Joe Seck

    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...