My "place memory" is that of my old house. I don't have any photos with me on hand, but I did look up a Google street view: http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=107+south+howell,+hillsdale,+michigan&oe=UTF8&um=1&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=107+S+Howell+St,+Hillsdale,+MI+49242&gl=us&ei=OOy5TP_oMMannAfsi7nqDQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ8gEwAA but I lived there from when I was born at the hospital down the road until I was 10. I think I have a rather idealized memory of my old house. It's an old house--over a century-- and is located on one of the main streets of Hillsdale, Michigan. From the photos I have seen, it was quite a mess when my parents bought it in the mid-80s. On the inside, we had a large kitchen with a hardwood floor, plenty of large windows with lacy curtains, an unfinished basement that had a very distictive smell, a stairway that led to the second floor, where my brother and I had our bedrooms. Our house didn't have air conditioning, so summer nights were awfully warm up there! What I like the most about my old house was the outside. Since my dad is a landscape architect and my mom is a horticulturist, our yard was gorgeous, and I had a back yard with a playset and a sandbox made from a large tractor tire. I can see myself in all these spaces. I see myself alone, but with everything just the way I remember, with signs that the rest of my family lives there too. My favorite part was the wrap-around porch. Our house looks pretty much the same on the outside, from the times I've driven past. The new owners have built a small shed in the back yard, and have added a lot of "fluffy" decorations to the outside--something my parents would never have! The landscaping is not what it used to be, though I imagine it would be hard to keep up if you didn't know what you were doing. I don't want to see what it looks like on the inside. I think that no matter what, I would be very disappointed. I wouldn't want anything to tarnish what I remember.
#12 Memory of a Photograph: Which photograph from your past do you remember most? Describe this photograph. Describe how it makes you feel when you remember/think about this photograph. How have you changed? How has the place in this photograph changed? What would a reenactment of this photograph look like? Would you act or look differently if you reenacted this scene today?
This is a picture of me when I was maybe 7 or so, with our cocker spaniel in the grass next to me. I played outside a lot as a child, so this is reminicent of that. It also makes me miss my dog Ellie (though we called her Puppy). She passed away when I was 13, and we got her when I was born. A reinactment of this photo would include an older me, with perhaps our current dog, which looks nothing like Puppy! I would look older, obviously, though similar to my younger self, and the dog would be a terrier mix mutt, instead of a purebred cocker spaniel!
#13 Human-Made Space: In the past, photographers who were interested in how humans impacted the natural landscape grouped together to form the New Topographics. “New Topographics" signaled the emergence of a new photographic approach to landscape: romanticization gave way to cooler appraisal, focused on the everyday built environment and more attuned to conceptual concerns of the broader art field.” http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibTopo.aspx In addition, at the same time in history artists created (and still do create) “land art” in which they use materials found in the landscape to make sculptures that remain in the landscape. Many of these works now only exist as video recordings and photographic documents.
Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.
Footpaths on campus. Despite sidewalks and signs kindly requesting all to "keep off", those roaming the campus do it anyway, living by the rule that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Carving on trees. While not admirable, still interesting. This would be a fun idea for a photo series.
Stone piles. I'm not sure what the exact term for these are, but you see them used as trail markers or just for fun. It's amazing how they can get the stones to stay balanced for the next traveler to admire.
As far as land art in a man-made landscape, graffiti is always interesting, but since I'm not much of a deviant type, sidewalk chalk art is cool too. Or, it would be interesting to use the same object across a series of photos in different man-made environments.
#14 Unknown vs. Familiar Space: When photography was invented, it became a way to document and reveal the specific aspects of both familiar and faraway places. Imagine a familiar place. Imagine a faraway place. How would you use photographs to convey the difference? Can you imagine any places that have been “touched” very little by humans? How might you photograph them?
I think what makes a place familiar is the inclusion of items that you can relate to, based on your own experiences. Similar experiences can often be regional. To make a photo unfamiliar, you can remove all of these things, and replace them with people and places and ways of living that are completely different from what your audience knows.
