Place Photographer: Andrew L. Moore

"National Time" http://andrewlmoore.com/view_project.php

I have been fascinated with Andrew Moore's series on Detroit for quite some time now... in fact, I think many people have been intrigued by the recent photos and films of the dilapidated buildings of Detroit. Many people say that all of this attention is focusing on the negative... that if people would just look at the bigger picture, that perhaps right next to that crumbling piece of architecture there is an organic neighborhood farm growing in the lot next door, or a community art project is taking place. People say that in many ways, Detroit is becoming... or is still ... very much alive. This may be true, yet here these buildings sit, to be looted, photographed, razed or continue to decompose, since there is not money to have them demolished.

It was difficult to choose just one photo from the series. Each one has it's own attraction. I'm amazed at Moore's ability, whether by plan or chance... that he happened upon these places that very few people have discovered or paid any attention to. He said in an interview:

"Although one method is to work through diplomatic channels to gain entry to controlled places, my approach has always been to fly below the radar, so to speak. The first thing I try to do is find someone who has the contacts, charm, and curiosity necessary to get things done in a bureaucratic maze, as well as someone who understands what kinds of pictures I'm trying to make."  

Moore's images are sometimes painful to view. There is an overwhelming feeling of waste, lost history and potential... a complete and utter disregard for respect of these monuments of the past. 

I chose this photo because I feel that it does well in summing up the series as a whole. I think that It represents this transitional phase that Detroit is going through... It's difficult to tell where the city actually is as a whole, just as it would be difficult to tell time on this distorted clock. Detroit is caught between the old and the new, beginnings and endings. These buildings might represent the end of one time period, but offer themselves up for many new beginnings. New ways of thinking, new uses for spaces.

“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” Duane Michals

I think that this is the challenge with portrait photography. Like the quote states, anyone can take a picture of someone's face, but it takes someone special to capture not only a person's outside appearance, but a little bit of their character. It should make you stop and spend some time looking at the image. It should grab you, and create the feeling that in some way, you know a little something about that person--without reading a single word about them.

   

#17 “Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.” Arnold Newman

The photographer has control over a multitude of things when taking a photo. Both in the moments leading up to the push of the button, and afterwards, when they edit. They can choose what they want in the photo to begin with, the kind of lighting, what colors to bring out and what distractions to remove.

I think we also tend to photograph objects, people and places as we would like to remember them, whether it is truly an accurate depiction or not.

All of these things considered, that is how we create our own little illusion.

#16 “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer—and often the supreme disappointment.” ~Ansel Adams

Photographing nature always frustrates me. It always seems that no matter how I try, the photo never lives up to what I actually saw and experienced. Sunsets especially. They never seem as vivid in a photo as they did in real life.

I think that no how incredibly accurate cameras get, I have a feeling that nothing will be able to fully capture what we see through our own eyes. That being said, the challenge for the photographer is to get as close as they can.

Most of the time, I think that these frustrating moments are hints, telling me to put down the camera, be still, and just see.

Posts #11, 12, 13, 14, 15

#11 Memory of a Place: Try to imagine a place from your past. Do you have pictures of this place? Describe this place as you remember it. What might a photograph look like of this place if you were to go back and photograph it? What would it look like in the past? What would it look like to you today? Where are you standing in this place? What other items are in this place? What colors do you see? Are there other people or are you alone? Make a “written photograph” of this place using words/description.


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.

Assignment 3(0)

I'm not sure I really followed the rules for this assignment, but my image is more about the concept of the passage of time, and how quickly or how slowly it seems to move. It seems like the older I get, the faster time goes. One minute, I'll be complaining about the start of another week or about a class that seems like it's going on forever, and before I know it, the week...the month... the semester is over.

As I approach graduation in May, I am still struggling to grasp how I arrived at this point so quickly. As hard as I might try to slow things down, to enjoy the time I have left, it seems it is to no avail. I'm halfway through the Fall semester already. Should I be looking for jobs now? Is it too late? Too early? I feel caught between wanting to take the time to reminisce about the past and enjoy my present, but I'm constantly feeling the pressure to look ahead to the future.

When I reflect on how fast my last four years seem to have gone, it is interesting to look back on my memories over this period of time. High school seems so long ago, yet it seems like just yesterday I was wandering around the MSU campus for the first time, map and class schedule clutched firmly in hand. Some things I remember clearly, while some memories, though from the same time, are rather hazy.

This was completely unintentional... I just realized that the calendar is from the Alzheimer's Association. My parents got it in the mail for free... probably for donating, though we haven't had too much of a connection to Alzheimer's in our family. I took it to college because I wanted a calendar. 

Now that I think about it, bringing Alzheimer's into the picture adds and interesting spin to the passage of time, doesn't it?

Assignment II: Portrait | Final Images

 

Assignment II: Portrait

With this series, I tried to capture both the person and the environment in which he exists and how it reflects who he is. My boyfriend does very well in school, and I feel that these photographs reflect his dedication to his schoolwork. It was also helpful that he is a math/physics major, so there were plenty of huge textbooks and notebooks lying around. Some of my favorite photos from this set were the ones in which the room was completely dark except for the desk lamp. It almost seemed to add a daunting/dungeon-esque setting. I tried to capture his desk area from a variety of angles and points of view. Since the setting was a dorm room, this sometimes proved to be a challenge with very little room to move around the room.

PART II

My group interpreted ta lot of stress from the photos--that there is a lot of intimidation in the stacks of books in the scene. They also were very interested in the items on his desk--the blood pressure monitor (thus the blood pressure medication) and the fact that he is on Facebook, which is something I hadn't noticed before. They interpreted that this type of procrastination leads to his stress. It was interesting that they created a whole story about the person in the photo, based upon the items on his desk. The REAL story is that after awhile, my picture-taking was getting on his nerves and he couldn't focus on doing any real homework while I was still there taking pictures.

They also mentioned that the lighting could be something that I could work on. The photos printed slightly darker than they appeared on screen, and some detail was lost. They also thought that they would like to see more detail on his face in the first and 4th photos posted here.

As far as a jumping off point, they said that this group already was working as a series, but that I could do something similar with other people, and have their surroundings speak to who they are.