Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. He attended the North Toronto Collegiate Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he obtained a degree in visual communication at the University of Essen, Germany.
Wolf began his career in 1994 as a photojournalist, spending eight years working in Hong Kong for the German magazine Stern.
Wolf states that a decline in the magazine industry led to photojournalism assignments becoming “stupid and boring.” In 2003 he decided to work only on fine-art photography projects.
Wolf’s current works are spread between Hong Kong and Paris mainly and his work focuses on the structure and repetitiveness of daily life in big cities. He has has many notable projects such as ‘100×100’, ‘Bastard Chairs’ and ‘Tokyo Compression’.
A GIF (Graphical Interchange Format) is an image format invented in 1987 by Steve Wilhite, a US software writer who was looking for a way to animate images in the smallest file size. In short, GIFs are a series of images or soundless video that will loop continuously and doesn’t require anyone to press play. This repetition makes GIFs feel immediately familiar, like the beat of a song.
I then wanted to go one step further and develop my own GIF use the software Adobe Photoshop. Before doing this I would have to photograph one specific objects and variations of the objects shape and size, the object I decided on were water bottles. I chose bottles because of their common use in the everyday world and how easily they can be obtained, I then gathered together the classes bottles and proceeded to photograph them in the same position as the first, giving off the impression of the bottle changing as the frames moved. For one of the animations I wanted to add shapes moving around the screen to see whether it would effect the overall outcome and create a more aesthetic result. When I came out with the final result I made sure to put each frame at 0.2 seconds so that the animation seemed more fluid, these were my results:
Once I had made the GIFs I found that they related to the topic of variation and similarities through their constant transitioning between different styles of bottle. By doing this in future posts it would allow me to experiment with variations of some of the things photographed such as reflections and rock formations but taken in a topographic way where all subjects are taken in the centre of the image so that their transitions in the animation are smoother.
“I photograph this woman, Margrét, in the water. This optic matrix was very important, as water is a true key phenomenon in Iceland. It was a quite easy relation. I did not say anything about what she had to do. She simply got into the water and I began to take photographs. In sunlight or under a stormy, cloudy sky – the water surrounded her, was on her and her hair was sometimes wet and sometimes tousled by the wind (…) You do not look at this woman in the traditional manner of nude photography. You look at this woman, who is also looking at you (…) Through her relation to the weather, the light or the wind, she takes on these different personalities.”
Horn’s photographic series ‘ You are the Weather’ show a young woman emerging from a geothermal pool in Iceland. Each photo taken milliseconds apart show minute and subtle differences in character almost indistinguishable from image to image.
The series beautifully demonstrate that due to small differences in circumstance and weather, we are not the same from moment to moment, mutated by environments and by others.
Since the late 1970s, Roni Horn has produced drawings, photography, sculpture and installations, as well as works involving words and writing. Horn’s work, which has an emotional and psychological dimension, can be seen as an engagement with post-Minimalist forms as containers for affective perception. She talks about her work being ‘moody’ and ‘site-dependent’. Her attention to the specific qualities of certain materials spans all mediums, from the textured pigment drawings, to the use solid gold or cast glass, and rubber. Nature and humankind, the weather, literature and poetry are central to her art.
‘Big enough to get lost on. Small enough to find yourself. That’s how to use the island. I come here to place myself in the world. Iceland is a verb and its action is to center.’-Roni Horn on Iceland
Image Analysis
‘These photographs were taken in July and August of 1994. For a six-week period I traveled with Margrét throughout Iceland. Using the naturally heated waters that are commonplace there, we went from pool to pool.’
Horn uses the natural lighting of Iceland to light up the model.
The image appears saturated as the red colour in the woman’s face stands out, however this may just be due to the cold weather of Iceland. The images also feels cold due to the blue background and the blue undertones in the skin.
The images are Close-Up as they are focusing on the differences in the woman’s expressions. A Shallow Depth Of Field is gained by using a larger aperture. Amongst the series, the composition changes to have the woman facing slightly to the right, or in this case, to the left. The use of negative space around her, presenting what is around her, helps to emphasize how her expressions change with the weather.
The series reflects aspects of Minimalism, which Roni is apart of. The series puts a big focus on the relationship between all images rather than as individual images. By offering many perspectives, Horn opens the possibility for infinite mutability and denies the viewer the satisfaction of “knowing” a subject through film.
