Final Project (Any)Thing and a few thoughts.

            First let me say that I had a great time during this class this year. I saw so many different creative styles and interests it was very inspiring. I hope that everyone continues to create and grow and I look forward to seeing future works from everyone. Next I really do appreciate the feedback on my work and after being in so many critiques over the years I still learn things I can do better from other students. Good luck to you and your creative endeavors. 

Chris Hackard.

THE TEMPLE OF THE DARK PARTS OF THE MIND

           

ARTIST STATEMENT FINAL PROJECT: (ANY)THING

            Take a moment and think of the things that haunt you. I’ve often travelled there in my own mind with its limitless imagination conjuring all types of monstrosities. On many occasion I have been accused of being angry or somewhat disturbed because of the art work I create and what inspires me. My creations are nothing more than an act of catharsis, a way to bring forth my troubles and fears and visualize them. The simple act of creating something in some strange way lessons the anxiety of the unknown that my own imagination can bring forth from the dark ether of dreams. 

            I’ve taken a moment to once again to gaze into the temple of the dark parts of my mind to bring forth the following images based on my nightmares. One image is my vision of the constant struggle to create being torn between the left and right brain with neither giving way yet I bow down to them both.  One of my other images is my fear of becoming cold and machine like, feeling alien and not allowing anyone to see the light within. My last image is fear of the unknown unlocking some dark place where only anger resides that is beyond reason creating in essence my own demon. I explore my own dualism through my art and no matter how dark a creation the light is never completely extinguished from it. That ethereal-light is a reminder that things no matter how bad will eventually get better. So once again take a moment to think of the things that haunt you and then find a place within your own temple, a place where the light is just breaking through the fears that surround you.

Two Levels

Man Machine Am I

Inner Demon

Jason Langer

I found the photographer Jason Langer in Fraction Magazine. Langer’s series Possession works to universalize the identity of individuals while humanizing inanimate, often creepy objects. Langer’s photos are often black and white, making use of the night in order to mystify the subjects of his work. The inanimate objects in Possession are given a sense of personality while he works to hide the personality of his human subjects in order to create a more universal or generic identity. 

I was impressed with Langer’s use of black and white in primarily night time scenes, as I have an interest in this color choice and time frame. He creates haunting images that have a supernatural presence due to the somewhat abstracted settings hidden by the darkness. His use of mannequins and other similar human-like objects works to blur the line between animate and inanimate. 

Link to site: http://jasonlanger.com/#

Loretta Lux

Loretta Lux is a fine art photographer from Dresden, Germany who makes surreal portraits of young children. She particularly favors portraying young children as otherworldly adults, using photoshop to give her photographs a foreign aesthetic which gives them a surreal feel. She also makes use of a low camera angle, bringing the viewpoint to that of the child in order to scale down the world to their size. The perspective from which we view the child is similar to the way children view adults, a viewpoint that we rarely ever see children from. Lux's use of various costumes that seem both adult-like and from an vague era also contribute to her photographs' surreal, stylized appearance. 

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is a fine art photographer who creates massive, cinematic-like photographs in which every small detail is meticulously planned. Crewdson makes use of a large crew similar to a movie set in which he is the director. His large-scale photographs have an inherent narrative quality, they give the viewer hints about what has happened or about to happen while still leaving a certain vagueness, leaving some room for open interpretation. I really enjoy his photographs because they often seem close enough to reality to be true, but also have some type of otherworldly feel created by the composed aesthetics.

Cool 3D photography stuff

So I came across a few cool new "cameras", while doing research for an art history paper. They are really neat and really bring the mediums of 3D modelling/printing and photography together.

 
Sense's 3D Scanner:
So this is essentially a 3D camera. You approach your object from different views, and presto- you've got a rendered model on the computer. And if you've got a 3D printer, you can even print those models. It's like magic. But, judging on the amazon customer reviews page, the 3D scanner is a fraud. Real shame... The company also doesn't accept returns- go figure... So, yeah, some things are too good to be true. Well- that's what you get for buying a camera that looks like a staple-gun. 

Panono (360 degree) Panoramic Ball Camera:

Now, this one looks pretty legit. It's a ball, that you throw in the air, with a bunch of cameras on it (36 total), that all go off at the same time. You can then go onto a computer/ tablet/ smartphone and view the image from all angles. Seeing that these guys are still in the development phase, they will be able to actively work on their product and make sure that they fulfill their promises to their investors/ possible buyers.

Penelope Umbrico

  Penelope Umbrico is another artist I've discovered since moving to Albuquerque. Photography becomes the subject itself in her work. She employs traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

The first image is called "Suns (From Sunsets) from Flickr, 2006-ongoing. The piece is made by searching sunset on flickr, cropping the sunset and then each photograph uploaded to Kodak and 6x4 machine prints are made. The installation grows each time it's put on display according to the amount of hits she got when searching sunsets. The piece began with 2,303,057 suns from flickr in 2007 and by 2011, it was at 8,730,221 suns.

The second image is similar to the first but the suns were taken from stock photography websites and each photograph had a copyright watermark on it. Her intention for this work was to point out the absurdity of trying to "own" the image of the sun.

I think her work speaks a lot about today's attitude towards photography. Everyone is taking photographs and posting them online and it's at a point where it's like there's too much to look at. I think the act of appropriation is a good way of demonstrating those ideas.

http://www.penelopeumbrico.net/index.html

Sergey Larenkov

Sergev Larenkov is a russian photographer that decided to make this project blending old images from World War II with actual images of the same scene.

