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      

Incomplete

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry. Your blog is currently not up to date and work has been recorded as incomplete.

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.

Thomas Demand

Artist of the Week: Thomas Demand

Biography:

• Born in 1964 in Munich, Germany
  
• Attended the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Munchen from 1987-1989
  
• Staatliche Kunstakademie Dusseldorf from 1989-1992
  
• Goldsmiths College in London from 1993-1994
  
• "Originally trained as a sculptor, he developed a photographic practice involving the construction of life-size models of architectural interiors out of paper and cardboard.  The range of architectural types and subject matter represented by these models- many of which are based on mass-media imagery- has gradually expanded over time." -Guggenheim Museum
  

About his Work:

• Taken away from reality, he uses cardboard and paper models to create "tension between the fabricated and the real."
• Starts with a pre-existing photograph of a real location, from mass media.
• His images represent large scale mass media photographs, but actually show life-sized models.
• "Demand knowingly uses the traditional role of photography as a faithful transcriber of the world to throw his subject's artificiality into doubt.  This confounding of references is such that the very idea of an original recedes completely."- Carnegie International

Gallery Representing Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand Website