The American conceptual artist John Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He has influenced several generations of younger artists, and since the 1960s, has consistently renegotiated his own working practice – from his earlier text paintings to reworkings of old film stills. His work is primarily regarded as an extended humorous meditation on the nature of art itself; he is notorious for cremating his own paintings, commissioning others to make his artwork, and admonishing himself to make no more boring art.
In 1970 he began working in printmaking, film, video, installation, sculpture and photography and abandoned painting altogether, makng a diverse range of media . He has created thousands of works that demonstrate the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of the work of art.
John Baldessari Hitch-hiker (Splattered Blue) 1995
“You know, when you’re sitting in a dentist office or doctor’s office, and you look in a magazine and, and you go, ‘What was that?’ I would like people to have that feeling, you know, that, ‘Wait, what did I just see?’ ” Baldessari says with a laugh. Like with the colored dots pasted onto photographs — they’re actually price stickers. Over the years he’d been collecting black-and-white news images — pictures of people at various civic occasions.
“I just got so tired of looking at these faces,” Baldessari says — faces of mayors shaking hands with firefighters, faces of local officials at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
He invariably works with pre-existing images, often arranging them in such a way as to suggest a narrative, yet the various means he employs to distort them – from cropping the images, to collaging them with unrelated images, to blocking out faces and objects with colored dots – all force us to ask how and what the image is communicating
John Baldessari, Fissures and Ribbons,2004
Using two found photographs, one color, one black-and-white, and eradicating the faces in both photos with his trademark dots and color silhouette techniques, Baldessari presents two protagonists, one implicitly heroic, the other not so much. Wearing a military uniform, arms crossed, sitting upright, the hero figure is carried on the shoulders of a crowd of celebratory men, draped in streamers and balloons. The scale of the image, together with the grandeur of his pose, invoke history painting, as well as movies about World War II. The second section is marked with orange painted lines, echoing the orange and blue painted streamers that festoon the hero’s celebration, yet here the painted lines represent lines of fracture—fissures—which show how this world is coming apart, as if under the strain of its own contradictions.
“If you can’t see their face, you’re going to look at how they’re dressed, maybe their stance, their surroundings,” he explains.
Defining of his practice was an embrace of humour, and a tendency towards producing art that, while it may appeal to more cultivated sensibility, is also accessible. For example, in his video I Am Making Art 1971 we see him repeatedly reciting the title as he raises one arm after the other consecutively.
John Baldessari Prima Face (Third State): From Aloof to Vapid 2005
A crucial development in Baldessari’s work was the introduction of text to his paintings. It marked, for him, the realization that images and texts behave in similar ways – both using codes to convey their messages.
PRIMA FACIE (THIRD STATE): FROM AGHAST TO UPSET, 2005
Much of Baldessari’s work from the 1980s participates in a dialogue with a number of his contemporaries who were exploring questions of sexual identity and representation through photography and text. Baldessari’s interest in making the gaze explicit, in a number of works from this period, such as Man and Woman with Bridge (1984) and Spaces Between (Close to Remote) (1986), belongs to this historical moment. During this period, Baldessari also produced a series of works that explicitly deal with issues of masculinity and representation. Arguably, he shifts away from the category of Conceptual art to take up some of the political and aesthetic concerns of a younger generation
John Baldessari: Talking Art (talking about his career)
David Prentice was an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 he was one of the four founder members of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery. His work is hard-edged, abstract, close to the Op art of a period when young artists and architects were full of ideas for new beginnings.
For many years, his subject was the Malvern Hills, which he knew intimately from countless walks with sketchpad in hand. The forms of the hills were a constant, the weather constantly changing. He painted with the concern for structure and surface that had characterized his earlier work. The watercolors, often done on the spot, were more specific but the paintings done in the studio were as carefully constructed as ever. In time his subjects expanded to include dramatic cityscapes of London, especially of the river, and the landscape of Skye, or rather its approaches.
