What your eyes really look like...

This is kinda creepy and disturbing but also really cool photography.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9rfRAD/:ZERUb0pY:LYgV85.m/www.behance.net/paronsuren/Frame/428809/

Tessa Flores, Artist:Naoya Hatakeyama

My artist for this project was Naoya Hatakeyama who is a Japanese landscape photographer. His photographs show an objective view of man's effect on nature.  His images typically do not have any people in them because he feels that if there was a person in the picture it would distract you; you would not be able to  focus on the subject of the picture. For one of his series, limeworks, he photographed the factories near his hometown in Japan. I really liked this series because I thought it was interesting that these factories, which are typically ugly undesirable structures no one wants to live near, could look artistic. For this project I thought it would be interesting to photograph the factories in the industrial part of Albuquerque. They are very strange and foreign looking, and compared to the nature, which is what was there before them, they are. However, in our society we want everything to be made as quickly and efficiently as possible and these factories are how this is done.  They are neither good nor evil; they are simply the result of our way of manufacturing necessary items. With these photos I just wanted to show the odd shapes and forms of the factories made  by their pipes and structures. Like Hatakeyama's, I wanted the pictures to be objective, and absent of any people. 

His images can be found at http://www.lagalerie.de/hatakeyama.html

Emma Katz: Mark Seliger

The artist I chose to base my photos off of was Mark Seliger. The reason I chose him was because I think all of his work is extremely powerful. I originally picked him because I enjoy black and white portraiture but, the more I looked into his entire body of work, the more I realized that all of his photos are extremely interesting.

The main connection that I was trying to make to his work with my photographs was to his lighting techniques. His color photography is made up of very strong color pallets but is almost muted in a way. You look at it and you know that the colors are there but its as though there's a haze over them. I liked this because it makes the photos more than just your average magazine shoot and adds a level of mystery to them. His black and white photography is very stark but the lighting he uses gives it a softness. I really enjoy his lighting techniques because they leave you wanting to know more about the person or object in the photograph. The other thing about his body of work that caught my attention was the subject matter. While Seliger is known mostly for his portraiture he also creates extremely successful still life photography. I find it amazing that his still life's can tell just as much of a story as his portraiture and I tried to portray that with my photographs.

My work attempts to relate to Seliger's through the subject matter and the lighting techniques. I tried to use the softness of his lighting and the intensity of his shadows in sets of two photos, one color and one black and white. I also did one still life and one portrait in each set. While Seliger doesn't seem to have many self portraits I chose to use them because I knew exactly what I had in mind for the project and tried it with a few other people and couldn't seem to get it right. This assignment was rather challenging for me because I think the photographer I chose has a very clean and unique style but I enjoyed learning more about him and hope my photographs reflect his work.

Georgia Weiss-Elliott: Laura Letinsky

What My Mama Hates: Mirroring Laura Letinksy

      In hopes of mirroring Laura Letinsky, the master of tension and discomfort, I have chosen a theme intended to frustrate my audience. The ideal photo I’m modeling off of is Letinsky’s Untitled, #23 (of her Hardly More Than Ever series) where the dishes feel seconds away from crashing to the floor. I’m similarly trying to instill the feeling of unease within my viewers; to want to reach into the picture and fix it.  “What My Mama Hates” came from brainstorming about ideas that make people uncomfortable. Pet peeves became an umbrella and I started thinking about certain actions or inactions that bug my mom. I started to realize her pet peeves are my own: she, through numerous scolds, has passed down her neuroses to me. So the focus of the project isn’t necessarily ‘my mom’ but more about ‘me’ or ‘I’ as a viewer: who, why, and what makes this photo uncomfortable. My mom’s pet peeves include (but are not limited to): running the water while doing dishes, leaving dirty napkins and dishes out, leaving the fridge open too long, slurping soup, chewing in her ear (although you may be across the room from her), and leaving an empty roll of toilet paper for the next person. I believe that many people can relate to these peeves and will therefore feel discomfort.    

               Letinsky’s still-lifes, while they may at first seem chaotic, are actually very ‘clinical’. They often show a sort of truth, a perspective on reality, for the audience to contemplate. I hope to incorporate these characteristics within my own work, creating ‘as is’ still-lifes. My photographs are of everyday objects (that happen to make our lives frustrating) portrayed as they are, but to be seen in a different light. You can’t always see past the end of your nose until you take a picture of it.

Heather Kelly: Tina Enghoff

I chose to draw inspiration from Danish photographer Tina Enghoff's series Seven Years. Her work depicts foreign women who, under laws in Denmark, cannot leave abusive relationships without the possibility of being deported. These photographs are lonely and isolated, and each focuses on a different woman whose face is always turned away from the camera. I attempted to create images using the same general aesthetic as Enghoff, keeping the subject out of focus and anonymous. Often her subjects are in unnatural poses and I recreated this as well, which makes each image feel imbalanced and uncomfortable.

her website (tinaenghoff.com) is broken but several images from her series can be viewed here.

DAVID BENTLEY: Josephine Sacabo

The artist that I was inspired by in this series was Josephine Sacabo.  She does a number of interesting photos using a variety of techniques including photogravure, shooting through fabric, and using mirrors.  Her work is inspired by poetry and many of her pictures she feels are visual representations of the written word.  I really liked the way she used fabric in her shots and I sought to emulate this in my work.  Every photo is shot through fabric of some sort with varied distances from the camera/subject.  I experimented with this technique using different fabrics and also threw in a few of my own, experimenting with long exposures (10th photo) and light painting (1st photo).  I also really liked a few of her photos in which the subject is seen through a mirror.  I did the same in the 6th of my images.  Because her work in inspired by poetry, it seemed that there was an underlying story behind her photos.  Viewing the photos myself, I couldn't help but try and interpret what that story might be.  I really liked this aspect and decided to do the same thing in my work.  I came up with a basic story of a man and a woman in love, but then the man dies and she is left alone.  Alternatively, the story could be that the man leaves her, or perhaps he is unfaithful.  I imagine one could come up with more scenarios.  The subjects in the pictures were my wife and I as well as a cameo by our son Jacob, but they are supposed to represent a nameless couple.  I was additionally inspired by a second artist, William Goodwin, that I stumbled upon within the UNM Photo Lab Website, and took from his work in my 7th photo.  I had a lot of fun making these photos and put a lot of hard work and late nights into them.  I hope you enjoy!!!



By the way... sparklers and smoke detectors are not friends, just in case you didn't know that already!!!


Check out Josephine Sacabo's stuff here!!! --> http://www.josephinesacabo.org
...And here --> http://josephinesacabo.com

Steven Russell- Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky

My work relates to the artist Andreas Gusky's work in that it coveys the take over of a scene.  Each of my works depicts a moment in time of one or more aspects overtaking the setting.  I feel that each of my images is not easy to understand, at least not right away.  The viewer has to take in everything that is going on to really understand the situation.  The images speak to many things going on at one time in a structured busy type of way.  There is a lot of things happening anywhere you look within my images.  The themes of nature and man are recurring themes in my work.  More specifically it is the domination of one within a scene that creates the effect.  In both works (Gursky & mine) there is repetition on a massive scale going on.  The viewer gets the feeling of being inundated with sheer numbers whatever they may be.  Strangely enough there is simplicity in the overwhelmingly large amount of things going on within my images.  The simplicity is unifying; but there is an uneasiness.  I used repetition in my work to create a feeling of smallness for the viewer.  I wanted the idea that either really big things are happening or really detailed things are happening.

Link to Andreas Gursky's work:
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2001/gursky/gursky2.html

MINA LIM - DAVID HOCKNEY

David Hockney

I choose David Hockney. He is famous British painter, stage designer, and photographer. He influenced by Cubism and used multi perspectives. He also used collage skill for editing the photos. He took several pictures of same place of subject and pasted them into the one whole picture. The most impressive thing was that the way to rearrange of each different photos was very unique, but the theme of photos was very ordinary such as his mom, park, river, and so on. So I decided to take picture of my UNM life. I wanted to view my ordinary life in different perspective through the process of taking and editing photos.

Here is the official site of David Hockey.

http://www.hockneypictures.com/home.php

Way cooler than a class photo.  Or not.

Victoria Miera: Susan Burnstine

Susan Burnstine's Website: http://www.susanburnstine.com

From the time Susan Burnstine was four years old to the present, she has suffered from frequent and severe nightmares. As a result, her photography has become a method of coping with these dreams. Everything about her work lends itself to the the idea that her images are in fact depictions of dreams - from the blurred edges and mysterious dark figures to her use of black and white, soft light, and movement. Many of Burnstine’s images are also shot from either high above or far away, with the focal point taking up only a small portion of the entire photograph, creating a feeling of isolation, detachment, and sometimes, insignificance. These things in combination with one another give the work as a whole a dark feeling of wonder at the world and its workings.

For this project, I wanted to keep the dream-like feeling of Burnstine’s work, but focus on the more wishful daydreams of youth rather than the more overtly dark side of the unconscious. Though these images are much lighter and perhaps less meaningful at first glance than Burnstine’s, I attempted to capture the fears that people transitioning from one stage of life to another often feel, but don’t express out loud. I wanted to portray the feeling of being small when put face to face with the concept of an unknown future and both the awe and fear of a world that is much larger and much different than we might have expected. To do this, I used both black and white and color schemes to convey the vividness and quiet darkness of this time period, as well as a mix of solitary figures and broad expanses, large elements and small, to portray the interaction of internal thoughts with the external world.

Overall, I attempted to express that things can be both a dream and a terror at once and that neither sense detracts from the other, but combines to make one unique perspective of the world.