Mark Cohen 1970-Present

From my notes on the Mark Cohen Exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art:

 The photography of Mark Cohen is candid and exposing of our society. His wide angle lens create a broad depth of field, and the aggression in his photo's give a greater sense of the reality of the audience.  The flash used is intrusive and develops an exposed sense of his subjects.

The gallery that we looked at of his photos collects photos taken as early as 1972 and as recent as 2008.  All the photo's were taken in Pennsylvania, developing a sense of time, growth and the merger between the country side and the city.  The museum curator told us that the photos were widely criticized in the 1970's because they didn't understand the images of sex, depth and anxiety.  Due to the similar settings of all the pictures, a novelization is made between the photos developing the loose connections found in the area.
The pictures even begin to encapsulate James Joyces saying, "Everything happens in one day" depicting all the different parts of society in Pennsylvania.  

Many of the pictures in the gallery captured a transition between old in new.  This was found in the evolution of the style of the people and the evolution of the buildings and structures, and the ware and age of the people and the buildings .  However the strongest photo that i found in the gallery was titled "Boy in Yellow Shirt Smoking." It compares the smoking and the candy, and the youth against a "grown up" activity.  The picture contrasts this sense of adulthood, and the ideals of the time having been taken in 1977.  Smoking was obviously not completely understood as detrimental to health.  The smiles on the children are chilling and the array of different ages in the photo make this a strong message about youth corruption.


  

Hodgepodge of Photos

Today is the third to last day of my last fall semester at Ursinus College. The photo's that I am commenting on below were all found on Google using different word identifiers. Words such as riot, peace, justice, power, and more were typed into Google Images and sorted through to find suitable photos to comment on. The next collection of 12 photos are those suitable photos. Enjoy the commentary and the photos!

 Messages in photography seem to spring forth the longer you look into a photo.  The sense of micro-macro reality of the world is brought into focused view in this photo.  The layout of he photo portrays a typical crosswalk but with what is obviously tiny little figurines. The figures show us how fragile our lives really look from a distance by resonating a sense of fake life, or life created for the enjoyment of a voyeur.  The need for human quality and actual reality is found in the alliteration of our society.   

 At a glance this photo looks like four high society girls driving a fancy yellow car, but with more focus it is shown that these figures of girls are mannequins.  This a trick that brings forth a commentary on the nature of female beauty.  Mannequins represent an idolized beauty, and in this photo develop an impact upon what is real versus what is fake.  High society woman are looked at in a way that shows them to be one-note and plastic, without any real depth other than that they look good. 

 This is an example of Bressom's decisive moment.  The photo shows the solidarity of the Chinese military, and the unity felt in a uniform action.  The photo pulls you in by the sense of time that each jump brings (the highest jumps belong to the soldiers in the front of the picture, while the smaller jumps belong to the soldiers further away from the camera). 

 In another example of decisive moment we get this amorphous image of a water blob.  It took me a couple of seconds to understand the narrative of the photo and what the subjects in the photo meant in relation to each other.  The photo is of a human popping a water balloon. The lighting on the water makes form seem alive, and more synchronized with reality than the tiny sputter of orange balloon.  This shows the audience a reality of formation that usually by passes us so quickly that we never see it. 

 The looming forces of humanity in struggle against each other are shown in this narrative photo.  The forces of governance are portrayed in metal, great in number, shadowing the back ground of the picture. Our rioter in front open backpack and malatov-cocktail embody a sense of unarmored individuality fighting an uphill battle. The subjects play on each other create an enthralling device in this photo.

 This vigil of peace stands in relation to unenthusiastic pedestrians.  The emotion that is found in the formation of the peace sign on the ground in no way conveys the energies of the subjects around it.  Thus the vigil comes across as an empty gesture in the streets of this city.  The depth of the city streets creates a metaphoric vortex of status quo that is unaffected by the message in the vigil.

