This was a tough project for me, because I actually liked a lot of my images, and my works-in-progress critiques did not exactly help in choosing four images from the lot. I ended up choosing six, because I thought that five worked well as a series, and in fact, the sixth could be a part of that series too now that I think about it. I'll start with the track picture.
The goal was to create an image that combined the energy and excitement of one of my favorite paintings with a modern arena for showcasing athletic prowess. The image has a lot of lines and curves that direct the eye around the image, and the image almost seems to spiral in on itself, towards the chariot drivers. I kept the harsh light of the upper right hand corner because it seemed more like outdoor lighting with bright sunlight. The strong diagonals of the stairs and track lanes add to the energy of the image, and since the image of the charioteers is just hazy enough to not be completely lost, but not so defined as to detract from the field house behind it, the images blend and create a single, intertwined image.
This started with the subtle disruption idea. I was really enjoying combining mundane scenes with various unexpected figures, either famous or just out-of-place, and the idea came to me to try combining an old painting into a modern setting. I thought the dynamic poses of the horses, seen racing head-on, would look cool racing around the curve of our track. The horses' heads even direct the viewer toward the curve in the track.
To create this image, I brainstormed first of course, and walked around the indoor track, taking pictures at various heights and at various locations. I then took a photo of the etching, and combined the two photos using Photoshop. It was another successful Photoshop endeavor! I learned how to combine two images so that one faded into the other.
I think I've already covered this one, but the basic goal was to create a dynamic image that expressed both the excitement of racing, past and present, and the tradition of racing, while juxtaposing our modern institution of sports with the far more dangerous and sometimes fatal sports of the past.
This work draws inspiration from both paintings and modern sports photography, with its trend of taking racing photos head-on. The photo obviously makes use of an engraving of a painting, but puts it in a modern context. I think that a bit of inspiration comes from movies like Ben Hur, with its chariot race scene. My work strives to recreate the past, but as an echo. Its presence is not real. At the same time, the modern track facility hearkens back, in its design and purpose, to an older, more violent past. We have turned athletics into a business; an institution, even. We have made it safe, we have added equipment and arbitrary rules; yet we put the same amount of importance on the outcome now as we did then.
The second set, which consists of 5 photos, are taken in a variety of ways. To save on time though, and to spare everyone the trouble of reading about every single one, I'll analyze only a few of them, but talk generally about the set as a whole. The green cast photo was framed so that the large head was to the side, and the reflections on the glass created a visual line that led to the eye of the head. The emphasis was with the head, and the perspective was meant to feel as if you were actually standing there. I was hoping that the head size would be ambiguous. The lighting remained hazy and green, and this worked well as a way to add mystery to the image.
Each image is about a world. Or a single world in several stages. I wanted the images to be disorienting, in that the viewer would be unsure as to whether or not what they were witnessing was real, kind of like our own ideas about "lost worlds." What we imagine and think we know isn't necessarily true. The haziness of the lighting, and the various color casts gave each photo a specific mood, and helped to reinforce the idea of a mysterious world, in violence, in peace, or in ruin.
To create each image, I got very close to my subject and simply took the shot. I went to a pet store to photograph, so the lighting was almost entirely from above, if there was lighting at all, provided by various full-spectrum fluorescent lights. Depending on what cast was in each fish tank to begin with , and what decor was set around, the image would be given that cast. I had to shoot the photos through glass, so I used no flash, and had to touch up some parts in photoshop. I enhanced the colors as well to create a more saturated environment. It was fun to discover the ways in which I could enhance entirely different colors in the photo from what was actually there in the environment.
I've always had an active imagination, and I've always been fascinated by history, so I thought it would be fun to try to create the illusion of various worlds through fish tanks. I wanted to invoke ruin and decay, but also discovery, history, and mystery. I wanted to tell the story of a lost world, its destruction, and its remains.
My work draws inspiration from Arthur Tress's Fish Tank Sonata series, but instead of blatantly photographing the fish tank as a physical object, I look into the fish tank as a way to become immersed in this other world. There are no borders, no boundaries of glass that we can see. It could be a world, for all we know. It draws inspiration from Eleanor Antin's work too, since it's about constructing a kind of history. The fish tank is itself a constructed reality that fish must spend their lives in. Human strive to make it look natural, but the fact is that it's still a glass box. Much of history, or our notion of history, is just a construct as well.
Part II
At critique, others seemed to interpret my images as what I had described them as. They thought that the chariot image was strong, and got across the idea of a modern re-conception of something ancient. The lost world images seemed to appeal to the class, because some were so disorienting that it was hard to tell what they were, and some appeared so real as to be actual ruins. They thought that the mystery and somewhat alien quality came across.
In the chariot picture, the layering of the two images is working well. Because you can just barely make out the chariot race, it gives the image a dream like quality. Some people thought that some of the details of the chariot image were lost in areas such as the upper right hand corner, but I actually like the harsh lighting in this corner. I think I might like the horses to stand out just a little more, and the chariot drivers, but I don't think the faintness hurts the image. The class responded well to the color casts of the lost world photos, and I do think that these color casts (something that was not planned), help in creating a dream-like, fantasy aspect. Some critiqued that the reflections should either be more pronounced, or edited out. I do like the reflections in the green-cast photo, since they make an interesting line that leads to the eye of the Buddha head. I do wish the photos had printed out a little lighter though. And maybe I would print them larger next time, although when they are in their small form, I think they are more easily mistaken for actual places, since the details that alert the viewer to the fact that it's fabricated are less noticeable.
The chariot photo could be the start of a series of modern-day places with their respective "echoes" from the past. Things that are a normal part of life with their older equivalent....like a carriage outside of a car shop, or something like that. The lost world could be the start of a longer narrative series, about the creation and/or destruction of a world.
