Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Colors, finally!







...summer has its own thick light, and the air is saturated with it.  it comes downs in harsh angles in the late afternoon.  it is the kind of light that made me dizzy in little league baseball games. it is the kind of light that reflects off of a swimming pool and hurts your eyes.
i've been thinking a bit about the immediate sensation of the world to a kid.  there's this philosopher, hume, that talks about how we build up our ideas of things from the simplest sensations, like tastes or smells.  an apple is first red, and then sweet, and then tart, and it gets more and more complex.  you start to pull these sensations into comparisons with other similar things (how do you describe a new taste except by comparing it to some other, more basic flavor?) so anyways, there's this immediacy with the world that kids have, where everything is still new, and still surprising, and they soak it all in.   i've heard that our sense of smell is the sense most strongly linked to the brain, and you probably know how certain smells can echo way back into our early years.  
i spent some time in chattanooga as a kid, and it's weird, but i get that echo feeling, like i've been here before.  it's fascinating, though, when i show people my photos, and they know exactly where they were taken.  i randomly showed my art teacher photos from the past posting, and it turns out her first studio was in the same corridor.  and one of the dead factories (2 postings back) was where my dad worked before i was born.  i had no idea!
stories are wrapped up in places, and i'm happy to be finding both.  


  

Saturday, May 9, 2009

a few more...


i like shooting in between buildings.  it feels compositional to me- the different shades of black and white, the geometric dimensions, the sense of position within the space, and the lack of direct light makes you really notice light when you see it.  in a sense, photography is about finding light.  
i am copying what i have seen before.  for example, John Cohen.
the black triangle at the top left is important, i think, in situating the viewer.  it puts the building into some perspective, and also balances its angles and colors.  


i'm not sure how successful this shot is... it looks better close up.  i do like how the ladder is in focus and straight, but the background is off-kilter and off balance.  

i've been looking at how giacometti creates space.  the frame is really important- it informs everything inside.  without it, you would be looking all over the piece without knowing where to start.  he puts you into the space by cutting out the foot, and makes you want to look in from the right at the angle of his knee to his waist.  i think.  it is sort of starting to make sense to me.