Tim Hetherington

Tim Hetherington born in 1970 in Liverpool is a photographer and photojournalist who was known for his work based on war that gives us new way to look at and think of people suffering. He was known for directing the documentary film Restrepo along with co-director Sebastian Junger (author of the bestseller The Perfect Storm) that was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 for best Documentary Feature.

Tim studied literature at Oxford University, and photojournalism at Cardiff University, he was a member go the London based Network Photography agency and later worked with Panos Pictures. In 2007 he published his first book called Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold which documents the civil war in Liberia where he lived in West Africa for eight years with four years spent in Liberia, he later published another book which contains his photographs in Restrepo entitled Infidel.

In April 20, 2011 while covering the conflict in Libya, Tim Hetherington and his colleague and fellow photographer Chris Hondros were killed by libyan forces in a mortar attack in Misurata, he was 40 years old.

This month, Yoshi Milo Gallery is to present an exhibition with Hetherington's photographs which is the first major exhibition of the photojournalist since his death last year.

Bibliography


http://www.timhetherington.com/

http://www.timh-images.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8466775/Tim-Hetherington.html

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore is an american photographers who was born on October 8, 1947 in New York City where at the age of eight he began photographing, at fourteen he sold three prints to Edward Steichen (then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Shore exhibited his work in the institution's first-ever single artist show in 1971), during twelfth grade, he left Manhattan prep school and spent 1965 through 1969 documenting Andy Warhol's studio The Factory.

Shore mainly works on colour photography at the time in the 70s where only serious art photographers saw the world in black and white.

The series American Surfaces shows what Shores has explored during his travel across the states where he keeps a visual diary and photographs whatever he could find like people he meets, food he eats, the houses he comes across, the beds he slept in, store windows, art on walls, etc.

In the series Abu Dhabi it talks about change happening in Abu Dhabi a region that is overshadowed by its loftier neighbour Dubai. The images shows the environment, the people, transportation, etc. where Shore wanted to transform the world into a photograph without moral judgement.

My favourite image from Shore is this photo taken in Ironwood, Michigan in July 9, 1973 from the Uncommon Places series where one half is the sky the other half is the ground where you can see the reflection of the sky on the wet road and puddles and seeing the loneliness of the image where theres nobody in the photo.

Bibliography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/shore.shtml

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/shore_stephen.php

http://www.303gallery.com/artists/stephen_shore/index.php?iid=11166&exhid=3&p=img

http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/events/2011/july/29/stephen-shore-turns-his-lens-to-abu-dhabi/

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was born on January 16, 1933 in New York City, she grew up in Tucson, Arizona then attended high school in Los Angeles. She received a B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and studied philosophy, literature and theology at Harvard University Saint Anne's College, Oxford.

She is an american essayist, short story writer, novelist and leading commentator on modern culture whose innovative essays on subjects like pornographic literature, fascist aesthetics, AIDS, revolution and even photography gained wide attention, she wrote screenplays and directed films, and in the 1960s and 1970s she had a big impact on experimental art.

In her book 'On Photography' which won the National Book Critics Awards for Criticism in 1977, have a series of essays about her opinions on photography like photographs are as much as interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are, to collect photographs is to collect the world, appropriate the thing being photographed and other things she talks about.

Apart from winning an award for On Photography, Sontag achieved numerous awards like the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000) and the 1992 Malaparte Prize in Italy. She was named a Commandeur de I'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the french government in 1999.

On December 28, 2004, Sontag died in New York City.

Bibliography

http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/index.shtml

http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/onPhotography.shtml

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sontag.htm

Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood (born March 4, 1967) is a film maker, photographer and conceptual artist. She was born to a yoga teacher and astrologist mother and father who was a biker. She studied at Goldsmiths College, nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 and won the Illy Cafe Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 47th Venice Biennale. Her debut feature film was the 2009 'Nowhere Boy', a film based on the childhood experiences go the Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon.

Sam Taylor-Wood is best known for making the film 'Still Life' (2001) which sees a bowl of fruit decay as time passes.

