Photo Assignment: The World Outside Your Window
Hi everyone, I hope you are staying in and staying safe!
This week we are going to focus on the world outside our windows. Your assignment will be to create 10 photographs out the windows of your house/apartment. If you are looking for inspiration (of course you are), I highly recommend watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, murder, cameras, this film’s got it all!!!
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This photograph by Roy DeCarava is one of my all time favorites, I think of it every single night as I draw the blinds in my living room before settling in on the couch (21 year-old me would have definitely taken a picture of 44 year-old me through the window). When I was in college, my teacher took our class to see an exhibition of DeCarava’s work and I was floored by the dark tones and eerie stillness of the photographs. This man drinking a beer in his window on a hot summer night feels very familiar.
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The above two images are amongst my favorites from Robert Frank’s 1959 masterpiece, The Americans. The first image is out a hotel window in Butte, Montana, and the second image is the view looking down from a window in Los Angeles. In both cases, Frank is inside looking out (a phrase he used often). The image below is from the window of his house in Nova Scotia, I love his collaboration with the landscape, for this project feel free to construct something outside with the intent of photographing it from inside.
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This image is a favorite of mine by the photographer Colleen Plumb. Colleen’s work captures the tension that exists between the human world and the world of animals, you might recognize this image from my depth of field slideshow at the beginning of the semester. I love how the focus point of this image is the geese in migration and not the Chicago skyline or the holiday lights inside of her apartment.
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Another favorite window image of mine is this photograph by Jason Lazarus. Jason and I went to grad school together and he is one of my very favorite artists. This image seems to be an ordinary and poorly cropped image of a tree. The power of the piece is revealed when we learn that this is the top of the tree outside the window of Anne Frank’s hiding spot in Amsterdam and is what she saw when she cautiously looked out her window. You can find a link to a video of the piece HERE.
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This image is from an amazing project by the artist Shizuka Yokomizo titled, Dear Stranger. The photographs consist of strangers standing in their apartments looking out their window as she photographs anonymously from the street, blurring the line between public and private, connection and isolation. For this work, Yokomizo mailed a letter to first floor residents of apartments that faced the street in NY, Berlin, London and Tokyo. The letter read:
“Dear Stranger,
I am an artist working on a photographic project which involves people I do not know…I would like to take a photograph of you standing in your front room from the street in the evening. A camera will be set outside the window on the street. If you do not mind being photographed, please stand in the room and look into the camera through the window for 10 minutes on __-__-__ (date and time)…I will take your picture and then leave…we will remain strangers to each other…If you do not want to get involved, please simply draw your curtains to show your refusal…I really hope to see you from the window.”
To view the complete project, click HERE
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Unlike Yokomizo, Arne Svenson’s photographic series The Neighbors was not collaborative and raised a stir in NY when it was first shown a few years ago. Svenson made these images with a large zoom lens from inside of his apartment. Not surprisingly, this work resulted in a lawsuit. Click HERE to find out what happened :)
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Another one of my absolute favorites, Andre Kertesz. I find his work to be so poetic and also so structured, the man knew how to construct a composition! The above images were all made towards the end of his life from the windows of his apartment in NY. Looking at these photographs makes me feel like I need to get to work, no more wasted time sulking inside my house :)
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And finally, here is my project that I made between 2005-2008 out the window of my apartment in Chicago. Those first floor windows were mine and I set up 24-hour surveillance cameras in the plants in the window in an attempt to figure out who was stealing my garbage cans and why (we had 11 thefts in that 3 year period). The website consisted of 3 years of daily images and surveillance video but unfortunately, it was built with the application Flash which has been more or less discontinued. Writing this post has inspired me to rebuild an online archive in the weeks to come. Three years with multiple pictures and videos each day equals a lot of work... I’ve got time :)
kaledo-art
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
areudirty