Do I have Friends?

The main issue I found with this project was repetition.  I am used to doing projects with 12 images in them max, and it is very hard to become repetitious with so few images.  So when I was thinking about the project the thought that the images may start to become repetitive never entered my mind.  However, once I started shooting and editing I felt a bit of repetitiveness start, so I found myself having to really work on the photos to remove this feeling.  Another feeling that I kept having during the project was frustration.  While it was much faster and easier to work with and edit the photos on the computer as opposed to in a dark room I still found myself hating it.  Coming from a film background I have my way of looking at, working with, and arranging photos.  However, none of that works in digital.  For this reason I found it very hard to choose an order for the photos, and in general became quite frustrated with the whole process.

Flicker:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92732076@N04/sets/72157632645038533/

SnapFish:

http://www2.snapfish.com/flickrus/projectshareewelcome/l=5257409023/p=605301359565086012/g=5866528023/cobrandOid=1295012/COBRAND_NAME=flickrus/otsc=SYE/otsi=SPBKlink/ 

Lynda Barry

I felt that Lynda Barry was the best convo speaker in my time so far at Lawrence.  She was able to be thought provoking and funny and all around interesting.  This is something that I have not seen another convo speaker do.  But enough of that what did I like about her speech.  I found her way of connecting things incredibly interesting and enjoyable.  I really liked how she used familys and art and technology together.  Her discussion of how parents relate to there children is changing because of new technology was incredibly interesting.  However, what I found the most amazing, was the story she told about phantom pain.  I had to agree with her about it, it was strange that what was most definitively a medical process was not considered one because it used an image overlay.  To me there was something very wrong about that.  With that being said however, I still thought that the story was incredible.  The fact that the experiment worked was so fascinating, it really makes you wonder about the human brain.

My First

For this movie I really wanted to capture the idea of space being present in all times.  I tried to capture this through the use of extremely long shots.  What I was trying to capture was the permanence of spaces and objects throughout time.  I wanted to show that while things change that space that I saw there never will because at that point in time it existed.  I wanted to put the song Time is On My Side by the Rolling Stones in the video, but I had trouble getting it to the program.  It is for that reason that I left the video silent.

Under the Influence

There have been a number of artists who have really shaped me as an artist.  Of all of these artists there are three who stand above the rest, they are Chuck Close, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Ian Ruhter.  The images of these three men have inspired me in incredible ways.

The first to have a real impact on me was Henri Cartier-Bresson.  While looking at his images of street photography, I was filled with a sense of aw due to his ability to capture the magnificence on the every day.  As I have discussed before this ability to turn even the most mundane days into something special is something that I have tried to recreate on my own.

Chuck Close and Ian Ruhter have inspired me in similar ways.  They have both effected the way I create portraiture as well push me to try and create Daguerreotype's.  They both create these incredibly detailed and complex portraits that have greatly influenced my own portraits.  There is something about the beauty subtle intangible beauty to there portraits which can not be expressed, which I have tried to recreate in my own portraits.

                    
                                     SILVER & LIGHT from Ian Ruhter : Alchemist on Vimeo.

Yet Another Blog Post

Most of my art comes from two somewhat cliche places.  The first is how I view the world, and the second is how I view myself in the world.  These two ideas have greatly shaped the way I look at and create art.  This is most evident in my final projects in Intro and Intermediate Photo.

The first Image is from the final project for Intro to Photo.  The idea behind the project was to take the everyday world and make it beautiful and aw inspiring through abstraction.  The idea for this project came quite simply from the way in which I see the world.  Which is the first place from which my art originates.  My final project from Intermediate Photo exemplify's the world as I see it through myself.  For this project I made a series of portraits of Jewish students who attend Lawrence.  I then used these portraits to exemplify the community feel of Judaism.  The series showed that while we all come from different walks of life, look different, and may even come from very different racial backgrounds we are all connected by our Judaism and the community we gain from it.  This was conclusion that I had come to after much thinking on the matter.

The image above exemplify's who I am better than anything else I can think of.  There is very much two sides to my personality, and they come out in the choice of majors I have made.  The first is ordered and reasonable.  This then is my Government major.  Whereas the other side is creative and much more free, that would be my studio art major.  Now, the Image above has brought both of those worlds together.  It is an image with great political significance.  I took this image while working with the artist Wing Young Huie on his Chalk Talk project.  The image is of a ex-army chemical engineer who was part of the teams that looked for WMDs in Iraq.  After returning home and realizing that he has been lied to by his government and that his purpose in life was pretty much a lie he was broken.  While he has a wife and kids he could not support them and ended up homeless.  However, by the time I met him and took this picture he had found a new purpose in life, being the best father he could be and finding a way to provide for his family.

Finally, I leave you all with the below image, to reflect on the world, and the tremendous beauty contained within it and the road you take through it.

My website can be found at the following link. http://frankliebermanphotography.artworkfolio.com/