Katy Grannan Class 7 Entry

Katy Grannan is an American photographer from Arlington, Massachusetts. Her work consists of many different portraits of different kinds of people. Her photographs usually put the subject in awkward positions and places, and the subjects are sometimes wearing revealing clothing, or nude. Grannan's portraits are not conventionally pretty, and don't always depict conventionally attractive people and they are not supposed to. It seems that Katy Grannan likes to explore oddity, and how awkwardness can be achieved.

 

Christopher and Zachary, Bay Farm, Duxbury, MA

I think how subtly strange these pictures interests me, but I am not sure if I really like theses photographs. I am more attracted to aesthetics and how the subjects of pictures look, that is why I like environmental abstraction, it is a kind of photography that plays with distorting and altering aesthetics. I like some portraiture but usually it's in the style of street photography, so they aren't set up like Katy Grannan's work.

 

Addie, b. 1980

However, the more I have been looking at Grannan's, the more I see there is a certain focus on aesthetics. Like I said before, the aesthetics of the settings and subjects are usually odd. Maybe her photos can be considered a kind of situational abstraction. There is no clear reason why these subjects are dressed the way they are and in the places they are. It is like Grannan is abstracting reality. Thinking of her photos like this has started making me appreciate her pieces for their unconventional depictions of unconvenional subjects.

•                                                         Anonymous, Modesto, CA 2012

Todd Hildo (Class 6 Entry)

Todd Hildo is an American photographer. His photos usually depict urban settings and interior as the subject.

                                                        

                                                               2045

What makes his work interesting is the way he depicts these common areas most Americans are used to in a different way. Hildo takes most of the suburban home photos at night and use of lighting and color gives them an erie atmosphere. There is stark contrast in the shadows and brighter areas which also give some of these photos a dramatic feel. It looks like he uses long exposures for these photographs. This allows for the windows of these houses to become very illuminated and the sky show a glow around the houses. The result adds to the erie, almost haunting, atmosphere these pictures create. The windows become the brightest art of the scene and it makes the viewer wonder what might be happening in the house. 

                                                                  1536

                            

Another aspect of Todd Hildo's suburban setting photos that adds to the atmosphere is the lack of human subjects. The typical image of an American suburb usually includes people; whether there are kids playing outside or someone mowing the lawn or getting into their car. The lack of people in these photos make these scenes much more creepy. These neighborhoods now feel deserted. The lighting makes them feel mystical and otherworldly. 

                                                                 1927a

Hildo's interior shots usually give off a similar empty atmosphere and also play with lighting, but they deal more with forms and spaces inside suburban houses. A lot of these photos use the lines and textures of the floors and walls to create mores abstract compositions. He also uses furniture and household objects to explore the oddity of how these spaces look without any human subjects.  

I find Todd Hildo's work interesting because he uses environmental abstraction, which is what I try to show in my work. However, I find that his use of abstraction is very unique. He doesn't just abstract textures and forms, he uses lighting and space to abstract atmospheric qualities. He takes an area that usually gives a certain universal feeling, and changes it, so that these settings are both recognizable and unrecognizable.

Area Of Interest

        For the rest of the class, I would like to focus on making photos that depict environmental abstraction. In my recent photos, I noticed that I gravitated toward abstraction of architectural subjects. I would end up making compositions of environments that would be more about the shapes and forms than the subject and would appear two dimensional. In some of these photos, it would be hard to tell where up and down was and hard to get a good idea of how space in the scene would be set up. Photos by artists like John Lehr and Paul strand are pieces I will use as references.

Paul Strand "Shadows On Porch"

 John Lehr "126"

 John Lehr "326"

From these photos, I can see that Lehr and Strand and I are attracted to similar photos. Each piece uses the lines created by form and shadow to create abstract geometric compositions. I also like photos like these for how they alter everyday objects and environments and sometimes make them unrecognizable.

News Project

I chose to respond to this article , which talks about how Chinese authorities have recently been cracking down on people "rumor mongering" over the internet. A recent uproar of protesting was caused by the arrest of a 16 year old boy by Chinese authorities. The boy had questioned the cause of death of a man who fell out of a the building of a karaoke club. Authorities claimed it was a suicide, however the boy, named Yang Zhong, noted  that the club was owned y a local judicial official and the family of the man claims that he was beaten before being thrown off the building. Zhong was later arrested, which was followed by protesting in the streets. I wanted to respond to this article, making a statement about privacy on the internet and how it is freedom of expression is not always allowed, especially in China. I have some ideas that include taking a long exposure of a computer screen in a dark setting, similar to that of Hiroshi Sugimoto's work, but have a dark figure looming over the screen. I'd also like to play with illuminating lights being shined on subjects who seem oblivious to it though the light will be very obvious in the photo. I think it would be interesting to try showing normal, everyday scenes but with one subject seeming very out of place and looking suspicious or mysterious and watching the other subjects.

Stephen A. Scheer Entry 1

Stephen A. Scheer is a photographer who shoots mostly social scenes and street photography. While his earlier color work focused on people, his later work, part of a project called "Interborough", featured different areas of New York City as his focus. Scheer's , whether it be of  a group of buildings or a group of people, are ver busy. There are usually many geometric shapes and textures, and in his color work, many different bright colors. His photos of New York City use buildings to create very interesting geometric compositions and often depict large areas, giving an epic feeling to his photos. At the same time, however, Scheer uses the composition and the crisp blacks and whites from his large format camera to bring all the elements of these vast scenes together, almost making them seem like a flat but beautiful collage. 

This is well displayed in his photo"Loew’s Kings Showcase, El Camino Verdadero, Flatbush III". The sides of the four buildings in this piece appear to have different textures and colors and all seem to be on the same plain.

Loew’s Kings Showcase, El Camino Verdadero, Flatbush III

Stephen A. Scheers photographs are the type of photographs that I enjoy looking at and I feel I have a similar style to his. I live in New York City myself, and I love the environment the buildings create. I try to capture the forms of the buildings and create a create a composition that is both geometric unique. I also like trying to use perspective to give buildings and other manmade structures qualities of other structures natural or manmade, like making a group of buildings look like a mountain. I feel Scheers photo, "Highbridge Park, Water Tower II" does this unintentionally. The textures of the leaves of these trees remind me of a large body of water with many choppy waves. The tower seems like a lighthouse. The trees that are depicted are obviously far away from the tower and the camera, but the way the camera captures almost everything in focus creates a flat feeling. The trees are turned into a busy intricate pattern.   

 

Highbridge Park, Water Tower II