Reflections About Project 2--> "The Spirit of St. Mary's"

My Reflections about Project 2:

Group Four

By: Renessa Copeland

It was really exciting being able to sit down with the four books and flip through them, taking in all the colors and experience of turning the pages. After looking through my own section of our book ‘The Spirit of St. Mary’s’, overall I was pleased with what I saw, but I think that there are some things that I could have paid more attention to, changed, or fixed. After flipping through the six pages I realized that I still could have sent more time formatting the borders on my page. For me it was a little disturbing that the words were cut off the page, making it harder to read the words. At the same time, I was glad that I made the choice to move the words over one inch from the gutter.

After looking at the second spread, that spelled out SMCM, although I was really pleased with how everything came out, I feel like I could have lighted a few of the faces, because some of the faces were darker making it harder to identify the student who was smiling. I wanted all the images distinguishable. Also after looking at the images on this page, I realized that I should not have duplicated any of the images. I feel like I should have just taken a little more time to take a few more images so that they would not be duplicated. For me it disrupted my flow of looking at the images, because when I got to an image of a person I had already seen, I would look back at the first image and it made viewing the images disjointed.

One think that I really liked and was pleased with was that there was versatility in the picture formatting on the pages. I was glad that I chose not to repeat the exact same order on any page, or that I did not make each page very cluttered, because I think I made if page overly cluttered with visual information then it would have been to stimulating and would have taken away from my idea. What I am still not sure about is if I should have included color. Since the rest of the book relied so much with color, I feel like maybe I should have subtly included the colors, blue and yellow. Maybe making the images that spelled out SMCM monochrome images, in either the color blue or yellow.

As a whole I think that like others in my group have mentioned our topic was to broad and I think that we really branched to far away from our original topic to create a cohesive whole. After looking from one section to the next I feel like the book was not as much as a collective, I think there was to much variability. One thing that really helped to make the book appear to be more cohesive was the use of the division pages. But, I think that we need something within the book, or even on the division pages letting the viewer know how the section represented St. Mary’s. With the opening page followed by images, it was hard to follow why that particular topic, that the person chose to present to represent St. Mary’s, was important.

One thing that really bothered me when looking at our book was the front color. I feel like the front cover colors were contradictory, I am not sure why the front colors were the pastels that were selected. I feel like our claim, in representing St. Mary’s, would have been stronger if the colors in the front cover were St. Mary’s school colors (white, gold, blue, or some variation).
Within the book as a whole I really feel like my section was so different that my group member. I feel like the way I worked with text and images, in no way shape or form flowed with my group members sections. I feel like my section being complicated with words and images disrupted the other sections of the book and interrupted the flow of the book.

Overall I really enjoyed working on this project because it really allowed me to challenge myself. When I began working on this project I realized that what ever avenue that I took I wanted to challenge myself, think outside of the box, and try new ways of working.

Reflections on Project 02

Reflecting on Project_02: What it's like

I have to agree with Jordan about the covers. They are very nice but very dirty, it seems like black really shows fingerprints well.

I found looking through the book was different from looking at it on the computer screen (not a really big surprise). Having the pages in my hands to flip through at my leisure was nice. The pages felt a little stiff a couple of years/many viewings should help resolve that issue. I found that some of the pages had the same problem as the cover fingerprints everywhere (at least you can tell how people hold books).

Starting with my section then moving on to the rest of the book: the gutter surprised me. I thought I had left enough space for some of my words but apparently not. I lost a few letters here and there but overall I could still read what was being said. The pages I was most disappointed in were I’ve seen a loser win and Everything in between. The idea I had behind Everything in between was portrayed but it was done so with the loss of more lettering than I thought would be lost.

I think knowing the song helped a lot; I knew what was coming up next and what the general idea of the song was. I am not sure if knowing the song allowed me to see the book as joined when it could have looked a little disjointed.

Overall, I enjoyed looking at the final product and look forward to working on the third project and my final project.

Project_02 Assessment

Photo Book Self Assessment
Project_02


Having the book in-hand was not as positive an experience as I had hoped. I immediately felt that the book was too large for my section, as well as a couple others. Because the pages were so large, the pages were far less rigid than I thought they would be and it seemed that some details were easily lost in the physical act of trying to hold the book comfortably. There was also the things that don't survive the computer-to-paper translation: for example, I was disappointed by how pixelated some of the images turned out. I was also surprised by how the colors on the front cover, which were much more pastel than they appeared on the computer.

