That's twice this month you've slipped deadly nightshade into my tea

In photography, we were assigned a new project for the upcoming weeks. Basically, our last project dealt with shooting a role of film, but it didn’t matter what of because we were learning how to print and develop film so the content or subject matter was superfluous. This time we were told to experiment with sequencing which is basically a set of photographs that are meant to go together, display time or are meant to be read in a logical order from first to last. At first I had no idea what she was talking about, but she showed us a bunch of examples from famous artists and from people who were in this class before. I want my project to be really kickass. I am one of only two fine arts majors in the class and I want to defend our territory or show the non-majors up. Anyway, so since then I’ve been thinking about themes I could use to sequence. I was thinking about doing something with the idea of fire and ice and make up a narrative to go along with that. Then my other ideas are from religious things, which is odd for me but I find them interesting and think they might be cool to explore. The first is to do a sequence about the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Vanity, Avarice, Lust and Sloth. I am leaning toward doing this idea because it might be fun to link these things to people or situations I can take a picture of here at school. My other idea was to base it off of the triptych “Garden of Earthly Delights” by Bosch. This is one of my favorite paintings. Perhaps I’m morbid, but there seems to be a mystical quality to it. It’s sequential in that it walks you through the first part which stages of creation of Adam and Eve to the second panel when people run amuck and crazy on earth, then it ends with the third panel in this violent interpretation of hell and judgment. I am inclined to disregard this idea though because not many people have even seen this painting and even if they had it would be hard to make the connection. I don’t want to stand up there and explain myself and then fail the class cuz it’s too far out. My favorite example she showed us was the photography of Nicholas Nixon called The Brown Sisters He took a photo of the 4 girls once a year, every year from 1975 to 1997. When you look at them in order it is incredibly to see how the women have aged, the fashion has changed, and their faces have transformed. I got an email today about this contest for art depicting something to do with Lewis Carroll’s life and stories for a tribute show they're doing at the library so I think I might enter and do some kind of graphic arts representation.

Photography is starting to mean more to me than it used to. I never really thought about it as an art form, but recently I’ve been looking closer at photography. Duane Michals says, “I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” He said, “My portraits…have revealed nothing profound about the subjects or captured anything. They were almost all strangers to me. How could I say anything about them when I never knew them? What I did was share a moment with them, and now I share that moment with you, no more and no less.” Looking at all these photographs and hearing the artist’s words about them made me wonder about the artist’s relation to all this. Photography seems a very good outlet for those who seek to be an active observer of the world and society. Maybe that’s why I love this form of communication. The more reading I do about art, the more I wonder why I am drawn to do this sort of thing for a living. I’ve often felt not engaged in the things that go on around me, like I’m peeking through a keyhole onto things that happen to other people. An onlooker, but rarely an active participant. At first this bothered me because I don’t want to be the one who always sees what happens to other people, but the more I thought about it, it feels kind of cool to be one in the group of those who can observe and then communicate it in an engaging way. Maybe when you’re caught up in the middle of the action, you lack the sight to notice what’s going on. Charles Baudelaire spoke of the modern painter in the 19th century and said that one should see “the beauty of circumstance and the sketch of manners” and says about the true artist “the crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world.” I couldn’t describe any better myself.


P.S. Much thanks to kris for helping me figure out how to put in links