Photography as Documentation: Expanding Ideas Pt. 2

Continuing with the concept of mapping the process of aging, I arranged photos of my father and myself on a grid system to experiment with how the abrupt breaks would effect the spacial and transitional qualities of the composition. Although I do not intend to directly pursue this concept, the process of creating it helped me to generate new ideas for how I want to use this idea to depict time and space.
After visiting the Spencer and viewing Elliot Erwitt's Diana, I developed an idea in which the transition from me to my father is not only represented in a physical manner (aging), but also by using receding, compartmentalized areas (similar to Erwin's) to indicate stages of life.

This is a concept in which I combined formal elements from Erwitt's Diana with the process of aging emphasized by receding space in the composition. Each 20 year division in the collage would be composed of photographs reflecting that period in one's life. Instead of arranging a composition emphasizing the differences between my and my father's faces, I wanted to treat our lives as parallel's and map the process of a man's life by incorporating photos of my father, brother, and I as the same person.

Photography as Documentation: Expanding Ideas

This image is a continuation of my preliminary concept involving the statues and architecture of Lippincott Hall. With this composition I hope to create a conceptual map which depicts my personal interpretation and interaction with different environmental factors (architectural, spacial, textural, etc.) of Lippincott Hall.
 The purpose of this composition is to break down the concept of Lippincott as a static structure and build an image which focuses on the dynamism of the viewers (mine) own interest and experience with the structure.

Spencer Archive Photographs

Elliot Erwin depicts depth of field in his 1979 photograph Diana by capturing an image of space being visually broken apart by the framework of successive showrooms spanned by an unbroken walkway. The picture plane is set within a showroom at one end of the walkway and sets the motif of spacial recession by framing the next level of depth (the next showroom) within the door frame of its predecessor.
Diana is intriguing because it involves formal and technical elements which I tried to capture in my preliminary "Embedded Images" idea. To begin, I had not placed the original composition on a grid which made it difficult to read. In order to break it apart, I placed the image on a vertical grid. With the visual breaks in the composition I was able to achieve a greater sense of spacial recession and legibility. Erwin also employs obvious visual breaks when separating space to compartmentalize the successive showrooms within the framework of the one before it.
 Similar to how Erwin uses the walkway as an unbroken plane to the vanishing point, I also wanted the sidewalk of the "Embedded Images" idea to guide the viewers eye to through the image to the vanishing point.
Erwin's inclusion of the archer statue in the foreground and the man in the middle-ground also emphasize the images depth by displaying the hierarchy of forms in perspective.

Photography as Documentation

 Over the course of this project, I am going to create a photo-montage to display the relationship of time and space within the environments I photograph. The concept of time and space come together to emphasize the idea of a process as well. By compressing, extending, cutting, and pasting different images together into one composition, I hope to convey my own personal encounter and process of observing and existing within certain environments.

 This composition consists of embedding five different photographs I took while walking to class. The images are arranged so that the first creates the border for the fourth, and the fourth for the third, until the final image in the middle. What makes this composition effective are the lines of perspective created by the wall, sidewalk, and road. So as you view the image, it is similar to watching the entire walk in one frame. I also used a grid pattern in order to break the images apart, to make it more readable.

This image is a collage of photos of my father and I doing many exaggerated expressions. In this piece I hoped to convey the idea of shared family traits and the process of aging.

In the image above I wanted to show the process of creating a painting. In order to do this, I layered preliminary sketches and modeling images on top of the final piece. This idea for a composition is intriguing to me because I love to paint and I find it an interesting notion to be able to track an artists step by step process of creating while still being able to observe the piece.

The idea behind this composition is to create a map-like image from the view of my dorm room in which the major landmarks between myself and the horizon are superimposed so the viewer may easily interpret relative spacing of each structure.

In order to convey the process of my own personal experience with the statues and architecture of Lippincott Hall, I arranged elements of the photographs in a manner which renders the aspects I found most noteworthy and relatable in a heiratic order.

Final Container

Model of Container

Preliminary Sketches of Container

David Pye Reflection

In the book “The Nature and Aesthetics of Design” author and designer David Pye gives insight into his view of the relationship between aesthetics and function. Pye proposes as a society we need to focus less on the economy and commerce generated by product and more on ease of access and function. As people become more infatuated with money, the true nature of good design is blinded from the designer. Money cannot create good design, but designers often use it as the ultimate incentive to rob people instead of filling their lives with well designed product.

These principles are applicable to any design I may concieve because of the system of ethics in design it proposes. As designers enter the work force, their first goal must be to meet the needs of people, not their pockets.

Building a Vessel: Purpose/ Statement

A vessel is something which is constructed to contain something of importance. Using a subtractive process, we were tasked in building containers which were designed either to enclose and protect, or display our objects. The process required use of power tools like the band-saw and electric sander to complete. The status of the container depends very much on the object being contained. In the case of my object, a glass skull candle holder, I chose to display it because of its interesting form.
I chose the skull as my object because it was given to me by my girlfriend’s parents before she moved back to Sweden. Also, I though this project would be perfect for devising a container which could make interesting use of the light emitted by the skull when lit with a candle. To do this, I needed to make a concave, display style design. To make the box contrast in form from its contents, I made it intentionally very geometric.