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.