Cleon Peterson

     Cleon Peterson's work is important to me for a handful of reasons. The graphic nature of the line work and symbols as well as the color palette employed are eye catching and dynamic and are similar to a lot of the other sects of art making that interest and inspire me outside of fine art and photography. The socio-political violence and barbarity are very clear along with representing an unsympathetic/classless society. These particular depictions resonate with me strongly due to my personal beliefs about the world, survival, and the current legal and political environment. I think it's important that people are making this work and not taking liberty and free speech for granted even in simple, seemingly obvious ways like this.
Cleon Peterson

Whitney Cole - Artist (Emma Kisiel)

Although sometimes it sucks when you realize someone has already done something you've thought of shooting (and you thought it was original), I am really pleased to see these images from Emma Kisiel. Her series, At Rest, photographs Kisiel's attempts at providing a "proper" burial for animals who have been struck on the highway. For me, Kisiel has combined my love of humans and nature, rituals, and the cycles of life into a very simple and almost precious series. The way she has treated the bodies in the photographs by memorializing them balances out the morbid nature of some of the exposed insides of the poor little critters.

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was a self portrait artist (1958-1981) who worked in black and white photography. Her self portraits really speak to me in the way they emote mostly very dark and sad emotions. To me it feels like a very personal view of her mind, which is what I'm trying to do in my work as well.

Rachel Stern

Rachel Stern has a wide variety of studio works, but I was most drawn to the still lives that she creates. They have a very surreal and eye-catching quality that I'm interested in incorporating into my own work. The color pallets in these still lives are always poppy and crazy yet harmonious.

Jessica Berry - Artist

Lauren Crow

Let me entertain you:

"I have always had an interest in the business of sex workers. 
There is evidence of sex workers, or at least sexual services, being traded for goods dating back to Egyptian times. It has always been a taboo subject and profession that to this day, admitting you are an in the industry often times will generally cause shame to you/your family. 
I decided to put myself into the shoes, so to speak, of these workers. I dressed up as a different identity each time and posed on anyone's couch who would let me AND for the first time ever, i let my process of shooting myself be watched. 
For a trade of using their couch, they got a show." 

When I found this work I responded more to her process then the images with letting others watch as she poses. I'm doing something similar, but letting them control which poses I make and what I do as well.

Nikki Samson- Artist Post (Eric McNatt)

Eric McNatt
Welcome to Brownwood, TX

McNatt has a great way of capturing personality in the portraits that he takes, with these images, a sad clown who is truly sad, a star football player who seems less then content, and an elder woman whose stuff will not fill an empty hole. McNatts uses great lighting and location, through his portraiture, to give us a hit at Brownwood, TX.

Artist

Jeff Wall


I've known and admired Jeff Wall's work for a while now, but it wasn't until I seen a youtube video this week of him speaking about an exhibition he had put on where he described how he seen images as singular and not in relation to other images. This has started to make me think about how or even if I should try and sequence the images I am starting to collect for concepts.  The sort of confusing nature of the project may actually benefit from having images far apart and separate from each other..

However, this is acting in contrast to another influence I have been affected by recently that is in relation to the harmony blog post from a couple of months ago, I got an email reply from Bryan Schutmaat and his response has really opened up my train of thought in terms of sequence.

Moving forward I plan on using this conflict of thought to explore the best way to present my project keeping it's context and aesthetic value in mind and hopefully this will produce my first ever sequenced series.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVv6GSpPZ_o

Miles Coolidge

Miles Coolidge

These images are all from his series "safetyville" which includes photographs of a miniature town that was built at one-third scale. His work reminds me of the direction I am heading with my final project. He focuses on suburban and industrial landscapes and keeps his compositions simple relying on the color and lines to create an interesting image. I think the simplicity of his photos gives the viewer room to create a story of their own. The surrealist quality of them is something that i'm trying to create in my own project. 

Amber-Lynn Taber - Artist

Lois Conner

American West

Lois Conner is recognized for her silver platinum prints she make in her 7" x 17" camera. She's been recognized for some work she did in Beijing but I was drawn her her series from the American West. 

Her use of repetition in form and horizon line, not to mention the unique crop of the 7" x 17" ratio makes these seemingly unrelated area flow as a vision of the modern day American West.