Crying Men is a series of portraits of hollywood actors taken by Taylor-Wood where the actor must cry for the camera and show their emotions, actors include Daniel Craig, Jude Law, Robin Williams, Tim Roth, Hayden Christiansen, Laurence Fishburne etc.

Gracefully Suspended sees Taylor-Wood floating in the middle of the room as she explores notions of weight and gravity. Taylor-Wood was being supported by strings which you cannot see.

The image of Taylor-Wood and Henry Bond titled 26 October 1993 was a recreation of the portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono made by the photographer Annie Leibovitz which was taken a few hours before Lennon was assassinated in 1980.

Bibliography

http://photoslaves.com/crying-men-by-sam-taylor-wood/

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/sam-taylorwood-gracefully

http://theworldofphotographers.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/sam-taylor-wood-artist/

http://whitecube.com/artists/sam_taylor-wood/

Identity

Identity is a big thing in our lives, its what makes us all different. Identity comes in many different areas like skin colour, hair, faces, sexuality, religion, culture, style etc. and identity is also based on race and gender. In gender our identity is split into two areas: male and female both are in different style where a female are interested in shoes, shopping, beauty salons, watching romantic films and a male prefers beer, football and watching action films. Sexuality is a big part in our identity it tells if we are gay, lesbians, bisexual, heterosexual etc. Identity in religion talks of our faith if we are muslims we would go to a mosque, if we are jewish we would go synagogue or if we are christians we just go to regular churches. Race is the main part of identity, it all about our skin colour from black,white, olive etc. like africans, indians, chinese, mexicans, australians, americans and even british. Identity these days are now clashing together.

Identity is a big feature in photography like in a passport photo that shows what we look like also on drivers licence, ID cards even on student ID cards. It also works on portraiture as well, a portrait shows the persons identity, is tells us what the person looks like. I think identity works brilliantly with photography as it shows the image of a black person or a white person as it tells you the difference of one person and there culture to the other.

These image by David Goldblatt tells the story of these black south african people travelling on the bus who were forced to face enormous distance between home and work. The images from the series Transported of KwaNdebele talks about the daily journey of black workers between their unchosen homes in the semi-independent homeland of KwaNdebele and their places of work in the white metropolitan city of Pretoria.

I like these images by David Goldblatt as it show the africans identity as workers and slaves compare to white people.

Bibliography

http://www.wisecampus.com/uploads/notescans/GENDER,_RACE,_AND_MEDIA_REPRESENTATION.pdf

http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/davidgoldblatt

http://www.barrybester.com/davidgoldblatt.htm

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/study-room-resource-culture-identity-in-photography/

Ori Gersht: This Storm Is What We Call Progress

Ori Gerst is an Israeli-born, London based artist who is currently presenting his work based on world war and blossoms at the Imperial War Museum in London. The title of the show is called This Storm Is What We Call Progress which opened at the start of IWM London's Holocaust Day and is Gerst's first major solo exhibition in the UK.

The exhibition presents images and two HD films.

Will You Dance For Me depicts an 85-year-old dancer rocking back and forth in a chair, slowly recounting her experience as a young woman who refused to dance at a SS officer's party and was punished by standing barefoot in the snow all night and she pledged that if she survived she would dedicate her life to dance.

Evaders is a two screen film which explores the mountainous path of Lister Route that was used by many to escape Nazi-occupied France. The film focuses on the ill-fated journey of a Jewish writer and philosopher called Walter Benjamin, whose own words gave the exhibition its title. Walter Benjamin travelled across france to get to Spain so he could travel to the United States, when Benjamin got to the border, it was closed so Benjamin committed suicide as he could not continue.

Chasing Good Fortune, Night Fly 1, 2010

The photographic work Chasing Good Fortune examines the shifting symbolism of Japanese cherry blossoms that came to be linked with Kamikaze soldiers during world war two.

Gerst's work often deals with conflict, history and geographical place. Each work in this show disguise dark and complex themes beneath seductive, beautiful imagery.

The exhibition has been developed in partnership with Photoworks.

