Jennifer Martin

While doing some research on the internet to find some inspirtation for my thesis i came across the photographer Jennifer Martin. She describes her work as, "abstract nonrepresentational photographs, comfortable in their ambiguity". I believe this sentence really speaks to my own work as well. Here are some examples of her work:





While the subjects in her work are not quite as unrecognizable as i am striving for mine to be i can definitely appreciate the idea behind her work and it is my goal to push that concept a little further.

Source: www.jennifermartinphotography.com

Visual Research Project #2

While i do think they was a good exercise to get everyone thinking, i think it was pretty obvious that the consensus in class was that for the most part generic boarder look tacky. In my opinion it is very hard to make an image that doesn't originally natural posses some type of boarder, add a border and have it not turn out looking tacky or kitschy. The single most important thing I learned from this latest Visual Research exercise is that not all boarders are lines that directly follow the outside of the image. When it was brought up that a vignette was a type of boarder it really opened my mind to other possible forms or boarder that are not so generic looking. However i do think that for the most part, at least of what i saw from my own work and the rest of the class, it is hard to ass a tasteful boarder that doesn't distract from the image.

More Shooting

Today i set out to shoot with the intent of experimenting with the focus of my camera. I did all of my shooting using a magnifying lens cover and set my camera to the manual setting as well as manual focus. While i still did not come up with anything that i am completely blown away by i think that i am one step closer to producing some images that will represent what i am trying to depict and there are a couple that I am really happy with. Here are some examples of what i came up with this time.







I think the key to my success if definitely going to be the number of images i produce. The more i shoot the more i realize what exactly it is i am striving for and in turn i am able to produce more satisfactory images. I am spending the day this coming friday shooting again so i can't wait to see what i come up with then.

Visual Research Project #1

It was really interesting to see my work on different types of paper. Experimenting with different types of paper isn't something i have a lot of experience with and it was truly informative to see how each type effected my image it its own way. I have never been one to like glossy photo paper and have, for most of my college career, done what i can to avoid it. However, in the image that i printed out for this exercise i enjoyed the range of colors that the glossy paper was able to display. I was also very intrigued by what using a textured paper did to my image, making it much more painterly in appearance. I definitely need to take all of these things into account when deciding how to print my final series, and without having done this project i don't know if i would have been thinking about that soon enough. The single most important thing I learned from this latest Visual Research exercise is to be aware of things outside of just my shooting and photoshop that can completely change the meaning of your images and the feelings that are evoked from them.

Carl Chiarenza

I spent some time this afternoon looking for inspiration for my topic in the work of photographer who have experimented with this idea. Janie recommended that i look at the site www.luminous-lint.com to see the work of other artists who have worked with the concept of unrecognizable subject matter. While clicking through multiple artists i came across the work of Carl Chiarenza. While his more abstract work was photographs of his own collage work there were certain aspects of it that, especially after our first WIP critique, i felt pertained to the next step i would like to take with my own work. After discussing my work with the group it was obvious that i needed to do more experimentation. Experimentation with depth of field, light, distortion, post shoot manipulation, and much much more. Below are some of Chiarenza's images that i believe show this type of experimentation.


Chelsea Junkcar
1961-1964 (ca)

This image has a beautiful and intriguing depth of field. It pulls your eye into the image and directs it throughout the entire image all the while being completely ambiguous to what exactly you are looking at.


West End, Boston (bat window),
1958

This image, while a little more obvious as to what the subject matter is, show the importance and impact of negative space and light. Although i was able to determine what the form in the image was the angle and way it was shot at such a short distance from the actual object definitely helped to distort it.


This image was untitled and had not artist information. It was simply stated as a homage to Chiarenza.

This image i think definitely expressed the importance and usefulness of light in photographs. In this image i believe it creates a sense of depth in a relatively flat space and i think that will be very important for me to experiment with.

First shooting experience

During this Tuesday's workday i experienced my first day of shooting with my new topic finally solidified in my mind. For the first time in a while i feel like i have broken out of my funk and i am ready, excited, and determined to start experimenting. While this shooting session my not have been extremely successful as far a ending up with images that i was happy with, i think it was very informative and helpful to show me very basic things that worked (or that could work eventually with a little more experimentation) and things that did not work. Where as with my old topic when i came up with something that didn't work i felt stuck at a dead end, this topic is allowing me to learn from techniques that might not work so well and tailor them to be more appropriate to what i am trying to depict. The major problem that i ran into with this set of images was that although i came up with some images that really popped, were visually appealing, and esthetically pleasing the objects within them were still somewhat identifiable. I need to find ways to come up with the same attention getting images while also finding a way to completely abstract the subject matter. Although i do feel like this will present somewhat of a challenge i am definitely excited and ready to dive in.

Below are a selection of images that i shot during this session:







Again while i was happy about the framing and depth of field in these images i don't think that most of them reach the level of abstraction i am going for.

Thesis Synopsis

The beginning of my thesis project has already been quite a roller coaster ride. During my first quarter of research I started off on a project that I began to realize would not only fall outside my financial means but also require much more time then simply two more quarters of school. Because I was excited about the project initially it unfortunately took me until the end of the first quarter to admit this to myself and thus I am now practically back a square one. Over winter break I was able to spend a little more time shooting freely, which I believed helped me to see more clearly what my new path will be. I started off shooting colors. That was it. Plain and simple. I wanted to show the viewer the multitude of color that surround us on a day to day basis that we often times overlook because it is always present. Through the shooting I did for this idea I began to realize that the images I found most interesting were the ones that completely abstracted the object I was shooting making it hard for the viewer to recognize not only the function of the object but even as far as making the object itself unrecognizable. I began then, to connect my fascination with these images to the fascination I have with photography's place in the Fine Art world in general. Coming from a background of practically zero Fine Art classes and rather one of specifically photography classes, my transition into art school was in some senses a slap in the face. To me photography was always something that represented the "real" and showed you what your eye would see if you were there in that exact moment. Coming into art school I began to realize the many different ways the camera can be used and that it doesn't always have to show you an exact replication of a person, place, or thing. It is this idea that I plan on examining through my thesis project. I would like to shoot images that not only make the function of the subject and the object itself unrecognizable but also images that might make the end result unrecognizable as a photograph. Because my new idea has completely shifted and has 100% nothing to do with what I spent last quarter shooting I will have to start my research from scratch. I plan to first spend time researching the work of other artist both photographers and painters, and arts who use other mediums and choose to work by abstracting their images. I also plan on doing a lot of reading about photography’s place in the Fine Art world, how it fits, how it doesn’t, criticisms against it, and arguments for it. Shooting a lot of images will be another form of research that I will need to concentrate on heavily, as I am pretty much a full quarter behind as of now.
While the pictures below are not an exact representation of the kinds of images I would like to produce they are the ones that caught my eye while taking my initial "color" photos and i think they best exemplify the direction i would like to go in.