Places that have been left nearly untouched by humans: Very cold places -- the arctic, the deepest parts of the ocean. Places lacking water -- large deserts (I picture the wind blowing across the sand, removing any evidence that someone was standing in a place moments ago). And outer space. Now that's a place that people have only scratched the surface of. When photographing these places, I would think that I would want to focus on the wild, untamed nature of the place, since that is what makes it special -- the lack of control humans have on the place.
#15 In-Camera Collage: Collage brings together two or more items that were previously separate. The resulting piece usually visually references the fact that they were once separate entities. Imagine an important place in your past. Imagine an important place in your present. Imagine who you were in both of these past and present places. Describe how you might use a slow shutter speed and/or double exposure to capture two moments in one image that tell a new narrative about these important places and how they relate to who you are and were.
My whole life (that I can remember) has largely revolved around school. I think I would like to combine my memory of my classroom in elementary school (lots of colors and decorations, circle tables, crayons and snacks) and my current educational environment, which includes small, individual desks, plain white walls, definitely no snacks, and a lot of big books and staring at a computer screen. I think that I would create a double exposure of a young child sitting at a table in a typical elementary school classroom, and then have another image of a college classroom focusing on an older student, but from the same angle as the first image. I would want to include background elements from both photos (decorations, other students). The challenge would be in blending the pictures so that you could see individual elements from each photo, but creating a balance so that it wasn't too busy.
Footpaths on campus. Despite sidewalks and signs kindly requesting all to "keep off", those roaming the campus do it anyway, living by the rule that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Carving on trees. While not admirable, still interesting. This would be a fun idea for a photo series.
Stone piles. I'm not sure what the exact term for these are, but you see them used as trail markers or just for fun. It's amazing how they can get the stones to stay balanced for the next traveler to admire.
As far as land art in a man-made landscape, graffiti is always interesting, but since I'm not much of a deviant type, sidewalk chalk art is cool too. Or, it would be interesting to use the same object across a series of photos in different man-made environments.
#14 Unknown vs. Familiar Space: When photography was invented, it became a way to document and reveal the specific aspects of both familiar and faraway places. Imagine a familiar place. Imagine a faraway place. How would you use photographs to convey the difference? Can you imagine any places that have been “touched” very little by humans? How might you photograph them?
I think what makes a place familiar is the inclusion of items that you can relate to, based on your own experiences. Similar experiences can often be regional. To make a photo unfamiliar, you can remove all of these things, and replace them with people and places and ways of living that are completely different from what your audience knows.
Places that have been left nearly untouched by humans: Very cold places -- the arctic, the deepest parts of the ocean. Places lacking water -- large deserts (I picture the wind blowing across the sand, removing any evidence that someone was standing in a place moments ago). And outer space. Now that's a place that people have only scratched the surface of. When photographing these places, I would think that I would want to focus on the wild, untamed nature of the place, since that is what makes it special -- the lack of control humans have on the place.
#15 In-Camera Collage: Collage brings together two or more items that were previously separate. The resulting piece usually visually references the fact that they were once separate entities. Imagine an important place in your past. Imagine an important place in your present. Imagine who you were in both of these past and present places. Describe how you might use a slow shutter speed and/or double exposure to capture two moments in one image that tell a new narrative about these important places and how they relate to who you are and were.
My whole life (that I can remember) has largely revolved around school. I think I would like to combine my memory of my classroom in elementary school (lots of colors and decorations, circle tables, crayons and snacks) and my current educational environment, which includes small, individual desks, plain white walls, definitely no snacks, and a lot of big books and staring at a computer screen. I think that I would create a double exposure of a young child sitting at a table in a typical elementary school classroom, and then have another image of a college classroom focusing on an older student, but from the same angle as the first image. I would want to include background elements from both photos (decorations, other students). The challenge would be in blending the pictures so that you could see individual elements from each photo, but creating a balance so that it wasn't too busy.
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