Images from David Prentices galleryHiroshi Sugimoto Image from Seascapes Project
I believe there are direct correlations between the work of David Prentice and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The key similarity is the attention to lighting and textures as appose to detail and displaying a landscape how we would usually see it. Instead, Prentice uses large brush strokes giving a faded/blury look to the landscape with emphasis on accurate depiction of light. Sugimoto focuses on using slow shutter speeds to bring about this faded look like Prentice does. Despite Sugimoto’s images being in black and white I believe there is a main focus on how lighting/weather can transform the similar landscape that he focuses on. Another key similarity in their works is the elimination of any man made features creating a difficulty in identification of a place.
For this shoot I wanted to explore the use of natural forms in abstract and unusual ways using a monochrome filter to do so. Here I would walk around on specific area photographing the subjects in a highly contrasted light, which once edited would differ visually to what I originally saw. The photographer who I wanted to use as a reference of photography for this was Aaron Siskind, someone who specialised in abstract photography within streets as a means of creating a political view. What I especially looked at in his works were how he used only monochrome filter to create this images, choosing to take an angle upon the object that completely warps it compared to its original state. Here are some examples of his works:
From here I wanted to go on to produce a mind-map, by doing this it would allow me to focus on the things I intend to photograph when on the shoot, preventing me from capturing subjects that would have no relation to what I was doing at all. Not only would this make me more efficient, but also make the results of my shoot overall more effective. Here are some of my ideas for the future shoot:
Once I had finished with my ideas I decided it was time to move onto the shoot itself. For the shoot I would be exploring the North of the Island as I found that was the area of Jersey that had the highest ratio of agriculture and natural landscapes. Using the mind-map as my reference I decided footpaths would be my main go to. Here are the results of the shoot:
Once I had finished the shoot I then decided to whittle all the images down to a selection of only ten. By doing this not only would it make it easier for me to decide on an image that best reflects the overall idea of the shoot, but also the one that both technically and visually is best. Here are my choices for the ten best images:
After I had selected the ten images I found most effective I then decided to once again whittle the selection down to now only fives images. In doing this it would allow me to analyse each image in more depth than the rest, looking at why the image was chosen, the technical aspects of it and its overall relation to the entire topic, whilst making it easier to pick the final image. Here are my choices:
I selected this image because I loved the contrast between the wall and the surrounding ivy which grows upon it. For me by photographing a slither or concrete contrasted by the ivy it produces an abstract effect where two different environments merge into one, warping the images as you make your way to the centre of it. Composition wise I found the use of the darker ivy as a border to be effective as it slowly joins with the lighter shades of the brick, making use of any negative space which could have been there whilst producing an aesthetically pleasing result. I found that the use of a higher contrast was particularly effective here as it really highlights the hidden feature within the moss and bricks, creating more depth whilst also stopping parts of the piece from becoming too eye-sore for viewers.
For this image the reason I chose it was because of the great use of a depth of field. By only focusing on one part of the mesh wire I found that it produced an abstract effect that messes with the mind regarding where the focus come into play. The detail of the actual focused wire that separates itself from the rest of the image for me creates a huge aesthetic feel, as the fluid transition from focus to out of focus really compliments each other, especially through the use of shades such as greys and blacks. Regarding the composition I really like how it is not centred in the middle, but rather the top left, this really gives a sense of depth within the piece as the background becomes blurred and the then is up to the viewer to interpret what could be surrounding the fence.
What I loved about this image was how the varying shades of the horse create an aesthetic abstract effect where each shades merges into the next. I largely chose this image because of how the composition portrays the side of the horse, with the whites coming down from the left and the rest of the piece being surrounded by black hairs which provide the photography with a natural border. What sold the image for me was how the use of a high contrast really brings out the definition within the side of the horse and the form of the body, this in a way isolate the actual horse from its side as it takes the viewer a few moments to actually figure out what the image is of, with only hints giving it away.
For this image I was drawn towards once again the depth of field within the landscape. By focusing on only one layer of the bushes it creates a feel or vastness within the photo as it highlights the sharpened ends of the branches whilst softening the rest of the area. This contrast for me really brings a sense of aestheticism over the whole image, as by using only a monochrome filter it leaves the image devoid of any distractions to rather allow us to look at the formation of the natural subjects within. The composition of the focused areas is also a major reason why I selected it, this is because of how there is a larger area of focused bush on the left which grows smaller as you progress, stopping the blurred backdrop from becoming more overpowering than it actually is.
