Artist Lecture 2/15: Paul Pfeiffer

www.gagosian.com/artists/paul-pfeiffer
www.pbs.org/art21/artists/pfeiffer/index.html

On Feb 15, 2010 I attended the guest artist lecture of Paul Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer's work consisted of appropriated films ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes in length played continuously on loops.
Pfeiffer's films are about 4"x5" in size giving forcing the viewer to have an intimate experience with the tiny screens.
"Tiny acclaimed films on dollhouse sized screens" Pfeiffer's works are surprisingly Solitary, Introspective, and contain Spiritual/Religious undertones.

Pfeiffer stated that his "video sculptures" were "akin" to paintings or photographs and that his goal in makings these mini films was not about making objects, but that it was psychological and it was up to the viewer's imagination to create the artwork within. All of Pfeieffer's work contained spiritual/religious undertones while also dealing with Identity, Race, and Sexual orientation.

Artist: Richard Avedon

www.richardavedon.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon

Richard Avedon is a very prominent and well-known American fashion Photographer. I am not going to repeat facts about him because it would be easier to just look him up.
Richard Avedon was one of the first photographers I was introduced to back in high school. Avedon was well known for his fashion photography, but I am drawn to his portraits. Richard Avedon has a marvelous ability to capture a person on camera and I am not quite sure how he did it. It seems to me that he took his subjects out of their environments and placed them in a studio under lights and exposed them for who they really are and the subjects left with nothing but themselves were therefore captured on film. The thousands of portraits of Marilyn Monroe are all soft and glamourous pin-ups, but Avedon's portrait of Marilyn appears as if the picture was taken when she wasn't ready and I perhaps think that is the genius of it. By capturing a photograph at a moment when Ms. Monroe was unexpectant, Avedon captured a moment when our actress wasn't acting, therefore taking an honest portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Again I speak of "Honest" portraiture of which I believe Avedon successfully creates/captures honest portraits of his subjects.

Idea: A Portrait

Below is a 120mm image I took of three friends of mine; Claire, Aimee, Jordan-in that order.
I've known Claire and Jordan since Middle School and both decided to attend VCU as well. Aimee, was the very first person I met upon my arrival during orientation for AFO. I was the one responsible for introducing Aimee to everyone. Aimee and I like to joke that it was destiny that we were to be friends. The girls have lived together since sophomore year and have become a family within themselves. Those three girls mean a lot to me, so naturally, I wanted to take a simple portrait of them. This image was taken Junior year sometime I can't remember specifically. It was a darkroom print which was scanned in to be digitalized, hence the dust, which I really like dust on my images so Thank You very much. The dust did happen to be the fault of the enlarger I was using which was in the dark far side of the darkroom. I grew up in a dusty old farm house, and my parents work in produce, there was dust everywhere, all the time. I also think the dust compliments the black and white image giving it an antiquated feeling. However, i do not want dust on all my images, but it seemed to compliment this one.



Clamdan, 2008

What I want to concentrate on this final semester is capturing "Honesty" through portraiture using my 4x5 camera.

IDEA:
This weekend my "older" niece, is moving away to Florida to start a new career. We are all happy for her, but it is bitter sweet. Her mother, my half-sister, is coming in from Norfolk to say goodbye. My younger niece will remain here in RVA. Those three ladies I have known my whole life, yet we were often estranged due to "symbolic mountains."
Destiny brought us all to Richmond, which allowed us to reconnect and know each other like never before. My sophomore year I lived with my older niece and a year later, my 1/2 sister and younger niece followed.
This weekend I want to take a "mother and daughters" portrait using my 4x5 camera. I want the composition to be off balanced, using an old technique where each head is at a different height within the frame. I will be shooting in color film.

My goal is to capture "honesty" through the lens of a 4x5, but I also want each photograph to commemorate a metaphorical mile-marker within the life of the subject(s) within each photograph.

The mile-marker in this portrait should be obvious.
Working titles: Three Forks? Seperate Ways? Three Goodbyes?...something along those lines.

Artist: Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sartorialist
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

Scott Schuman began his career as "The Sartorialist" in NYC in 2005. He had left his career in a fashion sales position to care for his daughter. At this time, Schuman began carrying a digital camera with him as he walked the streets of New York. Schuman photographed avaerage people he would encounter who had a strong sense of "personal style."
After working in Fashion sales, Schumann knew that designers often looked at what people were wearing on the streets to determine the next fashion trends so Schuman began photographing in the way of looking for original styles to photograph.
Schuman began in New York, but began taking photographs/portraits in London, Stockholm, Paris, and Milan when traveling there for fashion shows. Schuman became quite popular in the fashion industry for his portraits and even began photographing fashion icons while still continuing to photograph anyone that struck his eye. He has done some work for French Vogue, Saks Fifth Ave, and Carl Lagerfield to name a couple.
Schuman's blog "The Sartorialist" was 2009's most influential blog on fashion out of 400 candidates.

A "Sartorialist" is someone related to the tailoring of clothing. I am not that interested in fashion by any means, but as a photographer I am really in love with Schuman's aesthetic. I mentioned before in my blog how I have been drawn to honesty in photography and I believe that Schuman is an honest photographer. Most fashion photography is tons of hair, make up, fantasy, unrealistic, over the top, haute couture, intense photographs which are then heavily photoshoped and airbrushed.
When looking at Schuman's work, you know that it's an honest photograph and he has the ability to capture each individual's personality within each image while taking really intriguing fashion shots. I admire what he has done by revolutionizing fashion photography in this way, by making supermodels of everyday people of all ages and walks of life.
For me, it is not about the fashion, but the great portraits that he is taking and the fact that he is just out in the world, on the street, photographing.

Idea: Teleidoscope

Last semester I was mentally in a weird place due to anxiety and stress. I was literally chasing dreams with my artwork. I was working in a very "Outsider Art" (self-taught artists, asylum art, folk art) influence by creating backwards processes of degrading my own work because I, at the time, felt mentally degraded. I produced some work that I liked and some work that, well, I don't feel as proud of, yet discovered some directions to take my work.

This semester I totally want to veer away from last semesters collaging xeroxes of my photographs. I am still interested in double exposures and want to find a way to incorporate that into spring work.

I purchased a 4x5 camera last summer and have shot with it several times, yet have only managed to produce one image that pleases me (Dad on the truck with the Kudzu) Spring semster is going to be perfecting and getting comfortable shooting 4x5.
I want to shoot portraits of people within landscapes. I also want honest imagery real people, quirky places, yet I want thiese new works to be able able to "hold hands" with my work from last semester.
Last semester, my works were recreations of prophetic dreams that were plaguing me,
dealt with strong conspiratorial symbolism,
the subconcious mind,
and memory.
The works were really off the wall, but not off the wall enough to "work." I was an educated art student trying to play the "outsider artist" but that was all..just playing...to really be an outsider artist you have to be obsessively inventive crazy and I couldn't go all the way with it. I wasn't outsider, at heart I am truly a photographer.

I plan on bringing some of my ideas from fall and incorporating/experimenting ideas with a 4x5 image.

ONE IDEA: that I have had for how to incorporate my midset from fall into a 4x5 was purchasing a large teleidoscope
A teleidoscope is basically a Kaleidoscope without the beads, instead it has a crystal ball, which turns the whole world into a kaleidocscope.
Using a 4x5 camera to photograph portraits through a teleidoscope would give me high resolution craziness in an image.
Each portrait would appear to be an abstract pattern at first glance but upon further inspection the viewer would realize there are 50 little portraits of the same person repeated over in intricate patterns.
I think that this would definitely relate/"hold hands" with my symbolistic/subconcious craziness from last semester. I am still considering the investment because a teleidoscope isn't cheap and it's been done before.....

Artist: Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth is an American hyper-realist painter. He is most famously known for his painting Christina's World which hangs in the MoMA in NYC.
Wyeth's hyper realist paintings during the modern art era of the 1950s contrasted with the mainly abstractionist style of the time with painters such as Jackson Pollock, etc.
Wyeth would paint the landscapes of his childhood home in Chadds Ford, PA and of his summer home in Maine. The simple portraits and landscapes almost appear photographic and it is his ability to devote so much detail in a painting with such seemingly simple subject matter that I think he was able to achieve Modern Art era status. Wyeth was known as the "painter of the people" and has made work for over 50 years recently passing away in January 2009.

Wyeth is, hands down, my favorite painter. His paintings are so well painted that I view them as photographs. It is his landscapes that really hit home with me because they remind me so much of the Shenandoah Valley's rolling hills. All his paintings would need are the Blue Ridge rising up in the background of Christina's World and it would be our farm in Stuarts Draft. I am also drawn to his landscapes involving a lone figure facing away-towards the landscape-that really speaks to me. There is just so much of a similarity between his paintings and many of my own photographs, yet that could be because he inspires me to make photographs for I could never paint that well...

A singular Wyeth painting, for me, evokes so much nostalgia that when looking at his paintings in person, and i have seen Christina's World at the MoMA, that I am actually filled with "Compassion Fatigue" and that is my true love for my landscapes of home.




This painting reminds me of a photograph of my father taken back when he was a young man in the 50s


This is my great aunt, 88 years old, sitting unable to move staring out of her "picture window"






Christina's World

Visiting Artist Lecture: Alec Soth

Quinn 2007
Sydney, Tallahassee, Florida, 2004
Stacey, South Plains, Texas, 2004
Andy Goldsworthy, Ithaca, New York, 2004
Untitled 29 DOG DAYS BOGOTA

Untitled 26, DOG DAYS BOGOTA

Untitled 49, DOG DAYS BOGOTA

Crystal, Easter, New Orleans, Louisiana 2002 SLEEPING BY THE MISSISSIPPI
Joshua, Angola State Prison, Louisiana 2002 SLEEPING BY THE MISSISSIPPI






http://www.alecsoth.com/
The first photography dept lecture of 2010 was Alec Soth on Jan 27th.
We were all at the lecture, so i am not gonna talk about it.
Soth talked mostly of how his thoughts, ideas, photographs, and images were all connected through tangents which led from one moment to the next. By connecting each image inside his photographic books through sidenotes on tangentry , Soth created maps which told a story documenting each experience through which each viewer of his books of photography:
SLEEPING BY THE MISSISSIPPI, 2000
DOG DAYS, BOGOTA
NIAGARA
...could follow a story

This way, Soth not only tells a story within a singular photograph, but tells an entire novella romanticizing his mediocre experiences of everyday life as he travels forward in time. Soth's work is honest in depicting the itty gritty truth of the world, which is refreshing. Soth mentioned "photographic overload" brought on by our generations ability to constantly photograph each instant. I feel that in the world of digital photography I am being constantly lied to because of photoshop, lighting, set design, studios, make up, digital color corrections, flashes, and millions of other ways technology allows an image to lie, yet Soth remains and strives for honesty.
Soth's portraiture is what really speaks to me. Each portrait has a balance/harmony between the person/people/subject(s) and with the background/landscape/space. This allows for narrative. I know that these portraits tell the truth about the people in them and that most of them were strangers that Soth met along the way. Soth's images/portraits are powerful because he introduces the viewer to the World which he, himself encountered.
Thank You, Alec Soth, for showing me a true photograph[story].

Soth has a style very similar to the one that I strive for. His works really make me jealous because I love his photographs, but his style is exactly like that of my own and I now fear that everyone is going to think of me as "trying to be Alec Soth"
Oh well.