Joe Seck

 Joe Seck 5/2/2023 Art 337 Alec Soth is an American photograp her and visual artist, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1969. He studied photography at Sarah Lawrence College and later earned an MFA from the University of Minnesota. He is particularly interested in the overlooked corners of American society, and his photographs often depict people and places that are not typically represented in mainstream media.     In this photo on the left, it shows an older woman in her home while the camera is behind some type of glass while the foliage reflected behind her makes the photo pop. The woman looks very elegant and I think her choice of clothing was picked perfectly. She looks like she has an aura and kind of looks like a god in a way.      The photo on the right shows a portrait of a man holding two model planes. The photo is shot very well with the subject being the man holding the planes. His environment being Minnesota really speaks to how cold it ...

 Joe Seck 5/2/2023 Art 337 Anne Arden McDonald is an American artist known for her unique work in the chemigram technique. Born in New York in 1952, McDonald studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and later earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has some of my favorite works I have seen in chemical painting. She does a lot of the things I tried to do and has done them in a fashion I couldn't imagine.     These works by McDonald have some of the most interesting patterns I have seen. The painting of the left reminds me of planets in a galaxy. The circle on the bottom has what looks like to me as a moon and the holes and small circles remind me of holes in planets. While the biggest circle on the left reminds me of Saturn without the rings. I love the black background as well and I wish I tried to do something similar.     The work on the right was one of the ones where I was pretty confused how she did it. I assum...

    Joe Seck 4/30/2023   Art:337 John Dugdale is a contemporary American photographer known for his striking and often ethereal black and white images. He was born in 1960 in North Haven, Connecticut, and was raised in a Quaker household. The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. However, in 1993, Dugdale was diagnosed with HIV, which prompted him to reassess his priorities and turn his attention to fine art photography. Using a large format camera and traditional darkroom techniques, Dugdale creates deeply personal and introspective images that explore themes of identity, mortality, and spirituality.     Dugdale has taken such interesting photos with this photo of his head being taken on the couch. The way his head is facing gives a feeling of peace and calm. The couch creates interesting curve to the photo and almost mimics Dugdale's nose with the arch. I feel like this ties into Dugdale's work into spirituality as this peaceful look could be him accepting his own ...

  Cynthia Huber is a renowned artist who has made a name for herself in the world of photography and printmaking with her innovative technique known as the chemigram. Born in the United States in 1950, Huber grew up with a passion for the arts and pursued a degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan. After graduation, she moved to New York City, where she honed her skills as a photographer and printmaker, experimenting with various techniques and mediums.     Looking at Huber's work here, this was a hand-colored work and I always wonder if the artist knows what to expect when creating a chemigram. From the looks of it she had an idea when creating this from the square blocks and the amazing colors. The chemigram reminds me of ash in a sort of way and I wonder how and what she used to achieve such an amazing result.  Another one of Huber's work which I really enjoyed. This work used stencils, coconut oil, varnish, sprays on both fixer and developer. I ca...

 Joe Seck 2/6/2023 Art 337                                    Hiroshi Sugimoto Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan he thinks of his work as a time capsule as he wishes to freeze a moment in time. His works are mostly shot by 8x10 using very large exposure. He has some very gorgeous shots and you can tell he is clearly a master of his craft.  One of the photos we looked at in class is Sugimoto's photo of a this theater called Marion Palace in Ohio . This photo was taken with a very long exposure, this is shown in the blank screen as images were moving throughout the film. The light from the screen is what lit the theater and it looks amazing. It reminds me of something you would seen in a old time movie with very sharp shadows. The lighting was done perfectly and I couldn't image sitting there for that long of an exposure.      While looking through Sugi...

 Joe Seck 2/1/2023 Art 337 Christian Vogt      Christian Vogt is a photographer that mostly shot studio portraits. Looking at his work I was surprised to see a lot of images of naked people, honestly for a while I felt a little uncomfortable at first but I got over it because at the end of the day it doesn't really matter the way someone looks. His images were mostly black and white so finding out how to capture shadows was extremely important for his work.     In Vogt's image above he takes a provocative portrait of a woman while shooting her from the back to have her back exposed as well as her legs. He has the light coming from the left side of the image because of the projected shadow. I liked this image the longer I looked at it because of the choices made in the image like having the box in the image and how he wanted the image to be provocative because of the choice of clothing and whatever she has in her hands.   

