Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Found and Bound- A Memory
“Found and Bound” took a lot of thought process before I was able to latch onto an idea or theme and honing the reason(s) for approaching this project in the way that I did. First, I was trying to interpret the given guidelines. They were a bit open ended and did not provide many limitations for what direction the project should be taken in other than the fifteen moves; actually, I removed and added so much to the project that I lost count after the fifteen. With so much freedom in the guidelines, I wanted to take the project’s title as literal as I possibly could and continue looking through the stack of books until I found something that caught my eye. None of the books I found had to necessarily correlate with one another, they just had to catch my attention. In fact, I got a little too much visual stimulation and ended up collecting more books than I ended up using. I simply wanted to keep my options as open as possible.
When it came time to actually come up with how I wanted to present my book as an object, I started searching for themes. I found that some of the books were meant to be a sincere gift for someone because of the notes that were in the front pages of the books. All I could think about was where these people were; why don’t they still have their books? Did the books ever hold any value or significance to the recipient? Where did they come from, and how did they end up in southern Maryland? In asking myself these questions, I started to think about the journey that these books embarked on and the hands and eyes they went through. I realized that these books then served as memories; not only the memories of the initial givers and recipients, but everyone else who intercepted these books before I came across them.
With the idea of memory planted in my thought process for what to do for this project, I thought how those memories would only serve to the people who experienced them first hand, and of course, the book itself. But how could a book share all of its memories with everyone who comes across it? These memories then become one’s own, precious and private. The books carry much more than the story on the pages bound within the covers. It carries the thoughts, memories, and stories of everyone who has intercepted it whether they are significant memories or not.
I started to block out bits and pieces of each page and sequences of pages as I flipped through the books I used. It became, in a sense, my literal representation of what has happened to the memories that these books went through. Then, being bound together as one book, they can somewhat share those stories that are all coming from different directions. It is more so the mystery of the experiences that these books went through, and the new mysteries that A Memory will carry in the future.
Found and Bound book project
The Found and Bound book project was a really neat hands-on project that helped me focus a slew of ideas into one book, while also being able to group numerous books together. When I first heard of the idea I thought that the project would be a compilation of different book pages that I would just insert into a main book, though when I started working on the piece I found that it started to become a sort-of collage type book of photos. When we initially went up into the library to find books to work from, I wasn’t sure of any theme or select path to take with the book, I just wanted to create something unique and abstract, something that no one else would create. Searching for books started off by looking for interesting titles, but then I soon realized that the title was the least important section of the book for me, so I spent a good time looking for photos within various books. The first book that I found was the one book that I pulled most of my source material from, which was a psychology book called The Mind of Man. This book initially caught my eye in the library because of the photos and diagrams in it, mostly images of the mind and human body. Then I found this small, blue, worn out book that just seemed like the right size and shape for the project, even though the title was Nuclear War Nuclear Peace. With this, I had picked out several more books that I figured I would use the covers or small images from, but ultimately in the end I just stayed with the one psychology book and other images from magazines. Even though I had all of my books and there was a mass of craft materials in front of me, I had no initial path that I wanted to take, I just figured that I would cut and paste and eventually figure it out; which is exactly what I did.
The first photo that I cut out was a diagram of a human bran under dissection, where you could see every vain and crevice, and I placed this on the first blank page I saw in the front of the book. From here on, I knew that I wanted the book to be about the mind and drugs and the various things that humans experience while on them. Text wasn’t an initial plan but in the end I thought it would be cool to kind of take the reader on a trip and guide them through the book, making them think about the photos and if the words even matched up with them or not. One concept that I wanted to make sure I included in the book was various spreads, and luckily I was able to find a lot of photos that fit the entire page and worked with the gutter of the book. I’m not quite sure why I wanted to include this item in the book but I eventually liked the way it looked and fit the concept of the book. I called the book War, Peace and Drugs and did everything from cutting and pasting to painting and tearing out pages from the book. I glued images down and drew in the book as well. This part was to basically add more confusion then was already in the book, so that the viewer could have an experience of the abstract chaos that takes place. Also, I wanted to just add my own little touch to the book, so I just added black pen marks to certain picture frames, kind of adding an abstract feel to the photo. Overall, I had fun making the book, and I really think it helped me focus on the sequence of photobooks and how they need to ultimately come together to form a cohesive idea or pattern, in this case, drugs war and peace.
The first photo that I cut out was a diagram of a human bran under dissection, where you could see every vain and crevice, and I placed this on the first blank page I saw in the front of the book. From here on, I knew that I wanted the book to be about the mind and drugs and the various things that humans experience while on them. Text wasn’t an initial plan but in the end I thought it would be cool to kind of take the reader on a trip and guide them through the book, making them think about the photos and if the words even matched up with them or not. One concept that I wanted to make sure I included in the book was various spreads, and luckily I was able to find a lot of photos that fit the entire page and worked with the gutter of the book. I’m not quite sure why I wanted to include this item in the book but I eventually liked the way it looked and fit the concept of the book. I called the book War, Peace and Drugs and did everything from cutting and pasting to painting and tearing out pages from the book. I glued images down and drew in the book as well. This part was to basically add more confusion then was already in the book, so that the viewer could have an experience of the abstract chaos that takes place. Also, I wanted to just add my own little touch to the book, so I just added black pen marks to certain picture frames, kind of adding an abstract feel to the photo. Overall, I had fun making the book, and I really think it helped me focus on the sequence of photobooks and how they need to ultimately come together to form a cohesive idea or pattern, in this case, drugs war and peace.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
FOUND AND BOUND "YOUNG TILL WE DIE"
So, project one gave me an idea of just how intense the rest of this class is going to be. I really feel like my book was not adequate, and most definitely not up to the rest of my standard of work. My concept wasn’t fully realized in time and as such when I set out to actually make the book my heart wasn’t in it. Sure, I had interesting parts, but I felt it really did not add up to a cohesive whole. I do feel like the idea of contrasting hand writing had a lot of potential but it really didn’t tie together with how I was approaching memory in the context of “Young Till We Die.” For me, the most important part of my book was the pages that I tore directly from last year’s dream journal. Obviously these pages were very personally significant but I feel like they also add a certain emotional heft that would’ve been very lacking without them. I wanted to take a step away from the visual aspects, because that’s what I feel like I do most often and most strongly, and see if I could make the texts interact with each other. Of course I ended up focusing on the most visually gratifying aspects of the texts I can; the handwriting. Ultimately I feel like what really made me book unsuccessful is fairly obvious and apparent, lack of effort. I was intimidated by this project and it shows.
However, I had no difficulty appreciating other people’s projects. I really admired Dana’s use of shape and form to create a cohesive narrative. I also really liked the way Tina used mixed media and incorporated a very strong element of hip-hop culture into her book.
Fear and Loathing in the Library
I didn’t have any set idea for the kind of book I wanted to make for the found and bound project. I was hoping to find a “cool” book that would inspire me, so I riffled through as many books as I could in the library to find one that was visually appealing inside more than out, but most of them were heavily text and data based. In the Leonardtown bookstore I found a book that was over 100 years old that was beautifully aged, antiqued, and I thought I could do something interesting with it. However, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy something so old even though it was only $10 and virulently intolerant (it said horrible things about Blacks, women and Protestants). I went with the book “Close-Up on the City” that I found in the library.
