Celebrating the Less than Peachy

The most pronounced line in this photo is the line of the river traveling off into the distance. The dead trees also make a line that matches with the horizon. The river forms a triangle. The contrast in the shadows and highlights of the grass add to the sense of deadness that it gives off. The point of view is straight on and distant which is typical to a landscape.

This picture is celebrating the earth. Even though the trees are dead and skeleton they are still beautiful. The photo conveys a certain solemn are similar to Vincent Van Gogh's painting Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background. Van Gogh painted this piece in 1889. Van Gogh uses dark, muted colors and the picture has a gloomy mood, but that is part of what makes it beautiful. The tan, dying long grass is found in both images and help to convey the gloomy solemn tone that links the images. These images are a reminder that even in mourning and solemn times there can be beauty and that is worthy of celebrating.

Earthworks manipulate nature. It is changed in what ever way the artist sees fit. Earthworks are humans creating based on the within nature while landscapes are just capturing nature in its true, original, and unadulterated beauty. When making an earthwork the artist often tries to push boundaries in their work done in part by the manipulation, but while a landscape can be controversial, it is often much more tame and straight forward.

Getting Lost Slideshow

All of the pictures are in black and white. There is a consistent value and lighting throughout the collection. The pictures play with depth and layers. Some create the illusion that the subject is coming out of the frame. The pictures are light weight, carefree, and natural.

The photos of Elie Saab's textiles mimic the feel and texture of the photos in the collection. It shows the original and a recreation, quite literally a fabrication of what God first created. The media quote relates the beauty of nature with beauty in another, manmade way. For me the quote takes the same beauty out of nature and applies it in a formal, stiff environment. If nature is embodied by soft blowing breezes the fabric of the fashion show is reminiscent of starch.

The scope of all of the pictures is close up and the field of view is narrow and up-close. Each picture, as mentioned before, has layers despite the small scope of the photo. The black and white and the shared values of the pictures help add to their cohesion. The progression of the pictures almost come to a point. At the start of the they are softer and end in the spider picture which is more severe.

I think one thing that works in the collection is the use of black and white. Also the media quote resembles the photos nicely while also bringing a different angle and connotation to the them. On the negative side not all of the photos fit together as seamlessly as the rest. For this reason I removed one photo of a vine climbing up tree bark. To improve the collection further I would crop in the photos of the fashion models to emphasize the textile because the background and model's faces are not contributing to the collection.

The photos and the media quotes within this collection speak to both the way of media and the way of culture. Nature is the only thing that is truly original. Culture draws from that and recreates and manipulates it for its purposes. In his clothing Elie Saab draws his inspiration from nature but drags it into the context of culture. Nature has the power to change culture but while culture can manipulate and destroy nature it can not affect actual, original change to it.    

The Body 2013

The focal point of the picture is the figure to the left side of the frame. From the figure the sidewalk creates two distinct lines that stand in contrast to the dark paved street. The dashed crosswalk also creates a line the travels in a different direction from the other two lines of the sidewalk. The lines created by the street signs mimic the lines of the street and the sidewalk. The figure is much darker than the rest of the shot making her stand out. The picture was composed with a lot of things going on and a lot of lines to lead your eye around the picture. The point of view is at eye level and because it is from the back of the figure it gives the impression that the viewer is seeing what the figure is seeing.

My art historical is a statue of a greek goddess looking out across the ocean. The statue has no head. She is poised forward as if she is about to travel into the ocean and beyond. The statue being headless makes her anonymous; she could be anyone. Her body is poised for motion and the endless possibilities of the ocean stretch out in from of her.

This photograph represents the body in 2013 because to me the body takes you were you want to go. Physically the body is literally what allows one to move forward and take which ever path you choose but it also it also gets you where you want to go in other ways. I was reading an article that discussed the correlation between being perceived as attractive the ability of the person to get hired. The article noted that “attractive” people were more likely to get chosen for a position over a more average looking person and that “attractive” people are generally perceived as more friendly. In this sense the body or physical appearance is what gets people where they want to go. The figure in the picture is poised forward, much like the statue, and she is looking up at the road signs trying to determine where her body will take her.