Alec Soth Lecture

Joshua, Angola State Prison, Louisiana 2002
(source: http://www.alecsoth.com/Mississippi-new/pages/frameset.html)

Born 1969, Minneapolis, Minnesota

In searching for new ways to authentically create works of photography Alec Soth employs a method of storytelling that may be next direction in photography. It was absolutely inspiring for me to see the embrace of such adventurous methods and the obvious joy taken by Soth in pursuit of his art. Focusing heavily on the expansion of William Eggleston's concept of the Democratic Forest (the idea that all subjects may be photographed and considered with equal weight) into that of the Democratic Jungle, Soth seeks to find a meaningful way to approach photography in the current image saturated environment. While his past work is connected with loose themes that developed over the course of many and repeated road trips, his more recent works focus on bringing together the art of storytelling and the art of photography. Series like "the most beautiful woman in georgia" or "the loneliest man in Missouri" take a on the literary tone of great road novels placing him in often strange situations while in search of his subjects. Soth's approach to the process of photography is one i might very well explore and if not in active practice his views and comments on the purpose of photography and documentation will stay with me for a long time.

MONDAY ARTIST // TARYN SIMON

http://www.ted.com/talks/taryn_simon_photographs_secret_sites.html
Above link to Taryn Simon's TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/taryn_simon.html
Short Artist bio and back ground on the work being present.

I absolutely love the work of Taryn Simon. Her conceptual backing is extremely strong and well thought out. In expert fashion the images themselves appear just as complete as the thoughts that support each subject's selection.

"Simon shows the things that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience."(from the artists bio, link above)

What makes the conceptual backing of her work so interesting to me is that it functions to reveal the conflict between the public and private while exploring the mythology of American culture as well as teasing out the relationship of the broad culture to often uncomfortable realities. In presentation the work is accompanied by text, SImon explains:

"A big part of the work that is sort of absent in this context is text, so I create these two poles. Every image is accompanied with a very detailed factual text and what i'm most interested in is the invisible space between text and its accompanying image. And how the images is transformed by the text and the text by the image. So at best the image is meant to float away into abstraction and multiple truths and fantasy. And the text functions as this cruel anchor that nails it to the ground. "
-transcribed from the video (link at top)

I am considering the ways in which i might be able to attempt to construct a similar relationship between the images i will create for this semester. In exploring the visual language of the media coverage of the crisis in Haiti it may be advantages to anchor the constructed images with transcriptions of related reports and commentary from the popular media's reporting.

link to artist's website
http://www.tarynsimon.com/#

SPRING SEMESTER BEGINS HERE

SPRING SEMESTER BEGINS HERE