Jeff Whetstone

Jeff Whetstone Artist Talk

On a very basic level, I enjoyed hearing Jeff Whetstone speak about things other than his photos: I learned a lot about nature/human nature, and it seemed like he was very passionate about zoology. He also had a great sense of humor, making the lecture consistently entertaining.

"Everyone is Postmodern."

I quoted Whetstone while he was showing some historical examples - a few of his favorite photographs. I can't remember who the photographer was during this specific quote, but said photograph was taken by an American veteran and commissioned by the U.S. government. Whetstone describes this photo of the Midwestern mountains as deeply emotional, solely on account of its formal qualities.

Another quote I wrote down went somewhere along the lines of "We need to make a new definition of wilderness - one that includes man." He says that humankind, and our impact on the earth, is not separate from "nature." We developed from nature, and therefore everything we create is no less a part of the environment than tress and rocks.

Another fascinating idea Whetstone brought up relates to nature and human history. He explored the caves around his hometown and photographed the graffiti that had built up over the generations. He shed a new light on this "graffiti" by comparing it to the caves in Lasceaux and Altamira, where the world's first pictures (graffiti?) can be found. They're not exactly comparable, but the parallels are uncanny; perhaps this tendency is inherent in our nature. Mark things with our identities so that they will last longer than our bodies.

Taking these photos, Whetstone didn't know what he was going to get, because he couldn't see much in the pitch blackness. It sounds like an exciting (and evidently a rewarding) process. Not many people can achieve these photos (with a view camera. no less!), and that makes them so much more special.

To be honest, my favorite part of Jeff Whetstone's talks were not his photographs (although I truly did like his pictures), but the snippets of information that they were based on. I feel like I learned a lot of extraneous information from Whetstone, which is something that I have not really been able to report after an artist talk. Thanks, Jeff!

Week 11: Barthes

Roland Barthes has a distinct writing style; long sentences with lots of breaks in them and complicated vocabulary. I enjoy reading his writings because of this, but it seems to go against this particular text, in that it doesn't exemplify the death of the Author. I can recognize his voice, and as a result of this, I must think about the text in relation to my perception of Barthes the Author.
But throughout much of the reading, I kept wondering, "What is so bad about the Author?" I read a book last summer that was heavily political, and the author naturally had a strong opinion on the subject. This definitely influenced the opinion of the reader, and their interpretation of the facts presented. I agree that this type of text (political, news, scientific or anything involving objective facts) should not have an Author. Textbooks have no need for an Author, and also would benefit without one. Fiction, I believe, could go either way. But it seems to me that Barthes is advocating for the Author, their voice, their influence, and their background to be no longer existent. Forever.

Language can be messy, with one person trying to communicate their ideas to another (or even more complicated, to a group of people) given the author's background, prior knowledge/experience, and their understandings of semantics. Every person has a different combination of these, and other, circumstances, which can make for misunderstandings. But this is one of the natural challenges of communication. We cannot simply upload a thought directly into another's brain, and we never will be able to. And this is okay. Everything in the world has imperfection, but this issue can easily be solved if the author knows who their audience is, how to most effectively communicate to them, and is sure to be explicit enough in their writing so as to not leave room for reader error...if this is what they want to achieve. Not all writings need to be without a voice, without an Author, and I am somewhat confused as to why Barthes finds it so important to do away with the Author altogether.

Art can be the same way. I was required to take a course titled Visual Language in my freshman year of college, and the content is just as it sounds: how to use completely abstract forms in artwork in order to communicate an idea, theme, or mood. There was often miscommunication within the class as to what one student's piece was "saying" using this universal visual language, just as there is miscommunication between an artist and his/her viewer in professional art galleries. It comes with being human, and it is something to be embraced (though maybe not all the time, depending on the effect the maker wants to have on the audience) both in writing and in art.

Week 10

My focus for this project is on manmade structures that are not given much attention by the better part of the population. Not given attention because they are do not directly serve us, because they are under construction, because they are behind a building, and so on. I am photographing them for no other reason than the fact that they are beautiful - I often make the composition symmetrical to emphasize this beauty, and to make it more complete.

