Eleanor Antin

Eleanor Antin works in photography, video, film, performance, drawing, and writing. She uses history as a way to explore the present. She takes things that have happened in the past, and mixes them with things that are happening currently, normally to find humor in something that was serious. She stages photographs as well as performance art, and even performs herself.  She researches things about history, and then finds a new way of looking at them.  For instance, in her "Helen's Odyssey" series, she found that Helen of Troy is often shown in art as a "dumb blonde because she was a much hated person". So Eleanor wanted to show different sides of her, being flirtatious, angry, big as life, etc.  I really liked looking through her photographs because even though they are obviously staged, they have a realistic side to them.  They aren't just photographs that you can glance at and understand, you have to take a deeper look into what she is actually trying to say through them.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog/images/Antin-Eleanor_Constructng-Helen_2008-sml.JPG

The Lady of Shallot by Henry Peach Robinson

http://charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/TENNLADY.HTML

The Lady of Shalott by Henry Peach Robinson, made in 1861 was made from 2 negatives. It is the only known photograph that illustrates the poem by Alfred Tennyson.  "I made a barge, crimped the model's hair, PR fashion, laid her on the boat in the river among the water lilies, and gave her a background of weeping willows, taken in the rain so that they might look dreary." Robinson received many criticisms about this photograph, most about it not being realistic. He was merely trying to illustrate an imaginary scene from the poem, however, this was before photography was used as an art form. I believe the concept was lost on those who only viewed photography as a way to keep records or document actual occurrences. Today, a photograph like this would not be seen as anything unusual. 

Assignment 3: Place

Urban Picturesque

 

Multiple Selves 

Reenactment of a Photograph

Social Cultural Document

Prompt 19

The only thing that I could think of that should not be photographed is naked children. I can see how some see nudity as art, but not when it comes to kids. I remember hearing a photographer talk about how she was taking pictures of her son by a body of water, and she came out with some really nice shots, but she was saying that it would have been better if he had been naked. I just didn't get it, I thought the photograph that she got was great, and didn't think it would have been better if he had been naked. I think it's only ok to photograph someone without clothes if they are a consenting adult. I really can't think of anything that COULD not be photographed. There are things that might be physically impossible to capture, such as someone's thoughts or imagination, but in the art world, people create things all the time that give an illustration of things that cannot be seen, (for example, someone in my class did a project where he took pictures of his little sister and they were about her imagination. He got some great shots and he just used costumes, props, and set up scenes to illustrate things that she imagined.)  I wouldn't really want to photograph someone who was severely injured or brutally killed.  I don't like blood and gore.  I can't imagine ever wanting to be in any situation with that sort of thing, like a police officer or a crime scene investigator, even a doctor or nurse that works in the emergency room...no thanks. I'd like to take pictures of pretty much everything else.

Place Photographers Research

http://www.anthonygoicolea.com/NewAnthonySite/shelter_series/ice_storm.htm

"'Sheltered Life' is a series of digitally constructed photographs that depicts fairytale-like, timeless places inhabited by contemporary characters. All of the landscapes are punctuated with alternative makeshift living spaces that are made up of, as well as incorporated into, the surrounding environment. Many of the figures in the photos are reduced in size and are almost swallowed by their surroundings. The characters are often masked, hooded, or seen from the back in order to preserve their identity. They operate as a single unit, living in situations that simultaneously reference backyard play dates and hippie communes, as well as detainment camps and disaster relief areas. Their living arrangements and concealed identities cement their status as outcasts or refugees from society. The composed wooded scenes depicted in many of the photos are bisected into two halves and are often times seen as a cross-section of themselves. In images like “Ice Storm” or “Dead Tree Forest” the bottom half of the photo is relegated to a violent underworld of roots, dirt, rock and earth which are stratified into a multi-layered platform or stage on which scenes are acted out. The shelters that inhabit the photos range in form from tree houses, lean-to’s and caves, to cardboard forts or dilapidated barns. Their playfulness undermines the sort of desperate haphazard construction and deeper desire to migrate or live on the outside of communities. The sense of foreboding tinged with playful fantasy characteristics of many of the photographs is mimicked in a suite of complex figurative drawings on Mylar. Androgynous figures an indeterminate age float on top of and through each other in a layered composition separated by planes of semi-opaque vellum paper. The ghostlike figures are caught in free-floating, awkward, transitional states: sometimes their images are doubled; sometimes they seem like as much animal as human. As the figures migrate through the forest in small packs, they fade in and out of each other in a series of tentative lines that read like traces of pervious drawings and refer to memory and transition." 

This image creates a sense of isolation.  This group of people out in the middle of no where together, creates a bonding experience.  They have nothing else around them to entertain them and must use each other to keep busy.  I think his intention about this space was to show closeness in isolation, and also possibly a sense of comfort in an uncomfortable space.  I think this image is effective because, being from Michigan, I have seen weather like this and have gone up north with friends when it's cold and snowy.  It gives me a feeling of friendship and warmth even in an unpleasant, cold place.

Prompt 16, 17, & 18

#16- “I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” Duane Michals
I'm not sure if I would link this with photography.  Unless he is talking about something that you don't notice at first, until you see a photograph of it, whether it is physical, emotional, mental, etc. Sometimes something that you can imagine, is not something you could actually take a picture of, but I think that you can make photographs IN your imagination, we are able to see anything in our minds, possible or impossible.
 
#17- “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” Berenice Abbott 
I really like this quote, and completely agree.  When someone takes a photograph, that moment in time can never be repeated.  People can recreate the situation, or recreate the photograph, but then it's fake.  The subject or place might continue to exist, but it will change. It can only be exactly the way it is in the present.


#18- “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer—and often the supreme disappointment.” ~Ansel Adams
I'm not a huge fan of landscape photography, because sometimes I look at photographs of landscapes and think, anyone could take that. Maybe that's why he says it's the supreme test, to take a photograph of a landscape, and see how you can make it better or different that someone else would.  Looking for specific details to capture, waiting for the perfect lighting or time of year, etc.  I could definitely understand being disappointed after taking a picture of a landscape, and not seeing anything different than they'd seen before.

Working Collage