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Last year Stephen Chalmers visited the University and I assisted the talk about his work. I thought it would be appropriate to look up a little bit more about him, to show his work during my presentation tonight.
Stephen has an M.F.A in Cinema and Photography, a B.A in Fine Art Photography, a B.S in Psychology and he is an Emergency Medical Technician. He is very active in the community, does workshops in digital photography, and is an active artist.
His work is very much Research oriented. I am going to focus on one body of work which is 'Dump Sites'. With little knowledge of the purpose and intentions of the artist, the images portray beautiful and very specific landscape. Upon reading the title, one realizes that there is more behind the surface of the photograph. Each images portrays the specific spot where a murder has taken place. He titles the image with the name of the victim and the date of the murder.
The artist interest is to create a memorial for the victim. He argues that in murders, people only remember the killer, as opposed to remembering the victim. So, what he wants to do is to create a memorial for the victim, and only focus on that.
He shoots with 4x5 camera and creates an area of focus where he believes, to the best of his knowledge, the place where the body of the victim was found.The images are beautiful, but they are juxtaposed by the disturbing title. He creates a play between life and dead, that juxtaposes a sad, true, disturbing event from the past with the present emptiness of the landscape that is left. He can play with the assumptions of the viewer upon first encountering the photographs, and the inevitable visual imagery that creates in each of them after learning more about them.
Check out his website: Askew-view
Images found on google: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=stephen%20chalmers%20dump%20sites&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Going from blog, after blog, after blog, I came across Akos Major. I couldn't find more information than him being from Budapest, Hungary. I did find hundreds of his images, and I highly recommend people to look at his photographs.
The images seem to portray very powerful natural beauty of the landscape. I am going to focus in a few images that seem to consistently inform each other. He photographs landscapes that include snow or water, with a city scape, or natural formations.
The images are stunning! I admire his use of the square format and the placement of the horizon line. In many of his images, one can appreciate a clear consistency of the frame awareness by the photographer.
The calming presence of the images convey a level of aesthetics that in many cases is very difficult to achieve by photographing landscape. In my opinion, what the photographer achieves is that viewer can have a sensory experience when looking at it...where one can feel the coldness of the snow, or water... One can smell the cold ice, and fog... and finally, one can feel the loneliness, and isolation of some of the subjects on that landscape.
I am personally moved and inspired by these images. In particular by the choice of subject matter and the technical decisions that make the simplest things in nature become so hugely noticeable, and beautiful. Simple or (as Chris would say:) 'Minimal' is beautiful.
Check him out on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/absolutelynothing/
In 2008 I had the opportunity to go to a Photoshop conference lectured by Bert Monroy, and I have to say that everyone in that conference room left with a urge of exploring the software and getting creative. Bert Monroy is an artist, author, and lecturer, that has been a key figure and pioneer for the world of Digital Art, in 2004, he was inducted to the Photoshop Hall of Fame. He considers himself a Hyper-realist artist, that is very much inspired by photography and paint.
Bert Monroy creates a very unique and, process oriented type of work. He has a particular passion of the digital world, his work is inspiring. The photo-real paintings, are extremely detailed with a mind blowing depth of field. Every single object in his composition is made from scratch, in Photoshop, or Illustrator. One can see detailed in the leaves of far away trees, dust, reflections, rust, screws...etc. He relies his work flow in photographs.
As a photo-realist painter, I have often been asked why I don’t just take a photograph. Good question, when you consider my paintings look like photographs. Well, for one thing, I’m not a photographer. To me, it is not the destination that is important—it is the journey.
The incredible challenge of recreating reality is my motivation. —Bert Monroy
I think that it is very interesting that he doesn't consider himself a photographer, yet he has such a active relationship with the medium. He relies in photographs to achieve a hyper-real photographic painting. As he says, what it is important for him is the "journey", not the destination. That is why in my opinion, the artist is very much process oriented. He bases his passion for art in the actual process of making it, as opposed to the final product.
I am thoroughly enjoying the search and investigation of artists for this blog. A few days ago I came across Steven B Smith's landscapes, and I couldn't help but to look him up for more information.
The photographer was born in Utah, studied at Utah State and Yale, taught at Yale and Brown, and he is currently a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2005 he was awarded the First Book Prize for Photography by the Honickman Foundation and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University Press. The work featured was "The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West" where he investigates the transition of the Western landscape into suburbia.
In his photographs, one can appreciate the artist's approach towards the investigation between the interactions of humans with nature in the American West. In my opinion the images play back and forth between the ironies of a beautiful landscape that has been interrupted by man force with the objective of creating beautiful places to inhabit. In a sense, it implies the rapid growth of man-made systems that are being embedded in what it once was pure nature.
These images are inspired by the rapid changes that the land suffers not only by its natural causes, but also by the introduction of man-made systems that rapidly are occupying land to be able to one day call it suburbia, neighborhood, water system... etc
Besides the careful and detail formal aspects of the quality of the images, in my opinion they have a lonely, sad feel to them. I can help but to imagine this pure, calm, and beautiful landscape that it is being corrupted by the self centered human urge for power.
Check out his website: Steven Smith Photography
Last year Stephen Chalmers visited the University and I assisted the talk about his work. I thought it would be appropriate to look up a little bit more about him, to show his work during my presentation tonight.
The artist interest is to create a memorial for the victim. He argues that in murders, people only remember the killer, as opposed to remembering the victim. So, what he wants to do is to create a memorial for the victim, and only focus on that.
