Zoe Beloff Questions

1. Your work seems to deal a lot with the idea of the supernatural and psychic. Have you ever experimented with using photography to create ghostlike images in a stop motion effect?

2. While some of your work addresses the relationship between technology and imaginations, you still choose to use film for your work. Have you considered using HD video for your work?

Gregory Crewdson

I find I am extremely drawn to the cinematic elements of Gregory Crewdson's photographs, as well as the eeriness that the viewer finds when looking at them. He uses light not only as an aesthetic quality but also as another presence in the photograph. This is the same kind of feel I am going for. Using the light as a presence, as another character reacting to the figure. I want to try to move my work indoors again since I have many images I am happy with from the outdoors. These images give me insight into how to make drama out of the mundane feel of the suburban interiors. 


Biography:


"Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1962. His first experience of photography, at the age of ten, was a Diane Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At sixteen, he played in a band called the Speedies, whose first single was titled "Let Me Take Your Foto." In 1985, he received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase, where he studied photography with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. He graduated with an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University in 1988. For his thesis project, he took photographic portraits of residents of the area around Lee, Massachusetts, where his family had a cabin." (Metroartwork.com)


Quotes:


"I think the process, in my mind, is as important as the picture itself."- Gregory Crewdson


"I think that, in a sense, there's something about photography in general that we could associate with memory, or the past, or childhood."-Gregory Crewdson

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"Gregory Crewdson Biography and Artwork - MetroArtWork." MetroArtWork - MetroArtWork. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. <http://metroartwork.com/gregory-crewdson-biography-artwork-m-61.html>.

Alone

Psychologists have recently noticed that people have become increasingly isolated socially from each other in the present. Due to all of the virtual gadgets that are now the norm in our lives, communication and companionship seem  to have taken a back seat. "Remarkably, 25% of Americans have no meaningful social support at all - not a single person they can confide in. And over half of all Americans report having no close confidants or friends outside their immediate family. The situation today is much worse today than it was when similar data were gathered in 1985,"(Psychology Today).  We have moved out of the comforts of company and into our own self involved worlds. "Even Americans of a few generations ago used to benefit from a richness of community life that has all but disappeared, as we've witnessed a long, slow retreat into the hermetically sealed comfort of our fortress-like homes..."(Psychology Today).

The idea of social isolation has a lot to do with the themes present in my work. My figure lives in some form of isolation with this mysterious relationship with the light. Others are never present in this mental world although much time passes. The idea of how we have begun to stray away from others and form a band with ourselves really touches on what my work has to do with.

"Social Isolation: A Modern Plague | Psychology Today." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-depression-cure/200907/social-isolation-modern-plague>.

I found this article to be very interesting due to the evidence it showed about how we are drifting apart. I raises great points about why this is happening due to new gadgets as well as the hours we work and commute. I found it very interesting though to read about how this so negatively effects us because we are meant to live in small groups that we grow close with. We are made to have companionship. The articles brings up the sad statistics about how so many people (25%) feel that they have no kind of companionship or support group.

Richard Misrach

Richard Misrach's work is similar to mine in his concept of how we have a large hand in the environment. We effect how it looks, yet we never stop to notice the absurdity of this. I also have been interested in his work because I am very drawn to the style in which he shoots. His work is the complete opposite of mine in the sense of aesthetics. While mine is extremely dark with high contrast, his work has a much softer and lighter look to it.

Biography:
"Richard Misrach (born in Los Angeles, California in 1949) is an American photographer known for his photographs of human intervention in landscapes.
Misrach graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He first started photographing with a 35mm camera to foster social change. Since the late 1970s he has photographed using an 8x10 camera and color film. Misrach has one child, Jacob and lives in Berkeley, California."(Robert Mann Gallery)

Misrash is well known for his landscapes that show and obvious human hand in them such as tire tracks in a dessert and crowds of people on a beautiful beach. His most popular work, Dessert Cantos beautifully mixes this with soft lighting.

Quotes:
"Misrach's photography is sometimes referred to as cultural landscape photography as it shows human intervention in the landscape." (Robert Mann Gallery)

"As interesting and provocative as the cultural geography might be, the desert may serve as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes and failures, the use and abuse, both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself. It is a simple, if almost incomprehensible equation: the world is as terrible as it is beautiful, but when you look more closely, it is as beautiful as it is terrible. We must maintain constant vigilance, to protect the world from ourselves, and to embrace the world as it exists." -Richard Misrach

Artist does not have a website

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"Biography: Richard Misrach | Robert Mann Gallery." ARTINFO - The Premier Site for News about Art and Culture around the World. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. <http://www.artinfo.com/galleryguide/20291/6826/6306/robert-mann-gallery-new-york/artist/richard-misrach/biography/>.

