Candy Cigarette, 1989, Sally Mann
I don't care how many people I hear say that they don't like Sally Mann's work, she still remains an inspiration to me. Her artistic career, mainly composed of recording her loved ones, following her children around, worshiping them with the camera is awe striking to me. Wouldn't every mother enjoy this kind of lifestyle and experimental/psychological interaction with her children? The way she displays childhood as a dark, serious drama is so captivating to me. Most of the time I feel as though she puts more work into the result than people tend to recognize. Her strong contrast and silky grays underline her mysteriousness and curiosity. I believe that she wants to show the world a childhood it can't understand. Everyone was once a child wishing to grow up, but once you get older you realize how much easier life was when young. This particular image struck up controversy because of her daughter posing with the candy cigarette. Some people thought it was real at first; thank god the title proved otherwise. Her nude photographs of her children are to me images of expressing the freedom of early life and the emotional strength children have due to there being no need for them to over think their bodies. On the other hand I know a lot of people want to think of childhood as a glorious, innocent time, but these are the years in which we develop our subconscious and the way we judge and love. While going through radical changes in physical and mental aspects of our lives, it can occur that children become frustrated about the difficulties they must endure. They are not allowed to do as they please, they must accept that they are weaker than the rest of the world, and are often told they will not understand certain lessons due to their age no matter how determined they are to interpret. They are automatic outcasts from the rest of the world, and cannot see their place in the future. {How blissful it would be to forever retain the emotional attachment to the current moment, and not have to worry about the future.} This photograph makes me nostalgic for the times I wanted to grow older. Now I just pull my childhood memories behind me, weighing me down with remorse, knowing that those moments I felt weightless can never be relived.
Contemplation irrationnelle, 2003, Philippe Ramette
The first time I saw this photograph it was in a modern art museum in Lyon, France. I loved the twisted perspective of the artist standing awkwardly at the supposed edge of a building. I bought a postcard version of it that still hangs in my bedroom. It reminds me that our views of the world are all a bit irrational as parallel as they may seem sometimes. In the image the artist appears to be on the verge of suicide, but then the landscape is turned sideways. Could he even jump off of that edge? What would happen if he could and did? I just love this artist in general. He has a whole series of himself in a business suit looking, reaching, standing, or walking in awkward landscapes composed of every day scenery that has just been turned in a way to make is seem surreal. I love how easily you can connect the dream- with the "real" world.
In The City, 2006, Fabrice Fouillet
I'm in love with contemporary photography. I was never for the slow death of the film industry, but I prepared myself for it years ago. Slowly with time and interest I have come to love digital a tad bit more than the old hands on process. Sometimes you can create conceptual content in images much easier with digital. This image by Fabrice Foillet moves me because I for the longest time have tried to understand what is so different between the many cultures and human beings that makes us break peace so quickly sometimes. When I happened across this postcard in a store it made me laugh out loud. It's a hilarious concept, people living in tupperware like left overs, but I connected with it. Photography doesn't always have to reveal the traumatizing images from countries around the world in order to be shocking. The movement in this image, and the mood set by that the blue hue, it's so on point about humanity. We live in little universes on a shelf. Others see us and we recognize their existence, but a mixing of our contents doesn't occur as often as it possibly should. I don't want to say humans are ignorant of their surroundings, because that is false. However I will say that people shrug things off far too often, and the hypocrisies on this earth have come to a boil. If people do not break out of their plastic houses we will come to rot in the fridge of our cosmos, and never experience the microwave of our future.
No comments:
Post a Comment