It’s hard to take Duane Michals seriously when he’s pretending that he’s Don Quixote and his freeing slaves from that’s actually an abandoned mill on the edge of Pittsburgh, when he’s stealing a pair of gloves from a storefront, or leaving a souvenir of a column aside the museum display of a replica of a building that looks like the Parthenon. He seems to defy all the stereotypes of senior citizens depicting them as decrepit; at the ripe age of 80 years old, Michals is youthful, energetic, sarcastic, and has a childlike curiosity for the world that feels contagious. His art reflects his traits, breaking down themes like life, love, and death into bite-sized stories that can evoke the same curiosity in the viewer. I was inspired by his ability to tell stories and his inability to take anything seriously, and surprised by his photo-taking method.

Throughout the film, Michals tells a lot of stories but sometimes it’s hard to discern fact from fiction. He so easily spews illustrious sentences that somehow build a narrative, it sounds effortless and totally believable. One example is when he told a story about a lighthouse that used to be atop a hill near his childhood home in Pittsburgh. The story seems true enough up until the point where he mentions that at the top of the 1000^th step of this lighthouse, one could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. I believe that coming up with so many narratives on the fly, no matter how silly they are, is good practice for telling stories. Throughout the movie, I found myself taking him seriously less and less the more he told these kinds of stories, not in a mistrusting way but rather in a way where it made his narratives funnier to me.

I think the thing that surprised me the most was how Michals has a youthful spirit. At the beginning, his interactions with the young man/model were so playful and relaxed. Not only that, but his playful banter with the inanimate duck statue was so funny. It felt refreshing, as it’s not the kind of behavior one would typically see of someone on the older side. I think his bright energy and inability to take anything seriously helps fuel the natural curiosity he has for the world, and in turn, makes the world more interesting to him. Michals inspired me to take myself less seriously and just have fun with not only my photography, but with everything else I do in life, it just makes it more fun.

I was surprised to gradually discover that the focal point of Michals’ artwork is the words that he writes with it, and not necessarily the photograph. The purpose of the picture seems like it’s to grab the attention of a viewer, and then it is just an aid to the story that he’s trying to tell in the caption. When he was taking pictures of the female model for the Pandora’s Box series, it seemed like he had the story in mind/the meaning of the picture beforehand as he was directing her, meaning that the story is really the foundation of the piece. Not only that, but he didn’t seem to care much for technical aspects of photography, which I also liked. For someone who’s more well-known as a photographer, his photographic process seemed like a secondary storyline to this movie and to who he is as an artist and a person.

Lee Friedlander

I like how Friedlander plays with light in this picture, using the reflection of himself in the window to make the image look like a double exposure. Once my eye was done analyzing the setting and subjects of the window reflection, I then took note of the small mirror on the other side of the window, which I didn’t notice at first. His portrait is the only subject linking the two sides of the window together, otherwise one may believe that it is actually a double exposure.

 

Vivian Maier

I like this picture because it’s unique from some of Maier’s more famous self-portraits because it doesn’t incorporate reflective surfaces and you can’t see the camera. The shadows across her face and her pose/body language (notably her grip on the chair) makes the image have a very dramatic feeling. I wonder how she developed her pose; whether or not she decided on it by looking in a mirror or if it was something she chose in the moment.

 

Sources:

1. “LEE FRIEDLANDER – SELF-PORTRAITS” https://www.formidablemag.com/lee-friedlander/
2. http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/#slide-41

Laurie Lambrecht (1955 – Present) is an American visual artist based in New York who focuses on surface, texture, color, and form. Her photographs are primarily of her work in other mediums, such as fibers and paints. Lambrecht’s pictures that stood out the most to me are from her series Bark Cloth. In it, Lambrecht prints photographs of different tree barks onto fabric, which have been intricately and delicately embroidered with multicolored threads. Some patterns of thread are seamlessly integrated along grooves in the bark, whereas others create a contrast by going against the grain. For all of these images, I liked how Lambrecht zoomed into the bark such that it took up the entirety of the frame. It allows the viewer to focus on the identifying all the tiny details in the bark; some of them are less noticeable than others. Not only that, but her printing her images on fabrics makes it feel more fluid. Her pictures also inspired me to consider texture in my images.

 

 

 

Sources:

1. https://laurielambrecht.com/PORTFOLIO/Bark-Cloth/1/thumbs-caption

See: Corresponding PechaKucha PowerPoint Presentation: Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879) did not start taking pictures until she was 48 years old but managed to capture over 900 images throughout a span of 12 years and established herself as a major influence in Victorian-era photography. Most of Cameron’s works are close-up portraits of men, women and children.

Cameron utilized different techniques to characterize each of her subjects. For example, many of her portraits of well-known and respected men are sharp and have dramatic lighting; the backgrounds are usually featureless in order to accentuate their figures (see Sir John Herschel (1979)). On the other hand, the portraits of women are soft in focus and typically have less dramatic lighting, which can evoke a sense of femininity and gentleness (see Sadness (1864)). She depicts children in a similar manner as her female subjects, with even lighting and soft focus but occasionally with certain props or costumes to portray them as angelic and pure.

Another notable feature of Cameron’s body of work is her series recreating scenes or characters from religious, historical, or literary contexts. The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1864) is one of Cameron’s more famous examples of this (paired with poetry written by her friend Alfred Lord Tennyson. The posing of the two subjects in an embrace illustrates the implied connection between them and telling the viewer that these people are dear to each other. Additionally, the candid nature of the pose adds to the realism of the image, as if the viewer is watching the actual Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere embrace for the last time before they part ways. The vignette and dramatic lighting accentuates the characters’ profiles and adds to the drama of the image. This photograph demonstrates the level of detail that Cameron put into not only in this picture, but in all of her images.

References:

1. Cox, Julian. “The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.” The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/58710/julia-margaret-cameron-alvin-langdon-coburn-the-parting-of-sir-lancelot-and-queen-guinevere-british-negative-1874-print-1910/.
2. Gaylord, Kristen. “Julia Margaret Cameron: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org/artists/932.
3. “Julia Margaret Cameron.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron.