For my response to the Civil war Stereographs I will be using this photo as reference and I will be using these images for the edits.
To create these stereographs I used an application called XstereO Player, it allows you to use red and blue, or green and magenta. I used photos that I took on a snow day a while back. The image shapes you can get are a standard portrait, or a wider landscape.
This photo series documents John Baldessari’s repeated attempts at throwing balls in the air, hoping they form a straight line. Baldessari invented and pursued this seemingly meaningless challenge. These photographs demonstrate Baldessari’s interest in exploring the structure and limits of games and language.
My response
Baldwin is best known for his chaotic and dramatic multi-media paintings, which show both beautiful and jarring imagery all compiled into one. Baldwin received his BA in Communication Media and Illustration from Kent Institute of Art and Design in Maidstone. He graduated with honors in 1995. As well as his best known iconic paintings, Baldwin has also produced other work such as book covers, album covers and ceramic work. I first became familiar with the work of Dan Baldwin when I saw his work exhibited in the Jersey CCA galleries. My initial thoughts about his work were that the chaotic nature caused me as a viewer to be able to notice different elements and aspects each time I looked at one of his pieces, which for me was a great characteristic of the work as it made it very interesting to view. This chaotic nature of the work is executed as I mentioned before using a multi-media process in which he combines screen-printing techniques, household paint, found objects, and spray paint, and other creative materials.
Below are some examples of the work which I have spoken about…
Analysis Of Dan Baldwin’s work…
The theme of variation and similarity can be seen throughout many types of work one of which is an experiment by Californian photographer John Baldessari. This experiment was influenced by Baldessari after he did it in 1973. His aim was to get all three balls to line up mid air and take a picture as they do so. it was really challenging to throw them up and get them lined up and take the picture at that exact moment.
My Attempt:
The American Civil war started 158 years ago, and back in 2011, it was its 150th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, The Atlantic made a special issue featuring photographs from the civil war itself.
These photos were taken by war correspondents to bring the ugly visuals of the frontlines to those at home, in a realistic and modern way of viewing them.
This new way of viewing and photography process was called stereo photography, also known as stereography. This was one of the first uses of a type of three dimension photography that was accessible to the public, providing they had access to a stereoscopic viewer, which is what created the 3D effect that has been kept alive and modernised through the years.
Also as these photos were taken over 150 years ago, they were taken with plate cameras so you can see the lens edges and exposure lines on the sides.
Analysis:
Her work combines factors of identity, race, culture, history and memory. I think it is evident throughout all of these artists work, there is a defined clarity to their relation to that of similarity and variation. However it is divided into the narratives of peoples, places and an emotional responses to the title. I started off with looking at ‘Simpson’ She uses her work in order to repeat an understanding of peoples lack of attention, and their uncomfortablity within learning and seeing new aspects of people. She claims to create a dynamic which makes people uncomfortable, as it is within the open relationships of artworks and viewers, that they grow and become more susceptible to understanding a narrative, and learning from the piece of art themselves. I Believe her work is work which becomes more interesting once you know and have learnt the understanding to why she has done what she has done. To my mind, her work is slightly repetitive with a lack of change, I would rather she expresses a narrative thought ,rather than a repeated image, however, this was her aim when creating this art form. Her work not only has her own influence of her black identity, and narrative of peoples lack of attention. But it too links to connections of fine art being multitude of creative mannerism, clearly influencing her work.
What is a GIF?
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.
Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The impressionist artists were not trying to paint a realistic picture, but an impression of what the person, object or landscape looked like to them. This how the name of the movement came about – impressionists. They wanted to capture the movement and life of what they saw and show it to us as if it is happening before our eyes.
The sudden change in the look of these paintings was brought about by a change in methodology: applying paint in small touches of pure colour rather than broader strokes, and painting outdoors scenes to catch a particular fleeting impression of colour and light. The result was to emphasise the artist’s perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself.
Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. Usually when you imagine a scene you view this the same all the time, however it should differ as time goes on because the lighting is always changing. Impressionists paint their pictures with a lot of color and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant with the absence of detail but with bold colors. Some of the greatest impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
Monet was interested in subtle changes in the atmosphere which I have taken a particular interest in shown through my previous shoots.
Impressionist covers much of the art of this time, there were smaller movements within it, such as Pointillism, Art Nouveau and Fauvism. Pointilism was developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance.
Before impressionism, landscapes in art were often imaginary and painted perfectly from a studio. The impressionists changed all that. They painted outdoors and on the spot. As they were outside, they looked at how light and colour changed the scenes and painted what lay in front of them. The technique of impressionism allowed the artists to quickly paint what was in front of them resulting in what some people argued to be ‘messy’. Lots of people didn’t like impressionism as they thought it was a bit messy and that the paintings looked unfinished. They thought art should be neater and that subjects in art should be more important than just everyday scenes. I argue against this point and believe that it is an interesting technique that allows an appreciation for the depiction of light which is often overlooked when looking at an art piece.
Carrying on from my previous shoot, this shoot is dedicated to creating an intense and moody atmosphere. I kept a close eye on the weather and picked my time to undergo with this shoot carefully. As explained in my previous post, I am focusing on the white house location with a variety of weather conditions to portray how the weather can transform a familiar landscape. The end result will have my images in a typology which will allow an easy comparison between the different weather and lighting.
Contact Sheet
Edited Images
I was really happy with the way in which this shoot has turned out. The sky formed perfectly for the moody feel I was going for. I shot the majority of these photos with a very fast shutter speed to present us with a darker and more intense image. It worked well that my focal point was white as it really stood out against the dark background. These images will work extremely well along side the photos at sunset from my previous shoot helping me to demonstrate how lighting changes a landscape.