Elizabeth Turrell Lecture

Elizabeth Turrel works in the enamel medium, and dedicates much of her practice to research in enamel art at the Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE.  She has done many comissions, some of those include works for the CATALIS Public Art Project, the Emmerson Green Library control desk, and contributor to the Tree of Life Exhibition in 2002.  Earlier commissions include coordinator/artist work for the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, The National Library for Women, and a book for A&C Black on contemporary enamelling.

Before the lecture I was not quite sure what enamel art was.  It is more of a 2 dimensional art at first, unless later applied to a 3 dimensional surface- but in her case usually a metal surface.  In Enamelling, Turrell creates decals with the use of a highly technical process, some of the materials and processes she utilizes are steel, stainless steel, copper, larger sheets of metal, litho, typesetting, screen printing, and stencils for enamels from a laser cutter.  What I find interesting about this work is the wide variety of visual possibilities that can come from working in this medium.  She describes enamelling as being similar to glaze in pottery.

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Gregory Crewdson

Bio

• Born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1962.
  
• At sixteen, he played in a band called the Speedies, whose first single was titled "Let Me Take Your Foto."
•  In 1985, he received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase, where he studied photography with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. He graduated with an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University in 1988.
  
• For his thesis project, he took photographic portraits of residents of the area around Lee, Massachusetts, where his family had a cabin.
  

His Work

• "It was also in Lee that Crewdson conceived of his later Natural Wonder series (1992–97), in which birds, insects, and mutilated body parts are presented in surreal yet mundane domestic settings. Photographs from Natural Wonder were shown in the 1991 exhibition Pleasures and Terrors in Domestic Comfort at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In his next series, Hover (1995�97), Crewdson turned away from brightly colored close-ups to black-and-white bird's-eye views of strange situations (a man covering a street with sod, a bear gawked at by onlookers as it rummages through garbage) set in the streets and backyards of Lee. His Twilight series (1998–2001) introduced color and an enlarged scale—50 x 60 inches—to this surreal formula, resulting in decidedly cinematic images reminiscent of the films of Steven Spielberg. These recent photographs have become increasingly spectacular and complex to produce, requiring dozens of assistants, Hollywood-style lighting, and specially crafted stage sets. Crewdson plans to direct a feature film in the future."

Website

Gagosian Gallery

Buffer Zones

"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth." ~Henry David Thoreau

Vegetative buffer zones are undeveloped areas that are directly adjacent to a body of water and can be made of existing plants.  Interestingly enough, buffer zones can also be created by new plantings.  These plantings can highly improve the quality of life in which it surrounds, as well as water quality. These buffers reduce shoreline destruction from erosion and reduce harmful pollutants entering the water due to runoff.  By creating buffers, wildlife and fish in these areas will flourish by being provided with food, shelter and shade.  

"A study done in northern Wisconsin looked at the impact to wildlife when natural shorelines were replaced with developed shorelines. Researchers found that the number of frog species, as well as the total number of frogs, was significantly reduced in lakes where native vegetation and woody debris were removed from the shoreline. Many bird species were also lost, particularly those depending on insects for food and those that nest on the ground."

MInnesota Department of Natural Resources
http://www.sustland.umn.edu/related/water2.html

This topic relates to my work because I am building landscapes where nature is taking back the land, buffer zones do the same for the environment by creating and sustaining natural life. It opens up a different perspective to what I'm creating, now considering how the land that I have created could have came to be. Did this overgrowth of vegetation start by a human force or form natural causes? It adds more of a background story to my ideas.

Elizabeth Carmel

Bio

• California based photographer
• Specializes in unique, expressive landscapes and waterscapes, combined with dramatic imagery, vivid colors- "artistic touches to create new, captivating visions of the natural world."
• "Ms. Carmel has spent years exploring and photographing the diverse landscapes of the world.  Her award winning images are in numerous galleries and private collections throughout the US, and were recently selected for display at the Nevada Museum of Art.  In recognition of her fine art photography and technical expertise, Elizabeth is one of 12 photographers worldwide honored with the Hasselblad Master Photographer award for 2006."