My process for expanding the book was odd. I wanted to approach it from a standpoint of creatively editing the text rather that completely obscuring its original content—the only part I completely made my own was the cover. I also wanted to do something prolific (who doesn’t?) that I would achieve at least in part by “editing” a vast majority of the book—this is where I made my first mistake because creating artwork and messages on all 200 pages was too much work given the time I had. I should have picked a smaller book with regard to both size and page count. Also, I knew I wanted to hollow out a space in it (my parents wouldn’t let me do that when I was a kid) and put in a mouse trap. I don’t know why that was the only idea before starting the project.
Much of my editing came from adding interesting images to complement the text or subvert it. I found these in magazines and pasted them in. The cover has a religious image of god creating the earth that I cut out to make it look like he was destroying a city in a hurricane-like vortex; the flaming fire image was a somewhat ominous compliment to the title page; the covered face went with the section title Preface; the nude woman served to create a “dirty” undertone for the page in which I highlighted all the vaguely sexual words and phrases. The writing I did in the book was supposed to seem like marginal notes written by a previous and immature reader before I edited it, but I don’t think that was successful.
Overly I thought my book was relatively unsuccessful. I was trying to subvert the theme of the book like a few of the other students did, but I don’t think that is very obvious. I also didn’t edit nearly as much of the book as I would have liked to. Compared to all of the other books mine seems inadequate and half assed. It also doesn’t have the narrative links from page to page that I was hoping for—instead each page is a work in and of its own. It feels incomplete.
I should have put that mouse trap in the book.
Found and Bound: The Wasted Americans
I was afraid I would have to explain everything about my book, but I am glad that everyone understood. I had it planned out in my head, but when I put it together in the book, it seemed kind of scattered. The book is attempts an explanation for why people do what they do and how they become who they are. Ultimately, the need for an explanation is put into question by the inevitable fact of extinction.
My first idea was to use the Grey’s Anatomy book and mesh together pictures of anatomy with portraits. However, the book was too long and I did not want my modifications to get lost in the pages. Another idea I had, which I decided to go with, was to take the book The Wasted Americans literally. It was originally about people on welfare, but I changed the meaning of the book by adding pictures of my friends partying, literally “wasted Americans.” This didn’t seem like enough, so I started looking at the other books for more ideas.
One book was about dinosaurs and I knew I wanted to use dinosaurs in the project, but I did not know how. Then, I noticed that this book and Grey’s Anatomy had a lot of similar pictures of growth and anatomy (the fetus, birth, skeletons). I questioned how different we really are from dinosaurs and saw this as a point of comparison for my book. Another book was a children’s alphabet book and I used these pictures to show the growth of children. A narrative of a human life began to take shape in my head.
The book begins with the preface of dinosaur life, birth, growth, fighting, and extinction. This is actually a brief summary of the rest of the book, which is about humans rather than dinosaurs. The dinosaurs appear a few more times in the book in relation to the events of human life to keep the comparison going.
The first chapter, “The Catalyst”, begins with sex (the catalyst for life) and conception. It is not sexual, but anatomical, because this is not what I want people to remember about the book. However, this is visually my favorite part of the book. I used colored images of the ovary, bones and other parts of the human body as backgrounds for the black and white images of humans. The ovary is behind the father (the mother is surrounded by sperm). This is my way of showing the act of sex conceptually by showing the parts involved. This is done again with the female and male pelvises. Microscopic views of cells are behind the growing fetuses. The child is not born until the next chapter. The first piece of text appears at the end of this chapter and sets up the next chapter. It starts another theme in the book: the mindset of the human, which is the desire to have an effect on the world. The rest of the book explains what can happen when that desire fails to become reality.
The text came from the book How to Raise a Human Being. This is a very interesting and meaningful title and I thought about using this as the main book, but I liked the idea of wasted Americans more. It focuses the book on the possible outcome of raising a human being (the wasted Americans) rather than the actual process. Instead, I used “How to Raise a Human Being” as a chapter in my book. This is the chapter in which the human becomes American. He or she learns to read, count, and how to be American. The astronaut and fairy are meant to represent typical daydreams of American boys and girls. The text about lying to children comes after this chapter. American children are told they can be anything they want (astronauts), but it is not true. When this disenchanted child grows older, she or he does not fully believe the dangers of things such as LSD or alcohol, which they have been lectured about.
The main chapter is the culmination of the previous ones. It represents the transition into adulthood and the struggle between letting go of childhood and becoming an adult. As the text suggests, alcohol is a destructive means of coping with the transition. The black and white pictures show young people drinking. The numbered bears represent the grasp they still have on childhood, while also counting the destructive acts of drinking. The pictures get more blurry and disorienting until the last picture of the young man passed out. The fire on the next pages represents the burning of this wasted time. The chapter does not end on a completely negative note, however. This behavior is not healthy, but also not pointless. The criticism is not on the wasted Americans, but the environment around them. These Americans are stuck in transition. There is no chapter about adulthood. This is because the book is coming from the point of view of one of these young people. For now, we are not finished growing up and adulthood still seems to be far away.
Many elements in the book are meant to be humorous, a reminder that life isn’t really that bad even though the book may make it seem so. The very last page, “About the Author” has a picture of me. I have appeared in previous pictures and the viewer hopefully recognizes me. With this, I am saying that I am not judging anyone, especially the people in the book. I am one of the wasted Americans and it is okay if you are too. This is meant to be one of the humorous elements in the book. I did not mean for the book to be as depressing as it was perceived, but after evaluating and rereading it, I can see this.
The last chapter represents death, but it is not supposed to be sad. I put the dinosaur bones with the human skeleton to suggest that maybe human life means no more than a dinosaur’s life. Life eventually leads to extinction. Does it really matter that we were wasted Americans?
This project was a new experience for me. I do not like destroying books or even magazines. In the end, it was actually fun. I was surprised at the many different ways people thought of to change and add to the books and how these changes could alter the mood and meaning of each one.
My first idea was to use the Grey’s Anatomy book and mesh together pictures of anatomy with portraits. However, the book was too long and I did not want my modifications to get lost in the pages. Another idea I had, which I decided to go with, was to take the book The Wasted Americans literally. It was originally about people on welfare, but I changed the meaning of the book by adding pictures of my friends partying, literally “wasted Americans.” This didn’t seem like enough, so I started looking at the other books for more ideas.
One book was about dinosaurs and I knew I wanted to use dinosaurs in the project, but I did not know how. Then, I noticed that this book and Grey’s Anatomy had a lot of similar pictures of growth and anatomy (the fetus, birth, skeletons). I questioned how different we really are from dinosaurs and saw this as a point of comparison for my book. Another book was a children’s alphabet book and I used these pictures to show the growth of children. A narrative of a human life began to take shape in my head.
The book begins with the preface of dinosaur life, birth, growth, fighting, and extinction. This is actually a brief summary of the rest of the book, which is about humans rather than dinosaurs. The dinosaurs appear a few more times in the book in relation to the events of human life to keep the comparison going.