Bibliography

http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/ori-gersht-this-storm-is-what-we-call-progress

http://www.photoworks.org.uk/programme/projects/this-storm-is-what-we-call-progress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bzj1HB35k

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin was born in Washington D.C. in 1953. As a teenager she began taking photographs in Boston, MA while studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Art. Her earliest work of black and white drag queens was a celebration of the subcultural lifestyle of the community where she belonged. Her work was based gender, sexuality, transexuals, etc. Goldin mainly took photographs of people in the nude, some of them were hugging and kissing even having sex. Goldin said in a youtube clip that she went to a school based on Summerhill, England which is a free school where people were running naked and at that point she became obsessed with taking pictures. On her first subject was David Armstrong who was a drag queen and through him she a whole community of drag queens which must of made David Armstrong her inspiration on photographing other drag queens.

Goldin says that she is NOT a sex addict but loves working with it in photography even when taking photos of herself and her boyfriend having sex and after sex. Her boyfriend Brian was with her from 1981 till 1984 who he was also battering her explaining the top image of Goldin with two black eyes.

Warning: The last link to a youtube clip contains nudity, genital exposure and images of a sexual nature.

Bibliography

http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/nan-goldin/

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/nan-goldin-2649

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwISjOF8k8c

Photography Exhibitions in Berlin

The C/O Gallery in Berlin is holding two photography exhibitions at the moment. The first is Bruce Davidson - Subway and the second is Arnold Newman - Masterclass.

Bruce Davidson - Subway
17 March to 20 May 2012

Bruce Davidson who was born in America was best known as a respectable and influential documentary photographer. He presented his work with images taken at New York subway in 1980. Davidson wanted to show the subway has like graffiti, mugging, dirt, noisy crowds etc. Davidson talks about public transport being a nightmare when he boards a train from a station full of musicians, homeless people, tourists and business people and also gangs on the train so davidson took images of what subway trains and stations contains the kind of people who travel around New York. I think the New York subway can relate to the London Underground as the tube to can have the kind of people like businessmen and musicians and sometimes there can be trouble.


Arnold Newman - Masterclass
3 March to 20 May 2012

Arnold Newman was born in New York City in 1918 and over the past 50 years he became one of the most renowned portrait photographer. His most recognisable work is his images of artists, musicians and presidents like Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol. The exhibition called Masterclass talks about Newman taking images of celebrities, Newman photographed numerous famous people but hated the idea of celebrity when it was devoid of achievement. He was only interested in what, not who, people were.

Bibliography

http://www.co-berlin.info/program/exhibitions/2012/bruce-davidson.html

http://www.co-berlin.info/program/exhibitions/2012/arnold-newman.html

http://www.edelmangallery.com/davidsonshow5.htm

http://www.areaofdesign.com/americanicons/newman.htm

Modernism/Postmodernism

According to some theorists, the 20th century can be divided into two distinct periods; one characterised by the modernism movement and the other by postmodernism. Modernism in the late 1800s was followed by Postmodernism after world war two. This blog tells the difference between Modernism and Postmodernism.

Modernism


Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till 1945. Modernism in everyday terms 'modern' is often used to refer to contemporary design, media or forms of social organisation (as in 'the modern family'). Modernism describes a collection of cultural movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in art, architecture, literature, music and applied arts.

Modernism in photography was mainly used for portraits or landscapes found in history, like this image above showing what the history of photography how it was during modernism.

Postmodernism


Postmodernism began after world war two, especially after 1968. Literally 'after the modern', the postmodern represents a critique of the limitations of modernism with its emphasis upon progress and, in the case of the arts, upon the materiality of the medium of communication. At the time of postmodernism, thing were changing even in photography, in postmodernism photography has now become a form of art. Theorists believe that postmodernism was a response to modernism and hence consider them as two aspects of the same movement.

With Cindy Sherman's work, it show both modernism and postmodernism as her black and white stills relates to hollywood movie like theme as it were before postmodernism.

Bibliography

Wells L., 2009, Photography A Critical Introduction, 4th Edition, Oxon, Routledge, p348-349

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/214493.html

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman who was born in America in 1954 is known as one of the most influential artists in contemporary art. She studied art at Buffalo State College until she graduated in 1976 and moved to New York City. Photography is what made her known for her series called the 'Untitled Film Stills' (1978-1980) showing black and white images of her dressed up in many designs and appearances.

