#frankieschulte

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #13

“The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot gave me very similar vibes to old movies which were packed full of so much content, you could focus anywhere on the screen in a given scene and find something new going on. The poem is not only split up into multiple parts, but there’s so much happening in each part where you can get a completely different experience upon rereading the poem.

On my first readthrough, there were several very strong settings that formulated in my mind. The first was a wide open field filled with flowers on a gloomy spring day, where the trees are almost flowering but aren’t quite there. The second setting I envisioned was a grand, glowing medieval throne room clad with marble and shiny pillars reflecting the sunlight in every direction. The third was a very small, sheltered cabin home in the woods by a river, one surrounded by nothing but nature. The last setting was a stormy coastline with a lighthouse prominent in the foreground, relentlessly beaten away by the surges of the ocean. It’s especially interesting, as I’m certain most of these settings were not what what T.S. Eliot was describing, and upon rereading I had slightly different interpretations of the text. It’s always fun consuming content this packed full of information, as it feels like a new experience upon every read.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #15

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #14

Both of the texts were in-depth explorations into the colors of red and blue respectively. What was most interesting was how far that simple premise was taken, and how these two explorations served as a strong juxtaposition tonally despite simply speaking about two primary colors.

Right as I started reading the text about red, I was immediately reminded of the Vsauce video on a similar topic. In the video, the concept of color as a whole is broken down, and an investigation into what fundamentally makes a color it’s color was done. The key question of the video was “is my red the same as your red?” in regards to seeing a strawberry. What frame of reference do we have to pose our color red to? The only person in the world who can confirm they see red the same as you do is yourself, so the question remains, is my red the same as your red?

The texts were a different exploration than the video by Vsauce, however. It was much more an exploration into the fundamental emotions and associations given to colors. Red’s writing style was far more fierce and sporadic, and was very unpredictable in structure. Blue, meanwhile, had a very simple, easy-to-follow format. Red had many emotional descriptors of examples of red, showcasing the intense and powerful situations where red could be found. It was most common in situations of love or intensity. Meanwhile, blue was primarily explored through nature’s blue over the horizon of the sky, in a much calmer, more relaxed setting. The contrast of the two texts served to highlight the distinct qualities that come with each color, and truly cement in how drastic the unconscious emotional difference between these two colors can be without us having formally learned of it.

[frankieschulte]

Blogpost #13

“The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot gave me very similar vibes to old movies which were packed full of so much content, you could focus anywhere on the screen in a given scene and find something new going on. The poem is not only split up into multiple parts, but there’s so much happening in each part where you can get a completely different experience upon rereading the poem.

On my first readthrough, there were several very strong settings that formulated in my mind. The first was a wide open field filled with flowers on a gloomy spring day, where the trees are almost flowering but aren’t quite there. The second setting I envisioned was a grand, glowing medieval throne room clad with marble and shiny pillars reflecting the sunlight in every direction. The third was a very small, sheltered cabin home in the woods by a river, one surrounded by nothing but nature. The last setting was a stormy coastline with a lighthouse prominent in the foreground, relentlessly beaten away by the surges of the ocean. It’s especially interesting, as I’m certain most of these settings were not what what T.S. Eliot was describing, and upon rereading I had slightly different interpretations of the text. It’s always fun consuming content this packed full of information, as it feels like a new experience upon every read.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #11

The perspective taken on by Hito Steyerl in "In Defense of the Poor Image" explores the many facets that have impacted photography as a result of the modern age. She makes remarks about how true photography is vastly separated from the ‘poor image,’ and that the modern world has made true photographic works harder to come by.

This is an especially fun topic for me to talk about, as I’m someone who lived on online forms growing up. The environment of oversharing photos and watching them reduce in quality and cropping with every new distribution is one that I’m very familiar with, and I’ve certainly contributed to turning pure images into poor images throughout my lifetime. While it’s certainly a sad prospective to see a high quality, well-cared-for photo to be treated so poorly and irresponsibly, I feel that’s part of the charm of the media world. If it were a requirement for every individual to treat every photo with the utmost care to ensure it remains at the same standard of quality as when it started, why, we wouldn’t have nearly as fun a culture of sharing photos and stories. The fact that anyone, experienced or not, can hop on the internet and easily share a photo with others is invaluable; the typical qualities of the ‘poor image’ are just scars which show that even non-photographers find the photo interesting enough to pass it along. I always found it funny when I would see videos which had intentionally been reduced in quality and re-recorded hundreds of times to simulate the poorest image possible, it’s both humorous and a good reminder to at least take some care of a photo when you pass it along.

