22 September, 2010

notes from my retrospective critique//Cory rules



yesterday I was skyped in to my retrospective review back in KC. this time I could hear everyone and could usually see people, which was great. thanks so much, fellow P/DFers, for accommodating my hemispherical handicap.

Cory very kindly took notes for me, which are awesome, which I am posting here right now:

isn't Cory amazing?
yes, she is.

but anyhow, I was pleased to hear people saying all the things I'd been thinking, and most of those things that I mentioned in my tentative proposal. basically, everything everyone said encouraged me. great job, guys.

20 September, 2010

12 September, 2010

internet as exhibition space//i need to learn html

faces and hoodies

that website looks neat. i want to learn to do that.


also, i generally like samantha casolari's photography

06 September, 2010

another influence for current project

too hard to keep

photographer jason lazarus started this project. he requests that people send in photos that they feel are "too hard to keep". this implies that the images bring up memories that are too painful, so painful that they don't want to see these photos anymore. that makes it seem like by giving away these photographs, the person will no longer have that memory... or at least, will not have to think about it.



this is the most intense one that i've seen. in this case i can see why that's something you'd want to forget - but why was the image taken in the first place? evidence?



then there are others like this one that just seem silly to me. why did she take this photo if she didn't want to remember? she looks like she's been crying. i'm guessing that message on the mirror was someone breaking up with her. or was she doing the breaking? either way, again i question why she would even take the photo if she doesn't want to remember it...



this one is more like what i would expect. and this one makes the most sense to me.



it's kind of fun to think about why people submitted the photos they did. i think he needs to get a lot more submissions, though... there just aren't enough at this point.

who knows. maybe it'll be the next post secret.

TENTATIVE PROPOSAL!

LYDIA WAS HERE [[working title...]]


My intent with this project is to effectively convey the personal experiences and feelings involved with my time in New Zealand within a body of work that represents the growth of my aesthetic and theoretical “style” as manifested over the past four years. This project will be my final body of work in my college career. I plan on addressing ideas that have appeared in my work in the past (the self, male/female relations in art, personal perception, visual disorientation, the influence of text on an image, the questionable reality of photographs) as well as some new themes (photographs as memories, the “editing” of a person's life that happens through the choice of images shown, the internet as exhibition space). The resulting images will be a mixture of staged and spontaneous photographs depicting my daily life in New Zealand, a mixture of truths and fictions. All of the images I have shot since my arrival can potentially be included in this series. It is my hope that while with some images it will be obvious whether it was staged or not, with others it will be more difficult to determine. I may also include PhotoBooth images, as I have been taking a photo (almost) every day of myself since January. In addition to images this series will also include text such as letters to & from home, journal entries, and writings in retrospect. The final format of this project is yet to be determined, though I am considering (in addition to a physical exhibition) a book and a website devoted to this project alone. Along the way I will continue to blog regularly (hopefully moreso than I have so far...) as much of what appears on my blog (including comments) could potentially have a place within the finished body of work. Due to finances and the need to be continuously producing and editing, at least the majority of the images will be digital. The format of final gallery display of these images is yet to be determined. It is my hope that this project will at the very least give viewers an idea of my experience living abroad and hopefully also cause them to raise questions about the reality of photography, how we use images to replace memories, and the “editing” we perform on our own memories.


INFLUENCES
- Cortney Andrews (http://cortneyandrews.com) – female sexuality, relationships between males and females, the self, aesthetic influence
- Roberta Ridolfi's “I dreamt I dream” (http://idreamtidream.net) – visual journal, internet as exhibition space, aesthetic influence
- Jeff Harris (http://jeffharris.org) – visual journal, the self, daily documentation of self, aesthetic influence
- Charlie Engman (http://charlieengman.com) – aesthetic influence
- various blogs found on the internet
- something my roommate once said to me - “I want to make sure only good pictures of me exist so my children think I was really cool” - and that idea which I feel a lot of people have
- the fact that some people make me delete photos of themselves that they don't like
- the fact that I have trouble remembering highschool because I lost most of my photos from that time period when my computer crashed
- … living in New Zealand.