Gregory Crewdson and Carmelo Bongiorno

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn in 1962. He received his MFA from Yale where he is now a professor. His work is elaborately staged and require a large crew and all sorts of equipment one would expect to see on a movie set. He and his team scout locations in small towns, often returning to the same locations multiple times. He shoots almost exclusively in the fifteen minutes before the sun sets using large format film cameras. The degree of control he exerts over every aspect of his work is amazing. Lighting, subject matter, placement of subjects and composition is all fine tuned. He also merges multiple images of areas in a scene, each one shot sharp as a tack and scaled to fit the scene resulting in an unnatural depth of field that adds a very surreal effect to many of his images. Below is one of my favorite examples of this technique:

  The image shows his depth of field work and touches on an aspect of his life that also influences his work. His father is a psychoanalyst and he described his childhood as a bit tense with strict discipline, although not necessarily unpleasant. There is a strange and akward tension as these two, presumably mother and son, sit down to dinner. As is typical with his work, strange lighting, in this case visible through the kitchen window, emphasizes the exaggerated depth of field and adds to the surreal tension in the image.

This is a more straightforward image in terms of the layering for depth. The interesting thing is that this was actually constructed in the womans home, not on a set. Its almost like shes in a euphoric half dream induced by the alien abductors who are just outside. The sexual tension is high as she straddles a mound of obviously very fertile soil. This sort of symbolism and narrative is common in his work.

This boy had been following the crew around the town they were shooting in, and seemed very reluctant to part ways. There was mention of a bad home life he was trying to avoid and so Crewdson decided to use him in a shoot. Using his spotlight on a crane he lit this area and told the kid to think the most beautiful thing he could imagine. I thought that this was a very interesting way to make the point that what he is talking about are themes that are universal. Sexual tension, fear of the unknown, loneliness are the major themes he seems to be interested in. I think he does so in a highly unique and creative way while preserving the diginity of his subjects. It's not about individuality but the common experiences that make us who we are. I was fortunate to have seen Crewdson speak last year at the DMA.

Carmelo Bongiorno is an Italian photographer who I have admired for some time. He reminds me very much of his fellow countryman Mario Giacomelli in his use of a high contrast, sometimes tenebristic style.

This is a good example of his style. Abstract, high contrast work that is often manipulated by a very controlled panning style. He works almost exclusively in black and white. The image above is interesting in its symmetry, with the figure isolated in the white area being the anchor to the whole piece. Depth of field is usually very shallow in his work, and this is used to great effect in creating texture in some of his panned works.

This is a good example of the technique. The pan is not so dramatic as to cause streaking of the forms, nor so perfectly timed that they become sharp. By accentuating the movement and abstracting the forms slightly and employing the use of high contrast the images become interesting in terms of line, tonality and negative space as well as the content. Carmelo is very very consistent and seems to be able to reproduce this effect at will.

This is a commercial image shot for a magazine and I think it is interesting to see this side of his work. It sort of re enforces the cliche that you have to know the rules before you break them. Perhaps not true in every case, but his consistency and a very strong body of commercial work show Bongiorno is equally at home in either world, which I admire.

Richard Misrach and Robert Glenn Ketchum

Richard Misrach is an American photographer who was an early pioneer of large scale color photography. He was interested from the beginning of his career in the camera as a tool for exploring social issues. While attending Berkeley in the late 60's he completed his first project Telegraph 3AM, a project about the homeless around the city. Shooting the homeless has been done so often that it is considered almost cliche by many people. When thinking about the camera as a tool for exploring social issue I think this becomes one of the real challenges, simply because of the fact that these things have been done time and again. How do you make compelling images that avoid the cliche, capture the essence of the subject and is accessible to an audience? Many social problems are universal from culture to culture and have been covered extensively in the past. Drug addiction, war, poverty, domestic abuse, environmental concerns......the list goes on and on. How do we make people take interest in things they have been inundated with and possibly have grown slightly numb to? Having the technical skills to produce visually compelling imagery, the compositional skill to make well balanced images and the ability to use these elements to expand the narrative conceptually is what will set apart work of this kind in the future. That may be stating the obvious but with the digital age these things become more important than ever.
I think he really began to hit that balance between fine art, social commentary and concept with his environmental studies that often contrast rampant industrialism in a natural setting. His image of old cars, and abandoned structures in the Salton Sea is a good example of this sort of odd juxtaposition of visual elements.