The first chapter, “The Catalyst”, begins with sex (the catalyst for life) and conception. It is not sexual, but anatomical, because this is not what I want people to remember about the book. However, this is visually my favorite part of the book. I used colored images of the ovary, bones and other parts of the human body as backgrounds for the black and white images of humans. The ovary is behind the father (the mother is surrounded by sperm). This is my way of showing the act of sex conceptually by showing the parts involved. This is done again with the female and male pelvises. Microscopic views of cells are behind the growing fetuses. The child is not born until the next chapter. The first piece of text appears at the end of this chapter and sets up the next chapter. It starts another theme in the book: the mindset of the human, which is the desire to have an effect on the world. The rest of the book explains what can happen when that desire fails to become reality.
The text came from the book How to Raise a Human Being. This is a very interesting and meaningful title and I thought about using this as the main book, but I liked the idea of wasted Americans more. It focuses the book on the possible outcome of raising a human being (the wasted Americans) rather than the actual process. Instead, I used “How to Raise a Human Being” as a chapter in my book. This is the chapter in which the human becomes American. He or she learns to read, count, and how to be American. The astronaut and fairy are meant to represent typical daydreams of American boys and girls. The text about lying to children comes after this chapter. American children are told they can be anything they want (astronauts), but it is not true. When this disenchanted child grows older, she or he does not fully believe the dangers of things such as LSD or alcohol, which they have been lectured about.
The main chapter is the culmination of the previous ones. It represents the transition into adulthood and the struggle between letting go of childhood and becoming an adult. As the text suggests, alcohol is a destructive means of coping with the transition. The black and white pictures show young people drinking. The numbered bears represent the grasp they still have on childhood, while also counting the destructive acts of drinking. The pictures get more blurry and disorienting until the last picture of the young man passed out. The fire on the next pages represents the burning of this wasted time. The chapter does not end on a completely negative note, however. This behavior is not healthy, but also not pointless. The criticism is not on the wasted Americans, but the environment around them. These Americans are stuck in transition. There is no chapter about adulthood. This is because the book is coming from the point of view of one of these young people. For now, we are not finished growing up and adulthood still seems to be far away.
Many elements in the book are meant to be humorous, a reminder that life isn’t really that bad even though the book may make it seem so. The very last page, “About the Author” has a picture of me. I have appeared in previous pictures and the viewer hopefully recognizes me. With this, I am saying that I am not judging anyone, especially the people in the book. I am one of the wasted Americans and it is okay if you are too. This is meant to be one of the humorous elements in the book. I did not mean for the book to be as depressing as it was perceived, but after evaluating and rereading it, I can see this.
The last chapter represents death, but it is not supposed to be sad. I put the dinosaur bones with the human skeleton to suggest that maybe human life means no more than a dinosaur’s life. Life eventually leads to extinction. Does it really matter that we were wasted Americans?
This project was a new experience for me. I do not like destroying books or even magazines. In the end, it was actually fun. I was surprised at the many different ways people thought of to change and add to the books and how these changes could alter the mood and meaning of each one.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Found and Bound: "Cross Currents"
When we went to the library to select books, I was largely unsure about what I wanted to do with the assignment. What I realized after a while, however, was that what I was really looking at and getting interested in was the covers of books. Since I didn’t really know about the content of any of these books, I was able to look at the covers merely as images. This gave me the idea of focusing on the covers themselves, and trying to create a project that connected the images of the covers.
When I got all my books together and brought them back home, I tried to figure out a way to connect them. I had a bunch of different ideas, from making a sort of giant book out of the covers to making a sort of sequenced visual film strip by placing them after one another. I didn’t like the results of these attempts, and decided what I should do was take the covers off and combine them into a sort of photobook of covers.
I was talking to Chris and he mentioned how an english major he knew was shocked at my idea to destroying so many books just for the covers. I hadn’t really stepped back and thought about this, but I instantly realized I didn’t want to destroy so many books for the project. As I sat in class thinking about how to get around this, I realized that I had already put the covers in a form that would allow me to make a project without destroying them - I had taken a picture of each book so I could easily sequence them in class. I decided I would make a book out of the photos of the covers.
With this in mind I spent the class looking at the different visual connections about how to sequence the photos of the covers. I tried a few different things but then realized that one of the covers was partially titled Cross Currents (the full title was Cross Currents of the South). This gave me the idea of blending together different parts of the covers in photoshop to create a sequence of images that sort of flows back and forth between covers and breaks up the natural separation they have as covers of individual books.
Once I created an outline for my sequence of blended images I started photoshopping. I had experience altering and combining images from Intro to Digital Art, so I based what I did initially on the techniques I knew from that class, mainly selecting out parts of one cover and combing them onto another. I had lots of fun doing this, tweaking the different ways the separate images went together. When I got a little farther along, I realized I wanted to do something that Professor Friebele showed us but that I hadn’t done on my own project, which was to warp part of the image on a 3D plane. After a bit of messing around I was able to do this and use it on several images.
When I went further, I started to think about how I would make the book an object. I decided that I wanted it to still have the weight and feel of a cover, and realized cardboard would be the best base for the photos. At this point I also realized that not only could the images connect by sequencing after each other as they were on my computer, but in the book form they could connect when two images were viewed at once (when the book was open) and by mirroring one of the front covers on back covers. With this in mind I tried to create new connections in photoshop that worked with this form.
After finishing the project and showing it in class I was largely happy with the final product. I think the different images sequence together well and the cardboard worked well as a base for them to sort of mimic the feel of covers. The one thing I wish I would have done that I thought of after the fact was paint the sides of the cardboard to look like pages inside of a book to emphasize the idea that my book was combining these separate books and covers. However, I still think the project was successful and gave me a lot of good experience both with the overall concept of sequencing images and with using photoshop and the book object form as a means to enhance this.
When I got all my books together and brought them back home, I tried to figure out a way to connect them. I had a bunch of different ideas, from making a sort of giant book out of the covers to making a sort of sequenced visual film strip by placing them after one another. I didn’t like the results of these attempts, and decided what I should do was take the covers off and combine them into a sort of photobook of covers.
I was talking to Chris and he mentioned how an english major he knew was shocked at my idea to destroying so many books just for the covers. I hadn’t really stepped back and thought about this, but I instantly realized I didn’t want to destroy so many books for the project. As I sat in class thinking about how to get around this, I realized that I had already put the covers in a form that would allow me to make a project without destroying them - I had taken a picture of each book so I could easily sequence them in class. I decided I would make a book out of the photos of the covers.
With this in mind I spent the class looking at the different visual connections about how to sequence the photos of the covers. I tried a few different things but then realized that one of the covers was partially titled Cross Currents (the full title was Cross Currents of the South). This gave me the idea of blending together different parts of the covers in photoshop to create a sequence of images that sort of flows back and forth between covers and breaks up the natural separation they have as covers of individual books.
Once I created an outline for my sequence of blended images I started photoshopping. I had experience altering and combining images from Intro to Digital Art, so I based what I did initially on the techniques I knew from that class, mainly selecting out parts of one cover and combing them onto another. I had lots of fun doing this, tweaking the different ways the separate images went together. When I got a little farther along, I realized I wanted to do something that Professor Friebele showed us but that I hadn’t done on my own project, which was to warp part of the image on a 3D plane. After a bit of messing around I was able to do this and use it on several images.
When I went further, I started to think about how I would make the book an object. I decided that I wanted it to still have the weight and feel of a cover, and realized cardboard would be the best base for the photos. At this point I also realized that not only could the images connect by sequencing after each other as they were on my computer, but in the book form they could connect when two images were viewed at once (when the book was open) and by mirroring one of the front covers on back covers. With this in mind I tried to create new connections in photoshop that worked with this form.