He traveled to Paris, Berlin, Prague and Russia to take pictures from a similar angle as the original war Photographs.

Gaston Ugalde

Gaston Ugalde is one of the most famous painters in my country and he´s been doing a lot of photography lately.

One of his last projects has been held in the Salar de Uyuni, the world´s largest salt flat, (southwest Bolivia). His purpose in this project is to highlight bright, saturated colors with the colors of the salt flat and the landscape.

Here´s the link of you want to see more of his work.

http://gastonugalde.com/

http://www.salart.org/

I was browsing online the other day and found this photo project called Slavik's Fashion by a Ukrainian photographer Yurii Dyachyshyn. Slavik’s Fashion is a cycle of photographs showing an unusual fashion collection from the streets of Lviv. Over 100 photographs depict Slavik-a homeless man, who is dressed differently in each picture. The photographs were taken during chance encounters on the streets of Lviv.After Slaviks disappearance in Jan. 2013, the photographer created the project Slavik Super Star, where he placed Slavik's images on covers of popular magazines and photographed them. I thought this was a pretty interesting project overall. For more info: images and statements you can visit http://dyachyshyn.com/en/ .

Seung-Hwan Oh

Another artist I recently discovered is Seung-Hwan Oh. He is a South Korean based artist. These portraits are a part of a series called "Impermanence" and it involves immersing developed film in water then adding microbes to the water. The microbes eat away at the film and create these surreal looking photographs. I really like the unpredictable nature of this process and thought it was a clever way to demonstrate how fragile film photography can be. When I first came across these photographs, I thought they were composites because of the composition of the affected areas.

http://www.seunghwan-oh.com/

Kelli Connell

Kelli Connell is an artist I discovered in my other photography class and thought it was kind of relevant to the composite project. The images are created by scanning negatives and manipulating two or more of those negatives in Photoshop. The work reconstructs private relationships that she has experienced personally, witnessed in public, or seen on television. What I find interesting about these photographs is that these images are completely fictitious - even though these events look believable, the events haven't actually occurred.

"Using the computer as a tool to create a "believable" situation is not that different from accepting any photograph as an object of truth"

http://kelliconnell.com/

Action Sports

I've always been amazed at what happens when it comes to action sports and how fast paced (not to mention how dangerous) it is. Below are three different photographers with their own style specializing in a different sport.

Below is photographer Brian Bielmann, who has been in the business for over 30 years and has had his work published on over 100 magazine covers. He had even done commercial pieces for Billabong and Volcom. Though I know nothing about surfing, I've always thought how crazy it is to go out in open water, and ride a wave on a board and hope nothing bad happens.

http://www.brianbielmann.com/PORTFOLIO/SURFING/1/caption/

Next is Matt Rice. I found him through my brother's friend's Instagram page (photo below). Rice's work ranges from traditional weddings and his own personal work, but mainly takes photos for MXPTV and Alli Sports Motocross. 

http://mattricephoto.smugmug.com/

Last, is Arto Saari, who originally started off as a professional skateboarder, but then became a photographer and cinematographer. He primarily takes photos of skateboarders (go figure) that are known internationally.

http://www.artosaari.com/skateboarding/

For anyone that has watched on form of actions sports or another, you will know that it is not easy. Being able to capture an athlete mid performance while they are literally zooming by you. 

Group Composite

Group Composite!

Tah-dah!

Tiffany Chien Photography

This is another photographer I admire. Her work is more of what I started doing and I love it because some of the places she has shot at or has been to, I also want to shoot at and be at. I started following her after she made a Teen Wolf Typography Print that is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and discovered she also did photography and I immediately fell in love. Still here is her site and I hope you enjoy it.

Camilla Hylleberg Photography

Im really into sports and outdoor photography. There is something about it that is so interesting and exciting, maybe its the always being on the move and trying to get that perfect shot that lures me in. It's stuff like this that I want to do in the future. Anyway, I found her by accident when looking for photography people to follow on instragram and I don't regret it. Here is the link  to her site and I hope you enjoy them

Colorized Old Pictures

While looking for some examples for my Black and White assignment on the Internet, I found this article showing historic film photographies that have been colorized by different artist.

I got amazed by the fact that modern digital tools can completely transform an old picture and make it look like the picture has been recently taken.

I think this is a really cool project to keep in mind and worth trying.

Here is the link if you want to take a look at more images.

http://imgur.com/a/wapUe

High Fashion & Nigel Barker

     Though I have never been too big on doing portraits myself, I have always been interested in what goes into creating an image dealing with high fashion. Generally, the model (or models) are placed in a simple background and surrounded by very intense lighting while dressed in very lavish clothing. One fashion photographer that I have known about for some time is Nigel Barker. He has done advertising for Sony and Ford, and even Nine West and Pamela Roland. Despite who or what he is photographing, he always maintains the same style, using dramatic light and utilizing Photoshop to create high contrast images.
     Below are three photos that I feel best represent his work and what one usually sees when looking at any form of high fashion. First is super model Coco Rocha, next is an image part of an ad campaign for Pamela Roland, and last is part of a photo shoot done for Cycle 16 of America's Next Top Model in Morocco.

http://www.nigelbarker.tv/