Anytime I see images like this, I wonder how it looked a hundred years ago, and how it will look a hundred years from now. The passing of time makes the work more and more interesting, but I think the relevance is established as soon as the artist conceives the idea and starts producing quality work. I find landscape work mundane a lot of the time but this contrast of elements is very interesting.

Robert Glenn Ketchum
Ketchum is another of the photographers that was active when the fine art world began accepting color photography as a legitimate medium after years of black and white dominance. He started out shooting musicians in the late 60's including the Doors, Hendrix and Cream. As the sixties wound up he began giving attention to environmental issues, as so many did at the time. Unlike Misrach he seems to have been interested in showing that which was still somewhat pristine, that hadn't yet been lost. This is very much in keeping with the tradition of Ansel Adams who was becoming very popular at this time.
Looking at Ketchums work it becomes clear that he has tonality in mind as much as color, a hallmark of black and white training. Many of his best images have the high range of tonalities we expect from an Adams print, only in color. The consideration of how colors work together as well as how the tonalities will play off them makes the work more challenging.

This is a very cool toned and somewhat monochromatic image. The bright reflections on the water lead us through the image from fore to background, creating a nice movement through the piece. The dark areas of land on the right balance the mountains on the left and give an almost sinister feel, as if some grasping fingers were preparing to overrun the scene with darkness and oblivion. I think leaving the areas dark was probably a conscious decision as detail could have been brought out either in exposure, printing or a combination of the two. I was unsure about landscape photography when I first started really considering photography. I know there are challenges in terms of translating the majesty of an area to a photograph, it is not easy. Like the cliche that the Grand Canyon doesn't look so grand in many photographs. Still, I found it a bit mundane. When considered in the context of our rapidly changing world and the fact that these places may be altered beyond recognition in our lifetime , the work begins to take on new meaning. I think context and content are more important than ever when considering an audience and trying to give work more impact. We are inundated with all kinds of imagery in the digital age. In spite of this I think people will always respond to strong images that use that blend of the technical and conceptual as a device to draw the viewer in. When someone is working on this level, it becomes more than just pretty landscapes. It takes a large body of work to get this point across, and Ketchum certainly has that as he is represented in over 400 shows either alone or with groups. He has won many awards for his environmental work and is a good example of how the camera can be used to raise awareness about issues.

Annie Leibovitz and Cheri Nevers

Annie Leibovitz is famous for her work in the Rolling Stone. She took what is probably the most iconic photograph in the magazines history and that of course is the one of John and Yoko Lennon that was taken about 5 hours before he was killed. I could go on about her work with celebrity, especially musicians, and I am inspired by her concepts. I discovered another body of her work from Vogue in May,2008 that I thought would be more interesting to talk about.
It is a small sequence of stills telling the story of Romeo and Juliet. I want to say first that Leibovitz has well documented financial trouble, and I suspect this was largely motivated by financial need. The work is very well done but still a little cliche. I like the fact that the imagery was created from the written word with the use of imagination, selecting the most important elements of the story to create a sequence that is narrative and immediately recognizable.

In this shot it appears that the dominant figure is Juliet who has been hit with some sort of softbox to pop her dress and push her forward in the image. The masked figure in the far left of the frame has a fairly strong directional light coming from the left, perhaps a small slaved softbox. This also appears to be filling Romeo from the left. Romeo also seems to be getting good fill from on the front portion of his face from Juliets flash, which is also coming from the left. The one flaw I see in this small rendering is that the strong back lighting from the background is casting shadows back toward the camera. The five figures in the foreground are casting shadows away from the camera even though the shadow from the door frame indicates the back light is strong enough to cast forward shadows from backlighting these figures. That is the give away of flash, or at least a strong directional light. It is killing the shadows in the foreground.It may be that strong dark shadows leaving the frame in the foreground would draw the eye in the wrong direction, out of the scene.