After finishing the project and showing it in class I was largely happy with the final product. I think the different images sequence together well and the cardboard worked well as a base for them to sort of mimic the feel of covers. The one thing I wish I would have done that I thought of after the fact was paint the sides of the cardboard to look like pages inside of a book to emphasize the idea that my book was combining these separate books and covers. However, I still think the project was successful and gave me a lot of good experience both with the overall concept of sequencing images and with using photoshop and the book object form as a means to enhance this.
found and bound self assessment
This project helpful in getting hands on with a book and having the complete ability to go in whatever direction possible. At first I didn't have any ideas as to where I was planing on taking the project and I figured the books I picked out would be able to guide me. I guess I got the box of books about civil rights and crime, which are topics that interest me so it worked out and quickly formed into using hip hop and the art of graffiti, an element of the hip hop culture. I was stuck for a while with an overload of random images, but I kind of talked through where I wanted to go with the project with a friend, and put on some music and the project figured itself out.
I think from the responses I got from the class, I think I made the project consistent enough. And I was happy with the final product, with elements of my own work as well as other images added to the graffiti feel of the book and added a sense of artist value when discussing a medium that some look down upon as vandalism. The cover with MF DOOM and the boondocks lyrics sum up what I'm trying to say with the book. I choose to draw MF DOOM because he epitomizes the misunderstood counterculture of politically charged hip hop, where it rebels as an art, just like graffiti. Although, I think I could have definitely added more images in to connect hip hop and graffiti together more so.
The project along with seeing other people's projects, let me get a feel for what's to come with the construction and organization for my coming photo book projects.
"Found And Bound": The Bookwich
Prior to "Found and Bound", I had previously usurped an existing book as a host for my own collage, drawing, painting, and writing. My high school art teacher was fascinated by the fairly contemporary and popular "Artist Book" movement, and had my peers and I fashion old books and dairies into sketch books for an unconventional and thrifty new interpretation of the journal. It was a relished assignment because we were unorthodoxy (for the time and place, anyway) encouraged to do as much damage as possible to the books we selected. Exact-o knives and lighters were heavily employed (to any high schooler's rapture) and there was lots of ripping and tearing. However, in this previous attempt to develop an "Artist Book", I did not approach my modifications with much intent. The work had little relation as thematic collection of images or reflections, and the original literature had little bearing on the new content I added. My book floundered in confused, sticky collages, with no goals for re-imagining the book as a vehicle of expression, and ultimately remains unfinished. Consequently, the introduction of our "Found and Bound" project was an opportunity to revisit my previous endeavors of book altering, and grapple again with the concept of the book. I was also excited to begin developing the goals I want strive for in my photobook: creating a cohesive, well- articulated body of work.
Freshly examining the significance of books and photobooks in class discussions, readings and individual research, what became apparent to me, was the nature of the book as an object with physical and historical weight and dimension.
I am fascinated by the idea that the development of the photobook and photo album related directly to the family bible, as a sort of archaic scrap-book or familial record. I connected this information with memories of watching my high school Art Teacher's own "recycled" book projects evolve from scrap books of personal correspondences in used books, to hand-made books filled with tapped-in, also hand-made envelopes. Similarly, I was intrigued by the versatility of the "Artist Book" medium, specifically in regard to the vastly diverse but common emphasis on the form and construction of the book as a basic way to communicate. The structure of the "accordion"-style poetry book which we probed in class, as well as a plethora of inspiring examples I discovered online, like Xu Bing of North Carolina's "Tobacco Project: the red book" (http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/artbooks/) which is a tin composed of printed on cigarettes, continually revised my ideas of how to interpret and approach a book. I concluded that the "object-hood" of a book and its context in time were essential traits I had not recognized before. I also wanted to clearly and thoughtfully relate my original source to my re-envisioned book.
I tried various different combination of collage and added materials such as cardboard, food magazines, a dental text book, illustrated civil-war histories etc. to create interesting imagery which still stressed my book as concrete structure. However, I consistently found myself trapped in a overly intricate, murky narrative between food, teeth, and ambiguous historical references which was difficult fully expand throughout a whole book. Neither, did they have any bearing on the shape of the book, as they were all two-dimensional. These I was unable to connect all of my ideas succinctly (I displayed examples of these failures with my tooth-headed, civil war general collages). I felt thwarted by my book in similar ways to the first time I attempted book alteration, and tried a new approach. I decided that I wanted simply, to reference the form of the book as three-dimensional object with "Found And Bound". So, I just bailed on any deep, or meaningful metaphors or rich visual imagery, and made made my book into a sandwich; A "Bookwich!"
I sourced Dada and surrealist art-criticisms and definitions a la Duchamp and Magritte, in a glib transformation of a cheap, student's copy of "The Pembrabook of Art Masterpieces" into a towering, Ham sandwich ready-made. I felt this simplified, absurd representation of the book as object was successful because it dealt with the two main issues of physical space, and time-chronicling which I felt I had previously over-looked. I enjoyed the visceral nature of the product. It was apparent that time was flying during our critique because the whole room began to smell of onions as the sandwich aged. I am also satisfied that it is hard to transport and display. Similarly, it was
In retrospect, I would have preferred my book to be more elaborate, and I did not really mesh new content with old, but rather subverted the original material with my modifications. However, I still think my book adequately accomplishes my aims (Now I just have to figure out how to show it in the library). My frustrating and rewarding new understanding of this assignment makes me very excited, and a little intimidated by our semester long photobook project. It is not easy to create, and successfully express theses and themes throughout a large body of work, especially in book format. I am eager to get started.
Freshly examining the significance of books and photobooks in class discussions, readings and individual research, what became apparent to me, was the nature of the book as an object with physical and historical weight and dimension.
I am fascinated by the idea that the development of the photobook and photo album related directly to the family bible, as a sort of archaic scrap-book or familial record. I connected this information with memories of watching my high school Art Teacher's own "recycled" book projects evolve from scrap books of personal correspondences in used books, to hand-made books filled with tapped-in, also hand-made envelopes. Similarly, I was intrigued by the versatility of the "Artist Book" medium, specifically in regard to the vastly diverse but common emphasis on the form and construction of the book as a basic way to communicate. The structure of the "accordion"-style poetry book which we probed in class, as well as a plethora of inspiring examples I discovered online, like Xu Bing of North Carolina's "Tobacco Project: the red book" (http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/artbooks/) which is a tin composed of printed on cigarettes, continually revised my ideas of how to interpret and approach a book. I concluded that the "object-hood" of a book and its context in time were essential traits I had not recognized before. I also wanted to clearly and thoughtfully relate my original source to my re-envisioned book.
I tried various different combination of collage and added materials such as cardboard, food magazines, a dental text book, illustrated civil-war histories etc. to create interesting imagery which still stressed my book as concrete structure. However, I consistently found myself trapped in a overly intricate, murky narrative between food, teeth, and ambiguous historical references which was difficult fully expand throughout a whole book. Neither, did they have any bearing on the shape of the book, as they were all two-dimensional. These I was unable to connect all of my ideas succinctly (I displayed examples of these failures with my tooth-headed, civil war general collages). I felt thwarted by my book in similar ways to the first time I attempted book alteration, and tried a new approach. I decided that I wanted simply, to reference the form of the book as three-dimensional object with "Found And Bound". So, I just bailed on any deep, or meaningful metaphors or rich visual imagery, and made made my book into a sandwich; A "Bookwich!"
