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.