Artist Research no.3: Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan is a Seattle based photographer who focuses on American consumerism, and excess in our culture. He creates incredibly large scale works, some over 30 feet long, using central themes of repetition, color, and pattern to draw attention to his ideas. His work is all based on statistics, 65,000  American teenagers under age eighteen  become addicted to cigarettes every month, nine million American children had no health insurance coverage in 2007, 83,000  people have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law, during the Bush Administration's war on terror. These numbers are overwhelming, and we are incapable of comprehending numbers that large, Chris Jordan's images provide a new perspective to view these facts.

Paper Bags, 2007
60x80"

Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.

Detail at actual size

Jet Trails, 2007
60x96"


Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours. 

 

Detail

Plastic Cups, 2008
60x90"


Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

Detail

Dog and Cat Collars, 2009
60x67"


Depicts ten thousand dog and cat collars, equal to the average number of unwanted dogs and cats euthanized in the United States every day.

Detail

Packing Peanuts, 2009
60x80"


Depicts 166,000 packing peanuts, equal to the number of overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S. every hour.

 Detail

Research no.2: Pocket Wizards

I've been researching ways to create artificial lighting in my sets, and have decided to utilize speedlites as they wont require cords and can be used outside, easily transportable, and I already own them. Nice + !

But here lies my dilemma, I HATE SYNC CORDS. They always stop working on me, I will have tested them prior to a shoot and they work fine,  I get on location, with a model staring at me, and they just wont fire. In any case, one can not use syncs with Canon flashes, they don't have a sync plug! You have to use one on camera, and have the rest fire as slaves, that direct flash is not really what I'm going for.. Alas, POCKET WIZARDS TO THE RESCUE! Pocket Wizard recently came out with something realllllly sweet.

The Flex TT5 paired with a mini TT1 allows you to remotely fire a speedlite to well over 50 feet, around corners, cars, through walls.  Well I just ordered these. And I am EXCITED.

Brain leakings..

Diego Velazquez, The Forge of Vulcan 1630

Velazquez was influenced by naturalist style painters like Caravaggio, and the deep shadows in his paintings come from Caravaggio's chiaroscuro lighting. He mostly painted in genre subject matter with intense realism, as the Baroque period started to arise. 

Chardin, The Silver Tureen, 1728

A French painter during the Rococo period, Chardin had little in common with his contemporaries, he utilizes the same Chiaroscuro lighting with dramatic shadows, employs careful detail of mundane, often grotesque still life images. He played close attention to texture and realism. 

  

Chardin

Chardin also painted genre paintings of domestic interiors, each usually had an underlying tone of discipline for children, and followed mores of the period for obedience. His work is noted for an absorptive relationship of subject to viewer. The subject is often "absorbed" in their own world, and does not show concern or awareness of the viewer. This is seen in work by Jeff Wall as well.

Edouard Manet, Le dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1863

His use of black paint to outline subjects, and the flatness in paintings like Olympia emphasize the material of the medium, this is a characteristic of his work that describes it as early modern. His genre scenes reference Velazquez, and have often been compared to Jeff Wall's work, seemingly posed actors, interacting with the viewer.

Edward Hopper, 1909, Summer Interior

Hopper was an American Realist, and was greatly influenced by Manet. He was interested in subjects and their relationship with their environment. He painted scenes of urban life using either impressionist light pastel palette and later, a much darker and drab color, similar to film noir, emphasizing line, shadow, and themes of isolation and loneliness. 

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper, A Woman in the Sun

His use of lighting is often compared to that of Gregory Crewdson, as is the moment of tension felt when  looking at his paintings.

Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931

Again, Hopper's subjects are unconcerned with the viewer, they are involved only in their worlds.

 Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940

His landscape image glow with light from buildings and seep with desolation, and a sense of sadness.

Jeff Wall, Insomnia, 1994

Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer who utilizes carefully constructed sets and color choices to illustrate mood and narrative. His work is cinematic, and strange, he has had influence on Gregory Crewdson. He blends together elements of documentary style photography and the constructed reality of fantasy. He is influenced by Manet, Caravaggio, and Hopper. 

 

Jeff Wall, After Invisible Man, 1999-2000

Jeff Wall, Pictures for Women, 1979

This photograph is directly related to Edouard Manet's the Bar Maid, references the photograph itself by including the camera directly in the center, and plays with the element of viewing and seeing by incorporating the mirrors. The seams down the image are transparencies connecting, but help emphasize the artifice of the photograph. 