 The composition of this photo and the colors emphasize the contrast between nature and knowledge.  This juxtaposition is refreshing in a world of photographers who keep taking photos of technology versus nature, bringing focus to the root of the epic showdown: knowledge being the founding reason for the changes in our world and the growth of our youth.  The books residing in the forest also bring forth a sense that the environment we live in can also help nourish the youth in their development.

 This photo goes along with the riot photo I commented on earlier showing the other side of the riot. Panic and chaos is found in this photo that captures in a timely manner the movement of people in the streets.  The disarray of the photo suggests danger but we aren't show what that is or where its coming from but, that it affects everyone in this street environment.

 This is simply human recreational fun.  The photo has power when taken in context but in some cases photos can draw power even though they say nothing.  This photo suggests nothing but the immaturity of mankind with his member.  The finger  through the zipper is shocking but brings little to nothing to think about.  Rebellion from the status quo and the appreciation for the silliness of humanity is seen in this photo.

 One man in front of a line of metallic military might, is inspiring and shows the vigor of human resilience. The power in this photo comes from the death that we know is possible from the tanks, and the fact that this small looking disheveled man wants to challenge this might head on.  The tanks even portray a sense of surprise at the challenge making that statement even more powerful.

 This example of decisive moment captures a painter with a huge brush filled with black paint and water.  The curvature of the brush is inhuman and the arc is magnificent to the eye, once again showing how much water can linger in the air when caught in a frame.

 The objects within the belly of the dead bird show the pollution that society has had on nature.  the spindles and pieces of plastic show the realities of our world.

NY Times Andy Grundberg Assignment

Looking back through the work Andy Grundberg has done for the New York Times I found an interesting photography review on a gallery displayed in Penn Station.  Grundbergs article is titled, "Review Photography; Amid Train Data, Images Of Danger and Intrigue" published August 17, 1990. 

Here is a link to the article. 

Grundberg begins by commenting on the area that the gallery was displayed.  If not displaying photos in a museum or an enclosed gallery, a photographer’s display area is by all means part of the resonance of the photo.  Grundberg’s approaches this gallery hesitantly making it known that the gallery is in a public setting, which can sometimes make publicly provocative, but also can lead sensory assault, quoting Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc.”  [insert photo here]

Eileen Cowins photos appeared at the Long Island Rail Road concourse in Penn Station in light boxes.  The arrangement of photos in a gallery is important to the consumption of its aura, and the first photos available for viewing in this gallery were hindered by the “rush of humanity” on escalators and train information screens all around them.  The Art for Transit Office of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the art was meant to “stimulate the imaginations of its 150,000 commuters” but the multi-colored screens all around the photos and the fact that the gallery was done in black in white caused the photos to gain little attention according to Grundberg.      

Eileen Cowin is the photographer analyzed in this article and Grundberg complements her work greatly.  Citing the black and white photos as mysterious and intriguing, “creating a climate of implied danger, sexual intrigue and violence”, Grundberg goes on to explore the inconclusive narrative found in her photos.  He describes her photos as film noir capturing a inconclusive narrative, “Clues abound: an open envelope, a telephone receiver, a stalking guard dog. In one image, a man wearing a wedding ring uses a pay telephone. In another, a woman's shadow appears on a wall behind a phone - whether it is the same phone or another is purposefully left unclear.”

The review seemed to be thoroughly layed out starting with setting of the gallery as a critical point of analysis. The way a photograph or piece of art is viewed by its audience is integrally important to the message of the gallery.  From Grundbergs review this gallery feels like it could have benefitted from repositioning in the same public area or might have worked better in an enclosed gallery, perhaps with black walls to border the art work and highlight the grey details. 

Grundbergs review of Ms.Cowins photos however have caused me to become immediately interested in film noir and I might be going to pick up a copy of The Maltese Falcon (1941) or Sunset Blvd (1950). The narrative nature of Cowins pictures and the clues and details that carry over from photograph to photograph convey the mastery that she has in putting together a ecosystem of mystery without any clear links.       