Individually, I think we all achieved our goals for each section we worked on. For me personally, I was glad that I was able to get feedback from the class about resizing my student portraits so that they were roughly the same size as the admissions photo that they were juxtaposed with. Correcting this detail helped the section flow together much better. Conceptually, I was happy with the way the student portraits and quotations represented both positive and negative perspectives of St. Mary's (without being overly disparaging or overly complimentary). It was a difficult process, because I struggled to find a diversity of students who were also willing to be quoted/photographed - not to mention that I got extremely sick toward the end. Despite all of the hurdles, the project did come together and my group was extraordinarily patient with me. I was glad to see that the others in my group seemed to be happy with their own work.

As a collective, however, I did not think that our book was very cohesive. I mentioned earlier that our topic wasn't quite focused enough, and seeing the physical book reaffirmed this. Aside from the unifying divider pages, I think our stylistic choices (text, color/bw, subject matter) was so varied that it did not have a continuous flow. Considering that we had such different takes on St. Mary's as as whole, I do think that we arranged the book was thoughtfully as possible. The flow from one subject to the other was done as best as we could. In some ways, the fact that we didn't have more unifying features is regrettable, but I wonder if it might also be a good thing. Given the topic that we selected (The Spirit of St. Mary's), I think it would also be disappointing if we had produced a book with cookie-cutter uniformity. A balance must be struck, and although I'm not sure we achieved it as a group, I do think that it represented our individual visions clearly. Midway through the project, I remember a group meeting we had in which everyone was worried about asking each other to alter their visions, and the few alterations that we did try to make were often objected to. In the end, I think we were all trying to preserve each other's artistry to the point of forsaking cohesion.

Reflections on Project 02

Reflecting on Project 02: Portraits with Words

by Jordan Grant

 

After opening up our completed photobook, Portraits with Words, my first thought was: Jeez, this thing is going to get dirty. While the black cover looks great, it has already accrued a solid layer of fingerprints and dust. Given a few years next to the darkroom, close to the eager hands of young photographers, I can only imagine the smudges our book will show.

 

            All jokes aside, I made a number of observations when I first held the printed version of our book. To put some organization onto this reflection, I’ll start with my thoughts on my own section, “I Would”, and move on to the rest of the book.

 

            To begin, I realized that my decision to place a photo of text (“I would”) on every page underestimated the memory of my readers. Initially, I inserted the text-photo into my spreads because I wanted my section of the book to have an obvious, formal parallel with the section created by my partner Jenny (whose pages contained two photos, one with a person and the text “I am not”, the other with the same person and text that answered that statement). However, when I actually saw “I would” scrawled across every page, I realized that readers might feel like I was banging them over the head with my  theme. If anything, I could have removed the “I would” text from one page of each spread. Even better, I could have removed the “I would” text altogether. My title page would have been enough of an explanation for most readers; after reading “I would” once, the reader would probably assume that the photos that followed would show people giving an answer to the stated question.

 

More importantly, removing the text from every page would have freed me to blow my pictures up. Full bleeds, though different in style from Jenny and Rachel’s sections, would have tied my own section to Elle’s work, tightening our book as a whole. Full bleeds would have also improved my images. As they are rendered now, I feel like my photos are too small for their own good. My subjects get lost on the page; their words don’t “pop”. A larger canvas area would have helped correct these problems.

This observation leads me into my largest critique for the book as a whole. Simply put, I think our photobook reads to fast for its own good. In my own section, the relative “smallness” of my images hampers (in my mind) the readers’ inclination to stop and see the relationship between the images being presented in each spread. On a larger level, I feel our book does very little to slow down the reader’s eye. In my own browsing, for instance, I often caught myself skipping over the title pages for each section. Though I can attribute this to my own familiarity with the book, I feel that other readers, less tied to the project, would also skip over those key title pages. If those same pages had given readers a sudden jolt –say, if they were rendered black, contrasting with the rest of the book- then our photobook may have become a slower, more methodical read.

