Final Presentation

 Nature is often used as background for portraiture, providing pleasant settings for its subjects.  Landscape photography exists due to the beautiful scenery nature supplies.  Despite nature’s frequent appearance in photography, it is rarely displayed and appreciated at an intimate level.  The intricacy at this level is lost in the background and the minute detail overlooked, as significance is generally placed on other subjects.  Everything in the natural world is connected, meaning each component is just as important as the next, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
The nature of my work is to expose the quiet complexity and beauty of the generally unnoticed elements of the environment on a personal scale.  In a sense, I am taking close-up portraits of certain aspects of nature, challenging the definition of portraiture by placing importance on natural elements rather than human ones. By doing this, I hope viewers will consider and value the subtle detail of nature in photography and in their surroundings in general.

Quiz #3 - Reflection on The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton

I responded most favorably to the tableau photography in Chapter 2 "Once Upon A Time".  My work from last semester fit very well into that category, as did my first assignment.  I love seeing a story play out in a photograph or series of photographs, whether it be a concious intnetion of the artist's or something I myself viewed in the image or images.  The dramatic scenes of the photographs in the chapter by Tom Hunter and Izima Kaoru of women lying seemingly dead or unconcious reflect back to stories we are familiar with or a dramatic interpretation of our own.

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I also very much liked the documentary style photography displayed in Chapter 6 "Moments in History".  Seeing the aftermath of certain events in these photographs is much more interesting to me and helps me form a better interpretation of what when on than seeing the action itself.  It was interesting to read about the amount of time it took for many of these series to come together, such as Luc Delahaye's History series in which he only included 4 photographs a year into his work. His photograph Kabul Road is haunting.  The mass of people seem terribly calm considering they are standing around dead bodies.  This strange calm in the aftermath of military conflict carries more weight in my opinion, than seeing a photograph of the actual fighting.

I feel as if my own work for my final project fits best into Chapter 4 "Something and Nothing".  I discuss in my artist statement that I am photographing nature at a more intimate level than it is normally shown. As the beginning of the chapter states, the photography in this chapter consists of objects that are normally passed by, and that is exactly what I am photographing in nature, or more so how I am photographing nature.

WIP Critique #4

For this set of photographs, I focused on the qualities in nature that resemble familiar objects and human characteristics, as well as a more abstract view of the natural world. I focused a great deal on the texture and patterns of the material I was photographing and how viewers would respond to them.