Final: Progress 4/18

I am thinking about religious intolerance in the south.  I have always found myself frustrated with the fact that you really can’t openly be of any faith other than Christian in the south. Any openly jewish person in my community was targeted. Its infuriating to see for obvious reasons.  It seems never ending. In school we spent so much time learning about the Holocaust and still christian kids hurt the jewish kids. And no one ever did anything about it, including myself as I mentioned in a previous post. People grow up with this hate and the cycle never ends. Just recently after the election a friend of mine in Richmond had his car keyed with swastikas and his front porch vandalized. So it isn’t just rural NC that is a problem. Right now with the images I have taken (mainly erie landscapes and white churches) I don’t feel like I am getting my anger across.. or really any productive point. I feel a bit like I am in a bubble or just screaming into the void. I have thought about bringing in other elements such as newspaper articles. Originally I was trying to make a work with straight photography. I am letting go of that now since I think it will be detrimental to the project. Today I am starting research and hope to find some things in the news. I know that in 2015, 3 muslim students were shot and killed at Chapel Hill. There is definitely news stories on that. I worry that a lot hasn’t been reported. Most of the hate crimes I have seen or heard of from friends have not been things that were reported, just events that have happened and nothing is done about it.

Below are a few of the images I have developed already. I am not interested in the last two images. I think the first two images are successful. The second image is of a dead willow tree, which when living is a symbol of luck and protection. Seeing it dead really encompassed how I am thinking about this issue.

I am excited to see the ones that have yet to be developed! I photographed three different churches, all pristinely white buildings. I also have more gritty nature shots. I have been considering photographing this huge, old, faded and completely tattered American flag that hangs sadly on a pole dead in the center of this person’s (unknown to me) front yard. I have also been considering photographing the fig tree. But I am not sure if they are needed. The fig tree I was thinking about because it has heavily biblical and art historical references. The old and destroyed flag for similar reasons as the willow tree. I am waiting to see if Kimin will have the time to develop the remainder of my film when he does his own. I will know today. If not, I will take them to photo tech.  I may shoot again tomorrow afternoon, but as of right now I am not sure where or what to photograph.

Final in-progress

So I’ve finally decided on a project idea. I’d been stressing too much over the ‘concepts’ part of Concepts II (haha) and I was seriously stuck for a long time. I’m into aesthetics, and that’s okay; that’s what drew me to art and photography in the first place. I love playing with light and perspective. I think I’m a cart-before-horse person anyway, images come before concept. Anything conceptual I’ve ever successfully made came after I took a bunch of images and/or video, and then edited down into a cohesive idea.

I definitely like these two images. The third image is one that I like, but not necessarily for this project – I’m going to use my monopod and a step-ladder to get these images that I’m a little too short to take straight-on.

I will have prints to show on Thursday. I will be photographing Wednesday night and Friday morning, I’m interested to see how/if things look different in the different lights. I work all weekend, but I will try and print Sunday or Monday to bring in on Tuesday.

Final project images

Good morning all.  I went out yesterday morning (0715) to shoot with the chance of getting some shots with out cars in them. 🙂  I was successful in some instances and not so much in others.

Final: Thoughts and Inspirations

I still have not got my film back from Phototech yet. He just received chemicals and the parts to fix his tank on Monday. Hopefully they will be in my hands soon. I am working on narrowing my concept so that I can create a meaningful work in this final and not just one half of one.

I am feeling inspired by Raymond Meeks. His work has a quality to it that I think feels both romantic and unsettling. This is something that I am striving for in my images. In particular I am drawn to his work ” amwell || continuum “. I have been trying to find him speaking about this work but I have yet to come across it. The work is emotive and so interesting visually. It makes me think about growing up in the south. These evocative images bring up a dark blur of memory. They are stunning in the way that they are able to be morphed. The viewer can inject their own memories and feelings into them at the same time wondering what he was thinking about while making this work.

There is one memory I have that haunts me to this day. It haunts me for many reasons and it has been bothering me so much recently. It was the 8th grade and we were reading The Diary of Anne Frank, the play. This boy came into class wearing his yamaka. These “popular” soccer boys grabbed the yamaka off his head and threw it down to the ground. They were yelling slurs at him and making offensive jokes. Then they started attacking him. They hit him, shoved him to the ground after knocking his head onto the metal desk. Once he was on the ground, they started kicking him until he cried. He laid there, face beat red, and crying on the ground for a moment before getting up and sitting at his desk to read the part of Peter. I played Anne. Somehow that made me feel like I had even more of a responsibility to stop what was happening. But, I was a shy young girl, equally afraid of those boys. I had faith that the teacher would do something. The teacher was in the room. He saw what was happening. He let it happen. AND he didn’t send the soccer boys out. He didn’t even yell or scold them in the slightest. No, we just started to read about a jewish family during the Holocaust like nothing had happened.

This memory has led me to Christian Boltanski. Boltanski makes a lot of work centered around the Holocaust. I first learned of Christian Boltanski when I went to the library and saw his book La Vie Impossible in Special Collections. The book had black and white prints on vellum overlaid on top of matte black pages. It was stunning.

He has unique installation works including this work that shines light on the school pictures of jewish children who did not survive the Holocaust.

