Joe Deal

Joe Deal was a well known landscape photographer for many years. He recently passed away in 2010 at only 62 years of age. He was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1947, but was actually raised in Missouri and later in Minnesota. After high school, Deal was accepted to the Kansas City Art Institute. After obtaining his degree, he took work as a janitor in a museum of photography in New York. Much later he received a masters in fine art from New Mexico University. He had a passion for teaching, and worked at the University of California, Washington University, and Rhode Island School of Design.

Deal had a fascination with making photographs portraying man’s impact on the world. In 1970 he made his big break when 18 of his photos were shown at an exhibition by William Jenkins at the Eastman House’s International Museum of photography. Deal was different in that he broke away from the “romantic” landscape made immortal by Ansell Adams. He was more concerned with the sometimes ugly and contrasting mark humans make on the world around us. He was fascinated with the once untouched west, and how development had changed the pristine landscapes. He approached his work in a very different manner than most photographers. He was scientific, rather than artistic, and this approach is what set him apart as something new and different. Deal was very against the idea of “personal intrusion.” He wanted to document the environment, rather than leave his own mark or interpretation in his image. Some of his most famous work was titled “The Fault Zone.” He furthered his concept by adding geologic impacts along with humans on the landscape.

One critic described his work as
“jaundice, and dry-eyed inspection.”

Another Raves
“They were photographing landscapes, but they weren't after beauty in the
classical sense; they were fine-art documentarians, capturing how man had
altered the American landscape. That genre of photography, for artists like
Deal, was no longer about the sublimity of nature; it was about the
intersection of civilization and wilderness. Not mountains, but suburban
sprawl.”

Personally, I think his work is very interesting and at the time very different. In my mind he bridged the gap between documentary photography and fine art work. While he says his work is an exact representation of the land he see’s, it still has its own personality. I think the strongest aspect of his work is the obvious attention to composition. I think despite his own remarks about leaving his bias aside, he still tells a story in the way he frames his photographs.

Text In Image

Larry Fink

Larry Fink was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City and was not afraid to voice his political opinions. Fink described himself as a Marxist. He has spent a substantial amount of time teaching and still remains on the faculty of Bard College. He also taught at Yale Parsons School of Design, and at New York University among other schools.
Fink’s work is widely recognized and shown regularly around the globe. He has done commercial work for big names like Bacardi and Smirnoff and has also been published in the New York Times and Vanity Fair.

http://www.larryfinkphotography.com/photos.php?cat=moments

I chose to analyze the project highlighted on Fink’s website called “moments.” It is a collection of photographs that document moments that would be familiar if one has ever been to a traditional wedding. On a beginning level, each image is black and white and tend to have a more “dramatic” lighting style. Some have a flash photography/documentary look, while others seem softer and show more deliberate control. This series is different from the others on the site because it focuses more on emotion and feeling, rather than documenting a specific person. Often people’s faces are partially or completely out of frame, and the emphasis is put on a different subject in the picture. Some pictures feature a shallow depth of field and demonstrate control in isolating a specific point of interest. The one of the couple holding hands takes the face out of the picture, allowing the viewer to project their own emotions into the image. That I why I believe these are successful and innovative, because it allows the viewer to put their own imagination to work. When they don’t see the face in the image they are able to put themselves or something more personal into it and therefore take more away from the picture then a standard “snapshot.”

Composition is obviously a big focus in this series. The position of the person/person’s in the frame as well as how much of them we see is thought out differently for each image. It’s interesting to compare the images together because there seems to be a pattern that arises. There are several pictures that are very general on first glance. They may be of just some hands holding or the legs of men standing in a hallway. Others though feature an entire person enjoying a moment. I think they are arranged this way to give us some idea of the specific event we are visiting, but also allows the viewer to make their own connections with the event by emotionally connecting with the pictures that are more general.
After reading several reviews, it seems that many critics praise Fink for his ability to come into situations and document the real emotion. One of the best quotes I found was from an anonymous review,

“Fink is best known for his photographs capturing moments of celebration
from unconventional perspectives. As an admirer for Henry Cartier-Bresson,he
carries on the idea of freezing a defining moment. His work reflects his
desire to document and portray the human emotions and elegant movements that
define and connect us all. "It is a profound aspect of our culture, this
compulsion for proof. It allows me to wade into a party."

People describe how he uses his senses to analyze an environment and then translate it into his photography. Some negative comments can be found in his more political work, especially that of his Vanity Fair coverage of the last presidential elections. Being an acclaimed photographer gives that person great power in how they want to portray individuals, in this case the presidential candidates.

Overall I enjoy the series because it takes a somewhat normal event and turns it into something more. As a viewer I don’t know who’s wedding this is and any of the people. If I were to look though a photo album of snapshots from a random wedding filled with people I don’t know, I would likely walk away not gaining much or feeling very connected. The way these images are sequenced however, makes me feel more connected to these strangers. I as a viewer am able to feel some emotion that I can connect with in some of the pictures, and then when I see a snapshot I can imagine how the person in the picture was feeling. This is a successful and interesting series because it begins to break down the boundaries I would normally encounter when looking at a bunch of strangers at a wedding.

Blogs 17 and 18

17. I honestly think that still photography had entered a new era in which the famous photographer may be no more. I think the process of recording still images will continue to evolve. Technology has allowed seemingly everyone to have easy access to recording a still image. What once required expensive equipment and time consuming labor in exposure now can happen instantly though something as small as a cell phone. Content is being produces at a rate the world has never seen and I think it is on of the biggest aspects of change in the world of photography. 50 years ago it was much easier to stand out as a photographer. Ease and accessibility to the art now means that there are many more people taking pictures. This will be the biggest change. What will it take for someone to truely stand out as a unique photographer? Will we ever see anyone again write their name in history like Ansel Adams?

18. I think that if I were to define "photography" I would describe it as -
The process of recording the physical world around us through the lens of the camera.
It is the camera's adaptation of what we see. Truely the camera can never capture what we are actually seeing real time, but it is an interpretation of a single moment in time.

FilmPoster

Further Exploits in HDR

One of my favorite places in East Lansing, had to try HDR down here.

Real creepy basement

Tom Brady Joke

Composite