I sourced Dada and surrealist art-criticisms and definitions a la Duchamp and Magritte, in a glib transformation of a cheap, student's copy of "The Pembrabook of Art Masterpieces" into a towering, Ham sandwich ready-made. I felt this simplified, absurd representation of the book as object was successful because it dealt with the two main issues of physical space, and time-chronicling which I felt I had previously over-looked. I enjoyed the visceral nature of the product. It was apparent that time was flying during our critique because the whole room began to smell of onions as the sandwich aged. I am also satisfied that it is hard to transport and display. Similarly, it was
In retrospect, I would have preferred my book to be more elaborate, and I did not really mesh new content with old, but rather subverted the original material with my modifications. However, I still think my book adequately accomplishes my aims (Now I just have to figure out how to show it in the library). My frustrating and rewarding new understanding of this assignment makes me very excited, and a little intimidated by our semester long photobook project. It is not easy to create, and successfully express theses and themes throughout a large body of work, especially in book format. I am eager to get started.
Found and Bound
I'm still ambivalent about whether it was a good or a bad idea to choose a book on a topic I was already heavily invested in. On the one hand, I got an intellectual head start in that I'd already thought about a lot of the issues embedded in the text that I wanted to bring to the surface. On the downside, this meant that I really was very dependent on the text, and on my need to preserve it. There was a danger that my work would tend too much towards the illustrative, as opposed to making something new. I also think I tended—both because of this, and because of my deeply ingrained respect for the physical book—to be pretty conservative about treating the book as an object.
This conservatism definitely became apparent in class, as I looked at some of the much more physically creative manipulations my classmates had come up with. It had never occurred to me to do some of the things they'd tried, including the fairly extensive scribbling/blacking out of text, and also some of the more adventurous cutting techniques. My book really depends on four basic modifications: collage, pasted in images, shaped cut-outs placed to reveal glimpses of either image or text, and pasted in text shapes—the negatives of the cut-outs. In a lot of ways, I guess, you could really say these are all versions of the same idea: I sought to create unexpected combinations of word and image, in some cases treating word as image, and in some cases the reverse.
"Unexpected," of course, is a relative term. My book is very tightly bounded thematically (again, something that has its pluses and its minuses), so I don't, say, have a random image of an emu, or a hot dog, in a book about India. What I did, though, is try to build on an initial discordance suggested by the book's title, and to push it in ways the author might not have intended. The book is Prison and Chocolate Cake, and it's a memoir written by one of Nehru's nieces about growing up during India's independence movement and—in particular—travelling to the United States to go to college, due to political instability at home. I was struck by the juxtaposition between the pleasurable (cake) and the painful (prison), as well as the concomitant one between childishness and seriousness—which seemed appropriate for a text that is, in many ways, about growing into adulthood. Finally, I was struck by a contrast the author doesn't really address directly: the one between her own immense level of privilege, and the lives of the vast majority of Indians whom her uncle fought on behalf of.
One of the first things I did to the volume was paste in a picture of a chocolate cake, and cut out prison bars in the few pages in front of it. I also created a collage of a small child playing superimposed on an Indian prison scene, which I eventually used in another chapter. I was also interested in the implicit contrast between the US and India, which I tried to address throughout via collage, and through cut-outs that showed the Indian through an American "lens" (or hole) and vice-versa. I was interested in the idea of what was left out by certain world views—the absences they created—but also in what you could see when you looked at the familiar through a new aperture. One of the chapters of the book is on the "first glimpse," and that notion of glimpsing—of seeing something in a fleeting manner, out of the corner of one's eye, rather than facing it head-on—is something I tried to emphasise. So, for example, although in a few places I used watercolour to highlight words I wanted to call readers' attention to, I quickly abandoned that technique, deciding that it was a little too obvious. I preferred to leave a window of text visible through an archway, and invite the reader to look a little harder in order to make connections or engage in interpretation him or herself.
Overall, I'm very satisfied with the book conceptually, although less so artistically, if that makes sense. I'd like to have been more gutsy, at the same time that I think I'll enjoy the finished product more the way it is than I would if I'd totally ripped it apart in order to make it new.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Found & Bound Assessment
I really enjoyed working on this project throughout, and was actually really excited as soon as I found out we were going to be cutting up old books (call me a bad English major!) and re-thinking them as manipulatable objects. I derived my idea from the types of books that appealed to me while looking through the library stash. I picked primarily books about atomic warfare, with titles such as “Understanding Doomsday,” “The War Myth,” and “The Balance of Terror,” along with a couple of larger books – an “Encyclopedia of Virology” and a “Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemicals.” Originally, I planned to use one of these larger books because of the possibility for doing some larger cut-outs and inserting larger objects into them, and this is still something that I would like to do because it could yield some very dynamic possibilities.
Before choosing a book to work with, I went through several of the “Art Forum” and “Art in America” magazines to cut out pictures, as well as finding some inspirational surrealist art in another magazine. I quickly found that I was approaching a sort of post-atomic theme regarding hostility, fear, incalculable sorrow and pain. I wanted to, if ever possible, capture the intensity of the chaotic experience of those afflicted with atomic and other warfare, namely that which is directed towards innocents. I also wanted to do something similar to Joe Mills in combining images through collage in a way that seemed structurally inevitable and comprised what he called “violent, exotic, surreal.” I don’t think that I achieved anything close to his work, but having him in mind helped me to overlay images in provocative ways.
I feel that my book is more focused on collage elements than on otherwise objectifying the book, but I did try throughout to use an exacto knife to cut up the page and arrange it around the content of the collages. In some cases, near the end of the experience, I inserted images into exacto-slits in the page so that they didn’t require glue to hold them in. I think this was my most creative use of the book as object, for the page itself was given weight by having the strength to support a picture through its own structure.
In the front of my mind as I worked was a focus on the violence inflicted by the United States upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as can be seen in the centerfold piece of my book. I also have a page using what I think is a Rodchenko image, which has more of a constructivist feel, paralleled by some of the other images in the book to create an organized, militant feel amidst the chaos of the actual effects of atomic warfare. I really wanted to take advantage of this paradox in creating a feel of symmetry and balance, as the title, “The Balance of Terror,” describes, despite the frenzied content of the images. The effect is rather disturbing, as the concept of atomic warfare – and mass murder by advancing technology – should be. I tried to keep inside the book many of the charts comparing actual atomic missiles and international statistics, also inserting some from one of the other books I had.
The beginning and ending quotes in my book are very relevant to thinking about the book as an object capable of social change. The first is, “Bodies are fragile, easily broken. A scrap of paper, an explanation, sustains impact better.” The last is, “Ah gentlemen, if I had been able to read and write, I’d have destroyed the human race.” These quotes indicate the strength of words and explanation to either save or destroy humans. They can stand in place of death and pain with a positive alternative, but they can also destroy us with their power to change, kind of like (though I am by no means religious) a god. There – I have redeemed myself as an English major.
