Hey guys. So as of right now I am still playing around with some ideas. One thing i’ve been doing is going on tours at apartment complexes and taking images of the vacant units (in return for a good property review). I’m not sure what it is about this that interests me yet but I think it could be cool as a book. Something about the impermenance of a home. like I said I’m not sure yet but I will be able to talk about it in class on thursday. Something else I’ve been thinking about doing is a performance. I have been reading this book called How We Die and in the chapter about suicide they talk about the most common ways for men and women to kill themselves (men being hangings and guns and women being drowning and medication). They also give statistical information about the amount of people who kill themselves every hour (80-100). I’ve been really interested in making a series of performances, documented in film and photography, that discuss these methods of suicide. In class, I will show a mini example of a performance that talks about the amount of people who die each hour. this will consist of me smashing my head against a piece of dry wall for an hour (yay). Here we go y’all. 
Month: February 2017
Weekly Update
So I’ve decided to continue with the private zoo idea. I’m thinking of going to each zoo and focusing on finding things that go along with their mission statement or overall theme. For example, the Luray Zoo takes in retired zoo animals, unwanted pets, etc. and the Virginia Safari Zoo allows visitors to drive through the zoo.
During my research, I found a lot of information I considered both interesting and disturbing. To clarify, the interesting goes hand in hand with disturbing. The Natural Bridge Zoo is described as a roadside zoo owned by Karl Mogensen. It has a rating of 2.2/5 on Google and has had 62 violations with the USDA since January of 2015. It was also reported that during the spring of 2015, over 40 animals needed veterinary care.
The Virginia Safari Zoo is a drive through zoo owned by Eric Mogensen. Yes that name sounds familiar. Why? He’s Karl Mogensen’s son. He also used to own the Reston Zoo, now called Roer’s Zoofari and is under new management. The Virginia Safari Zoo hasn’t recently popped up in the news, however has been under investigation in the past for a spider monkey that was euthanized for having frostbite that wasn’t treatable. The spider monkey got frostbite while at the Reston Zoo and was transferred to the Virginia Safari Zoo for treatment, but didn’t receive any in time. While Eric owned the Reston Zoo, an employee euthanized a wallaby by drowning it. Meghan Mogensen, Eric’s daughter and the director of the zoo at the time testified that “Her father wanted Parmesan euthanized and that he could do whatever he wanted with his ‘property'”. These two incidents both happened in 2012. It seems though that Eric wants nothing to do with his father, at least in terms of their businesses. On the main page of the Virginia Safari Park, there is the following statement:
Obviously there is a lot of substantiated issues with private zoos. Often they are small roadside zoos where the owners prioritize profit over the well being of the animals under their care. There are also private zoos that are owned by well meaning people who spend their time trying to give the animals under their care better lives. This is something I would like to explore that I think will go hand in hand with their public mission statements.
The Met Digitizes its Collection, Releasing 375,000 Images for Free
Some good news for once.
http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/met-digitizes-its-collection-releasing-350-00-images-free-n719661
hi y’all
A friend sent me this reading on getting stuck as a photographer. Doesn’t necessarily offer a solution, but is a gooooood follow up to what everyone seems to be on in class. Here’s a quote:
Photography can be a neurotic’s worst nightmare. At least if the neurotic thinks about it, and the neurotic does. He thinks too much. The photographer/neurotic gets caught between his desire and his intellect, and therein lies the nightmare. It’s not that desire and the intellect don’t go together, they do.
Click to access 04_TooDrunk.pdf
1117 Mosby Court
The title of this body of work “1117 Mosby Court” represent the house my family and I lived in from middle school to high school. I’ve been out a couple of times to shoot in Mosby Court area(the areas that I would go to try to escape). I used two different types of lens. The first shot of Martin Luther King Jr. School, was take with the 17-50mm DX lens on a full frame body. Which gave a vignetting around the image. I elected BW to play on my pass. I also provided some images taken in color, trying to decide if I liked it in this configuration or not…..Not. Understanding that this is the present and not the time in which I lived there, but in my mind it’s still the same.
The other images were taken using a 50mm full frame lens. My concerns, I like the look and fill of the BW image with the vignetting around the image. How well would in be represented if I have to resizes if for the format(square) when I print it? I guess I need to conduct a test of this process this weekend to see…. Oh by the way, I intended to be in the image in the left corner. Thanks and have a great weekend.
sun’s Weekly project update!
ok! so after I looked at works from our professor’s past student, I didn’t feel like taking documentary style photos anymore. I felt like i should have more fun when i take pictures. So, I looked up some artists like pretty puke… and I was really drawn into his usage of direct flashlights and subjects that he was photographing. And…. last week I finally went out and took the pictures that I wanted to take.
I’m not quite sure what these images mean. But the most important thing is, I really had fun taking those pictures. I think taking more of those weird and interesting pictures of my asian friends will help me figure out what these images mean.
Christina Macaulay Weekly Post
Okay, well I’m uncomfortable. So I started my project this weekend at work and so far the only person who agreed to participate was by far the creepiest man I have ever toured. He basically stared me up and down the whole time, kept couching me while we were on the golf cart, and while he would stare at me he would put his hand under his shirt and rub his stomach. Yeah, no thanks. I’m feeling a little discouraged about this project at this moment in time and think that I should do something else because at this rate, I’m not going to get enough work done for me to be proud of this project. Moving forward, I have a few other Ideas. I don’t want to post them quite yet though because they are not fleshed out but, just as an example, one of them might consist of me creating a character and doing daily vlogs (still need to think it through more). That just sounds like a lot of fun to me personally. However, I would like to talk to you guys as a class or even just Shannon specifically about it. I’m not too worried and am confident that I will get it done.
Museum removes all art created by immigrants
Latoya Ruby Frazier Short Film
Little Caesars founder quietly paid Rosa Parks’ rent for years
This is really cool, makes me wish I actually liked Little Caesar’s pizza.
Concepts II - 2017 