of a figure in a setting. For this exercise you will use the digital processing methods that you have available on your computer to make two new versions of this image.

In one, make the figure less prominent, so that it recedes into the setting. In the second, do the opposite, by making it stand out more. Possible selective adjustments are to brightness, contrast, even colour intensity if you are presenting a colour image.

This image was taken during a December 2014 trip to Istanbul.  The version here is how I developed and displayed it on my Flickr account.  For this exercise, I have developed two additional images.