Experimenting with multi-frame

For this assignment, we created multi-frame photos by combining two different compositions to make one and give the photo new meaning. I played around with angles and cropping. We used literal and abstract photos trying to make each photo flow into the next. I found that lines for example cracks or book cases help the transition. The hardest part was making all the different photos a cohesive unit with the same mood. Making them all the same color also helped achieve the similar look.

Diptych

Triptych

Multi-frames

Name Poem

For this assignment we made a poem from the letters of our name and portrayed it through photos. At first I was thinking of obvious adjectives such as Silly for S, but I realized I wanted something more abstract. I chose words that describe what I hope to achieve in my life. I also wanted the photos to not be so obvious and have the viewer think more about how it correlates. I think creating the actual poem was the hardest part. It was equally hard deciding what photos to take to represent each word because there are so many treasures waiting to be taken! The hand was my favorite because of the lighting that created such stark shadows.

Simple

Travel

Epiphany

Peace

Hope

SF Moma Review

Cartier-Bresson

All of his photographs have similar elements for example:

-Black and white

-Extreme angles from high to low and low to high. He doesn't show all of the body, in many of his photos its either the head or the body. The body looks contorted in some.

-There was little use of shadow.

-Relationships between people, there are rare moments of comradeship. For example, a photo of a Student Demonstration in Paris in 1968, which showed all the students are holding each other's hands and it represents unity.

-He creates perspective and depth. In Allee du Prado, Marseille depth is created through many many trees eventually getting smaller and smaller. There's something foreboding waiting ahead.

It is obvious from the exhibit that he is a photojournalist and took street photos. I felt like I was getting a history lesson, but shown through photographs because he captures all backgrounds. I saw photos from Africa to China to India and Mexico. Each culture had a different, unique element added in the photo. In China there was traditional dresses and calligraphy in the background. Religion was expressed in India of monk type people raising their hands to the sky dressed with skirt-type bottoms and no shirt. In Europe there was more architecture shots. In New York, you saw a complete 180. There were people dressed in sunglasses and hats, they had all these accessories and people who are reading. Even in photos of Boston in 1947, intellectuals were the models. People sitting looking poised on a stiff chair with spectacles.

None of his photographs were posed or over thought. He captured people in their most natural habitat so there was no chance to pose. The people were following their everyday routine. Nothing is staged and everything is spontaneous, in the moment. The more unsuspecting his models are of him taking the photo, the better because they have no time to react. He never wasted time waiting for the perfect photo because once he got that one photo it became a masterpiece.

The faces of his subjects are not attractive, they're not the "smile cheese" expressions. In fact, rarely was true happiness shown. I liked the photo in New York taken in 1946 of a large crowd. Even though you cannot see some of the faces and some of them are blurred, you can understand the pain. He shows the feelings subtly.

He references water or the slums frequently in places like Mexico in the 1930's or La Villette, Paris. Many of his photographs showed poverty and the poor aspects in life, nothing was glamorous about them. There were many photos of the market where trading was happening. Immigrants seemed to be a common theme. They were hard working and there was little time for breaks. Each elderly person had the same expression of despair which I thought was interesting.

One of his most famous photographs is probably the man jumping over the puddle taken in 1932, what a rare opportunity. What luck! The shape of the fence as strong, iron bars with rust is one of the best parts of the photo. It is everything around the model that counts. Like the ripples in the water or the dirt on the hanging clothes.

Exposed

The video: This was an entirely different exhibit, all of the photos were in color and there was an antique look. There were many examples faces in the mirror and even though the mirror showed the same face reflected back, it was almost like you could see something deeper in the mirror. Like the mirror showed the truth. There was also the similar theme of cigarettes and leather clothing. It was interesting because nobody looked directly into the camera, the eyes were set on something else, but they looked drained or filled with anguish.

Photos: There were photos of people who had deformed bodies with severed parts. There was also no eye contact. Pieces of the models faces were hidden by a hand or a mask, like in Soherzo di follia (1940's). It captured celebrities and stars at their worst moment. Paris Hilton probably did not want a photo of her in the back of a police car to be exhibited in a museum, so it also seemed like an invasion of privacy. But the photos had no limits. There were photos of jumping and suicides. One was even titled "Suicide Daughter" by Lee Miller (1945). It was of the tortured and the punished. The photographers were not afraid to show what many were reluctant to take photos of.

