Lewis Carroll, Arthur Tress

 St. George and the Dragon- Lewis Carroll. 1875. Albumen Silver Print

Constructed reality depicting St. George, patron saint of England, who killed a child-eating dragon before it could devour a princess. Carroll used his friend's children to act out the scenes for him. He obviously does not intend to hide the staged quality of this image.

The Teapot Opera Series: Act 1. 1980

Series of images involving a teapot and the creation of the world. Objects placed in the context of an opera production.

http://www.arthurtress.com/

Hospital Series: Throne of Aphrodite. 1986

Prompt 23

1. In what ways do you “construct” your identity? In what ways do you “perform” in your daily life?

I think most people create their identities and how people view them by the way the portray themselves. They way I act in front of people gives them information on who I am as a person, but I have control of how I act, so I can shape or 'construct' who they think I am. 

2. Describe some ways in which your personal culture and social environments are “constructed”.

Culture is a constructed thing, and social environments develop from culture. People create everything in culture, so the way that people act and the things that they value determine what kind of culture you have and what environment you're in.  

3. Describe some ways in which your physical environment/space is “constructed”.

I determine everything that goes in it, usually with conscious thought about whether it belongs or not.  

4. In your daily life, what would you consider to be “real” and what would you consider to be “constructed/fabricated”?

I don't want to say that everything is fake, but I do think that most people construct their identities based off how they want people to see them. I also think that how you construct yourself is definitely an insight into who you really are, or the 'real' you and what you value.  

5. Describe a narrative tableaux that you might create to be captured by a photograph. A narrative tableaux can be defined as “Several human actors play out scenes from everyday life, history, myth or the fantasy of the direction artist” ( Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography Edited by Michael Kohler , 34).

It would be fun to have people act out a story for a series of photographs. I like the idea of everyday life being portrayed. It might be interesting to have people try to act out a normal thing and see how unnatural it ends up looking.

 6. Describe an idea for a photograph that includes a miniature stage or still life. A description of such an image is “The tableaux reconstructs events as in the narrative tableaux, but in miniaturized format, using dolls and other toy objects” (Kohler, 34).

I've seen some great examples of this using legos. They were placed in different places and positions that related to each other and created a story.

Prompt 22

A. Series: Brainstorm various ways to make a “series” of photographic images. 

The pictures could tell a story with each picture being a different scene. Things would have to relate to each other and be a constant in all images so that they would not be mistaken as separate images.
The images could all be of the same place at different times or angles.

The images could all be of the same person at different ages, angles, styles, or situations.

B. Final Project: Your final project in this class will be designed by you. If you could tackle any photography project, what would it be? You could combine other media with photography (video, sculpture, drawing) or you could take one of your earlier assignments and expand it to create a larger project. If you are expanding an earlier project or creating an entirely new series of images, shoot for a series of at least 5 images. Describe an idea you have for your final project. 

I want to focus on the presentation of the images by transferring them onto a porcelain clay body and firing them in a kiln so they are imprinted on the clay. I will use the decal process to do this. The images will not be perfect, but the iron oxide in the ink from the printer will leave a brown decal of the image on the glazed porcelain. 

I'm not entirely sure what the subject of the images will be or what shape the porcelain will be. I was thinking of using a translucent porcelain and hanging or displaying the pieces with light shining from behind or inside them.

Final Images

Works in progress

Advertising

Stock

Advertising/Stock?

Stock

Recreate

Recreation of product imagery.

These are Pillsbury Orange Sweet rolls, my favorite breakfast treat. They bring up nice memories because my mom makes them every Christmas morning.

I tried to get a really close and detailed photo of how they looked, but I wanted to do it differently than the product image I found on the Pillsbury website. (They actually didn't even have the right kind.) I thought about recipe websites, and how they usually show food in less glamorous, and more realistic ways so that the people using the recipes can follow along in their own kitchens. I wanted to do it close-up so people would concentrate only on the product, and not anything else in the background.

Food photography is usually very manipulated, sometimes not actually featuring the real results of what the food looks naturally. For example, sometimes companies have people hired just to make the food look good and they add things to the food that aren't naturally there. They'll add grease to hamburgers to make them look juicy, or they'll take a syringe and add little dots of condensation onto a pop can to make it seem cool and refreshing. I didn't add anything to mine and I hope that it looks really yummy, because they tasted excellent!

Blog 20

Blog 20

A. In news-related images most of the time the subjects of the photo, if it is of people- they don't look at the camera, or the shot is candid. Also the photos are more informational than aesthetically pleasing or 'artsy', but they do of course have concept behind them, even if it is not immediately evident. All photos have a sort of way of telling, and news photographs are very effective in manipulating people into understanding one aspect of an event. The photographer chooses what to have in the scene, so his perspective is always there. 

B. Snapshots to me, are images that you take without really thinking much about what you are taking, or why you are. It's kind of a reflex thing, were you just haphazardly point at something and click. Aesthetically, it is up for grabs. You can get some great images, but you can also get some really boring ones. 

C. Advertisement, fashion, and product photography is usually very crisp and well-lit. It is usually focused on one thing and there is nothing important in the background. 

D. Film and movie stills are very dramatically lit, with tons of contrast and shading, and usually create an impact on an emotional level. Sometimes there are effects added to them like tints and shades that even more create some sort of 'feel'. 

E. Yearbook photos and senior portraits are very contrived, with one subject being the person, trying to be exactly straight and symmetrical, and look very contrived. They look very posed and unnatural, but no one expects them to be any different.

Blog 19

Blog 19

 

1. The things that should not be photographed are things like people who ask not to be photographed. If you as the photographer are intruding unwanted after specifically being asked not to, I think it is a violation of individual privacy. However, I think that all things in the public domain should be photographed. Things that are horrible and disturbing need to be photographed especially, so that people can understand the situation. For example, Emmett Till,  a young black boy from Chicago during the 1960's, went down to the south to visit some cousins and boasted that he had two white girlfriends in Chicago. The cousins didn't believe him and dared him to talk to a white women at a store. He apparently winked at a white women, and said a couple words. That night he was taken from his aunt and uncle's house and brutally tortured before being murdered. Found in a river later, he was shipped in a casket back to his mother in Chicago with a note that said not to open it because it was too disturbing to see. There was a significant amount of media attention, and when Mrs. Till got the casket the reporters asked her what she would do. She told them that she was going to have a funeral for her son and that it would be open-casket. People were scandalized and told her that it was too disturbing to show, but she wanted to have people see what had been done to her child. There was a funeral, and people took pictures of the body. JET magazine published the photo, and it ignited the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks saw the picture and said that it was what made her decide not to move to the back of the bus. By seeing evidence on what things are really like- even if the images are graphically disturbing, people are able to get the truth about a situation and react accordingly. 

2. Things that cannot be photographed are some ideas, and non-physical things, as well as things that happened in the past. We can only capture the present, and once a moment has passed undocumented it is impossible to go back and capture it. 

3. Things I do not want to photograph are few, but what comes to mind is the idea of being in a situation that I wouldn't want to be in. To take photos of something, you pretty much have to be there, and if was a place or situation that I didn't want to be in, I wouldn't want to be there even to take pictures of it. In general, just things that would make be uncomfortable or scared, or even awkward.