SX foto

Perhaps we should all get into this business.

The main subject in this Robert Mapplethorpe photograph is a nude, black male figure positioned inside of a large circular structure.  The placement of the figure inside the circular construct with the extension of his arms is reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man scientific drawing, which is based on the correlations of the ideal and anatomical human proportions.  The idealized and muscular male body shows the strength of man and also brings to mind Michelangelo’s David Renaissance sculpture with its idealization, precision, and balance.  However, the nude male subject had neither been drawn nor sculpted in this case bringing about controversy (especially for the audience of the 1980’s).  The subject has instead been publicly photographed meaning the subject actually does exist in the physical world yet has been captured in a so-called private setting.  The high contrast between the light foreground and the dark background with the mid-tone of the nude body allows every detail of the subject to be highlighted.  Not much is left to our own imaginations.  In Thomas, the image shows the male form at the peak of muscularity.  Mapplethorpe was notorious for showing his homosexual counterparts in an explicit and sexualized manner.  Some may even say his depictions of the black male have connotations of hyper sexualizing the black race.  Regardless, the homoeroticism contained in the photographs in conjunction with the AIDS epidemic that was occurring at the time segregated and separated Mapplethorpe from the mainstream American art community.  His photographs were not immediately and readily accepted as artistic photographs.  Even if misunderstood by his contemporaries, Mapplethorpe eventually elevated his shock art into the fine art realm over time by showing the different facets of beauty that are contained and readily exist within the human form, both female and male.

Sergio Ximenez & Alyssa Quiroz, Shadow Bird, 2012

The times of fast commutes through the city and empty streets at any time of day are long gone in Albuquerque.  The reason may arise from our apathy and seeing the congestion problem as normal.  The city is also to blame, as there seems to be a denial and an ignoring of the very present traffic problem since it believes small towns like Albuquerque do not have to deal with such problems.  Maybe Albuquerque’s small town mentality should become a thing of the past and join the ranks of other cities as a large, congested metropolis in order to try to find solutions and alternatives to the congestion problem.

It is odd to see these buildings now being neglected when they were once choice destinations for many a traveler.  It is as if they now remain solely as an empty shell in the landscape of the city.  Over the course of some time though, it seems a lot of these empty buildings have been starting to be converted into new businesses.  These new businesses bring new hope and new dreams to the structure as well as a renewed life.

The Joel Peter Witkin photograph is currently being displayed in the UNM Art Museum and immediately intrigued me and drew my attention from the rest of the photographs.  The severed head of a woman is seen used as a vase-like structure with various flowers (although also and ironically somewhat dead in appearance) placed inside the cranial cavity.  A small and seemingly taxidermic primate appears to the left of the head and is observed to be the figure actually placing the flowers inside the human.  Could it be that Joel Peter Witkin added himself into the photograph depicting himself as the “savage and wild” primate?  It is surprising to see both subjects together as both life forms are now dead but are known to come to existence from the same ancestry and have finally come together in death for this photograph.  Could this juxtaposition of subjects be a criticism of primitivism and the evolution of humanity, which has come to a standstill at this very moment?  While others may be turned away from the macabre and ghastly scene reminiscent of a still life painting, I find beauty and peace within its tombstone-bordered composition.  Still life paintings have always had a memento mori, or a reminder of humanity’s mortality, attached to them to remind people of their very own mortality in an artistically expressive way and to find tranquility within the idea before the actual event occurs.

The central subject in this Diane Arbus photograph is not only mentioned explicitly in the title but is also clearly seen in the composition.  The towering man over his two miniscule parents at first gives the illusion that the subject has walked into a miniature world when in reality this is the world we are familiar with and it is the man that we are not accustomed to.  The environment seems somewhat claustrophobic with the ceiling and walls creating a closed space.  The vignette used in the photograph seems to have the ability to engulf the scene entirely and also works to give the effect of a closed space, which contributes to this very claustrophobia.  Even if the giant subject is believed to be different and not of our world, the harsh lighting of the scene that is reminiscent of our very own amateur snapshots allows us to realize that this world is the very world in which we inhabit and that so-called “freaks” really do exists around us.  In Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents, the image puts a focus onto a subject that had otherwise been neglected from photographs and the public sphere for a long time.  The photograph is characteristic of Arbus’ work in which she depicted different people, people who were awkward and out of the ordinary in appearance.  These people were ignored and never emphasized as central photographic subjects until Arbus came along.  Arbus stated, “Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot.  It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me.  I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”

