My Process & Skills (3) Photo Editing

Photo Essay assignment continues. Our first homework is to take minimum 100 pictures, print them as thumbnails, and cut them like mini cards. It was so hard to take hundreds pictures in 4 days (time we could borrow a camera from the equipment center), and it was also time-consuming to cut them into pieces. Finally, I myself took more than 500 pictures, and cut 130 tiny thumbnails.

On the class, we spreaded them on the tables, did brief presentations and had a discussion for each theme. When, Where, How and Why, they were taken? One of my classmates focused on hands, of anonymous people gathering to the park. The other took his pictures all in the silent woods, nobody was there but a deer. Roadside trashes, graffiti series on walls, audiences in museums. And then, we selected each 12 pictures.

My turn was coming. The instructor looked not being interested in most of my photos of people, which were taken in a Burlesque show, in a park, on the road. As I wrote in this blog before, photos of “people who don’t notice at being taken a photo” are my lifework. Hey, why you don’t like it!?

Instead of them, the instructor pointed some pictures like these below. “Nice. I like it.” … really? These were taken as just a little “side dish” served between my “main theme”. The worst one was taken only to check camera settings of white balance. “No, no, I’ve already had several themes to take these pictures. I’d like to select one meaningful theme for my Photo Essay, without these meaningless pictures!” The insolent student said to the instructor. And then, the instructor Edward Walter answered to me, like this (only if my sketchbook could have succeeded to catch his words exactly).

“You don’t need the theme to take a picture. You don’t need the meaning to take a picture. When you took hundreds and thousands of pictures, you might find a sequence beyond the meanings. Your theme comes out from there, spontaneously. Catch it .”

Ok, Ok, so, you mean that is the “Process & Skills”, sir! Therefore, I started to the endless fight with hundreds of pictures I took… To consider what I’ve never thought during taking the picture. To find what I’ve never seen during scoping the finder. I understood that taking pictures is not like cooking, but just like preparing foodstuffs for cooking. And now, I’m at my kitchen counter. To choose them, edit them, and cook them. It’s not finished yet. Photo Essay assignment has to be continued.

Hockney-Inspired Collage

When we were asked to create a photocollage using David Hockney’s own collages as inspiration in Process and Skills a few weeks ago, I was excited.  Coincidentally, I had just been researching Hockney and one of his inspirations, Cubism.  I had visited MoMA and seen the works of Picasso and other Cubist painters, and studied how they used their paintings to present layered views from many angles in order to capture a subject from all sides.  The result was a fragmented image, a painted collage.  Inspired by Cubist concepts, Hockney took numerous photographs of subjects from all angles, including their surroundings, and arranged the photos to compose a new image.

In each of Hockney’s collages, or “joiners,” he approaches his subject uniquely.  These are some of the works that most inspired my own collage:

Hockney captures the man’s face and body from various angles and leaves white space between the polaroids in this collage.

Hockney plays with scale, perspective and the shape of his overall collage in this “joiner.”

Hockney painstakingly creates a unified image from numerous photographs; the result is a more “realistic” view of the subject, yet we still get the photographer’s perspective with the way he has photographed the ground and his shoes.

With my collage, I wanted to play with perspective, scale and shape of the overall piece.  Here is my final version, of my mother at the kitchen table (with an extra large cup of coffee!):

Photo Collage

For our process and skill class we were asked to take as many pictures as possible sequently  of an event or objet to expand the sensation of depth,moment in time, and interesting point of view. Here is some inspiration that I found from David Hockneys´s work. 

It´s amazing how you can still see a complete piece of something modifying the perspective direction and order of the objects.

Here it´s my work!! I chose Coca -cola because it is a product with a lot of history  but mainly because it is distinguished all around the world.Changing the direction of the pictures and playing with shapes created a much more exciting and creative work.

My Process & Skills (2) Photo Essay

Our second assignment for Process & Skills was an Photo Essay. “To take effective pictures you need to train your eye to see the world as the camera does” — the instructor mentioned. So I went outside along with single-lens reflex camera borrowed from our equipment center.

I love to take pictures. Especially, I love to take pictures of people, who don’t know being taken photos. Here are my old essay photos, taken in my home country Japan.

But I’ve been anxious about that my behavior might be refered to as “spy photo” or “peeping”. Someone might feel like that I’m very impolite, or that it’s an invasion of privacy. For example, these were my photos of travel taken in Italy 10 years ago. I couldn’t post them on my blog at that time, because these were too easy to identify them. But actually I was fascinated at releasing the shutter to them.

