Chapter 12: "Photography and Time-Based Media"

I) Chapter 12: "Photography and Time-Based Media" taught me a great deal. For example, how these media allow the artist to explore the "fourth-dimension" of time. How they can convey so much information and emotion. As Karen pointed out above, "A picture is worth a thousand words." A picture (whether still or moving, black-and-white, or color) can be so evocative. Like an "instant collage". I had never previously heard of the "photogenic drawing" of Talbot or the "calotype process". Talbot's calotype, "The Open Door", is amazing. It could have been taken last week, rather than  ~170 years ago! Timothy O'Sullivan's Civil War Photo, "Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pa.", left me transfixed. The dead soldier in the foreground, the only one with his face toward the camera, shows signs of "rigor mortis". (His face seems frozen; as if wailing in agony!) The tension between "form" and "content", whether "staged" or not, is chilling and highly artistic. After all, as our text points out, "Every photograph is an abstraction, a simplification of reality..."
Salgado's, "Four Figures in the Desert, Korem, Ethiopia", is hard to forget. Again, a face in the foreground of this composition was the "focus" of my attention. This time, it is the look of desperation and hopelessness on the face of a suffering child. I never realized how much hard work takes place before and after that "decisive moment", when an artist starts "writing with light". Whether its an Ansel Adams print, a D.W. Griffith film, "performance art" by Trisha
Brown, Paik's humorous video on the "boob tube", or a computer creation like I mention below- both the images and the process used to create them are critically important.

II) I agree with Rodolfo, that Sandy Skoglund's work has a surrealistic feel similar to a Lewis Carroll work. I also think that Lindsay, "nails" the way her work has evolved over time. About all I can add to their comments,are some technical features that really attracted me to her "installations". Her work entitled, "Revenge of the Goldfish", captured both my eyes and my imagination. Why? She uses a "restricted palette" to great effect. How? By using "complementary colors". (Hues opposite each other on the "color wheel"). Taking advantage of the "simultaneous contrast effect", the few colors she does use are extremely vivid! She also makes the viewer think by using everyday
objects (lamp, bed, et cetera) and human models, in clever ways. (As Jerry Uelsmann remarks regarding his art, to be "obviously symbolic, but not symbolically obvious.") For instance, by suggesting to the viewer, that the humans present in his installation are just as much a part of "fishbowl of life" as the goldfish happen to be. That's their revenge, the humans have no more privacy in their bedroom , than the fish have in their bowl!

III) While going online, to view the montage of Eisenstein's "Odessa Steps Sequence", 
I ran across a video I really liked and wanted to share with the class. Why? Because it fuses together
a few concepts mentioned in this chapter. It "morphs", wonderful portraits of beautiful women from the Classic to Modern times. In other words, it combines time, painting, and video into a "montage" on the subject of female beauty over the ages. (Hey, what's not to like?) Anyway, it also makes the point that computer software and internet-based sites like "youtube" have "democratized" the "World of Art". Now, almost, anyone who has a good idea can share their creative abilities with the global community without the need for a wealthy patron.
A) Digital Art Media by Philip Scott Johnson- "Fantastic Morphing Faces - Female Art Portraits" (2'59")
at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfhjBlwMiM