> ARTS 4364.251 > Advanced Digital Photography

Instructor Sherwin Rivera Tibayan Spring 2015 Advanced Digital Photography M/W 11:00-1:50 pm School of Art + Design Texas State University Sabinal Building

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ARTS 4364.251 > Advanced Digital Photography > Spring 2015

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Interview with Zoe Strauss

Studioscopic: Zoe Strauss from David S Kessler on Vimeo.

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"Too hard to keep" by Jason Lazarus

The project explained:

"I have started an archive of photographs deemed "too hard to keep."

Submissions may include photos of friends, family, pets, places/objects too hard to view again, etc. The reason you can't live with the photo or photo album I do not need to know...

I am creating a repository for these images so that they may exist without being destroyed."

via @hereontheweb

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Time to nerd out. Who doesn't love a Rube Goldberg machine!?

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This film will be shown tonight at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. I encourage you all to try and attend. Looks like it might blow your minds.

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Website: The Great Leap Sideways

You'll find a growing resource of provocative images and well-considered writing on The Great Leap Sideways.

Screen Captures via The Great Leap Sideways

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Student Post: Brittainie Best

Allison Leach is a well-known photographer in New York City. She works with a long list of clients including MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickleodeon, etc. She contributes photos for well known magazines, such as, Time, People,Newsweek, etc. 

But.... The best thing about Leach is her photos are not just good, they are funny too. I think that most people think of photography as this deep, conceptual, mellow-dramatic black and white emotional thing (i.e. a winter landscape, a dramatic angle on something, etc). I have, from time to time, been guilty of this idea as well. Just here lately though, right outside of the Photo 1 classroom door, there was a picture of an overweight man wearing a very 'different' swim outfit, holding tiny flippers, with stringy wet hair and a mischievous look on his face. And, I actually laughed out loud and I remembered something too: Photography can make a lot of different emotions surface and it can be funny too. 

Text by Brittainie Best

Images by Allison Leach

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"USING HTML5 AND WITH SOME HELP FROM GOOGLE, Chris Milk’s The Wilderness Downtown is akin to a music video which allows one’s childhood memories of place a starring role–or at least a competitive one with Google’s archive. It is eerily nostalgic while effacing the more individualized sense of one’s own personal history.

It also demonstrates how powerful Google’s image bank will become in years to come within the arts, where metaphor (and memory) becomes unnecessary when imagery of the location itself is so easily retrievable. You can no longer visualize where you grew up? Well here it is…

Google becomes the family album contextualizing all of us–our roles are increasingly those of the characters within. Many will surely rejoice."

Text via After Photography

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I'm a sucker for advice like this...

Here is a link to a bite-size list of things that might be useful to think about and employ while working through the upcoming projects in our class.

There's also this:

Images from The 99 Percent

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Prof. Hils shared this with the grad students and I thought I should pass it along. It's more timely advice from the playbook of a veteran. This and other works by Tom Sachs are available on his website.

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Photographer Portfolio: Ignacio Torres

Some of you might like this or are already familiar with the process. Maybe we can come up with some ideas and images that this technique can work with...

From his project statement for Stellar:

This project began from the theory that humans are made of cosmic matter as a result of a stars death. I created imagery that showcased this cosmic birth through the use of dust and reflective confetti to create galaxies. The models organic bodily expressions as they are frozen in time between the particles suggest their celestial creation. In addition, space and time is heightened by the use of three-dimensional animated gifs. Their movement serves as a visual metaphor to the spatial link we share with stars as well as their separateness through time.

Click the image to head over to his site and see what I'm talking about.

Images via Ignacio Torres // Found via Conscientious

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Introducing Larry Gagosian

Here is an older article from The Wall Street Journal that profiles mega-mega art dealer Larry Gagosian. Included among the images in above chart is one of the artist who I mentioned was from Oklahoma (correction: he was born in Omaha, Nebraska, but was raised in OKC, graduating from Classen High School before driving out to California to make art history).

So who's the artist?

Image from The Wall Street Journal

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Jason Lazarus & "Impossible Art Ideas"

Impossible Art Ideas is an ongoing collaborative project by Chicago-based conceptual artist Jason Lazarus. According to his website,

the strategy of working with impossibility as a medium has resulted in the practice of developing impossible art ideas (which can be found at www.jasonlazarus.com).  this, in turn, has become a part of my teaching (pure critical thinking without the need for physical skills, financial wealth, or physical space), and now, inevitably, i am creating a curated public archive.

Have a read through the successful submissions and consider offering your own piece to the project. Here are his guidelines:

submit as many ideas as often as you'd like, take care to avoid redundancy with ideas already in the archive...

all selected collaborators become named artist-authors in future exhibitions of the archive

last, try to keep the question in mind, 'what separates an impossible idea and an impossible art idea?'

Images and quotes captured from Impossible Art Ideas

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Student Post: Sierra Losing / Section 002

Tim Hetherington, photojournalist and filmmaker was killed on April 20, 2011 while covering the conflict in Misrata, Libya. In 2007, Hetherington was credited with the World Press Photo of the Year that depicted an exhausted American soldier after a day of fighting in Afghanistan. The majority of his images are rooted within the conflicts of war; depicting rare scenes that few people witness throughout the turmoil of war. The New York Times photography blog, Lens offers insight into Hetherington's unique perspective on photography as a form of mass communication.  The imagery demonstrates his commitment in capturing his story as well as his own bravery. According to a fellow photojournalist, Michael Kamber, "He would show us projects that he was working on. He always had ideas. He was conceptual. We would be hanging out there, drinking, looking at photos and dissecting what things mean. That was one of the reasons he went back to Libya: he was interested in the news coverage there and how it was affecting the public’s perception of what was going on. And he wanted to be part of that coverage." Tim Hetherington was truly an influential and innovative figure in the field of photojournalism and his photography will continue to inspire others. 

"We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight." -John Lennon

Text by Sierra LosingImage by Tim Hetherington

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Student Post: Chandler Wilson / Section 002

Zach Gold is an interesting photographer who has creative action shots. The shots show amazing movement and contrast. Gold captures expressive qualities as well as graceful motions. His shots with water spraying everywhere showcases deep depth of field and chaos which really appeal to me. The photos appear grainy and this adds to the sense of water going all different directions. 

I appreciate these pieces because there are so many different tones of grays in the black and white photos. These are daring shots.  

Text by Chandler Wilson

Image by Zach Gold

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Student Post: Nicole Drapeau / Section 001

Please visit Nicole's blog to read her text and view the rest of these images.

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Student Post: Shawn Phillips / Section 001

Phtographer Carsten Peter is known for his ability to obtain great photos in even the most extreme environments. The National Geographic photographer has been dubbed "the man for the dangerous assignment", the truth of which is demonstrated in this video. The video features a behind the scenes look at one of Carsten's shoots. Carsten descends into the heart of an active volcano, complete with a 1300 foot drop and a lava lake that often times overflows without suddenly, and without warning. The second link will take you to his gallery where you can take a look at the photos from the volcano, as well as photos focussing on other extremes such as tornadoes, deserts, and glaciers. 

Text by Shawn Phillips

Images by Carsten Peter