OBSESSION FLOWERS

http://lenscratch.com/2010/12/dawn-roscoe/

I’m very happy to have found this photographer because she embodies exactly the aesthetic I’ve attempted to work out for myself. Inspired by both documentary photography and surrealism, the artist is quoted as saying, “ my goal is for my current work to reflect both styles while remaining true to a specific narrative.” In this series, she presents a scene that is familiar and ordinary but subverts it using costume, makeup, and masks to touch on themes like isolation, mother-daughter relationships, friendship between girls, and success. In my own work, I also try to take familiar sights and make them seem strange. However, I feel as though I live as an outsider and thus can’t quite subvert my subjects as much as I show them through my own eyes. The theme of my own work during this semester has primarily been focused on death and isolation. When I show human subjects, it’s never a straight shot, I show them as deformed in some way, as if they are already dead even as they walk. The world how I portray it is an empty world full of dead people. Dawn Roscoe portrays an ordinary world that is not what it seems. 

From the front door of my apartment, across the alley is the Econo Inn. The foliage is overgrown and at night when the alley was once lit up by this light, there is only darkness.

I descend the stairs into the alley to start my walk.

On a neighbor’s balcony, this dog is getting some sun.

The balconies of the nearby old folks’ home. These were once grey but are now painted green, orange, and yellow.

An elderly local on a walk stops dead in her tracks when she reaches the Econo Inn.

The closure of the Econo Inn affects everyone differently. She has memories of this place from when her mom lived here.

The Econo Inn was here for decades. She apparently knew the owners.

For me, the closure of the Econo Inn means something else. My apartments are right on the other side of the alley behind the decrepit building. Neighbors in my complex have already complained that someone tried to break in since the building went dark.

The remains of the Econo Inn.

To be completely honest, when I saw this all I could think about was how badly I’ve been wanting an old CRT TV to watch my VHS tapes on. 

While researching photography that deals with the subject of death for last week’s post, I stumbled upon the work of Daniel Kovalovsky. In this series, Kovalovsky heavily edits his work in post to give them a bleached out appearance. This series includes portraits of people who have had near-death experiences along with a shot that visually represents what caused their experience. For example, the woman in the shot above had been poisoned and the accompanying photo depicts the weed that poisoned her. The work inspired me to not depict my subjects accurately as they appeared in real life but to alter them for symbolic effect. 

http://lenscratch.com/2015/06/daniel-kovalovszky/

I’ve spoken about this photographer more than once during class sessions but have yet to make a research post about him. Chris Maggio is and has been a primary influence on my work, though I feel like I have a hard time capturing what it is that makes his work so unique. To me, Chris Maggio creates surrealist photography out of the mundane. His subjects are almost always very plain and ordinary; older people walking around, trash on the floor, buildings, but they are always shot in such a way that they appear strange. His shots tend to have low contrast and dull colors. Frequently, his shots use cynical humor to great effect. My work, in contrast, tends not to be so funny and has mostly been grim, but I believe we have cynicism in common.

Day one: a walk

Under the bridge

Ugly graffiti

The welder

The bridge

For your protection

I don’t want to go in there

The patron

The essential worker

Day 2: a drive down Elm

Food desert

Liquor store was closed

Dora Maar was a photographer who was part of the surrealist movement during the 1930s. She innovated photography by introducing surrealist elements. By manipulating images and using visual motifs like hair and spirals, she creates unreal, dream-like images. In the photos I’ve provided here, a small ship is photographed in long wavy hair, giving it an appearance of being afloat in a sea of hair, a woman behind a spiderweb, someone in a strange costume photographed at an obscure angle, and a strange animal, she creates an unusual universe in each picture where normal logic doesn’t apply and the effect is unsettling. I’ve tried in a lot of my work to create an unsettling nightmare logic by zooming in to isolate the subject from its context, but it can be difficult to create a satisfying effect. In this work, I see a different strategy applied and so I tried to apply it to my own work in some of my shots for this week. Dora creates this effect by meticulously setting up her shots rather than shooting them off the cuff. This recent week I tried this by setting up intentional shots, such as the one with the balloon against a white backdrop, my partner in a homemade Halloween mask holding a knife, and the skulls and flowers. http://www.artnet.com/artists/dora-maar/?type=photographs

Two fallen comrades

Two comrades gone

My company of corpses

My whole life long

I’ve been looking at this list of late

Some memories not so good, some great

These friends of mine

Lack of time

Lack of time

Lack of time

Sean McFarland’s photography seems more interested in the appearance of the photo than the subject itself, like crafting a new work as one would create a painting. This is something I would like to emulate.

these pictures were taken at different times, some from before covid-19 and some after. i have not been motivated to leave the house so instead i tried messing with these in post.

I took a walk in Chinatown, taking photos of buildings and scenes significant to my life. Chinatown is a unique part of town that I have deep personal history with. For well over a decade it has been the heart of Fresno’s hardcore and punk scene. Much of my teenage years and early adult life were spent wasting away down here. Almost always empty during the day, these pictures were taken under circumstances similar to pre-coronavirus conditions. 

This is a view of the Buddhist temple anyone in the scene should be able to recognize. This is one of the more beautiful buildings in Chinatown. One of the rare buildings that actually look like they’re part of a Chinatown at all.