Now read my post on Crewdson again. 

(This is just a connection of influences, and a streamline of consciousness... and a reflection on my interest in the absorptive subject.)

Artist Research no. 2: Gregory Crewdson

 Gregory Crewdson embodies the film- style photographer/ director/ doesn't even touch the camera photograph maker. This guy creates huge sets, shuts down entire street blocks, blows in hundreds of gallons of fogs, yells down from cherry picker cranes to "figures" and has scores of people at his disposal for lighting, he even has an art director, and some guy who takes the pictures for him, he admits he never even looks through the viewfinder. One could make a very convincing argument that his name should not be the one listed as artist, but then again, he's the one who's brain envisions these things. I think he represents the most modern day Brassai, and his "decisive moment." He tries to create the moment just after the before, and snaps the shutter right before the after has begun. His images are wrought with tension, and unease. What I find most fascinating about his images is the light. He shoots right at that magic moment where twilight is almost night and the light filters in just right, but then he blasts it with 1000's of watts of artificial light from giant hot lights, balanced with just the right amount of bedside table light and that one lone street light, maybe a car headlight or two will create a touch of fill. His sets are completely fabricated, he is known to have cleared entire blocks to allow just the right amount of untouched snow to fall onto deserted streets. I don't have quite the funding he has available at his disposal, but I can sure try to emulate his balance of artificial and natural light. 

All images Copyright Gregory Crewdson

Perhaps, well not perhaps, it is not sound reason to suggest that we can all one day work like Gregory Crewdson, but I have to hope that maybe one day I can. And to finish this post are two quotes from him, well one is from him, one is a message left on his answering machine after he saw a woman's house he liked and left a note on her door asking if he could make a perfect circle of mulch in her backyard and photograph it. 

“It’s funny, when you’re making pictures you’re not really – I’m not – conscious of really the motivations behind the photographs or what they mean, ever. It wasn’t until much later, I was producing the show, that I realized there’s a lot of cars with doors open. I thought, ‘Whoa, strange. I wonder what that means.’ "

- Gregory Crewdson

" Do what you have to do." 

Research no.1: Geoffry Batchen

I read Geoffrey Batchen's Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age, and found his stance on digital photography very interesting. Within the first page he makes a statement I perceived as both beautiful and thought provoking, "

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I have recently found myself very interested in the "truthful" nature of photographs, how can any representation of anything at a given 1/60 of a second become symbol to something in our world, real and fluid with movement? This reading seems to side with only digital imaging being unreal, and fabricated, but from the beginning we know photographic images are not truth, can not be said to represent the objects imitated.

He then begins to break down the actual etymology of Digital Photography, saying that unlike film, it never tries to argue that it is actually representative of that which it captures, that it actually represents more of a painterly approach to art, "

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So why is it such a big deal that we fabricate images? Why is it an outrage that news outlets portray "manipulated imagery," is it not all manipulated, light, shadow, focus, etc.? Should every photograph be titled as a "photo illustration," or should it not be already assumed, in the very word of photograph that whatever seen is not the truth, that there is no way that it could be in the first place? I love how Susan Sontag puts it, that a photograph is proof only that something once existed, that a photograph is, "something directly stenciled off the real," and nothing more.

I found it comforting when Batchen addresses the notion that digital photography will result in the death of photography. He asserts that the history of the science is one of transition. That photography is merely 200 years of evolution, from daguerrotypes, to the brownie, to 4 x 5's to those cameras from the 90's that printed out 35mm negative sized stickers, none of which threaten to dissolve the medium in itself.

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But how long will "human" survive....?

At this point your should have three blogs posted, one artist and two research. I can only find two. Make sure to keep up with this. Check out the guidelines I sent out over Bb/email today.

Artist Research no. 1: Aaron Hobson

All images copyright Aaron Hobson. Digital C-Prints


I really dig this guy, Aaron Hobson. For starters, he has an awesome last name.. just has a really professional and talented ring to it.. Just kidding guys, I'm not related to this photographer or anything, and happened to stumble upon him while googling my website months ago. He creates these dizzying panorama-esque images that have a very cinematic feel to them. This is something I'd like to achieve with my series on cordyceps, almost as if they were film stills. Another reason I also feel influenced by his work is the constructed reality element. Each component in frame is carefully arranged to give clues to the narrative being told. Even the final layout has been considered, to further emphasize the "movie" theme, images are sized to be "widescreen" and include the thicker top and bottom black edges. I appreciate the thoughtfulness put into his images.