Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Burt Glinn

Burt Glinn, is a photographer who's had a very successful career photographing political and cultural events. Particulary from the 50's to the 70's. His photos have very beautiful compositions and he plays a lot with silhouettes and uses them succesfully. He's very versatile with his work, he can photograph commercial, capture personailty in portraits and capture the true essences of a moment. This photo stands out to me because i love the colors of the backfground and how the shapes interact with the silhouettes. It feels very expressive and the men waiting give the leonard bernstein a sense of hierarchy.


more photos here

Monday, December 13, 2010

John F. Conn

I was at a NYC street fair in Soho earlier this year photographing for my assignment and I came across this stand with these beautiful photographs on t shirts. It was these powerful subway photos this man John Conn did. The man himself wasn't selling them but his son was. These photos are so well done, and he captures this raw, spazztic, moment in subways. I was inspired after to keep shooting and to be more aware. I spoke to this son and he told me some of these were shot in medium format and some were shot in 35 mm. This man photographed subways for about a decade. I won't give up street photography yet.





here's more of his work:
http://futuredead.com/swanson/johnconn/subway/subway.html

Robert Longo

His work has been running through my mind lately. Especially his "Men in the cities" series he did. These works are iconic and create such drama and edge. These are charcoal drawings but first they were photographs. He would take his models (one of them was cindy sherman his roommate at the time) and have assistants throw tennis balls at them and photograph their dramatic expressions. From there he masterfully drew in charcoal these black and white drawings. He totally inspires me to do something this exciting and energetic in my work.


check out his other work here:

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Jan Kaila

I really enjoys looking at this photograph. Sometimes I don't really enjoy photos with such symbolic, set up, props. It's hard to pull off without making it look cheesy. But in this photo, it's used perfectly and effectively. It kind of breaks my heart seeing this old man in angel wings, it seems like he's ready to take flight. I love the use of blue in the environment, even the mist is blue. The texture of the the wings are very beautiful and I just really enjoy her photo.

Joel Meyerowitz

I started looking more at color photography a lot lately, i'm preparing myself for next semester! I'm really excited, and since i've dont street photography in black and white I wanted to see how it looks like in color. Joel Meyerowitz (along with other photographers) was one of the first photographers to use color effectively in the 70's. It improved his street work, and there's such liveiness in his photos and great energy. In this photo, I like the composition, the man the smoking a cigarette stands out to me. The color yellow seems to stand out to me for some weird reason, I associate new york with yellow, since there's so many taxis. I'll be checking out more from this artist.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Doug Dubois

I checked out in the library, Doug Dubois' book about his parents called "all the days and nights." The book was shot in color and it's possibly my favorite book. I was very moved by it and the images were humorous, painful, straight foward, and real. I love the use of space in this photo and the colors in the book. the women's expression is powerdul and the houses in the back give the sense of a home in reconstruction. I've been looking more at his work for inspiration for not just my series but for color next semester.
here's his website!
http://www.dougdubois.com/