Interview

Gallery

Website

Candice Breitz Lecture

Breitz spoke about her two main avenues that she explores with examples of her work.  The first area of work was created using found footage from popular culture.  Even though the work in its original gallery context was not seen,  it was interesting how she left it up to the audience to imagine all of the elements coming together as they would have been displayed.  Her second area of work consisted of footage that she created, opposed to being found.  I enjoyed this work more than her manipulations of found imagery, I think because she was still reproducing ideas of popular culture- but it created more of a quirky, real life (non-celebrity) quality. 

 I was actually pleasantly surprised by the lecture, normally I find it hard to sit for an hour or so when it comes to film work opposed to photography.  The way she spoke with excitement about the work probably drew me in more than normal.  The connection she created with the audience really seemed to reveal more of the true intentions of the work, which by its appropriated nature, leaves these visuals open for new and different interpretations.

HDR

High Dynamic Range Photography

"It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators." - Ansel Adams on landscape photography

Article

Sean T. McHugh

High dynamic range photography allows the photographer to combine different images so that a single photograph can show a wider range of detail. Meanwhile, each area of the image is properly exposed.  A new function on Photoshop called "merge to HDR" allows the artist to combine a series of bracketed exposures into a single image which "encompasses the tonal detail of the entire series."  

In a way, I use a more simplified technique of HDR photography in my work.  Because I am putting together different images as one, which are all taken at different times under different lighting at different locations, I need a way to show as much detail as possible in every situation.  I usually take multiple shots, each at the correct exposure for the background and foreground, or other objects just in case I need to use either or all areas of the photograph. Its a huge part of making images for me, and now knowing Photoshop has a function that could help me with this may be beneficial and more time efficient. 

Lynn Geesaman

Bio

• Born in Cleveland in 1938
• Originally studying physics at Wellesley College, she was introduced to photography.
• Interest in travel and gardens lead her to travel to England, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany.
• Received the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and the Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship Award 
• Geesaman's monograph, Poetics of Place, was published by Umbrage Editions in 1998.
  

Her Work

• "Lynn Geesaman's images of elaborate topiary gardens, canals, and dramatic landscapes employ unusual diffusion techniques that emphasize an imaginative and psychological interpretation of nature."- Robert Koch Gallery
  
• "Her shimmering images continue to invite the viewer into a dream world where the imagination runs free."-Robert Koch Gallery
• "Throughout here career, Geesaman has been preoccupied with one primary subject - the classical garden or cultivated landscape. For her, these places represent a human desire to find, amid the chaos of the environment, a reasoned order and a mathematical beauty of natural form. Building upon this approach, she turns her garden views into romanticized settings with a nostalgic look to the past. Well versed in the history of photography, her work reflects the early fascination of turn-of-the-century pictorialist views of the mysteries of nature. The contemplative sentiment that pervades Geesaman's work is gretly due to a sophisticated printing technique. The use of a greenish-sepia toned paper supports her romantic vision. In addition, she filters the negative during enlargement, achieving an image of softened detail and blurred appearance. This is also a direct reference to a Pictorial sensibility." [Therese Mulligan, 12/1999]
  

Thomas Barry Gallery

*no formal artist website

Interview

Regeneration

"Pollution is the forerunner of perdition"- John Trapp

Forest Ecology and Management

Catalyzing native forest regeneration on degraded tropical lands

John A. Parrotta, John W. Turnbull, Norman Jones

Human interaction and disturbance causes land to be less productive.  Things like forest clearing, forest degeneration, and certain agricultural practices lead to devastation.  In many instances, in order to restore an ecosystem, the affected area is abandoned to allow natural regeneration.  For an ecosystem to completely rebuild itself without aid, it could take up to 4000 years.  Changes in light, temperature, moisture, and wildlife are all factors in this process.

This relates to my work because I will be visually depicting a sort of regneration in the land through photo montage. These images will include elements of land degradation being overtaken by the natural rehabilitation process.

Todd Hido Interviews/Poem

Other Interview

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Poem--------------

Our world once a clean slate,

Currently the sight of unimaginable state.