Jerry Uelsmann Research Post

Jerry Uelsmann redefined and pushed the boundaries of surrealism during his time. His photo montages can be categorized as “the most significant silver printmaking achievements of the sixties (Masters of Photography). Uelsmann was born on June 11, 1934 in Detroit. He went to public school and his grades were mediocre at best, it was during this time that his interest in photography sparked. After graduating Cooley High School in 1952, he moved to New York. He believed the camera gave him the ability to exist outside himself. He got jobs doing photography for weddings and soon moved onto bigger things. In 1957 he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and in 1960 his Master's Degree and his Master of Fine Arts degree at Indiana University. Uelsmann started his teaching career at the University of Florida in 1960, his first real job offer. It was in the art department when his skill in combining negatives to come up with a final print evolved. His first photograph was shown in Photography Annual in 1957 and he had his first solo show in 1967 at the Museum of Modern Art. He helped found the Society of Photographic Education in 1962. He is internationally exhibited and well known in Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France. His process is revealed in his book called Process and Perception (1985), which exposes intimately the steps of how he creates a cohesive composition from the multiple negatives taken.

Surrealism emerged after World War I. It is the real expression of mental emotions, without any sugar coating. Surrealistic art forms are different from the conventional and thought to be more “accepted” forms in not having a specific shape or idea. It is the expression of imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind and basic human instinct. Uelsmann is a master at manipulating real images and ordinary snapshots to create the impression of a surrealist image. He is able to create different levels of reality. His photographs bring to mind Zen gardens, which represent hope and some level of enlightenment. His photos are not only surreal, but also quite metaphorical. This allegorical view is shown in Uelsmann's Untitled (1992) piece. The photograph shows how all life springs

from nature; inseparable from mankind's origin as simple animals. The woman is naked to emphasize the complete openness she feels with nature as her body becomes the river. Her expression reveals her comfort in the wild. Since humans are born from nature that is the place they must return to. No matter how far mankind advances their cities, they are always tied back to nature. Humans will forever bleed into nature as it sustains their way of life. The photograph makes the viewer take a break from the busy city life and appreciate a much simpler aspect of life.

Uelsmann's technique shows his patience and mastery of post-visualization where he has the foresight to come up with a cohesive image (Ezine Articles). He is unique because he challenged Weston's purist notion of pre-visualization by allowing his work to develop over a lengthy creative period. He simply integrates the different negatives to make a piece of art that represents him. Peter C. Bunnell calls Uelsmann's vast collection of negatives “his visual vocabulary.” He sees his photographs as appealing because they create an automatic response in human that is “pre-verbal” (Legends Online). Each of his photographs is a dramatic, impossible and rare instant in which events that should not be together occupy the same space. He has mastered his printing technique, which makes it difficult to tell what part of the photograph is manipulated and what is straight. Uelsmann's pieces disregards the simple definition and his photographs bring about a fantasy that keeps the viewer intrigued. He accredits the attraction and temptation of his work to how people respond to good music; his photographs have the power to connect one with an aesthetic reality that can hardly be expressed by language.

