Artist Analysis #4

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Polar Bear 1976

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a photographer from Tokyo Japan. Much of his work is very simple, with little actually going on in the image. He takes long exposures with an 8x10 large format camera. Sugimoto gets much of his influence from artists such as Marcel Duchamp, the Dadaist, and Surrealist movements, as well as from modern architecture. He has a huge and very diverse body of work, based on many different themes. One series he did was of pictures of old drive in theaters, another was of animals in natural history museums, also Japanese architecture, and electrical charges. His aim for his photos is to reveal time passing, which can be portrayed in many different ways, through blurring, long exposures, or exist in something deeper within the photo.

The photo above is from his natural history series and shows a polar bear on an ice shelf cautiously approaching what looks to be a dead seal laying on the ground. Hiroshi is known for his ability of creating real looking scenes from something fake. This image in particular is extremely hard to tell if it's real and fake. The ice behind the seal has recently cracked and creates a line pointing directly towards the seal which helps to move the viewers eyes around the image. It also has great balance dividing the scene essentially in two, with the seal on one side and the polar bear on the other. For this photo, he a process in which you print on silver gelatin. Because of the nature of shooting in such a bright place like this, he most likely took this opportunity to use a very small aperture opening in order to include everything in focus and create depth within the image. This would have allowed him to leave the shutter at a slower speed.

Artist Analysis #3

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is a well know American photographer known for his highly staged and manipulated scenes of suburban life. His work has always been set in and around Boston, Massachusetts, . He shoots half his work in the studio and the other half in real neighborhoods. He usually takes around 50 photos of the same scene without moving the camera, that way when it comes to post production he's able to have complete control over the image. He has the ability to exaggerate various elements of the scene, adjusting the focus, lighting and just about anything else he chooses. Crewdson does not use digital, but instead shoots on large 8x10 film, giving his images that surreal quality he's so known for. When he's satisfied with how it looks, he makes extremely high resolution scans of the negatives to further preserve the original quality. Crewdson's goal as a photographer is to eliminate all aspects that people usually associate with photography, such as blurring, soft focus and grain. He knows this is simply impossible but attempts to do it anyway. He wants the viewer to just fall into the world of the photograph with no distractions in-between.
The photo above caught my eye because it is extremely powerful and emotional yet at the same time so simple. It shows a man in a business suit looking down at the ground, standing in the middle of the street in a late night rain storm. His car is parked behind him with the door open and his briefcase sitting on the ground next to it. It looks as if could be in a small city's downtown area, it also looks like he could be holding something in his left hand ready to drop it. This photo could be read many different ways, but to me it looks as if he just got let go from his job and doesn't know what to do next with his life. The composition of this photo is very well balanced with the main subject centered in the scene and trees framing it on either side. The lighting is another key component of this image, creating the right atmosphere for the scene. The detail in the photo is amazing and really does pull me into the scene completely. It looks like he used a slow shutter speed, just from looking at the lighting, but its hard to tell what was added in post processing and what the raw photos looked like. I think this image is very effective at conveying the ideas Crewdson had in his mind and is able to create the surreal, painting-like effect to pull the viewer into the scene.

Artist Analysis #2

Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky is a german photographer known for his images of industrial buildings, and landscapes. He uses a wide angle lens and prefers shooting from high vantage points. He shoots on large format color film making his images extremely vivid and detailed from the closest subject to the furthest. Andreas is not so much interested in capturing humans as individuals, but focusing more on the human species as a whole and their interaction with the environment. Much of his work is highly manipulated in post processing which gives his work a kind of surreal look almost like a painting. 

The picture above was taken at the Time Square Marriott in New York. As you can see here, this image was highly manipulated, from the intense colors to the vines hanging from the building. The composition uses patterns and perspective lines to draw the viewers eye. Although its a very generic and anonymous place and point of view, he is able to capture it in the most dynamic fashion. Much of what influenced his work, came from his teachers at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany, where he learned how to systematically photograph industrial machinery and architecture. Also from landscape photographers such as John Davies, who strongly influenced Andreas to switch from street level photography to high vantage point photography. Looking at his work for me provides new and interesting ways of thinking about photography and how its important to not be afraid to edit your photos to get the look and feeling that you want.   

  

Artist Analysis #1

Robert and Shana ParkHarrison

Robert ParkeHarrison and his wife Shana ParkHarrison work together to create some of the most surrealistic, dream-like, and disturbing images of our time. Much of their work concentrates on the ever deteriorating relationship between the natural environment and humans. Almost all their works have a poetic quality to them, and are made to look antique, like they could have been taken in the early 1900's. Though much of their earlier work was shot in black and white, their more recent work uses warm tone printing to create an abstract and monochromatic color to the images. All their images are created by with elaborate set ups and then digitally altered to create the signature effect that is so recognizable.
This image shows a businessman with his back facing the view, and arms spread out, holding a birdcage in his left hand and strings attached to a dozen or so flying birds. This is a very powerful image that is thought to represent mans dream of flight, or showing the impact humans are having on the environment in modern times, kind of holding back the natural progression of nature. Shooting against a blank background helps to focus the attention on the subject with no distractions. The composition does a great job of keeping the viewers eyes moving around by dispersing the birds to the top of the frame and then pulling the eye back down the strings to the main subject. This image looks as if it was shot on a medium format camera, considering its squared aspect ratio. To make the background blurry he used a large aperture and to get the birds still, he used a very fast shutter speed.

Flying Lesson by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

It was hard to pick just one, so here's another one of their work. This work is entitled Burn Season and depicts a man in a business suit, with many small bags of water attached to himself, walking into a burning field. Its possible that he's committing a sacrifice of some kind.

Burn Season by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison