Mark Menjivar. Bartender

Mark Menjivar has a compilation of work called "you are what you eat," this compilation is a social reflection. Consideration of peoples lifestyles can be seen in many places in our natural environment, people, places and things that we interact with are in fact a part of who we are. Mark chooses a interesting place because the refrigerator houses our food and the food an individual eats can give you many insights into a persons life without knowing the person. For example from this refrigerator above you can make the assumption this person doesn't grocery shop or rarely eats at home at all. This person probably works in a food establishment and does not cook at home. In the compilation itself Mark does give a background of the peoples refrigerators he shoots but this give more meaning to the larger body and less on any one given photograph.
This work relates great with my projects as I am photographing pantries and how people store their dry goods. I realize a flaw in my work with the fact that i lose a lot of character in the idea of expiration. With a much larger expiration date things pile up in pantries speaking less about the owner then perishables. I plan to anylize as a large body, looking into what people share universally in their pantries as well a what is truly unique about each pantry.

Final Project tentative intentions.

For my final project i will be delving into a place in homes hardly seen by strangers. The pantry is a place we feed our families out of, a place that speaks to who we are because after all we are what we eat. Do we share common foods contained in our pantries or are our pantries as individual as we see ourselves? The results are intended to be able to quantify a person or family through a place kept out of sight of guests a place that should speak to a persons habits, personality and even socioeconomic stature. How important is dry foods and canned food in our food pyramid and how does this pyramid culminate in our hearts and minds. I hope to find differences that speak to class, gender and nationality from aesthetics to price and nutrient content. I want the viewer to come to conclusions about the persons pantry they are viewing and most importantly i want people to reflect on what their pantry says about them. Where things are purchased and how processed foods are something that should be considered in purchasing this day and age as well as the consequence of need versus choice.

Sober

Klett and Wolfe,website reflection

The work of Klett and Wolfe first and foremost struck me as being extremely labor intensive. The care in lining up old photographs and finding the exact places in which photos were taken blows me away. It must have been exhausting to just find the spot in which a photo was taken let alone get the angle even close. This is great, a appreciation for time is what we are as photographers and what a photograph in its essence are. To revisit time and place that was already captured and attempt to capture it again is very tough. Paying homage to the person who thought there photograph would never resurface or a place that hasn't changed and wont change for the span of human existance.

Artist critique; Robert Frank

Robert Frank is the artist i chose for the rephotography artist critique, I find his interest in diversity and the focus on socioeconomic classes of the timeframe intriguing and how much has changed since his shutter captured these images. This photograph exemplifies America of the era, showing disheveled people in a daily, bustle people of  color obviously separated. A reflection of American culture and powerful forceful text making people dive deeper into the meaning. I think and it looks as though the text is written on the bus but also may have been added later, i like to think the text was on the bus originally. It wouldn't be hard to reshoot this photo, maybe on a city bus looking out over Mercedes in traffic. When everyone thinks of a car as a necessity it is the impoverished that are separated by a bus now.  I feel nothing really changes, just shifts to meet the needs of the masses. A series about the Americas now would be interesting, I know of one photographer who did a walk across America but it seemed to me his work focused on middle America and the walls people build around them, normally not pretty. Same concept though, showing America the Americans.
http://www.aaronhuey.com/

Burtynsky throwback, ted talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_photographs_the_landscape_of_oil.html
thought this was interesting since so many of us chose Edwards work in our earlier critique.
I love TED

Aspen Mays: Map of the world

This photo is taken by photographer Aspen Mays and belongs in context of a collection called "1% of this is from the Big Bang." In my opinion the picture is of indecisiveness and the simplicity of the answers to all our questions. All of the questions in the universe can be arguably answered with this "map of the world."It speaks to the complexity of our human mind, we find ways to categorize everything and in the most primitive means we want the universe to answer our questions for us through the magic eight ball. Gutted and laid out this is what the future of our direct reality looks likes pulled from the constructs of a child's toy.
 This picture struck me and will stay with me for quite some time. the simplicity of white on white and the complexity and girth of the subject matter is inspiring and thought provoking. simple and broad, i love it.

#rephotography

artist critique, Man Ray

I chose the photograph to do my artist critique because it stands out to me in both form and meaning. The comparison of a violin and a woman is interesting to me. both share beautiful curves and a type of symmetry that is pleasing to the human eye. I wonder of Man Rays intentions in the combination of the images. In my opinion the artist is trying to speak to the nature of beautiful things, things that take commitment but return investments with tenderness. the curves are appealing because they have purpose, with the violin the curves amplify the music and with a woman the curves cradle life.

James Nachtwey... photojournalism in context

This is a TED Talks I stumbled across and found it really inspiring and amazing! worth the time to watch. Really speaks to the narrative our minds automatically assign to certain images.http://www.ted.com/talks/james_nachtwey_s_searing_pictures_of_war.html

sneaky scanner...

The Thing Itself, reflection.

Bill Jay has an amazing talent for describing my daydreams. While reading this article I realized that this is part of my artistic process and i also realized that i should develop this process more. When I begin photographing or lack any sort of idea of what to photograph, I usually walk or drive around and daydream to generate ideas. This is helpful in finding things that interest me but the real ideas dont come through until I actually begin to take Photographs. Normally once I begin photographing the creative ideas of what to do with the photographs come like a flood and is hard to decipher goos ideas from bad.
The part pf the article that really interested me is when the author spoke of exploration versus exploitation and that is is important to have enough interest in something to become knowledgable on the subject. My first photo course I wanted to photograph the homeless around downtown and I did but the results bothered me because they felt exploitive and I could not figure out why. Weeks later I came across an artist who did photograph the homeless in black and white and for some reason beyond skill and experience his photographs found merit. I was so intrigued by his work that i went to interview him and see why he choose these subjects and what he did differently. I turns out he actually knew many of the homeless from growing up in the same neighborhood and offered them food and clothing in exchange for the photographs. It never came down to the process of the photography itself, although that added to his personal portrait style that he had ended up with,  it came down to the knowledge he had of the vagrant he  photographed.
This article had epiphany all over it for me.

Textures of Re-use

brushes

this is my picture

Edward burtynsky, critique

Edward Burtynsky photographs speak to human ingenuity and humean excess as well as the wastefulness of human industry. In the picture is a airplane graveyard, airplanes in which are no longer needed but highly expensive when they were acquired. Military might is relative to the technology at a nations disposal. These are dinosaurs from only decades ago but still rival most countries military resources in technology and expense.
The photograph to me represents a revolution in both military and consumption and much like a veterans death, the loss of a loyal soldier. lined up in the same fashion as tombstones these planes mimic the changing landscape of war as well as priorities. When something becomes to costly to maintain it sits, much like our junkyard, land fills and in a human aspect, elderly. Waste is very human and in my opinion has become such a daily routine that the fragments of lost necessities find places out of our eyesight. Edward Burtynsky finds these lost or looked over things and creates a pattern pleasing to the eye but thought provoking.

Power to the escaped

Photographs and Context, Terry Berrett

The reading for this week was an interesting one in that it could have used some photographs to better explain the uses of the photograph produced by Robert Doisneau. The article explained how his photograph was construed many different way because of three aspects, internal context, external context and original context. Being a Strategic Communications major I am inclined to agree with Berrett because any message is subject to misunderstanding either intentionally by the sender or unintentional by the environment around the message being communicated. I think in seeing, reading or hearing things we tend to add or own imagination to things. The media for the most part is more aware of that now then ever before and play on that to entertain a individual audience. I really enjoyed the reading but still cant help but put my own story or captions to the examples given regarding the photographs many uses over the years and the misrepresentation of the original context.

knowledge and paint

A little inspiration...

this guys work is thought provoking and a beacon of American photojournalism. http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html

BAD! feeling