 Joe Seck Art:337 1/30/23                                                                     Arnold Newman      Arnold Newman was an American photographer, he was born in March 3rd 1918 and passed out June 6th 2006. He most well known for his environmental portraits. One thing I have discovered while doing research and looking at his photos is he does a great job creating the environments for his subjects. He can make such intriguing backdrops that some might not pay too much attention to.  The environments he creates always seem to go back to the subject and what their interests or talents are.     In the image below Newman is photographing Igor Stravinsky, who was a Russian-born composer so it of course Newman uses this to his advantage w...

 Joe Seck 12/7/2022 Art 240                                      Ernst Haas      The inspiration for my upcoming forty images is Ernst Hass, Hass was a fantastic photographer. In almost every aspect, from his work in color photography to what inspired me, his work using a macro lens. After doing my best and shooting over six hundred photos for this assignment and half of them are blurry messes. I've gained a tremendous amount of respect for those who shoot using a macro lens because it is anything but easy you will see what you think is a fantastic image with perfect lighting, so you go to take it, and you look back, and it is just a little bit blurry. The photos being just a little bit blurry can ruin a macro picture, especially when shooting nature, where clarity and texture make the image.      The images above these are some of my favorite ...

 Joe Seck 11/1/2022 Art 240                                                   Suzanne Opton Suzanne Opton inspired me for this assignment because of her focus on the men and women and the results on their mental state after experiencing the horrors of war and how those can affect your psyche. What she did was take photos of soldiers that have spent time in war and each photo has the name of the amount of time they had spent deployed. She spoke about what she was trying to accomplish with these photos by stating “I hoped to photograph the invisible. I thought that by looking in the face of a young person who had witnessed something unforgettable we might imagine what he had seen or done, or not done.” She wanted to see how war would affect people and if you could see the result by just looking into their eyes. In each one of the phot...

 Joe Seck 10/31/2022 Art 240 Lee Friedlander           I have already covered Friedlander but, I wanted to take another look at his images as I found his style to be very interesting. Looking at the image above this self-portrait was taken with a lightbulb in front of his face and I feel the facial expression he is using is perfect almost as if he is lost in the lightbulb. I then started to think about what is the symbolism of a lightbulb. I thought of the lightbulb being used as an allegory for an idea like a lightbulb pops up in your head when you get an idea, so maybe Friedlander is using the lightbulb to be lost in a thought or lost in an idea, which is super interesting.              Something I have noticed while going through Friedlander's work, especially his self-portraits he uses reflections and shadows very well and makes his images super interesting. In this image, he is using his reflection to take t...

 Joe Seck 10/27/21 Art 240                                                                                         Annie Leibovitz          Annie Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer who has taken portraits of some of the most important people in the world even a portrait of the late Queen of England as seen in the photos below. The lighting she used for this photo is absolutely stunning. I feel like the way she is posed shows a position of power. The image on the top shows the Queen in an empty room with the light just barely hitting her. The way I see the image of the darkness surrounding her speaks to how long she has been around and how she is in the twilight of her life. The two ima...

 Joe Seck 10/18/2022 Toward a Hyperphotography  "Much of digital photography will not be, as it is now, reactive but will try to anticipate and deal with potential issues rather than waiting for them to happen and recording their existence" (P143)     In this quote by McLuhan, I feel he is trying to convey how modern technology and photography are becoming less reactive to situations but more active, this is because of how everyone has a camera on them in the modern-day let it be an iPhone or Google Pixel but all of these are more than capable cameras. So instead of waiting for an event to occur to take a photograph, the cameras are in place to anticipate these issues rather than record.  "The digital environment encourages new strategies and supports them with new efficiencies. For the moment, however, an older more intuitive way of working yields to newer methods that are often still relatively simplistic. An analog photographer in the field, unsure whether th...

 Joe Seck 10/3/2022 Art:240                                                                                   Saul Leiter Saul Leiter was an American  photographer whos work made a significant impact to color photography in the 1930s and 1940s. This can be seen why when looking at his work. His use of color and contrast is some of the best I've seen. Looking at the image above titled Harlem the very loud red of featuring the truck, the man's tie and font on the bar and truck all of these contrasted by the dark shadow on the mans face with a bright white cigarette coming out of his mouth. The image itself is super compelling with large words "HOUSE" and "BAR" really show off the image, and I really enjoy this image.  I n this i...

 Joe Seck 9/12/2022 Art 240                                                                                                                                                 Alex Webb          Alex Webb from what I saw is an expert in street photography with an amazing attention to detail for colors. He has photographed wonderful photos of the street life and culture of New York City, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and other countries. In the photo below taken in Tamaulipas Mexico, you see three things that really catch your eye. These being ...

