Scanning Smackdown

Managed to miss getting this one on the blog earlier- whoops!

Can you tell which is which?





(dry on left, wet on right)

Final Book Project

Photography- a delicate play of light and time interacting with a photosensitive surface; nothing more, nothing less. My work explores this most fundamental aspect of the medium by utilizing darkroom tools and ambrotypes to create imagined landscapes – a topography formed by air, light and ice upon a piece of silvered glass. By omitting decipherable information, these cryographic prints can act as spaces for viewers to ponder what a photograph is, as well as provide scenes that can be read in many ways. My photographs are a record of something, but what? Ultimately, I find that the original moment is irrelevant; it can be discarded in favor of this new and evolving interpretation, at the mercy of my hand and each viewers' subjectivity.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/5446381/b09e45ca95d38a1be3ac189be65f06822ad10506

Diptych

Again, this was when the sickness struck me down, but here it is! I think being ill subliminally informed my subject.

Original Image

New Image

Diptych

Researched Books

As I’d been sick when this was happening, I looked into books I already owned to find some inspiration for The Book. I’ve got a decently wide array of photo books, so I had selected several to act as models.

1.)   Sante, Luc. Evidence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992. Print.

This book is a compilation of early crime scene photographs from 1910-1920 that the author discovered had been rescued from a massive purge of the NYPD’s archives in the ‘60s. Despite the rescue of the photographic plates, many had been neglected and largely all of the corresponding files/documentation was lost. Sante compiled the most compelling images and all available information regarding them into this book, presenting the plates one to a page, with a plate number to correspond to the back of the book.

The use of plate numbers appealed to me, as these were all originally ambrotypes, so it relates materialistically to my project. Beyond that, I could see myself using plate identification if I were to eventually have an index of full-plate thumbnails. I felt that the minimalism to the page was important to not detract from the subject matter, and I would likely use a similar approach with little to no text on each page. The way the book is broken up into components that allow the viewer increasing amounts of contextual information is practical for my purposes, as well; it worked in his favor to allow the reader to experience the horror of the photos before finding out the details that remain about the crime.

2.)   Busse, Dietmar, and Tom Breidenbach. Flower Album. New York: PowerHouse, 2003. Print.

In the book, Busse ‘tries on’ different imagined flowers, using his body as a canvas; he also does simpler arrangements of decomposed and recomposed plant specimens. Like the last book, Busse’s book uses highly minimal text on the photo pages, which I think is highly effective in allowing the reader to become absorbed in the images without getting distracted by unnecessary reading.

Also like the last book, there is an image index with specific species information for the plants used in each image, corresponding with page numbers and each piece’s title. The images themselves on the page were what caught my eye, though- all the images are full bleeds, allowing the image to sprawl across the page. I felt, more so than with Sante’s book, that I could be totally immersed in the pictures I was viewing. While with Sante’s found photographs the graphic nature really needed a border to contain them (to keep them from getting too close to us!) I think that  my own work really needs the entirety of the page.

3.)   Libbrecht, Kenneth George. The Little Book of Snowflakes. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur, 2004. Print.

This tiny book isn’t exactly an art book per se… more like one of those bargain books you’d get at Barnes & Noble. That being said, though, it’s got an abundance of different formats in the book that each work a little differently depending on the corresponding text and/or images. If I want to end up covering details from my plates, or provide a plate index, I think the grid format used on several of the pages could work really well, providing enough information without allowing anything to be too decipherable.

To get to the root of why I chose this book, I kept closing and opening it until I realized that I was smitten with the square format. I’m a sucker for symmetry. The plate details could work really well as large panoramas (landscape 8x10, for example) but I think that the 2:1 ratio should work well. This book appears to be the same size as the smallest square option through the Lightroom interface for Blurb.

Minimal text, large images

Plate indices

Interesting division of space without being distracting
Full bleed makes image seem to fall off of the page, extending beyond what viewer can see

Sneaky 2-image spread with full bleed
They seem to merge into one another with careful editing and excellent placement

Scanner Portraits

I was gone for this- I hope I did it right!

One-Page Wonders

Creature Comforts [Me]

documenting a week of sickness
and my cat

Suburban Sprawl

because what is more expansive online
than cat pictures

Dependence

saving me from returning to an empty home
is the damn cat
yes, again
because I'd be lost without him

Realities

check the boxes next to symptoms occurring in the past week
we will need your insurance information
please step on the scale
take a pill and a half in the evening
no milk for an hour before or after
this medication may cause suicidal thoughts or actions
but everything will be fine

Calling From Canada- Ken Lum Retrospective

Wow, the article started out with references to the Mirror Stage of the Oedipal Complex… after that, I kind of expected the author to focus on childhood trauma and I certainly wasn't disappointed. While only a brief part of Ken Lum's history, it would make sense that such events would go on to inform his interest in identity and culture that's so consistently present in his work. The work he does with signs is likely my favorite, though I do enjoy his work with mirrors. The 'personal logos' (as I believe he called them in his talk) have a quirky humor to them that make them very approachable. Though their meaning has shifted over the decades, viewers can still have an idea of political climates of the past to help inform their impressions of the work. There's an interesting conflict that happens in my mind when he 'casts' the East Asian man as "Steve"; while he does confront the discrimination of the time, he also strips away the person's identity to have them act the role they've been given. I think this is effective in creating conflicting feelings of amusement and discomfort; it certainly bothered me!
Aesthetically, his mirrors and inserted photographs are beautiful in a nostalgic kind of way, but I'm not certain if I would necessarily end up considering the same things if they were presented without his previous work with signage in the same show.