I was inspired by the thinking behind Anthony Hernandez's Automobile Landsscapes.

This photograph in particular appeals to my thinking. It appears to be a junkyard - something we don't typically focus on, but that is still just as important as the brand-new car dealership. Its existence helps define our world, the landscape that we have manufactured.

I am also inspired by Shai Kremer's work. Much of it is landscape-heavy, but his body New York - Notes From the Edges, reminds me of the work that I have been making this semester. Kremer went to - you guessed it - the edge of the city, on the river, to take pictures of things that we don't normally look at. The twisted metal of a bridge no longer in use. A deserted construction site. Stacks of palates with the skyline in the background. These are not the things we choose to surround ourselves with; they are out of the way for most of us. But they are there, and they are beautiful because they are so rarely seen.

Looking at Kremer's work also inspired me to go a little further to take pictures. It is clear that Kremer scoped out every angle before taking a shot, went to the outer edges, nooks, and crannies, to find the shots for his body New York. Perhaps if I try going into the further reaches of my photographing locations I will find something even more interesting than I have before.

I was intensely drawn to a photograph belonging to Lucinda Devlin while flipping through a book. This photo was at first very clinical - white lights, rectangular composition, void of a human presence. But like many of her other photographs, it was very eerie and sobering because it was a photo of a lethal injection chamber. This kind of photograph is very eye-catching because it takes advantage of our tendency to be morbidly curious. It's disturbing, but you can't look away.

I hope to combine this eerie-ness with the beauty of Hernandez and Kremer's photos. I hope to represent these unseen structures and locations under the context of "art" so that a few people can see them for the beauty that I see them for. However, the scenes I photograph are not completely out of the way, mind you. You can pass them by on the street any day. They do not require special access, like Lucinda Devlin's work. The structures I photograph are somewhere in between those that we see every day, and those that are off-limits.

Week 9

For the time being, I am having fun with my photos. I like the pictures I am taking and I'm still really excited to be doing digital printing. I tack it down to being a graphic designer, and especially, a lover of posters. Printing digitally is one of my favorite things about graphic design, and by extension, about photography. I suppose. As cool as darkroom printing is, I am so happy to be printing digitally.

As for my photos, this past week I finally got my hands on a tripod. I had been wanting to use one so that I could get more information and a larger depth of field in my photographs. I also had been looking forward to trying some night photography, which I attempted this week (week nine) and had a lot of success with.

The above photo was taken after after the sun had gone down for the night. I kept the shutter open for fifteen seconds at a small aperture (f/11). As a result of this, I have found that people tend to think that it was actually taken during the day (which is not exactly a good thing). I am thrilled with the way it came out; it is so sharp! I wasn't even sure if my exposure time was right at all, because light meters just don't work with such little light. It was exciting to see how all these photos came out.

I also printed a photo that was a little different for me. So far, I have only shown photographs that are of places (like the first one). I am, however, also very interested in textural photos (I know you hate that word, Kristine!) I don't know exactly how it will fit in with the other ones, but what I am envisioning is that photos like the one above will be a way to break up the standard vacant lot/empty building. It might even begin to build a narrative.

Based on the photos that I seem to be making (such as these two), maybe I will go in a geometric direction. I am drawn to taking photos that are symmetrical (like these) and that have organized formal qualities (like these). Or maybe I will go in the direction of eerie and isolated like I was planning. I will have to have look at them and decide.

Week 8 Papageorge

I would first like to say that I enjoy reading Tod Papageorge's essays (which is saying a lot, because essays can be really boring). They are well-written and well-balanced. I enjoy the breaks that he makes to tell a story (as in the end of Henri Cartier-Bresson: Two Lives) and to narrate (as in the end of Eugene Atget: A Photographer's Photographer). It livens the essay up and makes it 200% more enjoyable to read.