The main reason I am interested in this work is because it is something I( and many others I'm sure) have already touched on. My first effort was a Jeckyl and Hyde sequence I did in the 90s that were very cinematic self portraits. I have since been studying the background stories that were used to create the lyrics to a number of songs and plan to create a large body of work based on the tales. I have one band I am using as a source whose writers were very literate especially in archaic folk tales many of which they re told in more modern settings.

In this image the lighting is much more stark and one directional. Juliet almost appears to be in a spotlight which again makes her the dominant figure in the scene. Even though she is in the background the dark robes of Friar Lawrence and friend make her stand out. I also like the great shape that the end of Juliets dress and the start of the chamber maids dress begins.

The image of Belushi was the one that fits this assignment I was most drawn to. There are some pretty simple elements that convey an powerful message here. The white line is an obvious reference to his drug addiction. As the eye follows the road off into the distance, the red lights serve as a sort of visual barrier, and warning I think.  Its interesting how the slightly greenish lights on the left play off the red ones suggesting a sort of stop and go tug of war that is very symbolic of the way a drug addict lives. I have no idea if she was thinking of these things, had scouted the location or was familiar with it, however it happened it really captures his life. Obviously he has been hit with flash from the right and it was a little higher than his head.A longish shutter speed to get the background exposed. This is one of my favorite flash effects, the late evening purple sky shot.

Chris Verene is someone who I would describe as Crewdson meets Arbus. The ongoing series of everyday life in his mid western hometown Verene is doing is very reminiscent of Crewdsons elaborately lit and staged shots, but are much simpler and not so cinematic. They still touch on how surreal the most uninteresting subject matter can be.

This image has the immediate give away of strong flash...flat features and harsh shadows. The exposure is good though and the people are interesting a yokel kind of way. The arrangement of balloons seems like a figure waving poms poms and cheering the newlywed couple on. The wrapping on the base of the balloons also mirror the dark shirts of the guys in the background, who don't seem nearly as cheerful in spite of the occasion. It goes to show that you can break the rules and still come out with a successful image, and with an interesting body of work.

His work as Cheri Nevers is amazing in its concept. To take something so negative and sleazy as the "photo clubs" he infiltrated and turn it into a positive and successful photo project is brilliant. The fact that he joins in as Cheri is also a way of allowing his subjects to relate to him in an entirely different way. I don't know that I cant think of another photographer that has tried so hard to identify with the subject matter. Not in this way anyhow, becoming one of the people he is trying to elevate must help him to really get inside their heads.

Garry Winogrand and Eugene Meatyard

Garry Winogrand was one of the first photographers I learned about in my studies. I have always been amazed when I hear the stories of how much he shot. He used a Leica with a wide angle lens and pre-focused before shooting. I think this is interesting and worth mentioning because it allowed him to concentrate on composition and shutter or aperture priority, although looking at his work most of it seems to have a lot of depth of field. No doubt the wide lens played into this but I would guess he was shooting at fairly small apertures most of the time.

This is one of Winogrands shots from the 60's. I assume he was pretty familiar with the area and probably had recognized places with good design elements and utilized them. This image almost seems too well composed to have been completely spontaneous. Not that I think he posed these people just that he was aware of this spot and knew how he could use the elements to make this photograph. I would be very suprised if somehow I was to learn this was the first time Winogrand had shot at this intersection. This gives insight as to why a photographer would find interesting things to shoot in places he has been to many many times. The place looks the same, for a while, but the things that happen there will always be different and remain interesting to someone who realizes this and is persistent.

