current events post

I found this week's assignment challenging, but intriguing.  I decided to read an article that I had sitting open on my computer for a while, but hadn't gotten the time to sit down and read yet.  It was about the two deaths of young people at the first day of the New York City EDM (electronic dance music) festival Electric Zoo.  It struck my attention because electronic music and the festivals they draw have been the epicenters of social arguments in my life between me and my former friends.  As a [non-EDM] festival-goer, I am interested in the culture that surrounds festivals.  Wherever you go, whoever you ask, people will say that music festivals are unlike anything else.  They create their own world for a weekend where people can bond over the particular culmination of musicians invited to perform at the festival.  It's a holiday, a home away from home.  In fact, a lot of festival-goers go to many festivals.  People truly do feel at home here.  It's paradise--a place one can be passionate about their love for music, and all they have to do is buy a ticket and find a way there.  But this article talks about a third component--quite possibly the most important component to EDM festivals: the drug MDMA.  The article is written by a former drug dealer/promoter/artist booker who decides he wants to leave the music business.  He exposes the awful truth behind the EDM scene.  Basically, he reveals that these particular kinds of festivals don't operate correctly without MDMA, better known by its street name, Molly.  Drug dealers pay off law enforcement and concert promoters in order to get their drug into the festival and sell it to the young people who won't go to these festivals if the drug isn't available.

So this leads to an inherent problem.  Lots of kids want drugs, so supply becomes inflated and shabby. Like Walmart for drugs. Dealers capitalize on the high demand at the expense of quality.  The issue is that kids don't know this and are overdoing drugs they don't even know they're putting into their body. They're applying what they know about MDMA to this Molly crap they are finding at festivals from strangers who will tell them anything to get their money.  Festivals--their home away from home.  We trust our families, right?  This is a different kind of "family".

As you can see, I'm relatively passionate about this. Reading this article opened my eyes to the industry of EDM, and the drugs that infiltrate them. The drugs that FUEL them.  It's without a doubt just as important as the music itself.  Drugs kill young people frequently at electronic music events.  It's a huge problem and it really only slapped people in the face when an entire multi-million dollar music festival (including drug income) had to be cancelled because of two deaths on the first night.  It got me thinking about our reliance on drugs of all kinds, whether they are recreational or pharmaceutical.  How people "don't give a fuck" and people who do give a fuck look up to those people who don't give a fuck. It's one thing to not give a fuck about your homework or your dirty laundry or what people think of you, but it's another thing to not give a fuck about your LIFE/wellbeing/mental and physical health.  It's absurd! People are blind and allow themselves to be. Especially impressionable young people. Especially 14 year old girls listening to Miley Cyrus on the radio talking about doing molly and coke at dance parties and thinking it's acceptable because of that.
I played with some vitamins I have and made some photos of my roommate with them. I liked what windows this project opened for me. i don't know if i'll like the picture or if i'll print them, but it was a great exercise. i unfortunately don't have my contact sheets on me, they are drying currently, so i don't even have a reference point. But i'll see tomorrow!

post 2 - response to "Why People Photograph"

Robert Adams' "Why People Photograph"

I found the excerpts from this piece inspirational and identifiable.  I found myself highlighting, underlining, and annotating a fair few lines that resonated with me.  For example, on page 15, he writes, "They've [photographers] been given what they did not earn, and as is the way with unexpected gifts, the surprise carries an emotional blessing." Sometimes I feel weird opposing senses of guilt and pride when I make a photograph I sort of just stumbled into. So many photographers plan their photographs, which I find amazing. But I fail to recognize the unique pleasure and candidness that arises out of taking a camera with you where you don't know what kinds of photo's you'll make.  This event instills in me an emotion much like the one Adams describes.  I feel as though I have been thrust upon with an undeserving gift, but feel an immense gratitude that it was presented upon me and that I have a tool to make it become a photograph.  On a shallow level, this idea can be quite stark and uninspiring, but on a much deeper level, this idea is piercing and quite overwhelming when in the midst of its experience.

I took this photo on Randall's Island and printed it last autumn. I'm quite pleased with it. One of my favorite photos I've ever taken and it was not planned (with the exception of the composition). The man just biked into my shot and thus the opportunity was perfect.

"Smart is okay, but lucky is better," Adams elaborates on page 16.  When a photographer shoots to satisfy an intrinsic, immediate desire within themselves, it keeps them alive. In my experience anyway, this is why I shoot.  I love capturing moments that deserve to exist longer than the moment in which they are born.  Beautiful moments that can provoke inspiration, beauty, emotion, or memories are moments I seek to capture, wait for, create, or manipulate. I love luck. I think luck is the essence of free will and spontaneity. It's the opposite of mathematics--reliance, dependability, 'absolutes', finite ideas. It's creativity, it's bridging gaps between circumstances that don't occur together.  It's humor. I love when Adams talks about humor, too. He quotes Mark Twain saying that "analyzing humor was like dissecting a frog--both die in the process." Humor is a life that moves forward like time. We can't really explain its complexity, and it's one of the most powerful things known to us.

My bassist, playing in his underwear.

I don't even want to claim that this photograph is funny, I was merely photographing a funny moment. Someone might smile when they look at this, because it's sort of a ridiculous pairing of dramatic lighting and composition and the visible situation.

