Detritus

Here are my detritus images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Own Final

I was nearly ready for bed sitting in the basement of my parents’ house when I decided to step out for a cigarette.  It was brisk outside and the light from the full moon was strong, so as I craned my neck to meet it I was immediately stricken by the strangeness of its form.  There was the moon, the same as it had been the night before, but something was different.  An enormous halo stretched out from its center giving an impression of some massive shadowy disc behind the moon.  I didn’t know what to do so I stood watching it, trying desperately to justify its existence, chain smoking cigarettes and taking pictures of the thing.  I watched it for perhaps a half hour until it faded from view.
I found out later it was a meteorological phenomena called, quite informally, a “moonbow”; its basically a rainbow at night.  Light from the moon refracts when it meets moisture in the air resulting in a halo effect.  There was something unsatisfying to discover that it was just some sort of transcendent hallucination, that science had explained the entire event.  Regardless of its nature, the moonbow was special to me and I had never seen anything like it before.
For my final project I chose to take images of the moonbow and combine them with photographs of my friends.  I wanted to draw a parallel between the enigmatic moonbow and the types of feelings I have for people I care about.  The resulting images therefore are very personal.  Pictured are Zack, Colin, Alex, Sean, and Sam, they are the subjects of these photos and there actions in the photographs add to the emotional relevancy of each image.  I used noise and grow effects to give the images an ethereal quality, as well as apply gradients to enhance the rainbow colors surrounding the moon.  I finally superimposed images of my friends on top of the original moonbow images.  The series culminates with an image incorporating many of my friends; it is literally dozens of images of my friends in cradling the moonbow below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now with more noise.

Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture

For the subject of my final paper I decided to visit Columbia College downtown for an exhibition called “Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture”.  The exhibition was located in Columbia’s Museum of Contemporary Photography on Michigan Avenue.  The museum has three levels and at present all three floors are devoted to these current works.  The Chinese city of Shanghai and those that live there are the focus of the show.   The works on display all deal with the transformation in Shanghai over the past few decades into an enormous economic power and it’s shift from traditional ideologies to more modern independent society.
In Shanghai, a growing economy has ushered in the emergence of a new middle class living in a society torn between political ideologies.  They are young individuals living comfortably in a society that allows them to work toward a goal.  The formerly communist Chinese nation now approaches a sort of proto capitalism and as such their means of living have improved.  Similarly, young Chinese artists now have the freedom to express themselves and present their unique commentaries on the radical transformations of their city.  Though not a communist nation the Chinese does put limits on the expression of his people, this it seems presents the perfect critical environment for these young artists.   On every wall of the MOCP are images of young professionals in Shanghai, often in high-rise apartments, more recent luxuries of the Chinese people.  Likewise, images of the elderly inhabitants of the city present a harsh reality of a people whose context has been lost, the Shanghai that they remember is rapidly disappearing along with it’s customs and ideologies.  Also on display are images of a developing Shanghai and the deconstruction of its slums and old traditional neighborhoods.
One work that I found particularly interesting called Temporary Sculpture is a large photograph digitally altered by artist Zhou Xiaohu.  The works actually composed of multiple images of new Shanghai, characterized by the tall urban landscape, and old Shanghai, with its aged and dilapidated neighborhoods.  The images are combined to put a portion of old Shanghai, in the process of being demolished, at the center of focus.  This image is offset by a modern urban landscape that gives the impression of assimilation.  Xiaohu’s work seems bring to the forefront the issue of urbanization in modern day Shanghai and how the historic constitution of the city is giving way to a newly realized and independent social setting.
Another work located on the third level of the museum also deals with concepts of an advancing Shanghai but also the changing social conditions and new types of morality nurtured by the people that live there.  The work is from a series of images called “Super Absorbent” by artist/photographer Xu Zhen.  The series is composed of images of Shanghais nightlife and club scenes such as karaoke bars.  The work that happens to be on display depicts 5 or 6 teenage girls at a in what appears to be a nightclub.  The image itself is composed of lines and lines of text (in Chinese characters) from Internet chat forums, some of which is highly pornographic in nature.  Zhen’s work presents a convergence of several different transformations in Chinese culture.  The advent of computer and web-based communication along with newly realized sexual freedom composes the text of the work.  The image that text produces exemplifies the freedoms of the Chinese youth growing up in a social setting liberated from former communist limitations.

Robert ParkeHarrisson

Robert ParkeHarrison is an American photographer who obtained his BA in Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico in 1990, and his MA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994. It was why studying for his Masters that he met his current wife Shana. The ParkeHarrisons worked in separate careers for some time before collaborating on the works for which they are currently recognized and which I chose to emulate in my own photographs. Their first recognized body of work, The Architect’s Brother, combines ethereal monochromatic atmospheres with washed landscapes and haunting imagery that conveys a dreamlike feeling. The subject matter is strongly environmental in its symbolism and the compositions are often extremely complex, incorporating handmade mechanical structures with organic forms like clouds, flowers and sticks. This compilation laid the foundation for Counterpoint, the work that was the basis of my emulation. Unlike The Architect’s Brother, Counterpoint is shot in full color, often washed with hues of blue. Among the many photographs there are compositions in which Robert ParkeHarrison is depicted with twigs growing out of his arms and laying on the ground parallel to his subterranean doppelganger. I use my roommate Colin as my subject and tried to emulate the collision of nature, and society that are so wonderfully depicted in ParkeHarrison’s work. I attached leaves to Colin’s arm and tried to line him up effectively with the Chicago landscape, as to convey a sort of bridge between nature and technology. I also tried to capture some sense of the motion characteristic of the work in Counterpoint in the photographs of Colin throwing leaves in the air. My favorite emulation however is the photo of Colin’s arm with twigs attached. For me it is very true to the colors and exposure of ParkeHarrisons work and gives a sense of failure, something that tried to fit a natural concept but because of its context was never able succeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison Hompage

http://www.parkeharrison.com/index.html

Imaging A Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Database

http://www2.oakland.edu/shatteringearth/artists.cfm?Art=37

Us VS Them

This is my room mate Colin.

hidden image

The picture I’m looking at is curious because even though subject of the photo is extraordinary I must assume that it is real.  A shirtless man is framed on the left from the waste up with his back to the camera as he stares into the eyes of a large black bear whose paw is slung, gently given the weight of the bear, around the man’s neck.  It is in fact a bear hug in the middle of a rich green forest.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_kq8szdT5FD1qzcvpqo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1254595069&Signature=duMtooj1la%2BxwgEMdA%2FghN2PVMc%3D

Hey I’m Mike Sanders, I’m a sophomore at DePaul University. I enjoy drawing and playing music with friends. I’ve never taken a digital photo class before but I’ve familiarized myself with some film photography. I have not currently declared a major but I’m leaning toward art and psychology. It’s going to be really great learning the finer points of digital photography and I’m excited to see how this quarter will turn out.

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