 

Though I’ve focused on the negative in the past few paragraphs, I really am quite happy with our group’s final work. With some caveats, I believe that we managed to sequence and integrate four very different styles of photography on both thematic and formal levels. In the end, I think we managed to create a book where our individual voices combine to make something that’s more interesting than what they were alone.

           

            [One last aside: our group didn’t anticipate that iPhoto would insert gray pages at the beginning and end of our book. If we did it again, we would probably add in our own black or white pages, particularly on the spread that compliments Elle’s final self-portrait].  

 

Thoughts--> Richard Nickolson "How to Tell A War Story"

The Washingtonian, Richard Emery Nickolson’s lecture on “How to Tell a War Story” used both war images and stories to depict reveal the truth through war stories. He brought to this lecture not only research but also experience with war, being a Vietnam War Artists. Currently he is a professor of painting and drawing at Indiana University-Purdue University”.

He began his lecture reading a quote from Tim O’Brien, about the importance of stories. The line that stood out the most to me was that “stories are for joining the past to the future”. I found this quote to be so relevant to Nickolson’s lecture because each war that he described had a different text and images to help illustrate the truth behind the war. The texts that he chose to complement the images were from different periods than the images.

When Nickolson described the section of his talk, entitled “The Art of Combat: ‘Then and Now’”, it had an impact on me because of the way he related text and images. This section relating stories to imagery was engaging because it seemed to reveal the war stories in the most truthful, real manner. What grasped my attention when he introduced this section was how he started with a story that was personal to him, related to his experience as an artist during the Vietnam War. Describing how while being involved with the ‘U.S. Army’s Combat Artist Program’, photographers, drawers, and other artists, like Robert Knight and William Harrington, used different artistic mediums to “document military and civilian life”.

In the “The Art of Combat: ‘Then and Now’” segment of his talk it was full of elements that really grabbed my attention, but the most powerful aspect of his lecture for me was the way he depicted how Vietnam soldiers used their stories and experiences from the war as their text to create art that helped them to tell the viewer their story and ‘heal’ from the war. The artists in this section that engaged my attention the most was Sandoval. His technique and the uniqueness of his work, in which he weaves pieces of students’ trashed artwork together to create his art, was really fascinating. The way that he worked with recycled materials in this manner really interested me because in my opinion he uses creative, abstract, and personal expression to comment on events in his life or events, and war events of the pasts. As a Vietnam veteran he expressed his story about the war in his 1984 flag series entitled ‘State of the Union’. The other series of textile art that he made was his 1985 work ‘Ground Zero’. The way that he created these masterpieces in my opinion have such a profound message in relation to war and politics.

Richard Nickolson’s talk was unique, in the way that he weaved text and images together. Rather than having his images and text together or simultaneous, the words had more of an impact on me with him reading the text orally and then playing or allowing the viewer to read them also. His talk had a lot of surprises, meaning that there were many thing, images, and ways that he presented his work that I would never have imagined to do.

© 2009 Best's Studio Inc DBA The Ansel Adams Gallery. All rights reserved.

"It's the birthday of photographer Ansel Adams, born in San Francisco, California (1902). He spent a lot of time wandering in the wild places of the San Francisco area, hiking on the dunes or exploring Lobos Creek. When he was a teenager, he went to Yosemite National Park and took his first photographs with a Kodak Box Brownie camera. He persuaded the owner of a photo-finishing plant to take him on as a darkroom apprentice. Every summer he traveled to Yosemite, trying to take better and better photos. Looking out at the mountains, he said, "The silver light turned every blade of grass and every particle of sand into a luminous metallic splendor." He wanted to take photos that captured every blade of grass and particle of sand in perfect focus.

He served on the Sierra Club's board of directors for almost 40 years, and he allowed his photographs to be reprinted in calendars and books, hoping they would inspire people to protect wilderness areas. He died in 1984, and Congress approved the creation of Ansel Adams Wilderness, which preserved more than 200,000 acres of land near Yosemite."

from The Writer's Almanac (2/20/2009)

SHANNON SLAUGHTER

For my semester long project I want to tie in pictures of American and Japanese culture together. While I was in Japan for study abroad I taught students from primary to secondary school about Washington D.C. using a picture book of DC. Just as the DC photobook showed famous sites of DC, I will show famous (or at least significantly important to me) sites of Akita, Japan and Happo_cho Japan. I am thinking of having a picture of the district on one side and then a picture from Japan on the other. These paired pictures will either compliment or work against one another.

