I never been to the Pace Gallery so it was interesting to see something new.The first artist Irvin Penn focus more on fashion and personal portraits. the portraits were in black and white and it was close, don’t have much of a purpose but for documentation i’m not sure.The conceptual pictures was the most interesting, it had a concept, one of those pictures that you have to know some background information for you to understand what you looking at. For example the picture of the women with a football face, i didnt think much of it until learned i little about it, then Oh she’s leather face.
Nick Brandt photos i think was more dangerous than the others photographers to take. Mr Brandt took a lot of black and white, a lot of animal pictures and it all took place in the dessert. My favourite was the picture where he use the chain of men to make a cool perspective looking chain. He like up close pictures, but he didn’t use a stereo lens thing,i don’t remember the name of the term but what in trying to say he didn’t zoom in on the subject he was actually that close to the subject.Yea and i think some of the animals were dead, i just wanted to point that out.
St Robert Polidori, photos was kinda confusing to understand his main focus, i first thought that he like taking picture of paintings but further along i notice he stop taking pictures of paintings. the rest of the pictures were of the interior of a building. he took pictures of things that were ripped or damaged. so i concluded that he purposely took picture of the damaged interior, some of the doors in his picture were ripped up and scratched,and there was a column of a wall misplaced .i am certain he did it on purpose because the picture was in great detail,nobody would take a fine detailed picture of a scratched up door for no reason. So i think he focused mainly on the bad things that was in the area he was shooting at.
Susan Derges, pictures from what i was told were from light sensitive that is expose to light. i thought using this way would be more limited but the photographer found creative ways to create depth with just a 2d medium. The pictures technically flat with no vary in shadow but you can see some distance between subjects.
I looked very close to this photographers picture,only because it looked odd in the darker areas of the picture. the pictures was a little “boxy”? instead of tiny little dots it had little geometric shapes. I could only guess the artist took the picture and added a filter over the picture in photoshop. It looked more interesting to see how the pictures was viewed from a far distance. Olivo Barbieri took the pictures from very high angles and i think the only one out of all the galleries that manipulated their photos the most.
Phillip Lorca DiCorsia photos is another set of photos that need to be explained before looking at it. ALMOST all of the picture had some thing cool or interesting in it.The way all the pictures were taken reminded me of old Movies i used to watch when i was younger. Pulp Fiction and Training Day or some other movie that was created late 80s early 90s was popping up when i was looking at the photos. He mainly took Portraits of his subjects,the subjects had a dead look on their faces excepted for that lady or dude i dont know. Yea and that picture specifically reminded me of Andy Warhol, only because the lady or dude looks like Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol i think was obsessed with her. Back on topic the background of most of the pictures had a darkish orange in the background or a object that goes with the subject,probably its just the sun setting.
In general, your observations are good. You note in the paragraph about the Irving Penn show that one has to know something about the photos and I would say that is always true. Photographs are ambiguous and need context to be understood. the more you know about the photographer and when and why they were taken the more meaningful they become. So when you know Robert Polidori is taking pictures of Versailles-the last palace of the French monarchy that is now a major tourist attraction the photos become much more interesting. Also, I think you are dead on when you note the movie references in Philip Lorca-Dicorsia’s work.