Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky:

Andreas Gursky was born in 1955. He is a German photographer and he is known for his enormous architecture and landscape colour photographs. I like the way his work clashes colours and angles. His photography uses clashing colours and his images are captured using distant shots and overhead shots. Some of his images show shop windows and capture images inside a supermarket. His work shows elements of commercialism because they are captured in the style of a billboard. His images shows masses such as masses of people, products an example of this is an image taken from inside the 99 cent shop.

The above image is called '99 Cent' it was photographed in 1999. The 99 cent shop is the equivalent of the UK pound shop. His work shows elements of commercialism. This is because they show cheap mass produced goods and they are depersonalized because there are clashing brands in the shop. This shows discord because the brands are at competition especially in today's society. The actual products are not unique because there are so many similar products but with different brand names.

The image on the left is called 'Rhine II' by Andreas Gursky. It is a photograph of the Rhine River. Last year it was crowed the world's most expensive photograph. This is because it sold for $4.34 million at Christie's impressionist and modern art auction in New York.










http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/nov/11/andreas-gursky-rhine-ii-photograph

William Eggleston

William Eggleston:

William Eggleston was born on the 27^th of July 1939. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is an American photographer. He is widely credited for his work with colour photography. Eggleston’s work plays around with scale. William Eggleston’s work represents the moment when colour began to be accepted as part of art photography. He has been called the ‘father’ of colour photography. His work shows discord because he uses the angles and plays with the scale of an object to make it seem larger, this make the audience seem smaller.

This is an image by William Eggleston it is called ‘Troubled Waters’, 1980. I can see that this image uses neutral colours and has used elements of discord. Discord has been shown because the image has been photographed from below looking up towards the everyday objects. This makes the audience feel less superior because they are smaller than the objects. The image is simple and used natural lighting. The setting of the image may have been to show a certain period of time, this is shown through the design of the furniture and the patterned sofa covers.

Imperial War Museum

Imperial War Museum:

On visiting the Imperial War Museum I was thoroughly disappointed. After queuing for over an hour to visit the blitz exhibition I was able to be part of a 10minute tour showing how it would have been like living during the Second World War. I was disappointed because on visiting the exhibition as a young child I remember the experience better. Instead the benches didn't shake as much and the tour was very quick on a positive note the way that they recreated life during the Second World War was good because they recreated smells and events which would have occurred at that time.


Within this gallery I cam across this image where you see several people in the background and a guy which has been injured is being escorted. I felt this was a powerful image especially with the text which was next to it 'Only the dead have seen the end of war.'

Another image from the same gallery which I found interesting was the one with a child sitting on her bed. This was a moving image because when I think of war I think of those whom were either fighting on the front lines, the injured or those in the factories and you forget about the young children who are innocent and don't understand what is happening. Again with this image the caption 'War is part of God's creation' fitted well with the image because children are also part of 'God's Creation.'

On walking around the museum it was nice to spend time with other students and look at public transport of that time, tanks, bombs etc which would have been used during the war, and because we are not used to seeing them was nice to see the way they have been preserved for people to see them.

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore: 

Stephen Shore is an American photographer, born in 1947. Shore began his photography career using a 35mm camera and then moved on to a 4 x 5 and then to an 8 x 10 format.  He produced a book in 1982 entitled 'Uncommon Places' which was considered a bible for photographers looking to shoot in colour. "What I wanted to do was to keep a visual diary of the trip and started photographing every person I met, the beds I slept in, the toilets I used, art on walls, every meal I ate, store windows, residential buildings, commercial buildings, main streets and then anything else that came my way and that became the framework for that series."Up until this point in history only black and white images were taken seriously. Many well respected photographers have credited Shore with introducing them to the beauty of colour photography.

In 1971, at the age of 23, he became the first living photographer to have a one- man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is interested in the clear and focused attention because photography gives a sense of time being compressed because it would take several minutes for a person to see a certain scene.

I chose to include the image ‘U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973’ as an example of his work because I like the framing of the image and the way that it shows a landscape within a landscape.

Bibliography:

http://photography.about.com/od/famousphotogbiospz/a/Stephen-Shore-Biography.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM2X1GnNSQ

http://img.artknowledgenews.com/files2007/StephenShoreUS97.jpg

Guest of Cindy Sherman

Paul H-O is the director, producer and was the boyfriend of Cindy Sherman. He began his career in the 1990s which was called 'Gallery Beat'. Here he filmed art gallery openings giving the public access. Through this he became romantically involved with Cindy Sherman.

On watching the film 'Guest of Cindy Sherman' I was able to understand the reasoning and composition of the front cover. The film was a documentation of the life and work of Cindy Sherman from the view point of Paul H-O.

During the duration of the film it becomes apparent that he lost his identity though out the years of being with Cindy Sherman. He became known as 'guest of Cindy Sherman.' This was due to the high status name created by the media. This was a contrast to the personality of Cindy Sherman because this film showed that she didn’t like being in front of the camera and the only time she felt comfortable was when she was in a disguise which was portraying her feelings and issues which surrounded her at the time. Over the duration of 15 years he composed video footage which is shown in this film recreating his lost identity. 

'Fame' in this instance resulted in Paul H-O to loose his identity and brings up the issues of the value of a person and how the media creates an image of a person.

Bibliography:


http://entertainment.time.com/2009/03/24/guest-of-cindy-sherman/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443524/