Finally I selected this image because I loved how the overlapping twigs presented themselves as a sort of abstract mess, with there being no actual order to how or where they are coming from. I also really liked how the shadows between the twigs were really contrasted opposed to the lighter shades of the wood which consisted mostly of lighter areas. This was complimented through once again a use of depth of field which blurs some of the layers of twigs out, by doing this for me I found it to be more effective due to how its stopped any eye-sore from occurring for the viewers, prevented us from not being sure where to draw our eyes to.
Once I had analysed and selected the five images I thought were most effective regarding their technical, visual and relevance to the overall topic I then proceeded to chose my best photo:
FINAL IMAGE:
The reason I chose this as my final image was because of the composition, contrast and definition that was present inside this photo. What drew this to me the most was how the piece was perfectly focused with some use of depth of field, whilst using a variety of different shades present on the horses side to create an abstract effect that mimics the natural environment around it. In relation to the entire topic of variation and similarity I found that this image reflected well the differing aspects regarding the textures and patterns which can be found within the different landscapes of Jersey, where the North could consist of more natural ones like this, whereas the South could maybe be more concrete and urban. As well as this the image for me presents me with a new perspective regarding how textures and patterns can also be found in living things found in these particular landscapes rather than just the way you personally view the landscape as well.
Eadweard Muybridge was important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection.
Producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He was a bridge between still photography and recorded movement.
Leland Stanford hired him to prove that during a particular moment when a horse is trotting, all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. His first efforts were unsuccessful because his camera lacked a fast shutter. After awhile he used a special shutter he developed that gave an exposure of 2/1000 of a second. This arrangement gave satisfactory results. By 1878 he was photographing horses in motion using batteries of cameras, their shutters triggered by the horse’s movement over trip wires. The results were a technical and conceptual breakthrough. In their published form, they laid out the span of time captured by the cameras as a sequence of stop-motion images unlike anything that had been seen before.
Seeking a means of sharing his groundbreaking work, he invented the zoopraxiscope, a method of projecting animated versions of his photographs as short moving sequences, which anticipated subsequent developments in the history of cinema.
This work reminds me of the artist Andy Warhol’s early work where he uses repetition as a device to alter our perception of a different type of society portrait, creating different variations of the same image.
In the early 1960s, he began a series of portraits of stars. He used photographic silkscreen printing to create his celebrity portraits. This meant he could directly reproduce images already in the public eye, such as publicity shots or tabloid photographs
To respond to this work I could also photograph something moving with a fast shutter speed to create a series of images of the same object. Similarly, I could take the same photo and create different variations in colour and appearance and display them together like Andy Warhol.
Bernhard “Bernd” Becher and Hilla Becher were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. For forty years, they photographed disappearing industrial architecture around Europe and North America. To create these works, the artists traveled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures.
Bernd Becher’s first experiments in photography were in 1957 after studying painting and lithography , at which point he was already interested in functional buildings of industry and started documenting those that he had seen around his hometown of Siegen. Hilla studied photography in Germany and worked as an aerial photographer briefly. The couple met there that year, began collaborating, and married in 1961.
Water Towers 1931-2007,
Gas Tanks 1931-2007
Their black-and-white images served as visual case studies or typologies for industrial structures including water towers, coal bunkers, gas tanks and factories. Their work had a documentary style as their images were always taken in black and white. Their photographs never included people.
They exhibited their work in sets or typologies, grouping of several photographs of the same type of structure. The are well known for presenting their images in grid formations.
They overlooked beauty and the relationship between form and function. Both subjects addressed the effect of industry on economy and the environment. “I became aware that these buildings [blast furnaces] were a kind of nomadic architecture which had a comparatively short life—maybe 100 years, often less, then they disappear,” the artists said of their work. “It seemed important to keep them in some way and photography seemed the most appropriate way to do that.”
Blast Furnaces Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher 1931-2007
Blast Furnaces 1969−95 comprises twenty-four gelatin silver print photographs taken by Bernd and Hilla Becher over a period of almost thirty years and printed in 2013 under the supervision of Hilla Becher. The prints are arranged in three rows of eight. The photographs were taken across a number of years andin different locations across Europe and the United States.
In addition to blast furnaces, the Bechers created a number of similar ‘typologies’ of industrial architecture, including Gas Tanks 1965–2009 (Tate P81237), Water Towers 1972–2009 (Tate P81238) and Winding Towers (Britain) 1966–97 (Tate P81239). Each of these typologies gathers work from across a number of decades, reflecting the consistency with which the Bechers worked from the start of their collaboration in 1959.
