Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood is an English filmmaker, photographer and conceptual artist from Croydon, England. Through highly charged scenarios, her photographs and films examine our social and psychological differences. She explores human relationships and emotions, focusing on moments of fragmentation or tension. In her 2002 Crying Men series, she asked a hand full of celebrities to perform and cry while she photographed them. Through this process, we see a high-profiled subject showing heroic crying where stoic restraint has broken down. The viewer is presented with seemingly private, intimate moments of sorrowful emotion. However, with the knowledge that they are actors, it is left unconfirmed whether what the viewer is experiencing is an insight into their soul or the beautiful execution and capture of another acting role.

One of my favorite video series by Taylor-Wood is her 2001 Still Life series in which she references the passage of time by filming rotting fruit. It's particularly interesting that she chose to use a still life to represent this acceptance of mortality since still life's are very classical with symbolism. Still Life is part of the classical genre that contains symbols of change or death as a reminder of their inevitability. Its focus was upon confronting the vanity of worldly things through often subtle signs of elapsing time and decay, and her work steps right into that direction. We see the beauty of the fruit full of color and attractive to look at, but then it decomposes itself and we are left with nothing but a grey mass.

Photographing crying celebrities and filming decaying fruit really examines the split between being and appearance. Taylor-Wood does a great job placing her subjects in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is conflict. Her art deeply evokes the complexity of human emotions in everyday life. Overall, the images that she creates suggest the neurosis and psychosis of contemporary relationships. Her point is that there is a private, largely unseen side to every human emotion and relationship, and this is what represents us.

Mark Robert Halper

One commercial photographer that caught my eye is Mark Robert Halper from Los Angeles, California. He has a wide range of photography including still lifes, lifestyle, portrait, architecture, celebrity, and fine art. His celebrity human subjects have included Nobel Prize winners, artists, and athletes. What I find most intriguing about his celebrity subjects is the way his subjects are photographed. You do not find a common photograph, but rather a photograph that captures emotion and a certain angle of light that brings life to the picture. The picture below is taken from his series called Sunlight and Water, which showcases the intimate portraits of winemakers in Santa Barbara County winemakers and celebrates the romance of wine country, the passion of the vintners, and the artistry of great wine.

The subjects have a range of emotions depicting sadness, anxiety, and happiness. My favorite part of his photographs is the way he plays on with the lighting. The light encompasses the subject's face in a way that draws the eye directly to it making the faces light up and become the center of attention. In many of his photographs, the background is blurred or distorted while the subject remains sharp -- another quality that makes the subject the dominant image. In some photographs, the hair and shoulders are blurred, so the main focus of the subject instantly becomes their facial features. Some of his subjects are blurred completely, suggesting that the subject is in motion. The picture below is a picture of Lisa Rina, and the one feature that is most recognizable is her smile. Every other feature of her is blurred, so your eye is instantly drawn to the whiteness of her teeth.

Besides his own work, Halper has expanded his success and has taught photography at Santa Fe Workshops. He has studied with photographers such as Keith Carter, Andrew Eccles, Paul Elledge, Paul Aresu, Frank Ockenfels 3, Rodney Smith, Nick Merrick, Steve Hellerstein, Jay Maisel, Sean Kernan, and Dan Winters. He has also been an instructor for The Julia Dean Photo Workshops, the UCLA Extension, and has taught workshops through his own studio.
Halper has been a speaker for professional photography and design association events, including The Professional Photographers of Canada, The Professional Photographers of Orange County, and The Northwest Arkansas Art Directors Club.

Maggie Taylor: The Imagination

Maggie Taylor is one artist that has always intrigued me. I first became familiar with her works from her recognition in Gainesville, Florida, which is just a couple of hours away from me. The way in which she reaches into the imagination and creates a photograph so visually interesting makes people truly question just how far the realm of dreams can take you.



The way she takes objects and incorporates them as a part of another object or person is very interesting to me. I like to look at all of her photography and try to figure out the meaning behind them. They all seem to serve a certain theme, all categorized in a dreamlike atmosphere. A lot of her works are humorous, while some seem to have a darker more mysterious meaning. I also love how her works relate to the dreamed up whimsical world of Alice's adventures from Lewis Carrol.


This is what I find so fascinating about her works -- the imagination. The question of how far can the imagination take you is clearly defined in her works. Taylor has said that she likes to take pictures of everyday scenes and objects and then incorporate them into an idea -- an idea that is mystical and dreamlike. Her photography can really show someone how photographs and ideas can be squeezed through the imagination and be produced into something so surreal and obscure.

