Our first visited exhibit is the Pace Gallery of Irving Penn’s On Assignment. Penn’s work is mostly for the Vogue magazine, The New Yorker, Look and Vanity Fair. Penn is identify as the most respected photographer of the 19th and 20th century. His photography makes a strong contrast of the positive and negative shapes. He photographs foods and people mostly. He arrange foods in a most interesting shapes and form. One of them that I like is a frozen fruit in a square like container and takes out and form four squares. It is interesting because how many people would think of freezing the fruits to take a photograph. And the black and white photograph of expressing claustrophobic is interesting because all he did is board in the back of the subject to make it into a closed environment and shows the person’s personality. It is nice and simply presented.
The second stop is photographer, Nick Brandt’s Across the Ravaged Land. I think that he is in Africa or some forest to take the shots of animals and people who live there. A photograph of a wild lion that he uses Depth of field to make the background blur. This effect makes the lion looks like its in power in a large field that have no end. Another photograph that I like is a image of the tribe that live there and each of them are holding a elephant’s tusk. The first person on the right side is the largest and each of them are larger than the next person. It is because the line of perspective makes the contrast of sizes. Each of the photograph tells a story about the animals in the photograph in eye-level.
In Mary Boone Gallery, I see many of the colorful painting like images of worn palaces which is against the palaces that we usually sees that are beautiful. The photographs that Polidori took is the under the scene of how the palace really looks like. The owners have to spent money to manage the palace that are open for the tourist. The photographer uses extensive depth of field to make everything clear, include the image of the palace under construction and the living room of the palace with lots mirrors and portrait. The photographs have low contrast, the pattern of the door knobs and the paintings in the wall are low contrast.
Susan Derges shot the image with her camera and edited it in a dark room with a fish tank. She create her image by using a scantron projection paper. All of her images are created by hand. Susan Derges’ photograph feels like the trees, leaves, and bridge is living inside the frame. She uses colored transparent paper to create a mood to the photograph. Each images have a single background color.
Olivo Barbieri’s Alps-Geographics and People is interesting because when I look at a distance I see paint in the image, when I look closer I see a person is climbing the mountain. It is the kind of image that invites the viewers to look closer to explore the images. Each image contained a tiny figure that is climbing the mountain either use torn white papers or paint to create the mountains. The images are large and mostly mountains. It is high contrast between the mountain and the person. The images are shot in eye-level and negative space.
The last one is Phillip Lorca DiCorsia’s Hustlers. It is the photograph of man prostitutes. DiCorsia hired the man prostitutes to pose for him to take a photograph. He pays the same price as they earn for a night out with their customers. Most of the images are under the dark shadow with a tone of orange. The photographer creates a feeling of homelessness by setting up the scene mostly in gas stations, motels, and parking lots. He also use the depth of field to create a sense of loneliness.
