Week 1 reading images
Hello to all and welcome to CPS!!
Today for the first week we will take a look at the course outline and get our hands dirty by looking at various photographers and their unique vision expressed through the medium.
Before we get started, this is your course as much as it is mine. Your contributions will greatly impact the success of this course.
Before we get started, I want you to try and free up your mind from all the things that occupy it. This means clearing yourself from all distractions and thoughts you may have leading up to this moment. Be ready to receive information, question it and be ready to share your thoughts and beliefs.
Notes to cover| apart form the course outline | things to review:
- Create a BLOGGER blog for this course and send me a link to pberra@dawsoncollege.qc.ca! Things to consider when making your blog for CPS due by this Friday.
- keep the layout simple, clean and no images used as the background, they are distracting
- Display your name on your site so I know who it belongs to
- Your blog will be the place I expect you to post your assignments and make Journal entries. The journal entries is a question I will ask of you and need you to write it out as a free-writing exercise, responding as best you can to the set f questions. This said, you are welcome to write at will, m include as many photos as you like. This is your site after all!
- Assignment 1 Reflections a "Self-Portrait represented through a scene" due by next class.
- Assignment 6 the Photo Series an ongoing project whereby I ask you to create a series of images that explores a personal account about your day to day life due by the end of semester. This can be a home based project or anything that coincides with your interaction with the outside world at large.
- Summative is your blog containing all the course elements I need you to submit everything as best you can. It needs to show growth both through photogprhas, research and your journal entries. So do not skip out on anything! This course is a marathon, but a fun one asking you to look at issues and topics that relate to photography from many different points of view.
For your series it needs to be a minimum of 6 images taken throughout the semester.
You will need to make it personal, series of this nature are a personal account about your world, as to content and where you decide to point your lens is entirely up to you. But while making this work you need to take your audience into account by allowing the audience a glimpse into your understanding about your world. Potentially exposing daily rituals, ethnicity, gender roles, relationships, self-portraits, interactions situated within a space. Ultimately you can make a combination of several elements, people, places and objects. Or you can focus on one space, similar to Carrie Mae Weems, but what this series needs to represent how time plays a significant role, the photos are taken during a time period and not all taken all at once.
Photographer's process about producing work that can be attributed to a body of work based on time.
Assignment 1 1 Reflections a "Self-Portrait represented through a scene"
What do you think when you see this photo?
View from hotel window, Butte, Montana, 1955 by Robert Frank
I want you to remember this scene!
Portrait of Robert Frank (below)
Philip Brookman, Robert Frank, New York, 1985, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of the artist. © Philip Brookman
References Video:
Robert Frank: Sick of Goodby’s, 1978; from The Lines of My Hand
Assignment 1 1 Reflections a "Self-Portrait represented through a scene"
Inspired by Frank's, View from hotel window, Butte, Montana, 1955
Photo of inspiration
While Robert Frank's view out the hotel window overlooked a valley, at the time, a small village surrounded by roof tops and a valley in the distance, my photo looks out to a neighbouring home, across my street. Belonging to an old Montreal neighbourhood located in the south-West district, was once known for its blue collar workers, now evolving due to economic changes to include and eventually occupy a wealthier class of people. This is a personal view I look out to every day from my humble studio window. This view depicting a building crowded by the growth of vines and trees, showing a beautiful invasion of nature. A wish for me to see one day when nature and people can live in true harmony. A place and time when nature is not a foreign invader to be tamed but instead to be viewed as a sovereign organism.
Process of understanding photography in the present age Marvin Heiferman | Seeing Through Photographs
Dorothea Lange