The image below has always been one of my favorite shots by Gary. I included it to show that he had great vision in many situations. He did some work at the Stock Yards in Ft.Worth I also find interesting. His biggest influence on me has been to realize that the thing that happens is many times more important than the place, but if you can get the two to work together you have a chance of getting something special.

 

Eugene Meatyard I had never heard of until this assignment. My first thought was Crewdson meets Whitkin meets Rejlander. He did a wide variety of work: staged images of people wearing grotesque masks, the one of the children are especially odd with the over sized hands they sometimes wear. It's like hes making a statement on how the innocence of youth can morph into something truly monstrous in adulthood. I wonder what Hitler was like as a 5 year old. I have no clue if that was his intent but that is what went through my mind initially as I started looking at his work. 

Meatyard also did some work with multiple exposures that reminds me of some of Rejlanders early work. Nothing as elaborate as Two Ways of Life perhaps but still interesting. Reading a bit about him I found out he was a happily married man with children which makes the nature of his work a bit more interesting. You would expect the maladjusted loner type to be making such imagery but by most accounts I read he was a pretty happy guy. I have seen no mention as to how he died, only that he died in 1972 just before his 47th birthday. Below is one of his multiple exposures. He seems to have moved the tripod at some point during the exposures combining his panning/soft focus style with the multiple exposure, unless I am mistaken as to how he did this.

Above is one of Meatyards panned images. Really it is less of a traditional pan per se and more of a motion blur movement going up and to the right. This reminds me somewhat of a photographer I have become interested in named Carmelo Bongiorno. I have been experimenting with this sort of panning and it is interesting to see.  This guy is going into my list of photographers to study. Again he seems to enjoy the theme of youth and transitions. It makes me wonder again about his early death and if his work is somehow foreshadowing  it.

The image above really drew me in as soon as I saw it. She is moving her arm so its obvious she is alive, not in exactly a comfortable position though. The leg in the dark area of the fireplace appears to be in pretty sharp focus and that separates it from the other part of the out of focus body in a surreal way. Almost as if she is stepping through a portal to some new reality, instead of being killed as I first thought. That room she is in has not been lived in for some time, so he found this location and staged the shot. I wonder if he was familiar with the place and envisioned the shot later or if it was spontaneous. It is the same observation I had about Winogrand use of familiar places in a somewhat controlled way. Meatyards is comepletely staged whereas Winogrand let the action happen in the place, but I would guess they were familiar with these place and saw imagery in their minds. Pure speculation but it is something to be aware of.

William Eggleston and Stephen Shore

 "fearless naturalism—a belief that by looking patiently at what others ignore or look away from, interesting things can be seen." This is a phrase writer Robert Woodward used to describe a short film by Eggleston called "Stranded in Canton."
Looking at Egglestons photographs is much the same. I'm not sure what others read into such imagery but after years of education and looking at work I have finally learned to dig a little deeper when looking at this sort of imagery. Usually there are elements that work off each other in some pretty clever ways. Sometimes it is more about the color, Eggleston showed the first color exhibit in the history of the MOMA. This was at a time when black and white was still king, and I think his work was perfect for getting that barrier down.

Going beyond his eye for color he also is in the tradition of photographers that find a way to comment on some aspect of our society with images that may seem rather mundane to many.

A sidewalk, tricycle, lawn, house and two cars. It makes me think what these things mean to a child as opposed to what it means for an adult. Very much like the way children view a holiday such as Christmas and the way adults see it. Magical for most kids and stressful for most of the rest of us!


Stephen Shore has been described as " an interpreter of the American vernacular." He shows charcteristics that relate to the period in an often banal way. He is another artist that often requires the viewer to dig, yet the work is ambiguous enough to allow them to read into it what they wish. Much like Eggleston.

He was also another early pioneer of color photography as art. Pioneer may be a stretch, but certainly the time was right. I see this and think Freidlander shoots color. The subject matter is still relevant and fairly familiar, so what does the color add that pushes it? After seeing and shooting so much black and white I think it was exciting for these guys to have a new means of expression. The psychological impact of color has been employed by artists for literally tens of thousands of years.  Stephen Shore as well as Eggleston borrowed from photorealist painters and I am sure the were consciously aware of the way color affected the imagery.