The concept is still in its preliminary stages but this is the main idea.

JENNY METZ

For my project, I would like to "combine" photos. I would like to combine objects or scenes with emotions. In the printing process, I would use the same paper to develop two different photos to layer them on top of each other. This is inspired by something that happened last semester. Two people accidentally developed two different images onto the same paper and the result was very interesting. I would like to use this idea to pair the portraits of people with a separate image.

GLENCORA GUDGER

I have an idea, but I am not committed or entirely satisfied with it yet.

I would like to shoot portraits of friends/families/acquaintances. The portrait would be on one side of the spread and on the other a series of photographs that "explain" them. However, the individual may not in these pictures. I want to see if I am able to make the connections between the portrait and the images. How acculturatly can you portray a person through images? I imagine the portrait being simple and the corresponding images being much more stimulating, crowded, colorful.

CATHY BRANDT

My plan is to work on the idea "waiting/looking for spring". Documenting the progression of the campus from winter to spring. Hopefully shooting in the same/similar locations throughout the semester. I want to work in the wet-dark room and in the DIL for this project adding color to black and white photos I think would make for an interesting effect.

BARTOSZ ZIENDA

I have considered many ideas for my semester-long project, but the most compelling concepts have all been linked by one distinct characteristic: the unseen, or seldom seen.

As we grow familiar with a place, we begin to limit our interaction with it, and we form habits of movement through our local environment.

Unfortunately, this process of familiarization turns places that were once unknown and mystifying into racetracks along which we speed in our daily lives.

Inspired by my Point Lookout pilgrimage, I want to depict some familiar scenes at an odd time of day, or from unique vantage points.

One idea I have is shooting late night shots along the St. Mary's River, setting up a tripod as far out in the water as possible, and shooting the night scene from 1 foot above the water. I should either use high ISO film, or long exposure for these shots.

Another idea is shooting two collections of campus landmarks, one from 15-20 feet high (at the top of a step ladder), and the other from ground level.

ELLIE GUTOWSKI

For my semester long project I am thinking about doing a series which documents a mundane activity. I would document this by zooming into the site of action. For instance, if someone was washing dishes in a house, I would photograph the house, then the hallway, then the person standing at the sink until the last photograph which would be a close up of them holding the sponge against the dish.

Another idea I have for my semester long project would include a picture I took in the Gambia of a little boy in a village up country. He is posed barefoot standing with his arms crossed in front of Baobab trees in his village. I hope to take a series of pictures of people in a similar stance in various settings. I have not really figured how I want to incorporate text yet, or if I need to.

Finally, another idea I have is to document a day in a way that I can express my OCD for numbers. I attribute personalities to numbers and have numbers I like and numbers I don't. I would somehow convey the personality of the number using image and text. This seems like it would be hard to do, but it's my favorite idea so far.

EMILY DAVIS

For the semester long project i plan to show the change that has occurred in the tobacco farming industry in Calvert county due to the governments interaction. I have lived in Calvert county for quite some time now and have become very passionate on the topic and the transition that the farming industry went through in Calvert county. I still want to do a fair amount of research but basically the government paid Maryland and Calvert county farmers to stop farming tobacco, few farmers resisted and continuing farming tobacco in small fields but most of the tobacco farming industry has gone to waste and ruin. A handful of farmers had started farming soy after tobacco but the actual tobacco barns are now decrepit. I plan on talking to previous and present farmers getting some insight. I want to show what once was such a thriving industry, and that is what i want to do my semester long photobook on.

RENESSA COPELAND

Proposal One

Idea of an Interactive Children’s Book

Thinking about the semester long project I want to create a book that is an educational tool for young children. So basically I want to create a children’s book. I am still toiling with the idea for the theme of the book but I am thinking about doing a nature themed book, that is both informative with text but also interactive with hands-on, feel and learn activities. For example I want to bring the elements of nature into this book, such as trees and the elements of trees, water, dirt, grass, etc. I want the book to have different sections. I am drawing on my inspiration from children’s books such as The Magic School Bus.
I am not sure who I am going to do a historical research for this project. I want to do an author who specializes in creating works for children, but not just literature. I am also drawing some of my inspiration from media television shows such as Bill Nye: The Science Guy and Zoom. I like these shows for inspiration because they take science and make it interactive, entertaining, and fun, which is what I want to do in my semester-long book.