Jim Zuckerman

However original this may be, Jim Zuckerman is one of my favorite photographers. He ranges from a variety of different themes, visiting as many as 83 countries. He has lead many international photo excursions to exotic locations such as Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, Burma, Ethiopia, Indonesia, India Eastern Europe, Peru and Turkey. It was there that he captured the essence of cultures. In his collection ‘People and Cultures’, he has a group of works called vanishing cultures. Through his photography, he is addressing the beauty of cultures that is often overlooked by many. He uses bright, florescent colors to highlight cultures and to bring out a sense of unity in the photograph.



Colors seem to have been my recent inspiration in photography. I love how a single color in a photograph can direct your eye right to an object, while creating a new meaning to the picture. For this week’s blog I chose Jim Zuckerman because of his use of colors. Vivid, rich and florescent colors are brought together in his photographs to produce unity and balance.



Not only does he capture the exoticness of people, he captures the exoticness of the ‘Natural World’, as he calls his collection. Much of his works are used for commercial purposes. I enjoy looking at the rareness and stillness in his photography. His combination of colors is what makes the photograph pop. Zuckerman left his medical studies to pursue his passion for photography in 1970. He now enjoys teaching creative photography to many universities and private schools. Many of his works can also be seen in various magazines.

For more information and look through his collections, visit his website:

www.jimzuckerman.com

Kara Walker

Kara Walker is an American born artist from Stockton, California. I chose her from my presentation, and I'm using this blog to elaborate more about her. Her work primarily deals with race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity. She is known for her life-size paper-cut silhouettes.She moved to a suburb in Atlanta when she was 13 years old after her father, abstract painter Larry Walker, got a job at Georgia State University. It was there that she began to notice an identity crisis within the South. She lived in Stone Mountain, which is the cited birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. She then became obsessed with colonial history and her signature silhouettes evoking themes of slavery and brutality.

Her large scale installations feature nightmarish images of ravaged, distorted or severed bodies that play with the themes of antebellum folklore and racial stereotypes. Her work is both visually beautiful and controversial to her spectators.

While most prominent critics have praised her—Roberta Smith of the Times has said her work conveys the way that "slavery visited degradation equally on all concerned and that its tragic legacy poisons life for all Americans". While others disagree with her work, noted sculptor Betye Saar condemned Walker's work as "revolting and negative… betrayal to the slaves." Cultural conservatives have said that her work produces the kind of politically correct "victim art" that liberal art aficionados attack.
In 2006, she exhibited her work "After the Deluge," which examined the impact of Hurricane Katrina. It also juxtaposes a variety of objects from the Met Museum's collection with her own work in order to explore "the transformative effect and psychological meaning of the sea" and the role assigned to black figures represented in art. Since the Hurricane affected many of the black lower class families, she continued to use her black silhouettes to create 'blackness'.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Alfred Eisenstaedt is a German American photographer and photojournalist who is famous for his candid photographs. I chose to talk about Eisenstaedt because candid photographs are fun to look at and involve real people and real photographs. Also, I think he teaches the importance of having your photos be candid. Candid photographs are mostly taken in a split second shot. So the angle or the lighting may never be quite right. Eisenstaedt shows a great example of skills in his candid.

On this page is his most famous photograph of an American Sailor on V-d day. As the story goes, this sailor was running through the streets of New York with excitement, kissing every girl he saw. Eisenstaedt was aware and looking around so that he was ready to get this perfect shot seen here. Part of the fun and excitement in this photography is capturing your human subjects off guard so that your pictures have more natural emotion or expression. Subjects are not aware of your existence and not paying attention.

Eisenstaedt took photos of famous Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In a way, he was the Albert Einstein of Photography because he was of Jewish descent, lived in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1935 because of Hitler’s oppression where he became very successful.

The thing I admire most about Eisenstaedt's work is that he keeps everything simple. In fact, right before he died in 1995, he said his motto for everything was to "keep it simple." His love for the use of a camera, and the way he was able to capture pure expressions on people's faces turns the photograph into a high simplistic value. The photographer, skilled professional that he was, "always behaved like an amateur with little equipment." There is always the most spontaneous moments to enjoy as a perennial visual delight in his photographs.

What is meant by substantive?

For something to be substantive, it is independent in existence or function. It is not subordinate. It is essential, considerable and substantial. It is not imaginary, but rather actual and real. If information is substantive, it is of or relating to the essence or substance. So, if something is substantial, it has verifiable existence.
Substantive can be used to describe the realms of photography. Photography is real, concrete, and tangible. A single photography is substantive in the means that it can never be imaginary. For example, street photography is a great way to show substantive photography. It can define a moment or chronicle an environment or scene.
Charlene Weisler's photography reflects the ever-changing New York City's urban landscape. Her work is designed to capture the moment, but leaving the viewer with a taste of something totally new. Her works have been labeled "substantive photography" in the means that she relates to the essence of her subjects --the impermanence of New York City's street art. She concentrates on the evolving nature of layered graffiti. I have included a link to her website.

http://www.charleneweisler.com/portd.html