Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Born Diane Nemerov in New York city Diane Arbus grew up in a rich jewish family. At the age of 14 she met and fell in love with Allan Arbus; marrying him at the age of 18.

While Allan was training as a photographer for the U.S Army he shared his lessons with his wife, Diane. With thier skills the couple became very popular in the fashion indusry; Allan taking the photograhs and Diane styling the shoots. Diane took more formal photography lessons with Lisette Model and the New School in New York and soon landed a job as a photojournalist. In her earlyer work she shot with a 35mm camera but soon adopted a Rolleiflex medium format twin-lens reflex.

By 1963 after three years of extensive photojournaling and her photographs getting in some popular magazines (Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and Sunday Times Magazine) she recived a guggenheim Fellow grant to she could take time off work and focus on her art photography. She also taught photography at Parsons School of Design, NYC and Hampshire College, Massachusetts.

In July of 1971 Diane Arbus commited suicide at the age of 48. She overdosed on Barbiturates and slit her wrists.

Her photography is about individuality. She liked shooting the outsiders. Transvestites, dwarvs, giants, prostitutes or "ordinary people in disturbing settings" or poses are not out of the "norm" in her images.

Alexander Rodchenko

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (December 5, 1891- December 3, 1956) was one of the world's most versatile artists, dabbling in the fields of graphic design, painting, sculpting, furniture design, book covers, movie posters, billboards, and photography. His photography was innovative and original. He is famous for shooting his subjects from odd angles to shock the viewer, and for employing the use of lines in his photography. He once said "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

He studied at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev between 1910 and 1914. He was later appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik Government in 1920, and taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios. He soon abandoned painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was greatly influenced by the filmmaker Dziga Vertov, with whom he worked intensivly in 1922.

Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was increasingly abstract, and his art was concentrated on photomontages, which he used on book covers and posters. He exclusively used unoriginal photographs in his photomontages until 1924, when it became increasingly difficult for him to find suitable photographs. He soon turned all of his concentration on photography, shooting ordinary objects at unusual perspectives. Many of his photographs incorporated the use of lines and other geometric shapes and patterns, including stairs, grids, city streets, and overhead wires. He returned to painting in the late 1930's, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940's.

Rodchenko had been a supporter of the Soviet revolution, and his photography was intended to support and encourage social change. However, from around 1928 on, with the rise of Stalinism, his work was heavily criticized and was the subject of many political attacks for its 'bourgeois formalism', mainly because of his use of tilted camera angles. Rodchenko was lucky to avoid imprisonment or death, but the last twenty years of his life were spent in poverty and obscurity.

Much of 20th century graphic design was influenced by the work of Alexsander Rodchenko. His graphic design is so influential that to pick out particular designers he has influenced would be pointless.

Galleries:

http://www.left.ru/2001/3/rodchenko/r17.html

http://www.mdf.ru/festivals/fashion_style/2005/rodchenkocircle_fs05/

Gregory Crewdson

Born in the neighbourhood of Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, Gregory Crewdson came into the world in 1962 on September 26. He wasn't always an aspiring photographer, during his teenaged years he became a member in a punk rock group called The Speedies that sold out rock shows all over town. Their hit song, "Let Me Take Your Foto" was used by Hewlett Packard for their digital camera commercials in 2005. Being a world famous rocker was not to be his destiny however; he decided to move on from music to study photography at State University of New York at Purchase. He would later acquire his Master in Fine Arts from Yale University and later teach at Sarah Lawrance, Cooper Union, Vassar Colege and Yale University to where he is currently situated since 1993.

His general underlying theme for most of his photographic works seem be that of fear, anxiety, and isolation. The sets used to capture some of the pictures that are taken by this man are very, very, elaborate and complex that seems to give every inch of the frame filled. The pictures seemed to have a sense of loss and hopelessness that seems to raise more questions than answers.

It is an interesting notion that such a seemingly ordinary and plain man such a Gregory Crewdson can produce such deep and thought-provoking portrayals of reality and at times fantasy. He has produced many works in very short amounts of time, especially in 2001 when dozens of astonishing photos were captured. This man appears to be born with a gift, a gift that has done him wonders and created just as many. He is expected to produce dozens if not more of fantastic and interesting works for many years to come.

Create a Biography Blog Post

1. Choose a photographer from the list below
2. Research that person on the internet or in ther library
3. Create a blog post about your photographer including two medium sized photographs representative of their work. The Post should be over 400 words. The images should be at least 300 x 300 dpi.
4. Be sure to include information about their material, motives, and education!
5. Link two websites with images by your photographer.

Gregory Crewdson
Diane Arbus
August Sanders
Joe Pfahl
Robert Adams
Tina Modotti
Sandy Skoglund
Sebastiao Salgado
Edward Burtynsky
Eugene Atget
Robert Capa
Alexander Rodchenko
Dorothea Lange
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Julia Margret Cameron
Andreas Gursky
Mary Ellen Mark

Assignment 1: The Origins of Photography

go to National Gallery of Canada
wait for the intro
Click on the orange box in the upper lefthand corner (camera obscura) and read through the seven sections.
Answer the following questions:

Camera Obscura
1.Why was inventor Diovanni Battista del Porta charged with sorcery?
2. What were some of the uses of the camera obscura?
3. How were camera obscuras different from cameras today?
4. Draw a basic camera obscura.

Click on the yellow box in the upper lefthand corner (inventors) and read through the eight sections.
Answer the following questions:

The Inventors
1. Define the word "fix" as it is used in relation to photography.
2. What type of objects did Wedgwood's father use a camera obscura to help him decorate?
3.Why were daguerrotypes used mainly for achitecture at the time of their invention?
4. Who coined the word photography?
5. compare and contrast the chemical processes of two inventors.

due by Friday Feb 10th

David Guttenfelder, AP
A piece of the coastal highway near Lhok Nga in Banda Aceh, Indonesia wrecked by the December 26 tsunami , sits along the beach almost a year later on November, 24, 2005.