Corinne May Botz

I stumbled upon Corinne May Botz while researching Contemporary Photographers and saw such dark, mysterious beauty in her images.  She has work that is reminiscent of Laurie Simmons earlier work showcasing dolls in domestic situations but with a deadly twist.  Other images show abandoned places where hauntings have been recorded.  Her work has a dark presence and her simple compositions make it easy for the viewer to digest.  Above are a few examples of what I thought seemed to express her work thoroughly but please check out her site.

http://www.corinnebotz.com

Edward Burtynsky

Just because I mentioned him in the last post I wanted to show you some examples of his work that are my favorites.  Burtynsky usually deals with human's consumption and the run off from these products whether it's a nickel factory that leaks over the landscape, Chinese workers lined up like drones, and the humans destruction and repaving of the natural landscape.  His images have purpose and take a stance by showing what's usually unknown by everyone and does so in a beautiful and colorful way. Some of his images can make you dizzy with the over abundance but this is done on purpose, showing the chaos consumption creates. Enjoy!!

Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky is one of my all time favorite photographers right next to Edward Burtysnsky.  Gursky is a German artist known for visual large format landscape and architectural color photographs.  His images usually take on a higher point of view, often feeling like a bird's eye view.  He deals with the reality of living as a human being in today's world often expressing the over abundance and dealing with multiples whether it's created in nature or man himself has built it.  His images have a nice flow and are very much like landscape photography, using a horizontal point of view.  The bottom image showing a river and grass with a cloudy grey sky is entitled, "Rhein II" and this image was sold for  over $4.3 Million dollars at Christies in New York in November of 2011, becoming the most expensive photograph ever sold. Gursky trained with Hilla and Bernd Becher who took images of industrial machinery which also included water towers and they had a huge influence on Gursky.  He demonstrates a methodical approach to his large scale photographs.  Before the 1990's Gursky never used digital means for enhancing his photographs but since he admits to using the computer to help finish his images.  The MoMA in New York did a retrospective in 2001 and said about his work, "a sophisticated art of embellished observation. It is thanks to the artfulness of Gursky's fictions that we recognize his world as our own." This simple sentence really express the essence of Gurky's work is very straightforward.  He has been showing work in Museum's and Galleries around the world since 1985 till today. Gurky's works are part of worldwide collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Tate Modern in London, the SFMoMA in San Francisco, The Centre Pompidou in Paris and many many more.  I would suggest checking out Edward Burtynsky's work if you like Gursky. Gursky shows the everyday and Burtynsky show you behind the scenes. 


Check it out: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/
  

Charlie White

Charlie White is an amazing artist that works in photography and video.  White assisted artists such as Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham and studied with Marilyn Minter, while in New York.  He moved to Los Angeles in 1996 where he attended school and studied with artists such as Steven Prina and Christopher Williams and he received his MFA in 1998.  White uses a combination of artifice, make believe and fiction to represent the human condition.  Many of White's photographs explore America's social tensions in regards to identity and society's perception of this concept.  White's early works were similar to the practice of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall (also mentioned in my blog), these artists work  by staging scenes and photographing what they've created and sets the narrative that they are portraying.  His series include, "In a matter of Days (1999)" and "Understanding Joshua Tree (2001)" where he plays between reality and fiction shown above with the monster creatures in the photographs.  He has done many series that deal with narrative tableau that have dealt with religion and pop culture, he also did a series "Everything in America(2006)" that dealt with reconstructing historical instances of collective trauma and anguish such as the Manson Murders.  In 2008 he began doing a series entitles the "Girl Studies" where he did 3 years of research and production that expanded far beyond any other works he had done prior.  This series was the widest range in White's practice and further evoked his interest of the American cultural critique, which has been his interest from the beginning.  The Girl Studies featured images of a young girl standing next to a transgender man and the significance of the images were the similarity between the figures even though they were opposite sexes at birth they were still similar at least of an adolescent female, the image above is an example from this series.  Charlie White takes an interesting approach to his photography and the purpose or response he wants from his viewer is one of understanding his point of view.  Charlie White continues to work today and also is making videos in response to the questions that his images create for him.  

Check out more of his works at his website:

 http://www.charliewhite.info

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is a photographer that has been called Narcissistic, but I think of her as being an Actress of sorts, playing characters and photographing herself to preserve the various egos or personalities she has.  Some of her work raises and challenges important questions about the role and representation of woman in today's society.  She became famous by her Film Still series of white and black photographs of woman depicting the famous black and films and the roles woman played in these films.  As she got older she began using more make up and props. In 2003 she began doing images of clowns which is terribly creepy and colorful works.  Other later works that Cindy began to do is the images of Rich Older Woman, all portrayed by her with the use of make up and costuming she becomes her characters and plays her role, and the final images once she added backgrounds in photoshop, she showcased these images in huge floor to ceiling photographs framed in rich wooden decorative frames, making these upper class woman larger than life.  She also did a series where she portrayed 18th and 19th century art paintings but made them with the humor and tongue and cheek she is known for.  Cindy spends a lot of her time at thrift stores grabbing clothing for shoots and trying to create her next character. Cindy Sherman is a woman with a thousand faces and what makes her so interesting is the fact that she is in every image she takes and her role in the work is critical. She is actually one of my favorite photographers and I know some people think that her lack of using models and her role in her photographs makes her narcissistic.  She was quoted saying, "I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity."   She is a one of a kind Artist and is recognized because of it. Another quote that I can relate to that she said was, "When I do work, I get so much done in such a concentrated time that once I’m through a series, I’m so drained I don’t want to get near the camera." 


Please check out more of her work on her website:
http://www.cindysherman.com/

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is best known for his elaborate staging of scenes of the everyday American homes and neighborhoods. His photographs normally take place in small town America but his elaborate staging makes the images dramatic and have a cinematic quality to them. His images are often disturbing and surreal almost mythical and magical in it’s underlying message. His images have a science fiction quality to them and you can almost find yourself waiting to see aliens that have inhabited the characters in each image, and some images have this beam of light coming from the sky reiterating that sci-fi quality. Other images have a raw and sexual quality as well. He normally has a large crew helping him to create these scenes. He has two distinct ways of working in terms of creating images, one is on location and the other is on a soundstage. Most of his images are taken in Massachusetts in a seriously small town of North Adams. The models that he uses in his images are usually the locals from the town where he is taking the picture. The images above show a range of the work he creates. I really appreciate the creativity that goes into each shot, telling a story of the everyday mundane in a dramatic way that transcends the image into a mythical or whimsical place that may or may not exist in reality. My favorite image and the first image I ever saw of his work is the woman who is lying in a flooded living room ghost pale as if she is dead. The cinematic quality of this image is quite amazing and once you begin to dissect how this effect was achieved it’s even more unbelievable, just the time and money that goes into one image is crazy. Not a lot of photographers’ stage like he does but his end results are quite beautiful and disturbing, making these everyday neighborhoods and people into deserted zombies. The solitary figure in a room alone with or without a beam of light helps the viewer to think of that sci-fi influence like the character has been abducted and they’re in a trance back home. Other images show this same feeling of aloneness and drama but outside in nature or in the streets of these neighborhoods. I really do enjoy these images and the solitude that each one exudes and the mysterious qualities each of them have. His influences are photographer Diane Arbus who is one of my favorites as well and her work is dark and often showed the hidden side of society that most people didn’t want to see, and also painter Edward Hopper. Crewdson has exhibited all over the world and continues to create work. He told pbs.org in an interview, “I think I always have been drawn to photography because I want to construct a perfect world…. And in all my pictures what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into a place, into a perfect, still world.”