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.