Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Photography is art.

One of the main ideas that I am having to grapple with this semester is the notion that photography is an art form. I totally believe that it is. I think I have always considered the potential of a photographic image to be a work of art. However, I am completely struggling with whether or not I consider MYSELF a photographic artist. I have always created still images as a way to document my life - paying attention to formal qualities and composition along the way, but when considering a photographic body of work, I am experiencing difficulty. After expressing my frustrations with my really terrific professor, Ahndraya Parlato, whose work I find to be truly remarkable, she has encouraged me to take photos of what excites me. She also reassured me that as a first semester grad student in a new program, it is okay to be freaking out and confused. Woo!
Here is a selection of images that I photographed for my first critique in Advanced Photo. About a year ago I drew an image of cutlery growing out of the ground in my sketch book, so I thought I would see what happened if I translated that into still photographs. 


I like the idea of recognizing objects and I also wanted to see what I could do with the house that I built for a video installation project last year.


I'm completely unsure if anything will come out of these images in the future, but these are what I'm playing with for now. All in all, when it comes to a photographic image and my personal work I feel like there needs to be something more. Whether it be printing onto the photo, incorporating collage, cutting the images up and sewing them back together, combining them in a book or incorporating sound. Maybe this struggle has to do with the fact that I am only using digital images. Perhaps I need to branch out, use film and get down and dirty in the dark room?      

1 comment:

christine said...

This is a complicated thing to consider. I've learned a lot just from graduation until now, ironically. What I've taken away from my education in Photo is that I spent a lot of time trying to create narratives and themes based on specific assignments. Those projects were necessary to practice technical aspects, but most of all I've learned that unless you truly enjoy the subject and go after things, like your professor said, that interest you, you will ultimately be unsatisfied.

I really love your idea of using your house for photographic situations. What you have so far is great! I think you should definitely explore that, the idea of a constant state of "home" in unfamiliar places.

I would also strongly encourage you to try film! I don't know if you've done it before, but you get much more of a feeling of process which I think adds a lot of gratification. There's something magical about taking an image and not knowing the outcome, having to wait.

Also, you should definitely explore image collage, I know one of your strengths is fabric, sewing, etc. and I think if you incorporated that into your photography, it would be fabulous! :)

Good luck and let me know if you wanna chat about photo :)