 Joe Seck 9/4/2022 Art 240                                                                       What does photography mean to me?     I feel like every time I write what photography means to it changes, which I find quite interesting. The thing that remains the same and the primary reason I was interested in photography is my father. As I grow I realized that I was interested in it solely to impress my father. I wanted to create images to get his approval. I don't write this to say I have a bad relationship with my father, but I can see his passion for photography so when I capture an interesting image and he agrees it is a fantastic feeling.      Getting more into what photography means to me personally, I see photography as an avenue to explore my ...

 Phillip Halsman  Joe Seck 4/29/2022      Phillip Halsman was an American portrait photographer, he added fun and flair to portraits at the time. He took photos with some really great people like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Muhammad Ali. In his work, the flair is usually having people jumping or just being in the air, and it leads to some really fascinating images.  Halsman's trademark was having his subjects jump in the picture or as he called it "Jumpology", this adds a sort of liveliness and joy to the photo. In this image there is one of Americans' first models and real superstars Marilyn Monroe. In this photo, Halsman and Monroe are both jumping and they both look happy and full of joy. This is because as Halsman says " When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping, and the mask falls so that the real person appears.” I chose this picture because of the impact Muhammid Ali has and the fact that Halsm...

 Tokihiro Sato Joe Seck 4/29/2022 Sato is a Japanese photographer who specializes in long exposure images. He was born in 1957, and he is recognized as one of Japan's most accomplished and respected artists. This is seen through some of his breathtaking long exposure photographs of an urban landscape or landscapes.  Looking at this image by Sato it is absolutely incredible that this was done using a long exposure. This exposure to this image was taken over multiple hours. In this photo, it looks like Sato walked around this forest with some sort of light most likely a flashlight of some kind, and held it so the camera would capture this breathtaking image. This image is slightly ethereal as this is not some sort of thing you would see normally. For me, it looks like lighting bugs all over the forest floor and it is very beautiful and interesting. In this photo by Sato, he took a long exposure of this beautiful bridge and the light lines he created around it. It is fascinating ...

 Abbas Attar Joe Seck 4/29/2022 Abbas was an Iranian photographer that mainly photographed wars and revolutions that he had lived through. Abbas also had a profound interest in religion and the interlacings religion has with society. This can be seen through his work.       In this haunting photo taken by Abbas, you can see a South Vietnamese soldier being shown off to the village by the Vietcong. The reason this photo is so haunting is the lack of pretense and the way he is shown off to the village as he is the one to be made an example of. This type of photography is one that essential, this is because it shows the horrors of war and what it would be like to be there, for me personally it is terrifying and also extremely sad. In another tragic photo taken by Abbas, here he photographs a woman in Ireland during an IRA conflict that occurred in 1972. In this photo, the woman who is on the ground is being taken care of by what looks like soldiers or medics after ...

Jerry Uelsmann Joe Seck 4/3/2022     Jerry  Uelsmann was born in 1934 and he was best known for his surreal landscapes he would craft using a combination of several negatives to create some breath taking images. Going through his work I found a few images that really caught my eye. The way he creates such amazing and in a way that I have not seen before.      Looking at this image by  Uelsmann, this is an awesome landscape photo and the way it has been crafted is absolutely stunning. There is so much going on in the image like the tree floating away on the top left of the photo. The mountains in the background while the water reflects something else that just makes the image that much more interesting. I think Uelsmann has some of the most intesting images I have seen.      Another image by  Uelsmann that I really enjoyed, I don't know why I like it so much but I think it just has to do with the psychedelic feeling they give off for...

Robert W. Mapplethorpe      Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in Queens, New York, in 1963 he enrolled at an art institution called Pratt institution in 1963, this institution was influenced by many great artists such as Joseph Cornell. In 1970 he was given his first Polaroid camera by Sandy Daily. Mapplethorpe said it made him feel more honest to use a camera. Mapplethorpe was very well known for his self-portraits and for using his own image in his art. He was also very controversial including nudity, but in 1986 he was diagnosed with HIV. He continued to work until his death in 1989.      Mapplethorpe creates some very interesting self-images, if we look at the image above he is sitting in a chair in a pose that I see as powerful as well as thoughtful mainly because of the position of his hands and the way he is sitting while also looking proud and looking strong. I found this image above compelling because of what he is wearing. The robe that he covers hims...