10/30/08

Gregory's Website

Gregory Wikstrom, in the color photography class has completed his website!
If you have some free time, check out the work of your classmate.

10/3/08

Manfrotto Light Tripods are here

We just got 4 or 5 of these. Very light and easy to operate, work great with 35mm or medium format camera

Spotlight on Under Stolen Star

Check out Under Stolen Stars
Awesome blog

10/2/08

Morimura


Daughter of Art History is an elaborate deception; a fake art-history in which Rembrandt, Jesus Christ, Van Gogh, the Mona Lisa, Frida Kahlo, and Cindy Sherman have all been hijacked and replaced. Where once the viewer’s gaze met the eyes of a reclining female nude, a European master painter, or a Western religious icon, that gaze is now returned by the hauntingly photo-realistic eyes of a Japanese man.

Since the early eighties, Yasumasa Morimura has been invading the established canon of Western art—offering both wry commentary and loving tribute—by replacing the figures and faces of its well-known masterpieces with his own. After painstakingly recreating the surroundings of some of art-history’s most iconic paintings, like a chameleon, Morimura assumes their subjects’ identities through elaborate makeup and costume, and inserts himself into the scene. To view the resulting photographs is an uncanny experience.

Daughter of Art History begins with a foreword by renowned art historian Donald Kuspit who describes Morimura's art as "a kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, in which painting, sculpture, and photography form a seamless conceptual whole. His photographs may be mock masterpieces, but they are nonetheless masterpieces, for they show mastery of three mediums usually regarded as irreconcilable."

Morimura has shown extensively in international solo exhibitions, and his work is in the collections of the Yokohama Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth; The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

From the-artists.org


Mona Lisa

Daughter of Art History

Boy 3


Boy

10/1/08

FAVA 2009 Photography Show

Hi Pipo,
I wanted to give you the dates for the 2009 Photography Show at FAVA:

March 1 through April 10, 2009
(Drop-off: February 17-22)

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard's death in 1972, a week away from his 47th birthday, came at the height of the "photo boom," a period of growth and ferment in photography in the United States which paralleled the political and social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a time of ambition, not reflection, a time for writing resumés, not thoughtful and inclusive histories; in the contest of reputation, dying in 1972 meant leaving the race early. It was left to friends and colleagues to complete an Aperture monograph on Meatyard and carry through with the publication of The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (1974) which he had laid out and sequenced before his death. He was from Normal, Illinois.

While he lived Meatyard's work was shown and collected by major museums, published in important art magazines, and regarded by his peers as among the most original and disturbing imagery ever created with a camera. He exhibited with such well-known and diverse photographers as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, and Eikoh Hosoe. But by the late 1970s, his photographs seemed consigned to appear mainly in exhibitions of "southern" art. In the last decade, however, thanks in part to European critics (who since at least the time of De Tocqueville have forged insights into American culture), Meatyard's work has reemerged, and the depth of its genius and its contributions to photography have begun to be understood and appreciated. In a sense Meatyard suffered a fate common to artists who are very much of but also very far ahead of their time. Everything about his life and his art ran counter to the usual and expected patterns. He was an optician, happily married, a father of three, president of the Parent-Teacher Association, and coach of a boy's baseball team. He lived in Lexington, Kentucky, far from the urban centers most associated with serious art. His images had nothing to do with the gritty "street photography" of the east coast or the romantic view camera realism of the west coast. His best known images were populated with dolls and masks, with family, friends and neighbors pictured in abandoned buildings or in ordinary suburban backyards.

Wikipedia





More images from Eastman House
Master of Photography




Ralph Eugene Meatyard 'The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater'

 Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lucybelle Crater & her bearded brother-in-law Lucybelle Crater

Lucybelle with her bearded brother-in-law

 Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lucybelle Crater & bi-polar friend, Lucybelle Crater

Lucybelle w/ Bi-polar friend

 Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lucybelle Crater & fatherly friend, Lucybelle Crater

Lucybelle Crater and fatherly friend

Exactitudes

From Exactitudes
Thanks Sophia for turning me on to this site

Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 13 years. Rotterdam's heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad.

They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.