Questions:

1. Do you think the ‘poor image’ is damaging to the integrity that comes with photography? Or is it a positive result of the natural progression of the medium into the modern world?

2. Would you rather see an image passed along with its quality maintained to the utmost degree, or see it passed along with the quality reducing for every set of hands the photo passes through?

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #12

After looking through several chains in A New Nothing, probably my favorite has to be the pairing of Aaron Turner and Sonja Thomsen. Their chain started back in July of 2020, and it began with a simple photo of some prismatic sun reflections on the ground. The reflections were rather geometrical, and this combination of geometric shapes and prismatic colors stayed consistent in most photos the two would exchange. Something about keeping on with this established theme and focusing especially on primitive shapes, sun rays, and colors made for a very coherent chain of photos to scroll through, each one more innovative than the last. Some of them are ideas for photos I would never even conceive outside of the context set up by the photos, it really shows how a system like this can find really creative photographic perspectives.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #9

Magnum Photos was first founded two years after World War II, and had four founding members: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim Seymour. These four photographers founded Magnum Photos following the impact the war had on each of them, they were all deeply scarred by the war yet maintained a strong sense of curiosity about how what remained following the war. Magnum is a mixture of both reporting and artistry; it aims to capture what the world looks like and to make a statement about it as well.

After looking through some of the photos taken by Magnum photographers, I can really identify their goal to both report and create art. Some of the photos give off a strong feeling of importance and vitality, yet have some aspect of it that makes it a creative work of art. It’s easy to manage one or the other; taking photos of what’s happening or intentionally doing something creative in one’s photos are both not too difficult to manage on their own. Capturing the world’s events from an artistic perspective, however, is far more difficult. There’s a much smaller window of opportunity before the photo is irreplaceable, and I think that’s what truly makes Magnum Photos special.

The photographer that struck me the most upon scrolling through was Marc Riboud. He’s the photographer behind the iconic shot of the flower presented to the line of soldiers, and he’s taken many more photographs of soldiers in various other environments. Something that really marks me about all of his photos are his use of perspective. He has an impeccable eye on how to place both his subjects and his camera’s angle to make photos that feel mathematically calculated. The first photo below has him so perfectly in the reflection of the soldier’s sunglasses, it seems it would take hours to manage a framing like that. The photo of the man on the skyscraper trusses genuinely seems like the scene of a painting; even given the concept and the framing, I don’t think I could manage to take a photo like that.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #8

Documentaries such as Salt of the Earth still stand as some of my favorite pieces of media to watch. The eye-opening content within documentaries such as Salt of the Earth make it more than worth the watch, and I personally quite enjoyed watching Sebastiao Salgado's photographic endeavors. The raw variety in his work is nothing to scoff at, I'm very impressed at how long he will dedicate himself to putting together a collective piece, much less the content within the piece itself.

The film recorded of Salgado interacting with humans who had little contact to the outside world is nothing short of incredible. Sometimes it becomes very easy to get self-absorbed in the luxuries society has offered us both in communication and in our daily life, it's very easy to forget that not everyone lives the same life. My favorite period that Salgado recorded was his work during the Rwandan Civil War. I spent quite a bit of time in high school MUN studying the Rwandan Genocide, but quite a bit of that work was tame and idealized compared to the photos taken by Salgado. It's a friendly reminder that the world isn't as it's seen from the comfort of our couches and beds, beyond the world of social media there's life, death, war, and everything imaginable; both good and bad.

I'm also fairly certain I've seen certain parts of Salt of the Earth before, as the polar bear scene seemed very very familiar to me (though I have zero clue where I could have seen the clip before and in what context.)

Wim Wenders is a German filmmaker, and was one of the directors behind Salt of the Earth. Much like Salgado, he's a photographer who often works with desolate landscapes, similar to what was shown near the beginning of the film.