RACHEL MENDY

My Semester Long project will be entitled 24 hours in 24 days. Although there are 24 hours in a day, my project will take me 24 days for it to be accomplished. This is because my intentions for my project is to take four pictures on a certain hour on one day from the east, south, west and north of wherever I am, and another set of pictures at the next hour on the next day.

To elaborate more, I will be using the 24 hour clock format. Therefore on Monday at 13:00 (1pm) I will take the four pictures whilst on Tuesday the pictures will be taken at 14:00 (2pm), Wednesday, at 15:00 (3pm) and so on until I get to 24. My inspiration is my brain for constructing this idea and the purpose of the project will probably be to illustrate where I am during certain time in a day and my surroundings.

I will most likely modify this project various times but as of now this is the proposal and it’s a project, am looking forward to commencing on.

RACHEL RECKLING

Studio Art: Photobook
2/3/09
Proposal 1 for SL Project

For my Semester Long Project, I intend on creating a photo book based around imagination. One of my favorite plays is William Shakespeare’s A MidSummer Night’s Dream. I plan to use the very last monologue of the play as the basis of my story. The monologue suggests that all of the events that happened throughout the play could be interpreted as a dream and an apology for possibly offending those who got lost in the dream. I think that I could do a lot with playing on the words of the monologue and create a short story about dreams. Each though could be a sentence and each sentence could be a page. I plan for my project to be extremely colorful, and almost like a children’s book. I will be using my own drawing skills as well as pictures that I will be taking and photo shopping to create a cartoonish look to my photo book. I want to use the last monologue of the play as a way to keep the reader thinking and imagining. I do not want the dream to end with the last page of my photo book. I want the dream to continue. I plan to do this by catching the readers attention with pop-ups, bright colors, glitter, and abstract shapes. I decided that I wanted to do a project like this because I wanted to incorporate my love for acting and the theater, which is my major, in my photo book as well as tell a story through one of my favorite plays. I think that the semester long project will be fun and interesting for me and I think that my concept is a good one. Plus, it is a complete 180 from my Found and Bound Project which is very dark. I want to show some versatility in my art work.

JORDAN GRANT

For my final project, I am interested in creating a photobook situated around the incongruencies between capital-w War and my own Christian faith. As it stands now, I have a whole range of ideas for the project:
- Collages, pulling on stock images from WWII (provided by pop history books board games, etc.) and splicing in the various victims of war – Holocaust survivors, interned Japanese, starving Russians, or desperate African villagers.
- Voices of victims of war, such the atomic bomb testimonials from Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
- Biblical quotations, from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane to Isaiah prophesying a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares.
- War propaganda imagery
- Original photos; I have some cool conceptual ideas, but they might get me arrested for trespassing onto the Patuxent Naval Air force Base...
As the semester goes on, I hope to experiment with all these ideas and more. If anyone has any suggestions, or knows of any photobooks / artists I should check out, please let me know.

ROWAN COPLEY

It's so difficult to decide on an idea for my project, there are just so many options!

"Creepiest Book Ever"
With this idea, I would 'slurp' text and images from facebook and compile a book out of it.
In my current project, I am 'slurping' my content from media websites like washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com, as well as lesser-known media websites likes blogs. However, when I arrange the content on the page, I intentionally chop up stories so bits and pieces of it will appear scattered across the page, making a slightly less-than-intelligible mish-mash of content that imitates a newspaper, yet does not let the viewer focus on the detail of a particular stories. The viewer instead is forced to look at the overall picture, the tone of the content in general and themes that tie it all together. However, I (am trying to) insinuate hidden dimensions into the story by juxtaposing stories that make the viewer skeptical about the surface meaning of the content.
Taking this idea and bringing it a lot closer to home, I would take text and images from facebook and arrange them in a similar way. Since facebook is naturally non-linear, I would need to figure out a way to juxtapose the content in a way to tell the kind of story I would want to - which would most likely involve the insinuation of a fantastical dimension to the seeming banality of never-ending drunky-faced photos.

"Faces of Power: St. Mary's Edition"
This idea would require me to photograph students in important positions of power on campus a la Richard Avedon - the SGA president, people at The Point News, senators, club presidents, influential people, well-known people. The main point of the book would be to parody Avedon, of course. Since most of the people photographed would be at least somewhat recognizable, it would be funny to see them in the context of a serious piece about people in power - since when do these people have any 'real' power, we would demand? But behind the parody would be the idea that actually, power exists in a lot more places than we realize. However, probably not many people besides myself would find the book funny.

"Cannabis Should Be Legal, and Everyone Knows It"
This book would both celebrate cannabis culture as it exists today, and explore the punishment people receive from being caught enjoying the harmless drug. It would be far more than a clichéd pothead-friendly book, hopefully: after all, isn't it an interesting commentary on the hypocrisy of an America that will elect and practically worship a man who spent much of his youth enjoying cannabis and other recreational drugs; whereas our most prized athlete might be facing legal repercussions for a picture put online of him indulging in the drug? Not to mention that we have by far the largest percentage of incarcerated people in the world, many of whom are in prison for non-violent drug offenses.

MEGAN KELLY

For my semester long project, I have a couple of ideas… My first idea is regarding the use of space. I would like to observe the use of space. My idea comes from Irving Penn’s photographs of the same space with different people, studying their reactions. In this series of photographs, Penn sets up a corner space in his studio and chooses different subjects to stand in the corner. Each photograph, although the same space is used, is remarkably different and portrays personalities of his different subjects. I like this idea because people and their every day interactions really interest me. I also enjoy photographing people in general. I think that reactions to certain places and spaces show a lot about an individual without words… similar to opening up a present and seeing an initial reaction. I may or may not incorporate props into the space or spaces that I choose.

Another idea that I have is to get up close and personal with people… photographing their faces and drawing out every detail in them. My inspiration for this comes from photographers such as Richard Avedon and Amy Liebowitz. The amazing ways that they (as well as many other photographers) photographed their subjects created amazing and alluring portraits. I have other ideas regarding the theme of being “up close” and personal as well… ideas including body painting and juxtaposing wild with tame (business with party) I think that this would allow for creative expression not only on my behalf, but on the behalf of those that I would be photographing. These are my favorite ideas and I would like to further discuss them.

Whichever project I choose to take on, I want it to be funky (for lack of better wording at the moment) and very loud (maybe like Daft Punk… or maybe more like Girl Talk).

MONICA FRANTZ

For the semester-long project, I would like to focus on creating a book that tells the story of my family. Growing up my family was important to me and, as I’ve spent more time away from my family, I have discovered how unique my childhood was. Politically, I disagree with my parents on most issues, but I am always intrigued by the way they raised me. As a child, I hated their environmentally friendly practices, homegrown food, and holistic beliefs because of how different it made me among my peers. But now my parents’ lifestyle has become my lifestyle. I would like to create a photobook that evokes this simultaneous rejection and embrace of my family. My story is intimately connected to how I grew up though this isn’t the most obvious influence in my life.
This first decision I will need to make involves whether I will use a series of new photographs or existing family photos or a combination of the two. I also need to decide what perspective the story is being told through—my subjective perspective or a perspective that attempts to be more objective and removed. The photographs, regardless of which option I choose, will focus on the place of my family, the people of my family, our activities, relationships, and individual stories. I may need to isolate a more specific focus in order to provide a more concise book. This may lead me to include primarily photographs of my parents or my siblings or of our home.
The sequence of the book may be chronological, placing photographs in the order they were taken in order to show the passing of time and the growth of the people. I am also considering a sequence which highlights the passing of seasons—sections of photographs from summer, fall, winter, and spring that juxtapose photographs from different years. I think this option would show the cyclic nature of our lives and subvert the concept of constant progression forward. It would be interesting to try to promote the idea that as a family we all have a consciousness of ourselves and each other at many times in the past. The family is a dynamic whole, changing with time but always aware of what was.