photo 1, Painting, Photography, Family Photo albums

     For a (non-class related) series of paintings I am working on at this time (dealing with childhood experience, memory, obscurity, and emotion) I have been using old family photos (taken by my mom) as references for the series. Because of this I have spent a lot of time when home flipping through family photo albums. The pictures I am choosing to reference in this series have a connecting aesthetic theme (most notably atleast partially obscured adults (faces)) I thought I would share some of my favourite photos I have found here, since most will not find new context as paintings.

I like how authentic these photographs feel.

For almost all of these, photo credits to my mom, Natalie Evans.

 

photo 1 - Martha Rosler - Rights of Passage

 

Rights of Passage (1995-98) is a series of photographs by Rosler that picture (conventionally unattractive) places seen while travelling between Brooklyn and New Jersey.

I like the “grungy” aspects of this series, and really like Rosler’s work in general (especially Taking the War Home). 

This series interests me too in the lack of people present, which you don’t usually see in these types of photos. This may or may not have been a stylistic choice, but today I feel that attempting to exclude present figures from street photographs could prove quite difficult.. it’s not common to be on a street without anyone else present (or atleast that is how I feel).

I think the choice whether or not to include people in your photographs is really important. There’s also the in between phase (like Ralph Eugene Meatyard).

Rights of Passage was taken using a fixed-focus toy camera (a kids camera, likely from the 90s). I had to look it up, but fixed-focus means the camera can’t be adjusted, and likely has a large depth of field and small aperture lens(pinhole feeling?). On her website Rosler doesn’t mention why she chose to use a toy camera, but it has to be an important decision. I interpret this as seeing the beautiful elements in spaces usually considered benign - much like kids do. 

photo 1 - TIME - The Vanishing Art of the Family Photo Album

 

Installation view of Album Beauty at Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2013

    I have an interest in vintage photographs, especially ones that (atleast feel) candid. This is a really interesting article by TIME about the shifting function of family photo albums (from private to public and analog to digital)..

Album Beauty is a display consisting of found photos, another thing which greatly interests me (the idea of found art, from notes in library books to nuts and bolts  on the sidewalk).

“It’s extraordinary to think that photo albums have only been in existence for roughly one hundred years, and now they are virtually dead.”

-Kessels

“A long and dedicated search through photo albums will occasionally reveal something less than perfection… something other than an entry in the competition to appear normal. And in these cracks, beauty may be found.”

-Kessels

photo 1 - Digital photographs - Corn Maze

 Photographs I took with my iphone at the Lethbridge Corn Maze.

photo 1 - Nikon FM10 quick camera tour

 

photo 1 - John Chiara

 

    John Chiara is a contemporary American experimental photographer based in California. Chiara creates his images by directly manipulating photosensitive paper. To counter loss of information during the enlargement process in the dark room, he developed his own large cameras. His process seems to borrow from pinhole photography (but more complicated) and is described as the following:

“Once he selects a location, he situates, and then physically enters, the camera, and maneuvers in near total darkness a sheet of positive color photographic paper onto the camera's back wall.  Throughout each exposure, his instinctive control limits the light entering the lens. He uses his hands to burn and dodge the large-scale images, and develops them in a spinning drum by agitating the chemistry over photographic paper lining the interior of the drum. This process often leaves traces behind on the resulting images.”

…

Chiara's photographs are strongly perceptual, eliciting a visceral response, yet are rendered in soft hues that exude a strong sense of the viscosity of material and the ephemerality of presence. 

-These effects of the spinning drum, and his overall development/creation process for the photographs creates “imperfections” that Chiara embraces, but at the same time his photographs are highly detailed because of the large paper and cameras.

photo 1 - Negative Book

The negatives that I took for Assignment 2. 

photo 1 - Pinhole positives

 My final prints of two positives for assignment 2: A self portrait and “where my eyes cannot go”.

Velvet and Veins, inkjet print of pinhole photograph, 29.5 x 24 inches.

This pinhole photograph/photogram was taken by placing a a plastic sheet with moth and fly wings in the centre of my box camera in front of the photographic paper. 

Interwoven Light, inkjet print of pinhole photograph, 24 x 29.5 inches.

A single sheet of photographic paper was cut to cover the bottom of a cylindrical pinhole camera as well as the sides. Reflections of light were captured on the bottom of the tin can. 

photo 1 - Alison Rossiter

 I was really drawn to Rossiter’s work and the video on her art/process show last class, so I decided to look into her practice further!

Alison Rossiter, Defender Velour Black, expired January 1924, processed in 2013

I find how Rossiter puts vintage paper to use super exciting. I found myself especially drawn to when she was discussing how the best parts of her practice are finding ‘traces’ on the paper such as already exposed sections or fingerprints. I think the idea behind her work (and the work itself) is beautiful. Her process is linked to the past, but not necessarily in a historical or factual way. To me, it feels rooted in empathy and universal human experience. It is gentle.