Uelsmann confronts various levels of reality and represents a unique world, his style is especially shown in his work titled Rock Tree (1969). The foreground equivocally expresses either a crossing of the roots below or a reflection of the tree in a puddle, which plays on the perception of reality and its portrayal (Encyclopedia of World Biography). This picture can be personal to everyone as each individual instinctively feels a different way about it. Philosopher's Desk (1976) is one of Uelsmann's most mystifying works. The fact that the room has no ceiling adds to the surrealism. It is only these ambiguous clouds, which drift overhead in a sunlit sky. A viewer may see the clouds as representing a threatening apprehension or as hope letting the sunlight scintillate. It can give the impression of an Alice in Wonderland feel, with the comfort of a Victorian study playing against an infinite abyss. In Untitled (1989) the top of the desk is on fire next to a lonely chair. This conflagration explores the breath-taking landscape of Yosemite, which is where Uelsmann gave a workshop in 1973. Uelsmann's really conveys a message with this photograph as he chose the symbol of the burning desk to show how real ecological issues really are. He wants to express the threat of urban intrusion to a pristine wilderness area. Another one of Uelsmann's master pieces is Untitled (1975), which makes the viewer see a dream-like scene that conveys both culture and nature and birth and death. The man in the shadow adds mystery, no one knows if he is walking toward or away from the dark, void space behind the door. Many of his pieces are without a specific title because he wanted the viewers to find individual meanings from the same images they see in the photograph. Other famous photographs include Equivalent (1964) and Floating Boat in Waterfall (2000). His photographs all portray similar images of rocks, trees, human figures and water in new and exciting ways.

Jerry Uelsmann's influences at school were Ralph Hattersley, Minor White and Henry Holmes Smith; he called them his “photographic godfathers”. He learned the most valuable lesson from White, that the camera could do much more beyond just saving an image; it has the potential to “transcend the initial subject matter” (Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement). White had a saying: “One should snap objects, not only for what they are, but for what else they are” (Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement). Uelsmann believed to transform what was seen, he had to learn the technicalities of the camera-lens system rather than focus on the minor details of the image. Uelsmann remembers clearly a life-altering moment in Smith's class. They were discussing Arthur Segal's photograph that was a print consisting of superimposed images. Uelsmann pointed out an imperfection in the photograph and believed he could fix it. Smith laughed off Uelsmann's comment, which only encouraged his perseverance to became technically adept and prove something to Smith.

Near the end of the 1960s, straight photography had been the prevailing mode for almost forty years; it had been deemed the medium’s most honest expression by photographers and critics alike. Surrealist photo montages by artists like Man Ray, however, were not forgotten. Man Ray's most famous pieces are Tears (1923), Le violin de Ingres (1924) and Observatory Time - The Lovers (1934). Man Ray's photographs are often more crude than Uelsmann's, which can be described as seamless. Man Ray was motivated by his obsession for women and began to experiment with female eroticism. Uelsmann also sees a particular beauty in females, which is evident in many of his photographs. Uelsmann's other photographic influences include: Marcel Marien, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lee Miller, Jean Cocteau and Herbert Bayer. All these surrealists can be considered abstract artists who encompass the human mind’s spontaneous ideas in their work. Although the subjects in Uelsmann's photographs may vary, the surrealist approach, and the method used do not. Since the public is now much more welcoming when it comes to less traditional works of art, Uelsmann's recent photographs are more appraised and even more “real” compared to his older works. With so many modern advancements in the field of photography, Uelsmann's work can be imitated in a short period of time. But in his time, many referred to his technique as remarkable and he shattered the popular notion of photography. We all anticipate the future of surrealism, which holds so much promise with all the new digital possibilities.

Citations:

Green, Jonathan. “Jerry Uelsmann.” American Photography: A Critical History. Masters of Photography, 2010. Web. 17 Nov 2010. website

“Jerry Uelsmann.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 8 Nov 2010 website.

“Jerry N. Uelsmann.” Legends Online. 2008. 27 April 2008. website.

“Jerry Uelsmann.” Profotos. Webmasters, 2008. Web. 8 Nov 2010. website.

Lomgergar, Domen. “History of Surreal Photography.” Ezine Articles (2007): n. pag. Web. 8 Nov 2010. website.

Uelsmann, Jerry. “Bio.” Jerry N. Uelsmann. Livebooks, 2010. Web. 8 Nov 2010. website.

Picture citations:

http://www.billjayonphotography.com/JerryUelsmann.html

http://riandaartis.tumblr.com/Uelsmann

http://www.artline.com/associations/archive/ipa/show/show2009/exhibitors_and_non/Laurence_Miller.php

http://www.fotografya.gen.tr/issue-12/jerry/Jerrydata/Jerry.htm

http://www.dailyartfixx.com/2010/08/27/man-ray-1890-1976/