Journal 6

This week came with it's ups and downs. I got this great idea to experiment with stills and nudes and aesthetically grab from Dutch paintings. I figured I'd experiment with the aesthetics first. This was of course not in my plans for this week. I was going to shoot myself and do some auto bibliographical work, but I thought I'd let myself go on a bit of a tangent. 

Here's some of what I shot:

Now I wanted to experiment with nudes and stills and kind of comment on death and religion, but I didn't expect to do it that day, but then I thought while I'm here I should check out how the colors will look together, best lighting, etc. so I shot these:

I thought it might be interesting to put my head in the shot instead of a skull. 

I liked this shot, but I don't like the cropping...i feel like my bodes gotta either be in or out lol.

These started to get my interesting, but they have no concept to them,  they were just some aesthetic experiments I did for the week.

-Will resume conceptual work this week.

Journal 5

This week I'm working through everything. I'm going to be shooting in studio instead of in my environment and seeing what kind of different results I get and which ones I like best compared to the ones I took last week. I'll be shooting myself mainly, but I also want to shoot my family. I'm going to see if shooting my family will help me to see how I want to shoot myself and after reviewing my images I'll try to decide what direction I want to go in from there. 
I've still been looking at Ana Mendieta's work. 
I met with Miranda Lichtenstein and I was happy to have her look at my work and talk about it. That's one of the things I was hoping to do for a while. 
Here's some of her work:

This is from her series "The Searchers"

I started looking at Cindy Sherman's work as well and the idea of dressing up. I think dressing up can show a part of oneself that one usually doesn't get shown like an alter ego kind of thing but also how well people can blend into different personas. I want to experiment more with the idea of identity. 

Some of Cindy Sherman's work:

Journal 4

For this week I was thinking of building on my idea of shooting what I know. I've been looking at the work of Ruth Erdt's work and Larry Sultan's work just seeing how different artists have photographed their families in the past.

Ruth Erdt's work

Larry Sultan's work

 I also started looking at Ana Mendieta's work. I want my work to be autobiographical but to talk about life, death, feminism and culture. Of course I'm not sure how I'm going to do that, but I want this body of work to be a piece of myself. I want to also discover more about myself through the camera, as if seeing into myself through the lens. I'm not sure if this is what I'm untimely going to use for the thesis show, but I know to get to the point where I'm truly happy with a body of work, I have to just work through it.

Ana Mendieta's work

I've been listening to Amel Larrieux and Hector Lavoe, and wondering what it means to be a bi-racial American woman, in particular half Puerto Rican half African American woman. I want to explore all of these things in a new innovative way, but of course I'm still thinking about exactly how thats going to be.

Amel Larrieux- "Givin Somethin Up" and "Bravebird"

Hector Lavoe- "Mi Gente"

journal 3

I've ben thinking about my work and what I want to do for this class, but also what I want to do after graduation, which is to work for magazine companies. I've been thinking about how to combine the two so that I incorporate my ideas about how I want to shoot with the aesthetics of magazine photography to perfect what I can do and push further what I can't while making a body of work that I can have for my portfolio after graduation. i've been looking at Annie Leibovitz's work and also the work Justine Kurland did for New York Fashion Shows.

 This is some of Annie Leibovitz's work.

Justine Kurland's work.

I've also been looking at Sharon Core's work for still lives and studying lighting.

I want to think about lighting with my still lives, but I want to push conceptual still life photography. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to push for portraits or still, but I'm going to do some experimenting with both until I come to some type of conclusion.