The Earth as we know it has been taken for granted, 

Obstructed by development, less being replanted.

Frustrations are rising, no resolution is near, 

How do we solve this? The answer unclear.

Man knows his limitations, but searches for a source,

Suddenly, devastation taken over by inexplicable force.

Wind blows and rain falls as she reveals her face, 

Mother Nature begins healing Earth with her embrace.

Vegetation has sprouted with an abundance of green,

This is a possibility that no one has seen.

With remnants of civilization still in view,

The sight of our environment completely new.

We see the beginning of a regeneration,

Nature overcomes for successful rehabilitation.

Creations of man no longer a burden,

The planet becomes her secret garden.

Beate Gütschow

Biography

• Beate Gutschow was born in Mainz, Germany, 1970
• Studied at the School of the Fine Arts, Oslo- as well as the School of the Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany
• "She has appeared in one-person and group shows throughout Europe and recently had her first show in the US at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, and at Danziger Projects.
• Recieved the 2006 Ars Viva Prize, an Otto-Dix Prize of New Media, and a Villa Aurora fellowship.
• Lives and works in Berlin, represented by Danziger Projects in New York, Barbara Gross Galerie in Munich, and Produzentengalerie in Hamburg

Her Work

• The work "compels the viewer to think about humankind's celebration of nature and our ceaseless desire to control it."
• digitally produced photographs with high attention to detail, she uses an archive of images specifically to create seamless collages
• "The landscapes (series LS) are constructed to convey the "perfect" pastoral scene.  In stark contrast, the cityscapes (series S) present an eerily familiar vision of a nonexistant but clearly dystopian form of architecture.  Although the two series present seemingly tranquil settings that at first appear as binary opposites, in fact, they are equally fraught with issues of control, inauthenticity, and the pursuit of perfection."

Barbara Gross Gallery

Interview 

* no formal artist website available      

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Manipulation

Topic: Manipulation

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bibliography:

The Real and the True: The Digital Photography of Pedro Meyer, with essays by Louis Kaplan, Pedro Meyer, Alejandro Castellanos, and Douglas Cruickshank.

• Trust the Photographer, Not the Photogaph: Pedro Meyer in conversation with Ken Light, by Douglas Cruickshank, pp.126-142
• Las Vegas: Where Does Reality Reside? [December 1998, www.zonezero.com] pp.105-109
  

The infinite ways in which photographs can be altered is discussed between Ken Light and Pedro Meyer. These alterations are the factors which cause controversy over what really is a "real" or "true" photograph. Pedro Meyer speaks of his style of documentary photography with the use of the computer to manipulate his photographs in order to show the truth. The truth as he describes it, could be events which very well will occur in the near future, or may have happened at a different location seconds before the actual photo was taken.

For example, he takes two separate images: One of a tobacco field, and one photo of workers farming down the road. He combines the two images to create farmers in the tobacco field. This event may have not occurred exactly, but its safe to say that this scene could have, or already has occurred. Ken Light believes that any manipulation of a documentary photograph creates falsities, but Meyer's theory is that through manipulation he is making these images more accurate.

What I really found fascinating about the rading was a complete opposite idea that he discussed having to do with capturing "straight" images. These images are free of digital manipulation, but look like complete Photoshop fabrications, mostly being architecture found in Las Vegas. "It looks 'fake.' But what do you call an image in which the subject matter's apperance is fake to begin with? " This leads us to question, "Where does the deception lie, in the original subject or in the reproduction? Or in fact, does the deception reside in our interpretation of it all?"

In my recent work, I am using both "real" and "fake" elements to create a single image. By real I mean things like landscapes, and fake being representational models. I rely heavily on the use of Photoshop, and I feel like after reading the section on Las Vegas, I definitely would like to incorporate shooting photographs that already create this illusion type of aesthetic, and be less reliant on post production. I could do this by experimenting with different and more dramatic angles, as well as creating a lot of distortion within the images. I am drawn to the deception of these types of images, and the fine line between reality and actuality.