Spring 2013 History of Photography

I believe Katchadourian is extremely creative, her work reminds me the things my little brother used to do when he was a kid. When I was looking at her pictures I was thinking about the reaction some people would have had when they saw her doing them. At the moment they must have thought that she was ridiculous and immature, because that is not a “proper” way to behave during a flight, specially if you are an adult. I don’t believe that every person who takes pictures (with a professional camera or with a phone) is a photographer, but I also believe that an artist does not need all the expensive materials to do something creative or beautiful. About the self-portraits, I think is really clever to do that with just toilet paper, seat covers, etc., and yet still being able to make a good reference to the Flemish portraits painted some time ago. The original portraits, I believe were created to show the pureness and connection to god of some women, the innocence and the fact that they were “good girls”. Nina, by doing this representations of herself, I believe is doing all the opposite. She is making fun of that concept, and she is saying that she is not like that. It reminded me a CD cover of a mexican singer (Ximena Sariñana), where she is presented as the perfect wife, which nowadays is a concept that the western world makes fun of (at least in the big cities).

Looking at the videos and reading the article I believe that sleeping can be art in the sense that not everyone goes to bed the same way. I mean truthfully it will be boring and i wont watch a 6 hour movie just about someone sleeping but some people out there may like to observe the way people sleep. I say this becomes helpful to companies like sleepy’s etc. because this gives them ideas of how to create a better sleeping bed by observing the positions people sleep. The Andy Warhol movie “Sleep” I think will not be a hit just cause I think it would be boring just seeing someone sleeping for the whole movie but that’s just my opinion other people may think different. Lastly, the MoMA sleeping observation is crazy to me having a bunch of people looking at you in a glass box while you are sleeping taking pictures etc.

Looking at Nina Katchadourian’s iPhone photos my first impression was that they were strange, but looking at other Flemish style images I saw how the images style was similar to Nina. Using the objects on the plane to create these photo was creative. I wonder if any passengers saw her what were there thoughts seeing her doing this. The seat assignment if a good way to kill time while on a long flight. Also looking at the video you see the different images she created using the objects from the plane, even if the photos weren’t high definition. Overall, I think Nina is trying to portray the fact that being on a long flight don’t mean that you cant have fun and be creative.

I found Katchadourian’s seat assignment way more interesting and amusing than her self portraits. It is a little weird to me the fact that this women takes photos of herself in the bathroom of the airplane, I can definitely tell she was having fun playing Maria Portinari and posing to her iPhone with a variety of expressions and toilet paper outfits. I would never imagine a women of her age doing that. Although I think it is nice to see people from the last generation trying to involve and fit in this new innovative, high tech era. I think Katchadorian was not really saying something about those self portraits but rather mocking Hans Memling’s portraits of Maria Portinari. First of all, the quality of the pic is really low, just by looking at the photo you will think she was just messing around. So that is why I don’t really think she is giving a message to an audience. However, the seat assignment photos are very interesting. Especially because of the use of ordinary objects added to an existing photo to create an optical illusion of  a new escenario. I think that Nina Katchadourina’s point of these iPhone photos is to show how you don’t really need a professional camera to capture nice and new images just by putting some objects together and have a sense of imagination.

Nina Katchadourian’s self portraits are kinda weird. I wonder if any other passengers on the flights noticed what she was doing at all. That would have been funny. I think that she has this really serious mood in all her photographs. I can see how it resembles the Flemish portrait by Hans Memling. However, Maria Portinari looks slightly less scary. The hands are in a similar position but Maria still looks like she’s praying or devoting herself to something while Nina looks somewhat scared and at times angry. I’m not sure of what Nina is saying about herself in these self portraits. I don’t think that there’s a real purpose behind them. It seems sort of amateur. I give a photographs a thumbs down.  

I believe that Bill Rancic said it best, “art is in the eye of the beholder.”  I think people who believe that sleeping is a form of art have gone a little overboard.  It almost seems like a joke.  Perhaps I am missing something but I just don’t get it.  Some people might have more of a creative or artistic edge and so they might understand it but I surely don’t.  Also, unless Tilda Swinton took some sort of sleeping aid before hopping into that tiny cube to take a nap, I am a bit skeptical that she actually managed to get some sleep.  I am sure many people went to watch her and its a bit tough for a room full of people to stay quiet.  Maybe some may think that marveling at an actress’s unique beauty while she sleeps is art but if it were a regular perhaps maybe an unattractive person, would it have had the same turn out? As far as Andy Warhol’s movie “Sleep,” I wouldn’t sit through that simply to watch someone sleep.

While looking at Katchadourian’s pictures I kind of got the feeling that she was mocking the Flemish portraits.  I didn’t think she was being very creative when reenacting these Flemish portraits because they already existed and so she just immatated the images using airplane bathroom supplies as well as her scarf.  Still, some of the photographs she took of “landscaping” using food, salt and a straw was a little more creative.  But I couldn’t help but think “wow, this woman has nothing better to do with her time.” Flights can be pretty boring and if someone finds a way to keep themselves entertained, albeit a weird way, kudos to you.  I’m not entirely sure what Katchadourian is saying about herself but I think its something along the lines of “I’m gonna have fun on my flights and I don’t care if its eccentric.”  Seeing Katchadourian’s work made me think that anyone can be considered an artistic photographer.  This is because she literally only used toilet paper or a toilet seat cover to convey a Flemish portrait and she took pictures of herself using her cell phone.

Nina Katchadourian took a series of self-Portraits during her long plane ride with some limited materials such as toilet paper, thin black scarf , food, and a camera phone. Katchadourian’s self-portraits looks like a paint. One of her photos she took in the Flemish Style from her Seat Assignment has much painterly effect when she hung her black scarf as a deep black background. I think that Katchadourian wants to make a series of a painterly style photographs. Because, compares with Hans Memling’s portrait of the young 14-year-old bride Maria, Katchadourian poses a prayerful posture and her eyes was looking at somewhere just as similar as Maria Portinari. Seems like she’s telling people that she’s praying. And She dressed up as a Flemish to convince people and make a photo much like a art.

I believe that one of the main reasons any “kind” of art is created is to create some sort of reaction, to give the viewer the freedom to interpret it as they wish to. Even though I get the point that this was the intention in having Miss Tilda Swinton sleeping at MoMA, I strongly do NOT believe that “Sleep” should be considered a subject of art. In my opinion this “display” of art just seems effortless and meaningless. As I see it, art should be created under some kind of effort, it should be hand made or made using some kind of tool so to call a person sleeping in a museum a “piece of art” just seems a little silly to me. However I do consider Mr. Sergio Clavijo sleeping figures very artistic and clever. Since his creation has a good cause behind it I can very much appreciate it. The only good side I see in the MoMA presentation is the fact that we can see a person’s pure and real facial expressions when they are asleep.

In the beginning of the film, women is sat on one side and men on the other. The women are all sat not facing the camera and hands are placed on the table. This is like many early photographs of women. Similarities of both of them are that the film and camera had to be placed and could not be moved. It limits the motion and the people that can fit within the frame. I think both contains a negative. For film it can be played from just the negative. Photographs need to be produced in order for pictures to be seen. Both film and photography started out in black and white. Differences between the two is that one contains motion. It is like multiple pictures together moving at a very fast to create movement. Photography captures a part and needs to be reproduced out. Films could add effects to enhance their story. While back then they could only change the exposure time and the color. They did not have effects to change their photos even more.