I am going to speak about the essay on Henri Cartier-Bresson. I could actually identify with the author's fascination with Cartier-Bresson's photos. "It was poetry," he says of Cartier-Bresson's 1933 photograph of a boy looking up. While I was not enamored by the same photographs that Cartier-Bresson was, I certainly was by others.

http://beautydelux.com/?attachment_id=14214 Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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 I found myself looking at the above photograph longer than the others. I love it because of the moment it shows. It's a simple, common moment - nothing too extraordinary - but it is perfectly captured. From the position of the man's arm and how we can see his watch to the dog's glance upward at the moment of his companion's kiss, it amazes me that Cartier-Bresson took this photo candidly. I suppose this is a large part of the reason that I am so impressed. I could never capture this moment so perfectly! Just today I was taking photos with my 35mm camera and I pointed it at the man sitting across from me on the train, hoping to get his head and torso as he was reading his newspaper. But before I could focus and set my exposure, he looked up at me and I got uncomfortable and the photo was ruined. It's difficult to frame pictures of people on the street.

Many other photos by Cartier-Bresson are like this one. He was expert at photographing the "decisive moment." I define this not just as the moment that a photographer decides to press the shutter (although that inherently is also part of it), but also as the moment where things come together with their maximum amount of static/tension.

Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, France, 1932, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

 Like a social interaction between two people where the photographer captures the moment that both subjects react to something, or the instant before a man jumps into a ambiguous depth of water. I wonder if Cartier-Bresson often waited a long time with his camera in position until that moment came. He must have.

I can begin to comprehend how Cartier-Bresson came to find the things and people - situations, so to speak - that he ended up photographing. He walked everywhere and traveled the world, using his camera as an extension of his eyes. I imagine that he also practiced his Buddhism and entered a concentrative zen state while photographing. But what I can't fully explain is how he was able to photograph so perfectly the split-second moment that he so often did. And how he was able to make himself so invisible while doing it.

I noticed some large similarities between Cartier-Bresson's and Papageorge's work - namely, their subject matter. This made sense after reading that Papageorge was inspired to begin photography as a career by looking at one of Cartier-Bresson's pictures. I scarcely see any landscape, geometric, or abstract work by either of them. It is mostly people; street photography. I am usually not drawn to this genre, but after looking at both of their photographs I was quite amazed.

Week 7

I  have chosen to write about the photographer Joel Sternfeld this week. Joel Sternfeld has made quite a few collections of work, most notably American Prospects and On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam, which I will primarily be talking about.

Both of these bodies are relevant for similar reasons. The most obvious reason is that they depict true American landscapes, scenes, and events, and to someone who has always lived (and continues to live) in America, it doesn't get much more relevant.

I also find his photographs to be very appealing. I am trying not to overuse the word "beautiful." Down to a single blade of grass or piece of rust, they are full of detail. This gives me a lot to look into and keeps my interest for a long time. Similarly, and in the case of American Prospects, his photographs cover a large area with a large depth-of-field. I believe that his photos depict a scene that is beautiful - but also depict it in an elegant way, using time of day (a.k.a. light) and vantage point (high above to capture more stuff). These things are what make Joel Sternfeld's photographs so appealing to me.

Money, Mississippi, June 1994. www.Getty.edu

Copyright: © Joel Sternfeld

On a conceptual level, Sternfeld's photographs are largely illustrative, in a similar way to that of a journalistic photographer. He seems to be photographing places as they are day-to-day without tampering with how they look. From what I can tell, he is not setting up any extra light, or placing actors in the frame, or manipulating the landscape/scene in any way. In other words, the photographer's hand is almost nonexistent. This allows the viewer to take in the scene and focus only on what it contains. With On This Site, we need to read the commentary about the scene's history to give the photograph the extra weight (I question the effectiveness of this approach, however. When I regard Sternfeld's method of taking a static photo and pairing it with equally neutral commentary, I cannot help but feel that there should be a little more to it. Is it too simple, too obvious, to depict these locations in this manner? Does the method agree with the subject matter is represents? I do not know the answer to these questions. I simply can't shake the feeling that there could be more thought put into the process in order to best represent these horrifying stories). The strategy of almost-pure documentation of a scene makes the photographs relevant in that they are very relatable.

After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California. American Prospects.

© 2015 Joel Sternfeld. www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=55263

This photograph, for example, allows me to take in the scene and the event that it presents to me, and then allows me to interpret it - to compare it to my own life, home, climate, and so on. The photographs speak for themselves.

On one last note, I want to talk a little about something of which I have been thinking. I have been becoming aware of how many professional photographers use the view camera to create their pictures, and I am beginning to realize why. I have never used a view camera before (and most likely never will), so I am not 100% confident in its functions, but what I've gathered from my brief research is that they allow for a lot of detail - more than you could ever get with a 35mm camera or digital camera. This must be a result of the time one must take to expose the negative, as well as the size of the negative itself. It carries a ton of information. Discovering these things about photography is fun, because I am just beginning to figure out all of the possibilities and what their specialties are. It's really just good to find these things out on your own, through experience, instead of being told.

Week 6

This week, the photographs of David Hilliard resonated with me a  lot.

Right off the bat, they have a unique format. They are panoramic, but not in the traditional sense: they are really more like diptiks, triptiks, and upwards (all the way to seven or eight in some cases). Different viewpoints of the same scene sit side by side or on top of each other to complete the photograph.

All photographers represent something that exists in the world; they present something to the viewer that was first presented to them. They RE-present it. Whether it be studio photography with light setups and actors or street photography or landscape photography - it is always a representation. What I think is relevant about Hilliard's photos is that this representation is more lifelike than a standard photograph. They present the same scene to us but at different angles of the same view, and sometimes, at slightly offset times. The picture below demonstrates this.

 The man's arm is at his hip on the left, but on the right it has moved (or been moved from?) the side of the house.

Looking at Hilliard's photographs is a little like being there with him. It is like looking out of one's own eyes. When we are experiencing something in real life, we move out eyes around, turn our head, and take in the whole scene in a few seconds. This is the experience that I get when looking at one of Hilliard's panoramas.

I also can't help but think of practically the only other experience I have had with panoramas: the iPhone pano. I know that Hilliard's work is not a direct response to this because his panoramic style predates any cell phone with that capability. Nonetheless, it is satisfying to see this technique done professionally. There is deep thought and consideration in Hilliard's panoramas. They are a joy to look in and look into. And, of course, the quality is much richer than a phone camera shot!

Many, if not all, of Hilliard's photographs have a narrative quality to them.

This always adds to the impact of a photo. It makes the viewer want to figure out what is going on, makes us ask questions and contemplate what we are seeing. Everyone loves a good story, and with photography is can not always be deciphered easily. As for the above photo, I see a couple enjoying a lazy (and romantic due to the roses, candles, and of course, nudity) summer afternoon in what appears to be a cottage. One has fallen asleep by the fire while the other quietly reads a book by the window. Very peaceful.

Others are not so clear.

I suspect that his photographs mainly function in the context of their collection, or series. As with his collection The Tale is True, some photographs tell a more explicit tale, while others serve as punctuation; a breath or pause from the story. I am fond of the photograph above because I can get lost in this place by going deeper and deeper into the space. While I cannot determine what narrative it contains (if any), I find it interesting to look at because of its peculiarity. What's with the castle in the middle of nowhere? Is this truck unloading or picking up the junk, or is it part of it?

Week 5

I have a few opinions on the interview between Luc Sante and Stephen Shore, most of which stem from the same topic.

Right off the bat, Shore speaks about mentally modeling one's picture. "The image an experienced photographer has in mind, whether it be conscious or unconscious, can guide all the little decisions that go into making that picture." I find that I do this in all areas of art-making, especially those that I am most inspired to make. I have a "mental model" of the final result in my head and the whole time that I am creating the piece this final result is all I aim for. And a lot of these decisions are, indeed, unconscious.