Memory

In my psychology class we have been discussing how our memory works and how there are many elements of our lives we never remember because we choose to ignore it, so once we stop seeing, hearing, or feeling it, our brains loose the information forever. There are three different types of memory: Sensory Memory, Short-term memory, and Long-term memory. The amazing thing about sensory memory is that our brain absorbs all this information at every second, yet we only remember it for a few seconds. The small amount of information we do remember makes it into our Short-term memory, but most of this information only lasts in our brain for 30 seconds to 3 minutes. I feel this topic of how our brain remembers stuff, has a lot to do with some of the concepts in my work. A lot of my images have to do with discovery, but it is rediscovery of things that are already there, that we do not pay attention to, so it never makes it into our long-term memory.

Quotes:

"Usually, the STS is described as having a limited storage capacity (seven, plus or minus two items) that 'decay' and become inaccessible after a relatively brief interval (estimates range from 12 to 30 seconds)."-Human memory Model

"To do this, the theory must specify properties of the processes and stores. For example, a store might have a "maximum capacity" --- in other words, a maximum quantity of information that it can hold at a 

given time. If we know a store's capacity and what happens when that capacity is exceeded, we will be able to predict that certain information will be forgotten at certain times." -Human Memory Model

"Human Memory Model." Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames. Web. 20 Oct.2010.http://humanfactors.arc.nasa.gov/cognition/tutorials/ModelOf/Knowmore1.html.

This article gave me good scientific facts that I could use to cite information and then tie it into my project. The article provided a brief overview of the three types of memory and shows the movement from one to the next. Senory memory is all the information that our brain takes in. This form of memory though, only lasts for up to 30 seconds. The second form of memory is short-term memory this kind of memory last for only 30 seconds to 3 minutes. The third kind of memory is long-term memory, which is stored for over 3 minutes and on. Very little of our daily life ever makes it to this stage. From this information I was able to conceptualize these ideas and apply them to my work.

Arthur Tress

Although Arthur Tress's work is visually different from my work, his photographs still deal with a similar concept. His work places much importance on the subjects actions and locations in the shots. I love the small details in his photographs, such as the sun outlining one of the figures in the second image down. The images have an erie quality, yet the images are not out of the ordinary subjects and there is nothing distinctly different about the subjects. Somehow though, through the lighting, angles, etcetera, he is able to produce an alternate reality from reality.


Biography:

"Arthur Tress was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY on November 24, 1940. He took his first photographs while still in elementary school in 1952. He attended Bard College where he studied art and art history, world culture and philosophy under Heinrich Bluecher. While studying, he continued to photograph and began making short films. He graduated in 1962 with a B.F.A.  After graduation from Bard, Tress moved to Paris to attend film school, but soon left. After traveling through Europe, Egypt, Japan, India and Mexico, he settled in Stockholm, Sweden and worked as a photographer at the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum. In 1968 he moved back to New York with a commitment to becoming a professional photographer. He had his first one-person exhibition that year, "Appalachia--People and Places", which was held at the Smithsonian Institute and the Sierra Gallery (New York City). He then worked as a documentary photographer for V.I.S.T.A. from 1969-1970. Arthur Tress was one of the first artists in the 1970s to break way from street photography and develop a more personal vision, which included manipulating that realty in front of him instead of being just a passive observer."

 - Alex Novak  (Novak, Alex. "Arthur Tress." Rev. of Arthur Tress. Web log post. Contemporary Works. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. <http://www.contemporaryworks.net/artists/artist_bio.php/1/6606>.)

Quotes: 

"Photography has an amazing ability to capture the fine detail of surface textures. But far too often these intricate patterns are loved by the photographer for their own sake. The richness of texture fascinates the eye and the photographer falls easy prey to such quickly-caught complexities. The designs mean nothing in themselves and are merely pictorially attractive abstractions. A central problem in contemporary photography is to bring about a wider significance in purely textural imagery." - Arthur Tress 

"I’ll push myself to complete a series, because sometimes when you get to the end of your rope, you can go beyond and actually invent something new – something you hadn’t seen before." - Arthur Tress

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Magic

Magical realism has become an extremely important part of my series. I have turned the light from being a character to becoming more of precious, magical item while still mixing it with every day life. I am trying to have my figures dressed in every day clothing to give a clear dating to the images, yet I keep the locations in places that are much more ambiguous. Reading about magical realism in literature as well as in art, helps to give me ideas on how to go about this process. I want to create images that could easily be seen on a every day basis, yet I want to change one detail about it (the light, and the subjects interactions with it) in order to throw off the viewer.

“Magic realism is the opposite of the "once-upon-a-time" style of story-telling in which the author emphasizes the fantastic quality of imaginary events. In the world of magic realism, the narrator speaks of the surreal so naturally it becomes real.” -B.J Geetha

“…the supernatural is presented as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural or extraordinary.” – B.J Geetha

Geetha, B.J. "Magic Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude." Periyar University. Web. 13 Oct. 2010

This article was extremely effective in clearly describing magical realism as a literary and artistic genre. The article also acts as an analysis of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The author describes how Marquez uses the elements of the story to make the reader question real life political events occurring in Columbia. He then goes on to describe the main events in the storyline that deal with loneliness a person deals with, whether voluntary or forced. The article mostly helped though, to give examples of magical realism through analyzing the storyline.