I don’t know if I will use any of my family’s fishing images anymore, or any of the overly romanticized/nostalgic images. When shooting I have been thinking about what a lot of the things I have been photographing mean in a religious and art historical sense. For instance the Willow Tree. The wood of a willow tree can take trauma without splitting. The bark from a willow tree has a natural pain reliever. In many cultures it is believed that the weeping willows are healers and providers of good luck. That is why they tend to be planted near homes. The saying “knock on wood” originated from the willow tree because it was said to give you luck if you touched it. I chose to photograph a dead willow tree. I passed the tree many times and came back to it. I felt a little wrong photographing it dead, but it seemed fitting for me in how I am feeling about the south at times. I photographed the fig tree and later began to dig deeper into what it means. The fig tree has a very strong biblical reference. Adam and Eve dress themselves in fig leaves after eating the forbidden fruit. In art history, the fig leaf is known as the protector of modesty. It has often been used to cover genitals of nudes, even years after the original painting. “each man under his own vine and fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25) has been used to denote peace and prosperity. In 1790 in his writing to the Touro Synagogue, George Washington extended the metaphor to denote the equality of all Americans regardless of faith. I think both of these things are strong symbols that I can hold onto moving forward.

Photographers I am looking at for the final assignment are Gordon Parks and Walker Evans

The two photographers that I have looked at for inspiration were Gordon Parks and Walker Evans.  Theses are few of the images from both photographers.

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I-95

My images from the display I made, was taken out with the trash(mistake) while I was in Chicago.  I loaded the images to serve for the display.

Artists Inspirations: Lisa Crawford

Chino Otsuka, “Imagine Finding Me” series has stuck with me ever since Shannon showed this in class. Although her work has nothing to do with adoption, it deals with this narrative that she has created while looking back at her younger-self. It’s definitely made me think about how I’m creating this character through my own self-discovery and how I want that to be portrayed. I don’t plan on doing any digital manipulation for this project, but I’m interested in the dynamic it creates and would possibly manipulate in the future for this project. There is so much that I haven’t touched on about my adoption and I’m curious in how far I’m willing to go.

Jenny Butcher, “The Ties that Bind” collaborative installation projects speaks about the trauma a child experiences after being separated from the mother. When I was younger, I had so many questions about my identity and I still do. I think as much as I try very hard to fill that void, it will be never be the same. What I do have left of my identity are they artifacts and they act like puzzle pieces that I hope to piece together in hopes of better understanding myself. Because I look back at photographs and don’t remember those moments. I’m only projecting myself onto them and wonder what ifs.

JooYoung Choi, “Have Faith For You Have Always Been Loved” is part of her ‘Cosmic Womb’ series. This piece in particular really speaks to me, because not feeling loved has been something that I’ve always felt. It’s this indescribable pain that I feel, almost as if I lost a piece of my heart. Even though I have two loving parents that made sure I was loved it just doesn’t feel the same. That feeling of abandonment is still there. My mom reminds me that I wasn’t given up immediately, so my real mother must have loved me, but something happened for me to be left in a hospital bathroom with no name and a feeling of emptiness has taken it’s place.

Class on Tuesday March 28th

Hi all. I am thinking of cancelling class on Tuesday and making it  work day for you all. I know you all are slammed with work from every direction. If you find that 3 hours in the begining of the week you weren’t expecting will you use it wisely to work on your project? Please comment here if you want me to make Tuesday a free work day outside of class?

Artists I’ve been Looking at: Christina Macaulay

Doris Salcedo:

Doris is a installation artist born in 1958 in Columbia. While she works primarily in installation, she sometimes does work with photography (which is what I’m diggin). Her work discussed the marginalized individual lives of people living in third world countries as well as focusing on the victims in these situations. She makes it clear that she does not want her work to be viewed as a memorial for these people. Instead, she wants them to be examples of the gap between the powerful and the oppressed. My favorite work by her is titled Atrabiliarios. It consists of images of shoes printed on animal fibers and hung up using surgical thread. I love how these look aesthetacally and am drawing inspiration from them when making my collages. I also love the way she treats the wood in her sculptures, making it look distressed and older than it actually is. I want to play with that as well. She’s great.

 

Francesca Woodman:

This chick is dope and when looking into magical realism she came up. She was an American photographer who committed suicide at the age of 22 in 1981. Most of her images were shot using a medium format camera. She used herself as the subject in most of her images, often blurred out in order to create a ghostly effect in her locations. I find it funny, when doing research on her, she created over 800 prints when she was alive and most of them were untitled. There is also very little information about her conceptual process online, probably because she died before she could talk about it. Anyways, its creepy and I love it.

Christina Macaulay: In Progress

 

Hey guys! I know this is a day late but I still wanted to post today to talk more about my thoughts. So, as discussed in class today I have changed my topic to childhood development and suicide thinking about the environment the child lives in. I became interested in the Suicide thing when thinking about my mom’s attempt at suicide and the childhood thing when thinking about my own childhood and how that has affected who I am now(and I think many others as well). I want to do this by using collage. Something that I have been really struggling with this semester is how to have fun with making my work (through play). Well, I love making collages and think it is very therapeutic/playful. It just feels right. I think I will also be making images to represent both sides of the story. this meaning I will make work showing empathy for the people who inflict the tram as well as the individuals receiving the mistreatment. I still don’t know if I will be adding statistics but I will take your advice and look into some case studies about the subject. The more things I look at the better. Thanks a lot guys for all the feedback I’m actually really excited to see how these look! I haven’t worked like this in a long time and think it will be good for me. In case you forgot I’m attaching images of my in progress collages. Thanks!