Later in the interview is when I begin to disagree. I began getting the sense that in Shore's and Sante's minds the best (or most successful, most powerful) photography is thoroughly considered. It is completely intentional - the more intentional each element is, the better. "When you have a really good amateur photograph, it's generally because of some force of entropy." When this was said, Sante and Shore were discussing how accidents can sometimes become strong elements in a photograph. I don't believe that good photography needs to come from the mind; like any art form, it is visual and can be interpreted based on the visual. I can appreciate a photograph simply because I think it contains something beautiful. In fact, some of my favorite photographs do not speak to me on any conceptual level.

I love this photograph by Richard Benson because it contains something I find beautiful. It is one of my favorite photos, even though I have never pondered (or will ever know) what the artist was thinking when he made it (credit: Pace/MacGill Gallery, pacemacgill.com.)

A digital photograph I took while trying out a new lens. I think it's beautiful, but would Stephen Shore consider this a good photograph if I told him that it wasn't thought out or conceptualized?

This, of course, does not mean that the photograph does not need to be considered. I do agree that a considered photograph will come out better than one that was not. I suppose that there needs to be something that sets professional photographers apart from all other photographers (especially in this age of Instagram photography and art sauce), and this thing naturally is the "mental model." I just can't help but think that there must be some room for error and accident in good photography.

In Shore's defense, his response to the question of professional photographers working with accident was nice: "Things happen that photographers don't see, can't anticipate, and benefit by."

In the last few lines of the interview, Shore speaks again about what makes a good photograph good, and I understand what he is saying completely. A good photograph is not necessarily taking a picture of something that is interesting (though I can see this being the case with, say, journalistic photography) but taking a picture of something and by doing so, making it interesting. I have a little problem with the words he uses, though. He words this as the "distinction between photography and illustration." When I hear the word illustration - and this may just be my graphic design tendencies - some beautiful artwork is conjured. Illustration can be beautiful. Perhaps Shore is speaking of the word "illustration" as a verb, not a noun: the distinction between illustrating a scene or photographing it.

"I sometimes see a blind spot in people who are otherwise extraordinarily astute," says Shore in reference to his artistic and brilliant friend who "just didn't get photography." I would like to add as a last thought that I can sympathize with Stephen Shore's potter friend. I have been photographing for years, have succeeded in a couple college-level photo classes, been to quite a few photo galleries in New York City, and I still am unsure of what makes a great photo...great. Sometimes you just get it, but other times, you may wonder just what all the professional photographers see.

Week 4: Angela Strassheim Visit

Last Wednesday, photographer Angela Strassheim presented some of her bodies of work, including Left Behind, Pause, and Divine Bounty.


The photographs that Strassheim showed for the lecture were made because of some sort of personal interest - mainly because of an experience or an expression of emotion. As a result, they are powerful photographs. They are eye catching. Some of them are uncomfortable, some of them are beautiful. One, titled "The Spanking" (below), was disturbing to me.

After the first few seconds of looking at the picture, I still did not know what was going on, but I did not like it. I asked myself, "Why is a man slapping a grown woman's bare butt? Why are her pants all the way down, but not completely off?" Strassheim described that this was not the exact situation that she was put into when her father used to spank her, but rather it is a depiction of how she felt while it was happening. All of the discomfort that I feel when looking at this photograph is what she felt - and then some. For this reason, it is a very successful photograph.

Photography seems to be the way that Angela Strassheim interacts with the world, and how she copes with it. As with the above photograph, she uses photography as a way to express her emotions. She will not feel satisfied until she gets it just the way that she imagined it in her head (I certainly know that feeling). As with the photographs in Left Behind, Strassheim uses photography as a way to bring herself closer to her family. She gets a social and personal experience out of photographing her nieces and nephews, as if photography is a unique connection that can only be in existence because of the camera. However, when asked about her relationship with strangers (such as those in the photograph "Untitled (Storytime)"), she said that there is some small talk at first but beyond that she just concentrates on photographing and directing. I wonder if the personal connection is present when she works toward it, as with her nieces and nephews, or if it simply depends on the circumstances.