The subject in this James Nachtwey war photograph is a fully covered figure mourning the loss of a family member in an Afghan cemetery.  The abaya on the woman in the foreground is completely covered in dust, oddly giving the clothing a stone-like effect and mimicking the tombstones in her surroundings.  She blends in well with the environment with both the use of a mixture of tones and the contrast of the clothing and tombs with the entire land.  The woman also has an illusionistic aspect to her body in that it seems she is eerily rising from the ground below her.  The extended arm and visible hand though allows us to not forget that she is in fact still a live human being and allows us to put the woman back in perspective.  The focus is on the mourning woman and the random placement of the tombs in the background with the barren land allows the viewer to realize the severity of the situation being presented in the photograph.  In Afghanistan, the image is powerful in that we feel the strong emotion of the woman with only her body language.  We try to understand the situation to relate with the subject but realize that human emotion is all that is needed.  Even if he describes himself as an anti-war photographer, this war photograph is part of Nachtwey’s series on the Afghanistan conflict.  The purpose of war photography is to grasp a moment of chaos in history and preserve it by putting a human face on events that may otherwise be blurred by other factors such as politics and statistics.  It gives a voice to the voiceless and is a medium where there are no second chances.  Nachtwey states, “Photography enters our collective consciousness, and more important, our collective conscience.  It becomes an archive of visual memory, so that we learn from the past and apply its lessons to the future.  I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events that have been recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.”

Elections should be about voting for a cause."

The central subjects in this Mary Ellen Mark documentary photograph are two homeless youth from the streets of Seattle named “Rat” and Mike.  The shallow depth of field pulls the two subjects forward in focus and allows us to interact solely with them.  We never truly forget about the environment though and the wide tonality range with the graininess of the photograph works to emphasize the glum and bleak surroundings.  The presence of a gun on one of the young subjects draws you in and the blur caused by the action of taking out the gun from the coat gives the realization that this decisive moment is candid and an action is taking place.  Since the subjects are gazing off the screen and not engaging fully with the photographer or the audience, our point of view is somewhat on the voyeuristic side.  In “Rat” and Mike with a Gun, the image is captivating in that it definitely feels as if a story is being told through the scene.  The documentary photograph is part of Mark’s Streetwise series that documents the homeless children living in downtown Seattle.  The audience is able to get a sense of the struggle and desperation that these children must be going through.  It allows you to realize that even the youth of our nation can be living through tough times even if their lives are just beginning.  The purpose of documentary photography is to inform the general public about situations outside of their comfort zones.  Unlike the other types of photography, the strength of documentary photography lies in its ability to effectively tell a story and this photograph is no exception in allowing us into a world we would otherwise not dare enter.

For the Master Painting personal project, I decided to work with both the aesthetic side and the concept side of Warhol’s Green Car Crash.  In the aesthetic image, I decided to use my photograph of a wrecked, salvaged car and arrange them several times similar to the way Warhol arranged them, even recreating a similar green color.  In the concept side, I took the Warhol’s same aesthetic idea by multiplying my photograph of a Weegee inspired crime-like image and overlapping them on a red background (since I believe the color to be real emotive) so as to show our relationship with the image.  At times with the saturation of violent and criminal images in our society through the mass media, it seems as if the images end up becoming a solid, blurred mass of images.  I believe the first image has a true impact on us while the other images tend to become fused and rather unreadable.

The main focus in this Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph clearly stands out since our eyes easily become attracted to it. The completely white and overexposed theater screen captures our attention immediately and pulls us into the scene. The darkened theater that is solely and uniquely lit up by the white screen gives the location an overall eerie attribute. The softly lit theater seats and walls though help transform this strangely eerie location into a mysteriously beautiful one. The fine details of the building are slowly brought forth as each scene flickers by and is only recorded as a non-detailed, overexposure on the projected screen. The majority of the theaters in Sugimoto’s Theaters series tend to have a one-point perspective with the seats, walls, and ceiling working as the orthogonal lines leading up to the vanishing point. Oddly enough, the vanishing point falls somewhere inside the blank screen, giving us a sense of depth that has an effect times infinity. In Castro Theater, the image shows the subject/object relationship of movie theaters and an infinite collapse of time that allows for the invisible to therefore become visible. The blank movie screen has somewhat of a social and political implication of the American consumption culture and how the mass social programming that we encounter on a daily basis leads to a lack of actual content. The audience therefore realizes that what at times is obtained from mass communication leads to a blur of all the content into a single, unreadable white mass.

The subject in this Gregory Crewdson photograph may at first seem obvious to the viewer.  At first glance, the lone businessman standing adjacent to his car in the middle of the road is believed to be the central focus.  There is a sense throughout the image though that the main focus of the viewer’s attention should be elsewhere.  The sense could be attributed to the characteristic lighting, which is seen in most of the works by Crewdson.  It has a very cinematic and dream-like feel attached to it that transports the viewer to everyday, suburban America.  However, this is the more menacing and sinister side of America.  The sfumato atmospheric effect also works with the mysterious aspect Crewdson is trying to achieve.  It cautiously brings the viewer’s attention from the businessman to the background.  The placement of the businessman also brings about a confusing question: Why is he standing alone in the rain on an empty street?  Is it because he has been called away from his car by some mysterious, outside attraction or is it because he just wants to be more in touch with the outside world and his surroundings unlike his fellow citizens?  In the photograph from the series Twilight, the image brings forth the emotions of loneliness and disconnect of one human being from the rest of humanity.  It is done in a mysterious way though that allows the viewer’s curiosity to peak and realize that what is known can at times feel so unknown.  Life is somewhat so unreal that it is the exact reason it ends up being completely real.

Sergio Ximenez, The Last Dweller, 2012