It was an amazing experience to see everyone else’s books on Thursday and discuss how they considered the project incredibly differently from everyone else. The fact that we managed to span from painting inside to scribbling out, to graffiti, to fabric and books-within-books, to a play on titles using a cardboard book, all the way to a book-sandwich sculpture, really demonstrates to me the awesome creativity of this group. I can’t wait to revisit everyone’s work when it is in the library. I think that this project was a really great exercise to get us thinking about the book-perusing and evaluating experience. This is only the third time that I have done intensive collage for artistic purposes, and the first time I have re-crafted a book, and it left me wanting to do much more.
Before choosing a book to work with, I went through several of the “Art Forum” and “Art in America” magazines to cut out pictures, as well as finding some inspirational surrealist art in another magazine. I quickly found that I was approaching a sort of post-atomic theme regarding hostility, fear, incalculable sorrow and pain. I wanted to, if ever possible, capture the intensity of the chaotic experience of those afflicted with atomic and other warfare, namely that which is directed towards innocents. I also wanted to do something similar to Joe Mills in combining images through collage in a way that seemed structurally inevitable and comprised what he called “violent, exotic, surreal.” I don’t think that I achieved anything close to his work, but having him in mind helped me to overlay images in provocative ways.
I feel that my book is more focused on collage elements than on otherwise objectifying the book, but I did try throughout to use an exacto knife to cut up the page and arrange it around the content of the collages. In some cases, near the end of the experience, I inserted images into exacto-slits in the page so that they didn’t require glue to hold them in. I think this was my most creative use of the book as object, for the page itself was given weight by having the strength to support a picture through its own structure.
In the front of my mind as I worked was a focus on the violence inflicted by the United States upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as can be seen in the centerfold piece of my book. I also have a page using what I think is a Rodchenko image, which has more of a constructivist feel, paralleled by some of the other images in the book to create an organized, militant feel amidst the chaos of the actual effects of atomic warfare. I really wanted to take advantage of this paradox in creating a feel of symmetry and balance, as the title, “The Balance of Terror,” describes, despite the frenzied content of the images. The effect is rather disturbing, as the concept of atomic warfare – and mass murder by advancing technology – should be. I tried to keep inside the book many of the charts comparing actual atomic missiles and international statistics, also inserting some from one of the other books I had.
The beginning and ending quotes in my book are very relevant to thinking about the book as an object capable of social change. The first is, “Bodies are fragile, easily broken. A scrap of paper, an explanation, sustains impact better.” The last is, “Ah gentlemen, if I had been able to read and write, I’d have destroyed the human race.” These quotes indicate the strength of words and explanation to either save or destroy humans. They can stand in place of death and pain with a positive alternative, but they can also destroy us with their power to change, kind of like (though I am by no means religious) a god. There – I have redeemed myself as an English major.
It was an amazing experience to see everyone else’s books on Thursday and discuss how they considered the project incredibly differently from everyone else. The fact that we managed to span from painting inside to scribbling out, to graffiti, to fabric and books-within-books, to a play on titles using a cardboard book, all the way to a book-sandwich sculpture, really demonstrates to me the awesome creativity of this group. I can’t wait to revisit everyone’s work when it is in the library. I think that this project was a really great exercise to get us thinking about the book-perusing and evaluating experience. This is only the third time that I have done intensive collage for artistic purposes, and the first time I have re-crafted a book, and it left me wanting to do much more.
Found & Bound Self-Assessment
This project from the very beginning was a completely novel undertaking. I had never even contemplated destroying multiple books to create a "work of art". I did not know what narrative I wanted to do until I found the right couple of books. Once I had the books, I started researching online different ways to destroy and combine books. I still was not sure how much I wanted to destroy the books though. Finally however, I decided to take all the pages out of Around the World in 8 Days, which was my cover, and to replace the pages with pages from a United States Almanac. Deciding which pages to include however was another obstacle I had to face.
Do I want to make a statement about me or just a statement about travel? I ended up compromising for the two. I decided to include places in my book that I have lived and loved, other than Maryland. I included Maryland, because that is where I have lived the longest, and can't wait to get out of. I love traveling, and staying in Maryland for such an extended period of time has pushed me to want to leave, but still there were plenty of things to commemorate in each state.
In order to properly commemorate and memorialize the states and have the reader get the same enjoyment out of each state that I do, I needed to do more than just paste images into it. I needed to make the images "special", more specifically, they needed to stand out, so I started cutting away. Not one image is cut in the same shape, and is definitely not a boring traditional square. This affect, I believe, helps to show the unique experiences I had in each place, and the unique experience someone else may have while traveling.
To add to the mystique of each place, I painted scenery from each place in the proper sections. The effect the watercolor paints I used created an almost memory, or dream-like, recollection of each scene. The blurred edges must have been the culprit of this effect. This was actually brought up in the class discussion of my book. I was completely shocked that the group that looked through my book paid that close attention to it, and drew from my book something I had tried to put into it for their benefit. I guess that was a nice pat on the back.
Coupled with this pat on the back however, this project had some pretty daunting dilemmas involved with the production of the book. First off, since I had removed all the pages and replaced them with loose pages, I had to find a way to bind them. I decided to go with the technique of sewing the pages together into groups. To add some semblance of a divider between groups of states, a time for the viewer to take in everything he had just observed, I shrouded each section in a waxy paper. This added a different texture to the book, as well as an obvious break point. Not only did I have to whip out some needle and thread to bind my book, I also required a hammer and nail, Elmers glue, fabric, a hot glue gun, and 4 heavy duty clamps. This was probably the most hardware related art project I have ever gotten myself into.
Even after all the construction of my book, and everything was in one piece, I came across a problem. After hot gluing the fabric in to cover the unsightly stitches, the book would not close. To counteract this unhappy accident, I devised a plan. Since the glueing the fabric in was what caused the problem, I decided to make a little joke for myself. I braided some fabric together into a strand and used one of those rings people use to hold index cards together as a clasp. Obi had a great analogy for this. She likened it to a baggage handle, which went perfect with the narrative of my book. Even without planning it, the accidents I seemed to make and overcome during the production of my first Photobook seemed to help the overall outcome.
In the end however, all my hard work paid off. I was very happy with how my book turned out and how the class reacted to it. Thanks to this project and my naive understanding of bookmaking, has taught me what I can and can't do, as well as given me new ideas for the next projects. I honestly believe that my books can only get better from here, and this is a pretty high starting point if I do say so myself.
Do I want to make a statement about me or just a statement about travel? I ended up compromising for the two. I decided to include places in my book that I have lived and loved, other than Maryland. I included Maryland, because that is where I have lived the longest, and can't wait to get out of. I love traveling, and staying in Maryland for such an extended period of time has pushed me to want to leave, but still there were plenty of things to commemorate in each state.
In order to properly commemorate and memorialize the states and have the reader get the same enjoyment out of each state that I do, I needed to do more than just paste images into it. I needed to make the images "special", more specifically, they needed to stand out, so I started cutting away. Not one image is cut in the same shape, and is definitely not a boring traditional square. This affect, I believe, helps to show the unique experiences I had in each place, and the unique experience someone else may have while traveling.
To add to the mystique of each place, I painted scenery from each place in the proper sections. The effect the watercolor paints I used created an almost memory, or dream-like, recollection of each scene. The blurred edges must have been the culprit of this effect. This was actually brought up in the class discussion of my book. I was completely shocked that the group that looked through my book paid that close attention to it, and drew from my book something I had tried to put into it for their benefit. I guess that was a nice pat on the back.