To achieve the ‘perfect chain’ described by the Bechers, each photograph was produced following exactly the same setup, using a large-format camera positioned to capture the form from one of three distinct perspectives (as a detail, in the context of its surroundings, or in its entirety) so as to take up the whole frame of the picture. The flat, neutral quality of the prints was achieved by working in shadowless lighting conditions. Working within these parameters allowed the artists to make consistent groups of ‘types’ irrespective of when the images were taken. In the 1950s and early 1960s the Bechers’ unmediated, dispassionate approach and taxonomical mode of presentation stood in stark contrast to the pictorialist aesthetic dominant in photography at the time, instead drawing on the attitudes of the interwar avant-garde movement Neue Sachlichkeit(New Objectivity) and its photographic practitioners such as August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch and Karl Blossfeldt.
In 1989 they described their attitude to photography as follows:
The particular strength of photography lies in an absolutely realistic recording of the world. This sets it apart from all other image media; photography can do this better than anything else. And the more precisely it depicts objects the stronger its magical effect on the observer. (Quoted in Lange 2007, p.189.)
I chose Bernd and Hilla Becher as research as I think their work links directly with the project variation and similarity. By creating different variations of the same objects they are highlighting the structures similarities as well as their differences. Also by displaying their work in a grid format allows for the audience to identify the differences more clearly which is an aspect I will take inspiration from. I also like how the same composition is used for each of the variations which is also something i will take inspiration from as I think it creates structured appearance. To respond to their work i plan to take photos of the same objects in different variations and display them together so they can be compared to one another. Although, I won’t be photographing industrial structures in my images but natural objects as variation in nature is a direction I would like to experiment with in my project.
Work Of Jim Kazan – “My images are digitally manipulated composites built from photographs I find online. The technique I use could be considered “hyper-collage”. I cobble together pieces from photos I find interesting and feed them into Photoshop. Through a palimpsest-like layering process of adding and subtracting, I gradually blend the various parts together. I am basically manipulating and assembling a disparate array of multiple photographic elements (sometimes more than 50) to produce a single homogenized image. I do not use a camera at any stage in the process. ” SOURCE Work Of Lewis Bush – ” Metropole is an attempt to emulate my experience of feeling increasingly alienated from the city I grew up in. I’ve spent most of my life in London and when I was first becoming interested in photography I would spend hours wandering through the city, photographing it, in the process also becoming much better acquainted with its present and its past. Today I see much of what I love about the city being swept away by a huge glut of demolition and construction taking place under the guises of ‘development’ and ‘regeneration’, but which in my eyes are actually more a form of degeneration which is stripping away the essential character of London and forcing Londoners out of the city. ” SOURCEWork of Merve Ozaslan – ” My work shows the relationship between nature and humanity. I seek vintage photographs and combine them to natural ones, it explains how we are all part of the same environment. There is something magical that takes place in the present or the past, reinterpreting like if it were something new. Visual collages of stories that are narrated in the mind of the spectator. This shows us that photographs, like each of us, are part of a natural universe, taking on the theme of urbanization and mechanization of human beings, where colors and emotions are sometimes paralyzed from the clichés of city life. ” SOURCEWork of Christopher Scott Richey – Creating unusual contrasts and juxtapositions, his work blends a variety of decades. Each image is a mélange of materials: black-and-white photography, printed wallpaper, scraps of letters, vintage stamps, excerpts from textbooks, and picture postcards outlined with rough brushstrokes of neon paint. These pieces create a visually stimulating analysis of time and memory merging on the page. Unique titles, often taken from one aspect of the image, give us a glimpse into the focus of each piece, sending the viewer on a visual game of hide-and-seek. SOURCE Work Of Michael Wolf – “I’ve lived in Hong Kong for 22 years, but I still feel like an outsider. Its back alleys have become my natural habitat as a photographer. I can spend 12 hours a day wandering the narrow walkways behind busy restaurants, housing estates and shops. They can be daunting – filled with broken furniture, electronic castoffs, cockroaches and garbage bags full of food that rots and smells. I’m still surprised by the strange things I come across – and I love that. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. “ SOURCE
