Photograph 1

            One scene that I found very interesting in  Richard Avedon Darkness and Light  can be found starting at 10:38. Here he talked about how when he worked at Bazaar magazine the people there became his “new chosen” family (10:38). Brodovitch was his newly chosen father. He explained how Brodovitch never gave compliments but he was ok with that because he said, “I didn’t believe compliments. I never believed compliments.” (11:02). He never believed in compliments, and in a way, I feel the same. I never liked compliments because I never trusted them and I never understood the need for them. Compliments are a way for people to feel good about themselves and their work. An artist shouldn’t work just to please others. The only way you know you are getting anywhere as an artist is when you get people who disagree with your work. I say this because it means you are pushing boundaries and changing the way people see things. A good example of ...

  Christian Vogt was born in 1946 in Switzerland. He studied photography in Basel, Munich, and London. He worked against “Sachfotografie” (non-subjective photography). He has been a photographer for over 40 years and in that time he has had his photos hung in many museums around the world and has received several awards for his work. And throughout his 40 years, he has stayed true to himself and to his art.                 I like that in his interior photos the people are out of focus and the room is in focus. I also like how the room is simple. He isn’t trying to be all artsy with the way he takes the picture of the room. It is simple and pure. He captured the essence and the beauty of an everyday room. People have probably walked through these rooms and never looked around to see the room until he decided to photograph them. However, the mood in these pictures makes you feel like these rooms are really bla...

                 Philippe Halsman was born May 2, 1906. His father was a dentist and his mother was a teacher. When Halsman was born his mother gave up her career as a teacher. Halsman had a younger sister. His summer vacations in Europe allowed him to visit most of the important museums, where he found he most liked the portraits. He started taking pictures when he was fifteen and taught himself with the help of a book. The first person he photographed was his sister, and he developed the plate by himself in his bathroom. He became the photographer for his family and friends. He found he most liked taking pictures of their faces, which he carried through the rest of his career. Halsman decided to study mechanics in Germany but later continued his studies in Paris. Being in Paris made him want to experiment with photography because it was a big trend there. When he told his mother he was going to drop his studies and become a photographer she...

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in Queens. He died in 1989 at the young age of 42. Mapplethorpe went to college at Pratt Institute where he studied drawing, painting, and sculpting. He first got into photography in 1970 when he was given his first Polaroid camera. He used those photos in collages that he liked to make. Five years later he got a Hasselblad medium format camera which he used to begin taking pictures of his friends and acquaintances. He also used it to work on commercial projects, cover art for albums, and pictures for  Interview  Magazine. Mapplethorpe produced photos that both challenged and adhered to the classical aesthetic standards throughout the 1980s. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986. However, this did not stop him, instead, it gave him a reason to work harder. He accelerated his creative efforts, widened his scope of photographic inquiry, and accepted increasingly challenging commissions. Just a year before his death the Whitney Museum of American...

       Arnold Newman was born on March 3, 1918 in New York City, and died on June 6, 2006, in New York City. He was 88 years old when he died. Arnold Newman was known as the “Father of Environmental Portraiture.”, and he was one of the great masters of the 20th and 21st century. He was also known for his still life and abstract photography.           I am not a big fan of portrait photography because I don’t think people have the same raw beauty as the environment. We trust photos to tell us a story and while the environment can never lie in a photo, people almost always lie in their photos. Portrait photography is all about posing/staging the person and the things around them and I don’t like that. I also tend not to like people so I personally don’t like to photograph them. However, Arnold Newman’s work as a portrait photographer brings the abstract and nature into the picture which makes his work nicer. He is not my f...

An image does not have to be mind blowing, extremely creative, or have some hidden meaning to be good. All you need for a good image is something that catches the eye and draws the viewer in. Ralph Gibson has that something in his photos. His pictures do not look planned out they look natural and spontaneous, yet they capture so much detail. He can do this by focusing more on the small details of the image instead of the big ones, and also takes pictures of smaller areas. This way he gets more detail into an image which makes them look so intricate, even if it is black and white. Gibson was introduced to photography through films. His father worked on films sets so he got to go as a kid. He loved to see what could be done with the cameras. He later helped on sets himself and has also done a lot of work with books. Without that time with his father on set he may never have taken the path to become a photographer. He has traveled the world and received several wards and fellowships for h...

Huangshan Mountains      Michael Kenna is an amazing black and white photographer. I can say this without a doubt because he has gotten several awards to show it. The Imogen Cunningham award in 1981, the Institute of Aesthetic Development award in 1989, the Chevalier of the order of Arts and Letters in 2000, and the honorary Master of Arts in 2003, just to name a few. I would have liked to share all of his works but there are just too many to share so I picked my top five favorites to share. The top three pictures are all from the same mountain range and the bottom two are both from Japan. Breathtaking, hypnotizing, and stunning, these are all words I would use to describe Kenna’s works. My first words I used the first time seeing these pictures were, “oh my god these are beautiful”, and my jaw literal dropped. I was so stunned and hypnotized by the beauty in his works that I just stared at them. One of my favorite part of these pictures is the lighting. Kenna often photo...