In some of Eileen Cowins other work from the 90’s we see this inconclusive narrative structure brought up again. In the picture above the audience is drawn in by the meaning of the sentence below to the images above.  The narrative of the photos is not clear, however the itchy, hate feeling of being lied to is conveyed by the detail of all the photo's.  

 The photo of the woman opening the phone booth into the mans sensory path leads to a the question of how the two should be associated.  Some form of broken communication without sight is alluded, leaving the photo open to interpretation.  

Of the photo's presented this one puts together a stronger narrative but still leaves us starving for the final details.  The written text alludes to a crime committed by a man involving at least one woman and a series of witnesses.  The photo of the woman is solid and has some smoky depth. For some strange these two images together makes me crave for more information about her and this crime. 

Framing

For class last week we went to Philadelphia and took pictures in pairs. Associating our shots with one of John Szarkowski's 5 elements of photography (presented in his article The Photographers Eye).  Katy and I, decided to pick frame as our topic and thus set out to find interesting depth and contrast between objects and associations in everything we saw.  So continuing off of that interest in frame I will be commenting on a couple pictures with frame in mind.

  This picture quite literally has a frame created by the wooden statue in the foreground.  However, the point of analyzing frame isn't to look at the borders edges, but what has been chosen to fit within the borders of the picture.  From looking at the other statue we presume that the wooden legs we are viewing through is part of the other half of a western pistol duel.  It is very interesting that we can understand this without having to see what the actual statue looks like. The subject and detail of this picture thus creates and interesting frame where we become a candid viewer in this 'stoic' encounter.  Before moving on, I'd like to emphasize the care which the photographer took to capture the empty space between the legs of the opposing statue and the area around him.  This photograph could also be looked at for its vantage point as it catches this unique event from an otherwise unseen angle.

Where surfers are usually associated with the open sea, this framing allows us to associate the surfer with the extension of mankind into the ocean (via the boardwalk above).  The shadows that come off from the surfer and the wooden planks create a sense of depth and reality; the sunlight is peering under mans creation.  Another site of depth is seen in the extension of the boardwalk, tunneling us through. 

Cheers,
SPD

Time and Frame

After the class last week I found myself very interested in the concept of time.  As it was stated in the Photographers Eye the introduction of faster shutter speeds brought forth photos of unseen images, like two headed dogs, bending the way we see reality and blurring our sense of truth.

    This picture of a double-decker bus bursting through the streets pulls the viewer toward the destination of the red and white blur. The framing of the picture is interesting, capturing two streams of light from lamp posts further down the street and the mess of lights on the ground in the distance.  The people on the street also help to give us a idea of the speed the bus is going at.  The tail lights that stick out like two white magic marker lines capture a kind of tech light burst reminiscent of glow sticks and morphs the form of the bus into this "light speed" futuristic mesh.

The man without ties to the ground and the particles of water motionless in the air create a shot that couldn't have been taken a moment later, definitely a decisive moment.  The triangle of space made between the people "closest" to the viewer in the shot and the small space between the second girls hair and the man behind hers chest frames this photo in an impressive way.

Thanks for your time,
Sean

My Dog and an Island Monument

The pictures shown here are some photos that my sister and I took about 5 years ago while we lived in the Philippines.Welcome to my first Digital Photo blog post.
This picture above featuring my dog Spanky is impressive to me because of the angle of the shot and the elements that appear in the foreground and the background.  By having the chair and the edge of the table in the front we get a sense of the angle the space that exists between us and the floor.  the size of the cupboard and the plant behind Spank also defines her size in the photo.  The halo affect that comes from the window in its L shape also helps define the focal point of the picture.  The table and chair, and the two plants also help draw us towards the center of the picture where the aura of puzzled dog then stares back at us.

This picture was taken on a island in the Philippines that I have completely forgotten the name of.  The lighting is from directly over head and the focal point of the picture is the top of the monument.  The set of stairs that surround the picture add a bit of depth along and the bricks on the ground along with the angle of the shot makes the shot appear circular.  The kid on the bicycle allows us to place ourselves into the picture and makes the photo feel more novel.

thanks for your time,
SPD