Coupled with this pat on the back however, this project had some pretty daunting dilemmas involved with the production of the book. First off, since I had removed all the pages and replaced them with loose pages, I had to find a way to bind them. I decided to go with the technique of sewing the pages together into groups. To add some semblance of a divider between groups of states, a time for the viewer to take in everything he had just observed, I shrouded each section in a waxy paper. This added a different texture to the book, as well as an obvious break point. Not only did I have to whip out some needle and thread to bind my book, I also required a hammer and nail, Elmers glue, fabric, a hot glue gun, and 4 heavy duty clamps. This was probably the most hardware related art project I have ever gotten myself into.
Even after all the construction of my book, and everything was in one piece, I came across a problem. After hot gluing the fabric in to cover the unsightly stitches, the book would not close. To counteract this unhappy accident, I devised a plan. Since the glueing the fabric in was what caused the problem, I decided to make a little joke for myself. I braided some fabric together into a strand and used one of those rings people use to hold index cards together as a clasp. Obi had a great analogy for this. She likened it to a baggage handle, which went perfect with the narrative of my book. Even without planning it, the accidents I seemed to make and overcome during the production of my first Photobook seemed to help the overall outcome.
In the end however, all my hard work paid off. I was very happy with how my book turned out and how the class reacted to it. Thanks to this project and my naive understanding of bookmaking, has taught me what I can and can't do, as well as given me new ideas for the next projects. I honestly believe that my books can only get better from here, and this is a pretty high starting point if I do say so myself.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Found and Bound project assesment.
This project was in all challenging and fun. Initially, I was confused as how to combine the book I had selected as well as using the other books that I had gotten and putting it all together to form a cohesive piece that was in line with my theme. I found this very hard and decided to use the quotes in the book to guide me. Another issue I had was the pictures of the babies which tended to obscure the theme that I was going for. I started out with the theme of prejudice among Indians and Africans. Liked I had mentioned in class, when I showed my a couple of friends the first draft of the book, they found it rather confusing. To them the book somehow was mesh between the abolition of the Caste system, an outsiders view of Africa and babies. After much thoughts and advice from my friends, I decided to stick with the portrayal of African countries by the media.
Another problem I found daunting was that I found it hard to step back from creating the book and see the book as someone seeing it for the first time. I could not easily separate the idea that I had in my mind from the book. However, I am pleased with the outcome. I really wanted to show the frustration that I as an African face when I see the portrayal of African countries in the news. Having spent most of my years in Nigeria, my view of my country seems slightly different from what I hear in the news year in America. I did not want it to be a charge against anyone but at the same time I did not want to sugar coat the problem. Achieving these two factors proved difficult in selecting cartoons and pictures, as well as texts.
The thoughts that were expressed about the book in class were sort of in line with what I hoped to achieve. The only issue that was not what I hoped the viewer to see were the babies as re-birth. The re-birth of Africa the continent was not what I was going for. Any pictures of babies were in response to the text next to the babies in the given page - to give a face or character to the text. I guess I failed with that aspect although other interpretations are welcomed.
Having done this project, I can sort of imagine what type of photobook I could make. I still finding it hard trying not to be too literal in connecting pictures and text, that is if this is not a problem. I found the other books that were made less literal than mine and I enjoyed looking at them.
Another problem I found daunting was that I found it hard to step back from creating the book and see the book as someone seeing it for the first time. I could not easily separate the idea that I had in my mind from the book. However, I am pleased with the outcome. I really wanted to show the frustration that I as an African face when I see the portrayal of African countries in the news. Having spent most of my years in Nigeria, my view of my country seems slightly different from what I hear in the news year in America. I did not want it to be a charge against anyone but at the same time I did not want to sugar coat the problem. Achieving these two factors proved difficult in selecting cartoons and pictures, as well as texts.
The thoughts that were expressed about the book in class were sort of in line with what I hoped to achieve. The only issue that was not what I hoped the viewer to see were the babies as re-birth. The re-birth of Africa the continent was not what I was going for. Any pictures of babies were in response to the text next to the babies in the given page - to give a face or character to the text. I guess I failed with that aspect although other interpretations are welcomed.
Having done this project, I can sort of imagine what type of photobook I could make. I still finding it hard trying not to be too literal in connecting pictures and text, that is if this is not a problem. I found the other books that were made less literal than mine and I enjoyed looking at them.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
PLEASE POST YOUR RESPONSES TO CLASS READINGS (1)
You can find the on Blackboard under "Course Documents"
BLOG POST_01: Grace Gutowski
I noticed that the development of photography seems to rely on the methods that make mass production easier. The daguerreotype was popular until the advantage of Talbot’s calotype negative made it obsolete. Each daguerreotype was a unique image that could not be exactly reproduced, whereas Talbot’s paper negative allowed each picture to be reproduced over and over again. Having more than one copy allows the image to be mass produced in a book. Later, a process was developed to make it cheaper and easier to reproduce images in newspapers and books, allowing for even more mass production of each image. More recently, digital photography has made production of photographs even faster and cheaper. Above all, it allows even more copies to be made since the picture never actually needs to be printed in order to be seen by a large and diverse audience. The internet makes photographs more available to more people than photobooks or exhibitions.
The internet is a good venue for discovering individual photographs, but it does not do the same thing for photobooks. Photographs on the computer are not objects. You can only see what the computer screen or the file size allows. You cannot flip through a slideshow or web pages the way you can flip through a book. When I read a book, sometimes I want to flip back and forth between pages or skip ahead. This is more difficult to do on the computer. You cannot get that phenomenon of turning the page and slowly revealing what is on the next spread.
I also think that digital images are not as permanent. They can be lost if a computer or jump drive breaks or is lost. Photography negatives are less susceptible to human error such as accidental deletion or weather damage such as water or cold. I have heard that once something is on the internet, it is always there, but that does not mean it can be found. Web pages can be disconnected and links can be broken. Once a book is out in the world, it can be found again, even if it is broken or in pieces.
It is interesting that photography started out with one main focus, which was to document the world. It was not until many years later, after the technological aspects were improved, that photographers started to see photographs as art. They began to experiment in the art of photographic imagery rather than experimenting with chemicals and light involved in the photography process. Today, photography is used in many different ways including art, science, as evidence for crimes, family portraits, documentation and more.
Technological advancements have allowed photography to be more accessible. Everyone has a camera and many people put their pictures on the internet. Digital photography makes the production of photography faster and easier, which greatly increases the number of pictures taken. There are so many pictures these days that they run the risk of being lost in the crowd, especially since they are all in one place, the internet. Few photographs actually end up in printed form these days. When photography was new, the photobook was the main way they were seen, but today the photobook is rare.
reading response no. 1
Within the Introduction reading, I thought the author had a lot of thought provoking points about the photobook. One of the points that struck me the most, was that its not just about any one really good single image, its more about using many to shape into a smooth cohesive piece. The connection between the photobook and film is also interesting in that with a photobook, like films, the artist has the ability to add whole other dimensions to their photos with text and the way its choreographed within the book. The artist also has an extra dimension of the book as a physical object itself to consider when in production of their piece.
The author makes note of artists using found images, which is very appropriate and necessary to mention when speaking on photobooks. Collaging with found images and objects are just as thoughtful and hands on as an artist using photos they've taken.