At this Photo Essay assignment, I had the same conflicted feelings. May I take your photo, without telling you? It’s just a homework of training, but also it could be my “works”. I didn’t mean to harm you or your privacy. However, I’d like to take your photo without striking a pose, or fake smiling… I’m believing that God is in the ‘accidental’ detail of you…

I’m still feeling guilty in it, but I shot a lot of people in secret. This problem will be inconclusive issue. I’m still thinking helter-skelter, and still taking photos back-and-forth at the New York City.

By the way, sometimes people noticed me and strike a funny pose like this. Then I felt released a little bit. If you saw the portraits of yourselves in this article, please let me know. If you felt my eyes were disgusting, I would promise you to delete the images immediately and completely. If not, I would print them for you.

 

New York with Jacob A. Riis

Jacob A. Riis’ photographs now on display at The Museum of the City of New York until March 20,2016

Many of you have chosen one aspect of New York City as your topic for your photo essay.

Jacob Riis, a native of Denmark, was a early photojournalist. And, New York City was his subject. He started as a crime reporter on The New York Tribune in the late 1800’s.

In the turn of the 20th century, this social reformer used his images as well as his writings to bring attention to the conditions in the City’s slums.

He captured images of malnourished children, immigrant families jammed into tenements, and alleyways filled with garbage.

His photographs as well as his handwritten journals and personal correspondence are now on display at The Museum of The City of New York from October 14th 2015 to March 20, 2016.

Ludlow Street: Hebrew making ready for Sabbath Eve in his coal cellar — bread on his table

Court at No. 24 Baxter Street.

http://www.mcny.org/jacobariis

Michael Durham’s Life Magazine Presentation

During last Wednesday’s Process and Skills class, we were able to listen to former Life Magazine reporter and editor, Michael Durham, talk about his time at the magazine and some of the noteworthy stories he worked on. It was fascinating to listen to him matter-of-factly recount meeting Malcolm X, the Beatles; getting arrested in Birmingham during the civil rights protests; following a KKK wizard around; going to the site the day after JFK’s assassination where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots from – the stories truly were incredible!

The part of Michael’s presentation that resonated with me the most is something that my classmate Emily already mentioned, just how much work went into documenting these stories, sometimes to not have the stories published in the way they were originally planned or to not be published at all. Two examples of this stuck out to me from Michael’s presentation.

In the first example, he described how he had been assigned to cover the Beatles in Miami during their first visit to America. The editors at Life were very hung up on the length of the Beatles hair and wanted him and photographer John Loengard to do the photo shoot in a pool to get the Beatles’ “long” hair wet. It was a very laborious task to convince the Beatles to do a photo shoot in a pool in the first place, then sneak them out of the hotel and onto the estate where the pool was, and then get them actually into the pool since it was chilly outside. After all that, they did capture an iconic image, but none of the Beatles’ hair is wet in the photo!

You say hello, I say that is dry hair.

The second example Emily mentioned in her post as well, but it was such a crazy story, it bears repeating. Michael and a photographer were assigned to do a story on Antarctica. While on location there, the photographer Michael Rougier had a near-fatal accident that involved him falling hundreds of feet off the side of a cliff and needing to be airlifted to New Zealand for life-saving medical treatment. Prior to this, he and Michael had spent weeks living in a tent and following the researchers around. The story never ended up running in Life and all the images captured by Michael Rougier were never published.

Next time I’m struggling through a project I will try to channel Michael Rougier!

These two examples highlight how the finished product (or lack thereof) is truly the tip of the iceberg and the true scope of work can’t even be seen in the final piece. This reality of the process is something that I’m still coming to grips with in my own work. I need to get more used to the fact that part of the process means sometimes spending tons of time and energy on an element of a project or a whole project that doesn’t end up happening. It’s comforting to know that people far more accomplished and talented than me go through the same thing!

Life Magazine Stories with Michael Durham

This past week in Process & Skills, we met Michael Durham, a former photographer, reporter, and researcher at Life, who came to speak to our class about his experiences working for the magazine.  As we are all currently working on a photo essay, this provided us with a wonderful opportunity to learn from a professional and find inspiration.