I love the way Adams talks about money and dogs.  I can't help but connect these two sections.  Dogs do what they love to do because they love it. The reward is intrinsic to the activity, much like artists and photographers in particular. We do what we do because if we were left to our own devices, this is what we would do. Money, however is a strange third-party incentive. If I told a dog I was going to pay it to be a dog, and if it had a consciousness, what would it do? For some reason, with humans, it's nearly like a double-negative.  The more conflicting incentive, the less passion there is behind doing these things we once loved.  There's a sense of identity loss in work for work instead of work for play.  A dog has no problem chasing a ball around all day until it's passed out, but a dog wouldn't be a dog anymore if it needed an incentive to do this awesome, fun thing.

I'm not really sure if my comparison is making sense anymore, I'm just writing and seeing where this goes. The last paragraph of the Dogs section reads: "Art depends on there being affection in its creator's life, and an artist must find ways, like everyone else, to nourish it. A photographer down on his or her knees picturing a dog has found pleasure enough to make many things possible."

I love photographing animals, and I love seeing the way humans interact with animals. Animals are wonderful symbols of affection in the way they show it to humans. In this picture below, my friends are all staring at dozens of koi fish that gathered around them at the short of a pond at Pepsico.

This is another one of my favorite photos of my own.  I think that when humans are in the presence of each other, we can experience the same sort of affection we love about animals. Comfort, acceptance, love, and compatibility create an open sense of connectedness and freedom. Capturing that on film can create nostalgia in anyone.

Why do I take pictures?
I make pictures to remember, to forget, to make moments last longer than they intrinsically lasted.  I make photos to make things seem like things they aren't--using the camera to deceive and abstract the world around us. This interests me just as much as making photos that depict true, familiar reality--candids and secretly taken photos. What's wonderful about photos, however, is that they are never familiar.  As much as we can relate to what we see, we have never seen any novel photo before, so the situation is new, the people are new, the trees are new, the scene is new, and the composition is new.  I make photos to help me and people that see my photos construct and break down our realities.

Blog Post I: Lee Friedlander

Out of all the photographers we looked at in class, I was most intrigued by Lee Friedlander.  His photographs resonated with me in a way the others didn't. While I could appreciate and get inspiration from everyone's artwork, I was most inspired and captivated by Friedlander's work. It reminds me of my own. I feel that when I'm looking through a viewfinder, composition is one of the most important things to me. Aesthetics, balance, framing, and context interest me more than subject matter or technical mastery.  Lee Friedlander seems to have an emphasis on those former aspects while also bring the latter aspects into manifestation.

Lee's photographs look candid and planned simultaneously. I personally love successful candid and street photographs--ones that evoke a sense of nostalgia or ones that almost appear posed.  I also love photos that do this in a different way--photos that are staged in such a way that make them seem to be candid. Friedlander's pictures encompass this style.  They are aesthetically pleasing as well as emotionally identifiable.

I love how Lee plays with shapes and lines. Both these photographs above are just a couple of examples that show how he does this so beautifully.  In the top one, the shapes are defined by contrasts between light and dark tones. Almost all of the lines are soft--the curve of the bedpost, the frame of the television, and even the darkness creeping onto the wall on the left side of the picture makes that edge much softer. This is contrasted by the vertical lines of the bedpost. They are defined by white highlights and contrasting shadows. The deep blacks and the bright whites put the more subtle tonal ranges into context. My eye is not drawn to stark tones. My eye is drawn to the beautiful textured bedspread in the foreground made up of soft greys and the television screen comprised of similar grey tones.  This isn't my favorite photograph of Friedlander's, but I can find so many great things to say about it.
As I was flipping through Lee's photographs, the second one caught me. Its asymmetry and line flow is really interesting. Starting from the left, we see the contrasting shadow of the guardrail cast in a diagonal toward the corner of the photograph, then the nearly perpendicular line of the actual guardrail protruding forward from what appears to be a point in space on the horizon (the horizon being another line). Then we have the vertical posts of the guardrail which sort of mirror the vertical telephone poles and their telephone wires, one parallel to the horizon, the other pushing out from the same point the guardrail seems to be pushing out from. Then we have the rectangular billboard, and the lady figure who lays upon it.  The curvature of her body nearly matches the curvature of the end of the guardrail--the tip closest to the camera. And then the road appears to be continuing out of the edge of the guardrail, in the same angle, from the same point on the horizon. Even the plants on the left side of the road accentuate that same line, getting bigger as they are closer to the camera, creating an illusion of depth and a sense of fluidity.

Lee Friedlander creates a mystical world not only with candid-looking photos, but also by experimenting with light and shadow.  His photos beg you to wonder what is going on, what happened before and after, and what time of day it is. They are mysterious enough to make you ask questions, but practical enough to allow you to form your own answers, creating a sense of comfort and nostalgia when viewing his photos. I am truly inspired! I want to go out and make photos like these, concentrating on light and shadows, people, and intriguing moments.

 

So many shapes and tones. It's wondrous and yet familiar.

A beautiful candid--I'm not sure if it actually was, but it gives that impression.  We're at a party, people are mingling and happy, and falling in love with each other. This photo is perfect--but almost lucky. I'd love to know Lee's process, or the background of this photo and the people in it.

Double exposure? I love how the clouds are manipulated to be this mid-dark grey, and the tree is a silhouette. It's eerie and dream-like. The addition of the koi fish over it adds to that dream-like quality.