The article talks about how photobooks have been produced throughout history, though museums for years were selective about what kind of photography was displayed, meaning they didnt accept photobooks into their galleries. This fact was interesting to me, it makes me think of photobooks being in some kind of underground culture, which makes me wonder why certain art like the photobook, that takes just as much creative contemplation and ability, have to go under more scrutiny then others in the museum world. Of course, this form of art is now featured throughout museums, and photobooks holds importance in the photography world as it is a blend of, as the author states, the aesthetic and the contextual.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Talbot/photobook reading response
The introduction of the photobook and the photograph in general has made an immense contribution to the world of art and literature. I honestly didn’t know much about the history of the photobook or how it came about until I was able to read the excerpts from The Photobook and the work from William Henry Fox Talbot’s book The Pencil of Nature. One of the first things I found interesting from the intro the photobook was the fact that “photography was conceived as the hybrid offspring of art and science…a surrogate method of making paintings…” I found this to be really stimulating in the realm of photography because it seems at first that society wanted to separate science and art in general, but through the actions of scientific illustrations and diagrams it became possible. The fact that there were two types of photographic histories, one focused on technical developments and the other on aesthetics was also very thought provoking. I realized that within all realms of photography there is always a sense of advancing and development that creates a sense of beauty within all photographs, whether they are good or bad. One last thing that I particularly liked about this reading was the topic of the functionality of the photobook. John Grossage said that “firstly, it should contain great work…” I strongly believe in this statement because I think that regardless of however much time was spent on the work or whatever idea was originally implemented for the work, the book should contain work that the author believes is truly great. While reading the history on the first photobooks I found out that the first types of photobooks were simple works such as travel books, works of art and archaeological photo books. Within this particular reading I found it interesting that the process of transferring the photographic image to a plate could then be printed on paper, but that the problem was with the tonal range that it produced. This problem apparently took over a decade to figure out which seems like a great deal of time to figure out tonal range properties within books. Although, I think it’s interesting that a process as simple as transferring images to plates to be printed onto paper influenced the idea for photobooks because you wouldn’t necessarily group the two mediums. This makes me think of William Henry Fox Talbot and his work The Pencil of Nature where science and art merged into one medium: The photobook.
Talbot’s book created a lot of reactions and stirred results from the public that no other book did at the time. The reasoning behind this was due to the fact that Talbot created a book that was much more that “just the photos…” I honesty believe that this is where science and art began to merge into one, similar realm, simply due to Talbot’s strong scientific background and his interest in scientific illustrations. While reading the two excerpts on Talbot and his writings, I found it peculiar that Talbot mentioned the function of the camera and the amount of information it receives. He took the example of a camera taking the same amount of time to capture a group shot of 3 people compared to just one single person. He found it interesting that the camera didn’t take longer to capture the group shot than it did with the single person shot. I never thought of the camera in that sense, as if the camera would need to take longer to snap a photo if more subjects are presented to its eye, like more information for the camera. Luckily this isn’t the case with cameras and especially now with our technology we can capture any amount of information in the same amount of time. When actually reading Talbot’s book, I felt like I was reading a scientific journal on experiments on photographic paper, and how to transfer images in great detail to paper, so that they could eventually be printed in books. Talbot writes of how he worked with photograms and the camera obscura to capture photos of anything from a person to a large building. He experimented with various salt baths and silver iodide that resulted in many different outcomes. One part of this that I really found beautiful was Talbot’s mention of the brush going over the paper and how it sometimes causes an irregularity. I liked this because I’m always looking for ways to achieve a sense of abstractness and “irregularity,” and this is one of the ways that I have even created some of my photos.
Overall I found all of the readings very motivating and exciting and I really feel like they helped me better understand the function of a photobook in general. I feel confident with creating more photobooks and think that learning the history behind them contributed to that. Not only have photobooks been around for years but the idea of having a photo represented in book form has questioned the minds of thousands of artist’s for centuries. With Talbot’s introduction of The Pencil of Nature many future photographers and book makers were able to have guidance for creating unique works of art.
Talbot’s book created a lot of reactions and stirred results from the public that no other book did at the time. The reasoning behind this was due to the fact that Talbot created a book that was much more that “just the photos…” I honesty believe that this is where science and art began to merge into one, similar realm, simply due to Talbot’s strong scientific background and his interest in scientific illustrations. While reading the two excerpts on Talbot and his writings, I found it peculiar that Talbot mentioned the function of the camera and the amount of information it receives. He took the example of a camera taking the same amount of time to capture a group shot of 3 people compared to just one single person. He found it interesting that the camera didn’t take longer to capture the group shot than it did with the single person shot. I never thought of the camera in that sense, as if the camera would need to take longer to snap a photo if more subjects are presented to its eye, like more information for the camera. Luckily this isn’t the case with cameras and especially now with our technology we can capture any amount of information in the same amount of time. When actually reading Talbot’s book, I felt like I was reading a scientific journal on experiments on photographic paper, and how to transfer images in great detail to paper, so that they could eventually be printed in books. Talbot writes of how he worked with photograms and the camera obscura to capture photos of anything from a person to a large building. He experimented with various salt baths and silver iodide that resulted in many different outcomes. One part of this that I really found beautiful was Talbot’s mention of the brush going over the paper and how it sometimes causes an irregularity. I liked this because I’m always looking for ways to achieve a sense of abstractness and “irregularity,” and this is one of the ways that I have even created some of my photos.
Overall I found all of the readings very motivating and exciting and I really feel like they helped me better understand the function of a photobook in general. I feel confident with creating more photobooks and think that learning the history behind them contributed to that. Not only have photobooks been around for years but the idea of having a photo represented in book form has questioned the minds of thousands of artist’s for centuries. With Talbot’s introduction of The Pencil of Nature many future photographers and book makers were able to have guidance for creating unique works of art.
Talbot Doin' Work
The Photobook
The concept of a photobook is quite new to me as I am used to mounting individual prints for display in a gallery, but I love the concept of individual photos merging together to make a larger, more substantial work. It is also foreign, but exciting, to think that photos can transcend the two dimensional realm of print or screen and become something akin to sculpture. There is so much room for creativity and uniqueness in photography as it stands, but creating a book out of one’s work allows for it to be even further differentiated.
Being both a filmmaker and avid reader, I was intrigued by the description of the photobook as “between the novel and film”. The most interesting aspect that both film and the photobook share is that you can weave together and elaborate narrative through visual elements. Visuals can stand on their own to develop themes. Like the novel, a photobook can be a bit more abstract than a film and incorporate text into its structure. This concept can leave a lot of room for an individual’s mind to link photos in one’s own way, rather than having them in an obvious linear motif like movies. There’s more opportunity for the reader to use their imagination rather than passively viewing work.
“I can’t draw so I’ll invent photography.” – W.F. Talbot
I was inspired by The Pencil of Nature and Talbot’s passion for what would become photography. It is difficult to imagine someone becoming frustrated with drawing and inventing an entirely new art form simply by thinking images could be captured by photochemical means (it takes a vast amount of scientific knowledge and foresight to make such a leap in thinking). Talbot not only figured out how to take photos, but how to reproduce them in large quantities for print—what good would photographic documents be if almost no one could see them? I would liken his printing of photos to an invention as revolutionary as the printing press as it allowed for the dissemination of photographic information all around the world. He asks himself at one point, “And why should it not be possible?" That is a mentality I would like to fully embrace with my photography.
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