Creative Response to ISIS article

     An article I found interesting while reading the New York Times is an article called 'Weary of War, But Still Favoring Plan for Airstrike'.  The article talked about Obama's most recent speech (at the time the article was written) saying American needs to take a stand, and invade Iraq and Syria in order to diminish ISIS.  He decided against sending troops there, and thought an airstrike would be the best option.  The article had an array of interviews with different people, each explaining whether they agreed with Obama's decision or not.  The reactions were pretty mixed.  In an interview with two married couples, one Democrat and the other Republican, they all agree with Obama's airstrike plan.  One man who voted for Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 said America needs to be the country that leads everyone else.  He says "There is always going to be evil in the world"…"Someone has to address it."
     The reaction I got from this article was right away I felt like the people agreeing with the airstrike were being unfair, it seemed like there was something wrong with these people deciding they supported going into a country to help them, when we have done that before and completely messed up nations governments.  I didn't fully know what an airstrike was until my mom explained to me it was someone controlling a flying drone, and presses a button for the drone to drop a bomb.  This caught me by surprise and automatically created an image of my head of people and power and control.  The thought of people having so much control that they don't realize who they might be negatively affecting.  Dropping a drone on an area where they think someone will be could go wrong if that person happens to run over a couple feet, and the drone ends up killing too many innocent civilians.  It just seems like such a big decision and reading the article where all these people seemed to be so entitled, saying this is what needs to happen.  It made me think of American people as cruel, and almost controlled by technology.  Because we have fast-paced computers and smart phones things just seem easier and we don't have to worry about bombs dropping on us every day.  But with the click of a button we can choose drop a bomb anywhere else.
     I ended up taking photos of my friend sitting in front of a window.  He was wearing headphones to symbolize technology controlling us.  There were planes passing by the window and I took some photos as if the planes were shooting out of his head/eyes.  I took some more photos of people from the ground looking up at them, the intimidating, powerful, prideful Americans.  My reaction to the article was anger, and the feelings that I conveyed through the photographs were greed and power.

Response to Robert Adams essay

     This was an interesting article to read because it made me realize how many photographers there are out there in the world.  And at times reading this essay and realizing that it would freak me out, I am thinking that of course there will be someone who takes photos similar to mine, who's better than me, who actually makes money off of their images, where I won't.  But at other times I just remind myself that this is something that I love to do.  It's proven to be after spending a year in my conservatory I realized that this work I am never too tired to do, I am never bored by it, and I always learn something by every project, every roll that I take.  And that is what matters, that you love what you are doing.

     It struck me when Robert Adams was writing about the plateau that has been the focus of his work for 20 years because it made me realize how amazing it is that being a photographer, you get to take what the world is made of and use it to create moments that are very important to you.  And there are some things that keep your attention for so long and you never have to stop paying attention and photographing it.  

     I liked the quote he used by Diane Arbus that I've taken notice to before, " "Instead of arranging it", she said, "I arrange myself." "  I relate this to the way that I take a lot of my photos, I like when I see someone arranged in a cool pose that they were in not because I was already taking photos of them but because it was what their body naturally did.  I love when someone is okay with their pose and won't move if they see me taking their photo.  I am really interested in the natural way people look when they think, talk, get angry or sad or excited.  And it's great when you get a subject that accepts you and lets you document them.

These two images above are by two photographers that influence me a lot.  The top is an image taken by Vivian Maier, a street photographer/nanny.  The bottom one is Robert Doisneau a photographer who mainly photographed people on the streets of Paris.  

     I recently heard about Vivian Maier, when a documentary was made about her and her undiscovered photos.  She took really amazing pictures of people on the streets of Chicago and sometimes New York City.  They were mostly candids of strangers and I was just amazed at how many  she took of people she didn't know.  She inspires me to take more photos of strangers.

     I have been really influenced by Robert Doisneau's work for a while, every photo he takes whether it's kids sneaking in an alley or adults sharing a romantic moment at a cafe all have a watcher quality, where the sitter in the photo, whether they knew he is there taking the photo, they don't care.  I am inspired to be quick about taking my photos, you see it and either you go for it or you don't.   I also love how both these photos have a humorous feel to them.  

     

Beauty in Discomfort

     Carrie Levy's photography is very disturbing and different for me to look at, she caught my eye because her photos have a dark tone to them.  And you do not get them right away. To even begin to understand what is going on in the photo, who it is in the photo, and why they are posed the way they are I found myself needing to study them for 3-5 minutes, and I kept going back to look at certain ones again.
     One photo in her series called "Polaroids" particularly stuck out to me because as soon as I saw it, I started to create a story in my head.  The photos before and after it also influenced the story I created.  I saw this series as people being stuck in their own heads, almost showing people in an insane asylum.  And this woman standing on the box has her own world in her mind and isn't quite conscious to the world around her with everyone else.  I think Carrie Levy also has an interest in showing ambiguous sexuality and gender identity.  Faces are rarely shown, especially in this series, there are a lot of turned heads from the camera, bodies are shown not as gender specific, and male/female anatomy is not shown a lot in this series.  It is more just bodies.  Bodies, backs, spines, torsos are decaying.

In another series, called "Impaired", Carrie Levy has taken all color photos of people in different awkward, uncomfortable looking positions with their bodies.  Again, there are no faces shown, just contorted bodies.  In each photo the people seem to be working, working with objects and each others bodies.  This photograph below stuck out to me, for some reason it made me think it's a sort of interpretation of a woman's menstrual cycle, because of the red and spilt black on the floor.  But then I think about it again and I think that's completely wrong.  What is interesting about this photo is that I do not get it at all.  But I love the shape that the man is making with his hands splayed out.  And it would not be as powerful if you could see his face.  In this whole series you feel like you're getting a story of some sort but the missing faces add an eerie, creepy feel to every photo.  

Looking through all of Carrie's photographs, I see some similarities in the way that I take pictures.  I sometimes like to focus on one part of the body, a part that is expressive.  Whether that be the face, legs, hands…  It is also interesting to see her experiment with backgrounds going from floors, to normal everyday scenes in rooms to solid colored backgrounds.  Something else interesting about the people in most of her photographs (especially in the series "Domestic Stages") the subjects are all facing away from the camera and it feels very strained.  Like they are stuck in a faceless world and no one will ever be able to see what they look like, it feels sad and shameful.

Overall Carrie's photographs show people that look uncomfortable, and if it shows someone smiling, there is something else off about the photo and how it is set up.  They are beautiful and simple, but painful and complicated.