All of Sherman's work is based on women's styles used in movies, fashion, soap operas, etc. and has been going on since the 70s. Her film stills is now being used in colour and is still going to the present. The stills are mainly self portraits where Cindy uses different styles of herself with hairstyles, clothes, props and make-up. My favourite images (above) showing black and white stills of one woman disguising as many different women is what I like about Cindy Sherman's work where she can relate to many womens ways by dressing up.

Right now her latest stills relates to the present day with colour and style. Her work is starting to develop from her early stills as the style is changing. from her black and white hollywood style to her fake tan mini skirt style. I like how from the beginning of the series started to the present day where the design of the images change in time in a way we see photography change.

Bibliography

Bright S., 2006, Art Photography Now, Thames & Hudson

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1170

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/cindy_sherman.htm

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cindy-sherman-1938/text-artist-biography

Semiotics

Semiotics or semiology is a study of signs and symbols that was first introduced in 1916 by swiss linguist Ferninard de Saussure which was then developed even further by John Barthes (France) and C.S. Peirce (USA). Semiotics can be used or interpreted. Semiotics is to help us understand ways of seeing things around us and in reality. Semiotics can be anything from vehicles to clothing to food to music and semiotics is also mentioned in newspaper articles, television, magazine, books etc.

Semiotics is heard in music, smelt or tasted in food and seen in photographs, in photography semiotics can help us read from an image as the image shows evidence of what is happening in the image.

Signs

Signs are everywhere they can be anything and semiotics can make them understandable. Signs works in two areas: signifier and signified, signifier is the object and signified is what the object represented for example, an apple is the signifier (the apple means food) that can be signified as health, knowledge, temptation.

The painting above by Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden standing next to the Tree of Knowledge where Satan disguising as the serpent uses the apple to tempt Eve. In the painting you see the serpent in the tree and you think the snake means animal where the snake is signified as evil and is actually the devil taking the form of the serpent.

Icons

An icon is used to represent areas for example a magnifying glass is an icon for searching, a musical note is an icon for music, a gun is an icon for violence or war etc.

Bibliography

Wells L., 2009, Photography A Critical Introduction, 4th edition, Oxon, Routledge, p350.

Hall S., 2007, This Means This This Means That a user's guide to semiotics, Laurence King

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html

Robert Frank

Robert Frank born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1924 is one of the most influential photographers in history. At the age of 22 he became a professional industrial photographer then a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine in the 1940s. In 1947 he emigrated to America where he began developing images for The Americans series which is his most notable for. During his time working on the series, he travelled across the states from New York City to Chicago to New Orleans to Los Angeles taking photos of the kind of things that represents the US like the people who live here, the places they have, the vehicles they use etc.

Trolley - New Orleans 1956

During his travels he photographed cowboys, long roads, coffins, jukeboxes, diners, rodeos, factory workers, transexuals, african-americans, buildings, farmyards, the american flag and the list goes on. during the time in the 1950s there were different times in the states where black people were referred to as "Negros" rather then africans or foreigners and the community was split apart from the white community and the black community, from this image (shown above) showing what seems to be a bus where the white people were sitting in the front and the black people were sitting in the back as well as the image (shown below) showing factory working split in the middle of an assembly line where the white people are on the left and the black people are on the right. The top image was used as a front cover on the Robert Frank book called The Americans which shows images of america in the 1950s during his travel around the states. The book was based on post-war events after the second world war in a time where the United States was changing in the mid 20th century. The book was published in 1958 in france and a year later in America. 

Robert Frank was presenting his work in the book from the beginning of his journey to the end showing the culture of America in the 1950s at the time of jukeboxes, the change in music, fashion and hollywood stars. I think Robert Frank wanted to show us what Americas was like at that time and how much has changed since then.

Bibliography 

Well L., 2009, Photography: A Critical Introduction, 4th edition., Oxon, Routledge, p103 and 272

http://www.biography.com/people/robert-frank-9301000

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/frank/about.shtm

http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Robert-Frank.html