for some reason the links didn't post

Website:

www.RichardAvedon.com

Gallery:

www.fraenkelgallery.com

Interview:

www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec02/avedon_10-24.html

Blog two

I feel that an artist that has similar work is Richard Avedon, not in subject matter, but in its balance in frame.  A lot of his work has a central figure that balances out the frame within a white background.  While I have rarely used a white background, i always create balance within my frame of work.  Avedon, like my recent work, usually show just the person from the waist and above in a gritty fashion.  

Avedon was born ion May 15, 1923 in New York.  His photography career started when he join the merchant marines.  He then moved on to work at a department store and thats when he met a highly touted art director of Harper's Bazaar and started to work work for Vogue, Life, and Harper's Bazaar magazines.  Around 1966 he became a staff photographer for Vogue and eventually became the lead photographer and shot most of the covers for the magazine as well.  This is where a good part of his fashion photography came from.  He eventually started shooting in the American West, and this is where a lot of my influences come from.  His shots in the American West where commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas.  His American West project took him around six years and produced over 100 portraits for the project.  He died on October 1, 2004 from a brain hemorrhage.  

Aww Hell...the beginning

Well, nobody has critiqued my work this week, so I can't really make a comment on that.  Although, the most motivational and creative moment of the week was probably when I was in the library just looking at lots of art books and taking little bits and pieces of information from random photographers.  Richard Avedon is one of the photographers that I've really enjoyed researching.  His portraits of people that work in coal mines have really started to inspired my work.  Also, Javier Vallhonrat's triptychs have inspired me to try and create something in a triptych fashion and try to break out of the single photograph.

What I want to achieve in next week's studio practice is to start getting a general idea of what i want to do while i am here at VCU.  I want to experiment with my work and use different processes that I haven't really used before.  I want to start shooting 4x5 portraits, but I want to do something really creative with it.  I want to mix up some Avedon, some Witkin, and a lot of Petrenko.  I just want to start working.

What I achieved was critiquing John, Hassan, and Jennida's work.  I will achieve more tomorrow at noon when my individual meeting with Sonali happens.

My artistic failure this week is my inability to choose what what I want to start shooting.  I have ideas, but it's hard to narrow them down, but this weekend and friday i am going to start doing work.  Also, another failure was teaching my digital class on Tuesday.  Everything that I was presenting started to not work.  I mean that a film scanner wasn't working for a while and then two flatbed scanners stopped scanning film correctly.  Pretty much my class was just me trouble shooting everyone's problems with the scanners.  But, it all got scanned...it was a miracle.

I had a few profound thoughts this week.  First, I was thinking about doing some sort of mixed media image, one that involves painting, possibly cyanotypes, maybe some liquid light, and I was thinking some screenprinting on canvas.  I didn't have a subject matter at the time, but Jackson Pollack would be a be influence.  I also thought of a sculpture piece made of metal and chicken fence with blood packets in it as well.