This is a front view of what’s left of CAFE Infoshop, flanked on the right by the ruins of the Peacock building, a low income housing project, and on the left by the ruins of Paris Cafe, an old Chinese restaurant. Infoshop’s doors were open from 2006 all the way to the beginning of 2019. Infoshop hosted countless shows and was the headquarters for the local Food Not Bombs chapter. I spent countless hours, days, months of my life wasting away here. I began going to shows here in 2007 and became more involved with the people there from 2011 to 2015. Many of my friends lived there and at times it seemed like I did, too. This entire block will likely be demolished to make way for new developments.

This building is Happy’s Liquor. Happy is an interesting guy. You go in asking for a 40 of, say, Mickey’s, and he’ll try to convince you to buy a 40 of King Cobra instead. You used to be able to walk inside this store, but lately Happy keeps the gate shut and does business at the door. Because of its proximity to Chinatown’s punk venues, many of my friends are very familiar with this store. It fueled our alcohol addictions.

The iconic Happy Liquor Store sign. Friends of mine have discussed getting the sign tattooed on them.

Chinatown Gallery. Next door to Peacock on the other side, this building was briefly a local punk house from roughly 2013 to 2015. It was treated as more of a living space than a venue, but living room shows did happen here from time to time. I wish I could go inside and take pictures. From the living room window, you were able to see the balcony of the Infoshop just two units down. During the time that this space was open, there were three local punk spots all within a block of each other.

The back and side of the Chinatown Gallery. The windows were the bedroom windows of the Gallery. Friends of mine used to stick things in the windows, like disparaging mockeries of then police chief Jerry Dyer. My cat, pictured in other posts, was found before a gig featuring Sordo from Oxnard down the street by Bank of America. I picked him up and walked down to the Gallery and stashed him in one of my friend’s rooms so that he wouldn’t be in any danger during the show. 

The only currently active remnant of Chinatown’s punk scene, going strong since 2008. A previous photoset was shot inside this building. 

This building is found across the street from CAFE Infoshop. One time when we found the front door to this place wide open. The Gallery crew immediately sprang into action, exploring the inside, going up the stairs, seeing what was behind. The building is in ruins. The second story had massive gaping holes in the floor. You could climb out of the windows on the second story onto the rooftops of the building next door. I spent a 4th of July up on that roof watching the fireworks from Grizzly Stadium.

March 25th. The day prior, I learned that my closest friend in the geology department passed away on March 22nd. I can barely function. I agree to meet a friend (we keep our distance) at Roeding Park because isolation is too much for me. Here is the still water of the pond carrying debris. 

Primary subjects at the park end up being birds. I took many of birds in flight and ended up not being happy with most of them for various reasons. Here is a goose walking toward me after emerging from the pond. I cropped the photo to center around just the bird. The background provides little in the way of contrast.

I am losing track of days. Two riders on horseback are seen in the distance between the concrete pillars of an unfinished highway. Or perhaps it is part of the high speed rail project.

A walk in the neighborhood. It’s easy to avoid people downtown. Even before Covid-19, isolation is difficult to escape.

These shadows are cast above the staircase. Most of these photos are taken during “golden hour”.

From the same location, this photo captures the shadow cast on the bridge and also serves as a record of who stopped by to write their name.

The ruined Hotel Fresno, currently under development. I hear these will be apartments.

These three trees almost seem like they’re from a dream.

An ambulance speeds down the street. A high shutter speed freezes it in place as it crosses the intersection.

Shaft light: an attempt was made to capture light from my window as it hits my bedroom wall, though a true shaft wasn’t present

Emphasis: space and value are used to emphasize the cigarette

Hard lihghting from below: shadows are cast upward on this building at night as lights from below light up ledges

Color: Colorful punks: blue, pink, red, bright green, and orange are all featured

Point: this photo draws attention to a single point the end of the alleyway

Hard light from above: the hard light from the son near midday causes some very dark shadows under the crumbling factory

Harmony: the balconies at my apartment complex have a unifying appearance while remaining distinct from each other

Color: this photo exhibits some harmonic color relationships between the green crate, orange crates, burgundy crate, and yellow crate

Rhythm: the repeated vertical lines occur at regular intervals giving the photo a sense of rhythm

Soft light from above: though Mikie is lit up by a flash, the people behind him are light up by the fluorescent lights above, which cause the attendees to cast only soft shadows

Soft light from side: the soft lighting in this photo causes the objects to cast soft, diffuse shadows

Hard light from above: this photo was taken near midday while the sun was still at a high angle, casting downward shadows from every object

Hard light from side: a hard light causes one side of the cat statue to be completely dark with only a sliver of light appearing on its flat back 

Motion: my camera caught the moment the vocalist of Fentanyl was lifted into the air, motion is captured by the use of a slow shutter speed and flash

Hard light from behind: Light from outside enters my room and lights up my workstation, but the walls, curtains, lamp, and other objects are more of a silhouette

Rhythm: the repeated vertical lines on the side of this industrial building gives the photo a sense of rhythm

Emphasis: Spencer’s face is lit up and contrasts with the visually busy and dark backdrop, creating a sense of emphasis

Proportion: this photo of Mikie slapping Garrett in the face with a nasty old couch cushion is characterized by the proportions of the faces in the audience, giving a sense of depth

Space: the sky in this photo acts as negative space for the tower to stand in contrast to

Soft light from side: this cloudy afternoon allowed me to capture soft light hitting this building, leaving soft diffuse shadows on some surfaces

Gradation: this picture contains 3 linear elements, gradually decreasing in size as the element increases in elevation