Angela Strassheim's photos are so powerful, in part, because they are cinematic. Maybe it has something to do with the camera she uses (a view camera, mostly) or the light. I'm pretty sure it's mostly the latter. She sometimes sets up studio lighting on her subjects to create  a very dramatic scene.

Untitled (Butterfly)

In the above photo, there is obviously a lot of light coming from the window behind the boy, but there is also light illuminating his front. The result is a uniform light with very few shadows. In the photo below, the light seems to be coming from the point of view of the camera. Once again, it illuminates the scene uniformly, almost like a flash applied to the entire room.

Untitled (Fishtank)

I admire Strassheim's photography because it never fails to make me feel something. They are often aesthetically pleasing because of their formal qualities, and they often suggest a strong emotion or narrative. The cinematic quality brings it all home by giving the sense that these are photographs created by a master who knows what she's doing and has all the resources she needs.

Week 3: Current Event

Six killed as New York train hits vehicle

The above link is for an article from the BBC. The article reviews the train accident on the Metro North Harlem Line that occurred on Tuesday, February 3rd.

BBC World News is my news engine of choice, and I check it every day to keep up with events. Until I read this article, I had not though much about the collision; I had just heard that there was a train accident on the Metro North. Then I realized how serious it was. The Harlem line (where the accident happened) is the same route that I take whenever I go to the city from SUNY Purchase. The front train car collided with an SUV that had for some reason stalled on the tracks, which I believe was a freak occurrance (the NTSB is still investigating the events). But what bothers me the most is that the door to the front train car would not open. It was jammed, rendering the passengers trapped as the interior of the train car burned out. "If there was an engineer problem or a train problem, or an equipment problem, we'll learn from it. But sometimes, there are just accidents," said Gov. Cuomo at the scene.

This may be true, but I can't help blaming Metro North for the unsafe door that was stuck. Many small factors add up to make a disaster like this one, and many are not anyone's fault in particular, but I have a feeling that this small factor should have been avoided by Metro North's safety features.

This, and the fresh memory of the December 2013 accident that left four people dead after a train car derailed, were fuel to my outrage upon reading this story. This news hit close to home and made me consider that I might not be safe while taking my usual train ride to the city. I quickly looked up several more articles by more local journals. I was planning on riding a train to the city that weekend, and with the accident in mind I was not so sure. After I was satisfied that I knew every detail there was to know, I decided that if there was a current event that I was most passionate about, it would be this one. It always helps to make art about something you're angry over.

With this outrage in mind, I figured that the most effective way to communicate my position (and the most satisfactory) would be to show it in a physical and unmistakable way. No subtlety. I went to the Metro North station in White Plains where all of us SUNY Purchase students go to get to New York City and took photos of the station. I tried to photograph the casual things, like the benches, signs, train schedules, and of course, the tracks. I even got some train cars in there, too. Then, after I developed my film, I melted those Metro North photographs with a lighter until it sizzled and bubbled. I also scratched the film with a small needle, mainly on the parts of the photograph associated with the accident: the train car, the tracks, the rails. I wanted my anger to come across, so I took a direct route by calling back to the fatal fire of Tuesday's accident and by permanently damaging the film.

I've never done something like this to my film before, so it was innovative for me (although I know that the tactic has been used many times before). There's just something about the raw aggression involved in destroying one's film with fire, that demonstrates my emotions toward this topic. I hope that the emotion comes through to the viewer when the photographs are done.

Week 2: Why People Photograph

Art is, inherently, a personal endeavor. History puts emphasis on the artist. Why the artist made his or her art is as important as what it actually contains; the two are inseparable. Most (if not all) artists put their soul, their mind, thoughts, beliefs, worries, and their love, into their work in order to make it truly meaningful.

Photographers are artists. The above statements apply to the group no less than they do the fine artists. Photography is, of course, a different medium with different practices, but this is a discussion for another time. As is consistent in Robert Adams' Why People Photograph, photography is driven by personal interests: home, family, political-social beliefs, activism. Few can make a comfortable living solely on their photography, making it a labor of love. Why else would a person throw themselves into uncomfortable situations and even harms way ("Two acquaintances have while working been injured my livestock, and one when he fell from a railroad car.")?

It is not always love that motivates photographers. The best word I can muster to describe my motivation for photography is feverish. I first took up photography to replace a sense of longing I felt (and frankly, still feel) upon seeing certain things in the world. To quote my previous blog post, "Looking out the window of a car, I am fascinated by some of the things I see, and I feel the need to harness them. Like if I don't capture it somehow, it will build up and drive me insane." These scenes share similar characteristics, and more than likely have the same mood as each other. For deep psychological reasons that I cannot begin to understand, I am attracted to them and photography is seems like the best way to capture them. Let's say that I am enamored by an abandoned warehouse (as I often am, cliché as that may be). To photograph it means to be at the location, to be there, until I believe I have taken sufficient photographs. It is an experience that also yields an end result.

A photograph of mine, taken (more or less) with the above in mind.

I know this one breaks a few rules of photography, but when I am photographing for myself, it does not matter whether it is a "good" photograph. What matters is that I capture what I felt when I saw the subject.

My apologies if that was long-winded; I still have yet to find the right words to describe my inspiration. Let us return to Robert Adams. "Your own photography is never enough." A very true statement in a number of ways. One, it serves as inspiration. This time last year, I had a lot of fun making a photograph inspired by cinematic lighting - the project wouldn't have been conceived had I not seen the work of numerous other photographers and filmmakers. Second, (and maybe this is primarily true for me, a student) we base our perception of great work off of previous masters. The history of photography - what has been done already - informs and influences the photography that we make. Every time I frame a shot, I briefly consult this archive to judge the success of what I am about to take. The question, "is this a good photograph?" however improper, is based off of the photography of others.

Week 1

After seeing the photography of An-My Le, I decided to research it a little more. I found that her series Trap Rock resonates a lot with my personal taste in photography. Trap Rock features work that is in the category of landscape photography because they depict a vast amount of outdoor space. While there are no people (to my delight), there are prominent man-made structures. The entire series focuses on large construction sites and industrial complexes. Sometimes, the land is partially stripped, sometimes there is large gear in the frame, but these things are always dwarfed by the landscape. "I'm attracted to [the gear] for the same reason the men who join the military are attracted to it. There's...a certain excitement that takes you away from the desk and the office job."

Years ago, I began photography because I found was the best way that I could represent certain things that I see in the world. Looking out the window of a car, I am fascinated by some of the things I see, and I feel the need to harness them. Like if I don't capture it somehow, it will build up and drive me insane. These scenes that I am fascinated by include those that An-My Le photographed in Trap Rock. These photographs are very much about the structures associated with construction. They contain lots of metal that tend to cris-cross over each other, sometimes symmetrically and sometimes not. They contain muddy roads trampled by huge construction equipment, seemingly abandoned when there is no activity.

These photographs appear very still, as if they have been temporarily abandoned by the people who dwell there. Even in the top photograph, where there is a blurry stripe of a train speeding past (I did not see it until the artist pointed it out while speaking about it). They are heavily industrial, but contain bits of nature like trees and the occasional shrub. I chose these photographs to write about because they embrace the industrial side of Trap Rock the most. They feature vast sprawling complexes of metal and wire as they appear without human movement and presence.

While Trap Rock inspires me visually, An-My Le's military work inspires me conceptually. "I think I have very conflicted ideas about the military. It was something that drew me, but at the same time it was something that was repellent because of what had happened in Vietnam," says Le about her interest in the American military. The connection between the photographs of Trap Rock and her collections Small Wars and 29 Palms is the equipment used in both industries. Le is interested in photographing the often large machinery the military uses, making it appear dwarfed by the landscape. This is because she believes that no matter what, humans are actually quite small compared to nature.