Thilde Jensen

Thilde Jensen - The Canaries

Maybe this is somewhat cheating since I'm writing a paper on her. But she was a photographer I chose off a list other of others, her subject matter intriguing me the most. Her work, The Canaries, deals with people who suffer from MCS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Jensen herself says she suffers from this ailment as well. What this condition entails is a hyper sensitivity to chemicals that are ordinarily used in every day life such as fabric cleaners, synthetics, cell phone signals, cleaning products, perfumes, etc.. Sufferers of this condition get physically ill from being around these chemicals and many have moved to isolated areas. Jensen claims to have gone to therapy to help with her symptoms, so that she need not use a respirator or mask when going out into the city. This raises questions about hypochondria and the illness just being in one's head, but when looking at Jensen's photos, one wonders why anyone would willingly choose to live the way these people do unless they had a serious issue with this condition. It makes one aware of the chemicals that we consume on a daily basis and if they're really as safe as we think they are. The way Jensen photographs her subjects gives one a sense of anxiety and isolation when looking at them, the subjects being separated from the normal world and being surrounded by foiled rooms, respirators and masks.

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman

For a while now, I've only ever seen a few of her images, specifically the flour ones. Stanley brought her up in class the other day and spent a while discussing a particular image, but it intrigued me enough to go look her up and get a better idea of her work. What fascinated me the most about her was her brief lifetime, having taken her own life due to depression from not being able to gain attention for her work, despite her images being strong. Black and white photographs with soft focus and long exposure motion blur, her images evoke a sort of ghostliness to them, almost surreal, her death seeming to beautifully haunt these images now. It's amazing to me that these are images she had made when she was just a student. The amount of introspection and emotion in these photographs is very compelling to me, making me want to dissect the images to try and get personal associations and meaning from them.

Artist Post - Andie Younkin

Jeff Wall

I love the way that Jeff Wall presents his work on glowing surfaces. His work is very narrative and has so many details in it that it allows the viewer to look at his pieces for long periods of time without ever getting bored.

Nikki Samson-Artist Post (Eric Ogden)

Eric Ogden
A Half-Remembered Season

Ogdens has great use of his lighting skills. The photographs always have that extra kick when it comes to the lighting, like the two portraits above.

Richard Rinaldi (See America by Bus)

I am familiar with Richard Rinaldi's work Touching Strangers, but I have just recently come across his actual website and have found that I'm really taken by his series See America by Bus. Rinaldi seems to have a way to connect the viewer with a subject, wether it be through deep and emotional content or simply a beautiful composition. The images themselves are really captivating to me, as well as the sheer variety of his series. His work is an inspiration for how I would like to connect with or pose my subjects.

Ross Trimmer

Ross Trimmer is a local craftsmen dedicated to predominantly sign painting/brush lettering and tattooing. I take inspiration from everything around me but tattoos and lettering are two things outside of my discipline that continuously inspire with their visual compositions, cultural significance, and value as objects. Ross works in the American Traditional style of tattooing and I'm fascinating with the history of tattooing and its general nature of permanence, identification/identity, and its influence on other artistic sects. Text in imagery really never struck me as great and to honest, I dislike it strongly but text and lettering in almost any form interests me and allows me to function creatively outside of image making. I think it's incredibly important for my process and motivation to be able to perform creatively through other outlets to keep my photography motivation strong but not burnt out.

Artist- Amber-Lynn Taber

Christopher Herwig 

Soviet Bus Stops

Herwig's work Soviet Bus Stops explores all the varying designs of bus stops made in Soviet Union. These designs are so diverse despite the political landscape of the time they were made in.

This typography of bus stops shows the individualism of the architects creating the locations.

Herwig also has an already fulfilled Kickstarter to print a book of this series which can be found here.

Artist -Maggie

Frank Breuer

In his series titles, Poles, Frank is able to focus on a simple object while maintaining interesting compositions and subject matter. This reminds me of the series that i'm working on now, where i'm attempting to concentrate on route 95, but letting the work develop into something more specific along the way.

http://www.frankbreuer.com/projects-1.html

Artist

Hiroshi Sugimoto

So, it's after talking about this guy quite a bit in class I thought it was about time that I made a quick post about him. His wide-range of conceptual angles and experimental nature is something that I really respect. I personally hope to explore a more documentary route with my own work but his practice is something I really admire. He was the very first photographer I researched in my undergrad and there is something pretty satisfying about appropriating or drawing inspiration from him now..

Andie Younkin - Artist Post

Matt Eich

Matt Eich is a photographer out of Norfolk, VA. His work really inspires me with my current work that I'm doing in class. He photographed a town and the culture behind it, similar to what I am doing with my boyfriend and his life in the Navy.

James Mollison

James Mollison - The Disciples

James Mollison would travel through Europe and the US to different music concerts between 2004-2007. He travelled with a mobile photo studio and would sit at these venues where concerts were taking place and ask people for their photos. He then compiled the images of the people so that the same people from the same concert were standing next to each other.