Today was a different day, we as a class got to know different expressions of photography. This is really helpful and help us more to comprehend about current photographers and how their work is relevant and engaging.
First, the exhibition from the New York Times Magazine. This had a lot of different photographs and concepts and some classic shots of famous events. They had the layouts for their magazine and really stunning photographs. As a whole you look them as one theme related, which is a photo to a related article. However, Ashley Gilbertson photographs have a different idea behind the shot, an idea that brings emotion and make the whole photo-story concept really strong. His work was about rooms, empty rooms that belonged to deceased soldiers. These soldiers where young and brave, but their rooms is what they left intact when they left. These rooms are the ones where they are not coming bad. In my opinion this is one strong piece of work, even when there is not a lot of though into the actual production, the story is what make these pieces stand out from the rest of the work. Comparing this to Ansel Adams’ images they have one theme in common which is to create serious photographs. Adam’s style is different as he concentrated more into nature. I feel like he is trying to find beauty in each shot. This as he is more interested into the bringing texture and emotion of an image which also includes a strong composition. Lastly, the Stephen Shore exhibition. These image where compose in two different locations in the world. Prof. Michals called him a pioneer into serious color photography, this because as a standard people think black and white are the standard for serious photography. Once again Shore has more than anything else a strong idea and story behind each shot. These as we lear that he photographed Holocaust Survivors from Ukraine and Israel. There might be some of technical uniqueness to each photograph, but again I think that what make it a strong image is the whole story for each photograph.
There certainly was a standard in the past that equated serious photography with black and white. Interestingly enough, the two bodies of work that you talk about before the work of Stephen Shore-Bedrooms of the Fallen by Ashly Gilbertson and the work of Ansel Adams are both black and white. Of course, Adams didn’t really have a choice. Gilbertson working decades later than Adams did have a choice. Do you think he made the right choice? Would the series have been as effective in color?