Joel Meyerowitz and John Pfahl

"In the pantheon of greats there is Robert Frank and there is Atget.", Joel Meyerowitz.
This quote shows us where Meyerowitzs passion lies, and his greatest strength. He is a street photographer from the tradition of people like Atget, Frank and Winogrand.
Undoubtedly, the work that has been seen the most is the 9/11 series. Those were images that needed to be made and he was in the right place at the right time to make them. I'm sure it was very emotional for him. I try to imagine what would have been going through my mind if I had been the one shooting those images. Street work can be challenging. I have dabbled in it over the years and have grown to enjoy it. People like Joel remind me that even though things may seem to get redundant at times, we are really there for those special moments that need to be captured. As many cameras as there are in the world today we need a reason to to keep going. Meyerowitz's work certainly provides motivation.

John Pfahl is best known for his altered landscapes work. There was a book published in the mid 70's but the theme seems to be an ongoing one for him. He sets up many different items in landscapes that in most cases work with the landscape he places them in.
I am left wondering about the context of this work. Is it purely a matter of design for him? What does it mean when he places cables on a beach that seems to anchor a distant outcrop in the ocean, leading the eye using one point perspective. I think it begins to touch on something a bit deeper, but does so in a clever way using minimal elements. Perhaps he is alluding to humanities reliance on technology to sustain itself in a world of awesome natural power. The rock is so massive, with this huge ocean surrounding it, and we are supposed to believe the thin cables are going to keep these forces in check? Seems to require a bit of suspension of disbelief. This of course is the power of his work, the use of minimal elements to provoke deep thinking.

Andreas Gursky and Muhammed Muheisen

Andreas Gursky is drawn to large man made structures, large gatherings of people and so on. I have never really been a huge fan of architectural photography in a traditional sense. I am not saying the technical mastery required to pull off good architectural work isn't admirable, or that the documentation of certain places/structures is not important. Gursky however really pushes beyond blandness and digs for the human aspect. His best work makes the thoughtful viewer wonder what must be going on in these places, as the occupants live their separate lives. Or in the case of the photo shown above the people are placed in a very sterile and industrial setting, the cold lifeless steel playing off the pink fleshy color of the suits in a wonderful way. Looking at this work has really given me a better appreciation of what can be done with imagery that many would find mundane.

Muhammed Muheisen is shooting in Israel and the occupied areas. Living in a war zone presents such a fantastic opportunity and this guy is certainly taking full advantage. I consider the danger he is in, but my perspective is that of an outsider. I am assuming Muhammed was born and raised here and is accustomed to the violence. What strikes me is the variety of imagery. He is familiar with the area and the people and captures practically every aspect of life there. I have always admired people who aren't afraid to do what it takes to get the shot, Charles Moore has always been a hero of mine. This guy is now on that list.

Assignment 1

Blog Assignment 1

The paint chip was interesting for me. I just got this new camera and I am learning how to use it. Metering was spotty as I am using my old film lenses. Using the Sunny 16 rule and a borrowed light meter has solved this problem. There is no auto focus, no image stabilization and I have to use the aperture ring. It really is like shooting film again in that regard, especially when things get a bit faster paced. This in turn causes me to be less complacent. I love it.
I feel like I had some interesting shots, but nothing to write home to mom about. I feel that the shot that was truest to my style is the one of Val at his mixer. I have always liked shallow depth of field, and this old 50 MM prime has really beautiful bokeh, as much as I dislike that term. The Ford was also a pretty strong image, although looking back the wasp was distracting as was mentioned in critique.
I was most inspired by Haley's work not for the mild shock value but more because  it reminded me to not abandon my style for the class, but rather to adapt my style to the class, hopefully creating something new and interesting.

Posted by Jeff Bradley at 1:57 PM 0 comments