Listening to Mr. Durham’s stories about working at the magazine was like listening to a real-life Forrest Gump.  When he began his talk with a story about how he was hired by Life after his coverage of a tuna tournament in Massachusetts was spotted by an editor from New York, I knew he was going to be interesting.  I did not quite expect, however, to hear that over the course of his 11 years at the magazine, he would meet Malcolm X, the Beatles, or the leader of the KKK, and report on the Birmingham riots and the March on Washington in 1963, the 1968 Olympics, or the gay liberation movement of 1972. He was one of the first reporters on the scene after President Kennedy was shot, and very nearly got an interview with Martin Luther King Jr.–if only he bought the Birmingham rioters whistles to divert the police dogs (rule #1–journalists shouldn’t get involved in the story they are reporting on!).  It was incredible to hear these familiar historical episodes from someone who had witnessed them so closely.

The main takeaway from all this was most certainly that reporting, and getting “the” photograph, are a lot of hard work.  Sometimes, too, it is all for naught–Mr. Durham also recounted a story of how he and a fellow photographer had made a particularly demanding trip to Antarctica for six weeks to do a story for the magazine, during which his friend fell off a mountain and nearly died, and the story never ran.  So many stories that he worked on, in fact, never ran.  Countless hours, trips, miles, and money spent for a story never to see the light of day.  I think that, for us young designers, this is a very important lesson to learn; sometimes, as students, we might spend hours, days, or weeks working on a project, for it not to work out.  We might be out there taking hundreds of photos for our essays, to only come up with 10 that carry the message we want to convey.  It’s tough work.  But hey, who’s to say that somewhere along the way, we won’t meet some amazing people and witness some incredible things, like Mr. Durham?  It’s all about the process, and I think that Mr. Durham is himself an example that hard work is not without reward; at the very least, it gives you some unbelievable memories!

Photojournalism: LIFE and Walid Raad

This week, our class was given the opportunity to hear Michael Durham, a reporter, correspondent, and editor at LIFE magazine, speak. In addition to it being a fabulous examination of LIFE photojournalism, it was a rare opportunity to hear first hand stories of some of the most interesting and important turning points in recent American history–including Kennedy’s assassination, the Birmingham riots, and the gay revolution.

Later in the week, I also attended a MoMA exhibit of the contemporary artist Walid Raad. The exhibit features Raad’s photography, video, sculpture, and performance from the last 25 years, exploring “the role of memory and narrative within discourses of conflict, and the construction of histories of art in the Arab world.”

Visiting the exhibit shortly after listening to the role LIFE’s photography and journalism played in shaping the U.S. and international narrative made me think about the role photography plays in shaping perception of news and the world around us. This is especially poignant as Raad’s work included fictionalized photographs, videotapes, notebooks, and lectures that related to real events and authentic research in audio, film, and photographic archives in Lebanon and elsewhere. The exhibit explores how things we generally take at face value–photographs, video etc.–can be manipulated to present a narrative that is not true.

This relates to Mr. Durham’s discussion of things LIFE reporters would not do, such as get involved in the story they were reporting–for example, buying dog whistles for Martin Luther King’s supporters. Comparing my experiences listening to Mr. Durham and walking through Walid Raad’s work caused me to reflect on the importance of photojournalism to tell a story and the expectation that the story is true. 

Photography Inspiration: Lynn Saville

Just in time for our photo essays: A nice article about Lynn Saville in this week’s New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-archeology-of-overnight?mbid=social

Landmarks in the History of Photography | From TASCHEN BOOKS

A new publication to be released this month from Taschen Books.

50 Photo Icons | The Story Behind The Pictures by Hans-Michael Koetzle

“A meticulous analysis by an erudite historian.

Each shot is accompanied by a fascinating commentary.”— Le Monde, Paris

I saw this newly published book the other day at a friend’s home. Each photo, each essay, takes you to a different point in history. Each photographer becomes a visual historian – for our eyes to take in what they wanted to convey.

“Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see the world and influencing our perceptions of reality. To demonstrate the unique and profound influence on culture and society that photographs have, Photo Icons puts the most important landmarks in the history of photography under the microscope.

A spread from the book of photographer Bert Stern’s images of Marilyn Monroe.

Outskirts of Trang Bang | VietNam

Each chapter of this special edition focuses on a single image which is described and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artistic contexts. The book begins with the very first permanent images (Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre’s famous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the present day, via the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and works such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), Robert Doisneau’s Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), and Martin Parr’s ’New European photography.” from TASCHEN |  See & Read more at their web site:

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/44933/facts.50_photo_icons_the_story_behind_the_pictures.htm

Fashion photographer, Horst P. Horst, for Paris Vogue in the 1930’s.

Availability: October 2015 | US$ 29.99 | Edition: English