The Inverted Forest: December 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Fourth Project: The Kiss*

I shot several couples kissing. Every other take, I would ask one half of the couple to step back while the other half held their position. I sought to create a new image of intimacy be removing one critical element from the embrace we've seen thousands of times before.

*Hey, Pipo. Sorry that these scans, and those that follow, are nowhere near clean or color-corrected. I don't have the software in Vermont to whip these files into shape.

Side Project: Seaside Masquerade

I visited a friend in Maine. We thought it would be funny to take a bunch of touristy pictures in Acadia National Park wearing an old beat-up cat mask that I got at an Ohio thrift store. We became very adept at using hand signals to coordinate the donning of the mask at the taking of the photograph. None of our fellow tourists were as intrigued as we wanted them to be.

BONUS: Said friend, photographed at the back patio she and her friends made from scratch a week prior.

Third Project: Shit Luck

I got my fortune read by three psychics at a convention in Valley City, OH and acted out the most bummerific parts of each on film. These images were first presented as slides, viewed through magnifying loops on a light table. Each bad fortune constitutes the piece's title. I aimed to create intimate, fleeting, seductive images that contrast the blunt and dooming messages that accompany them.

Your first marriage will end in divorce.

Your mother will die in the next three years.

You will miscarry in the month of May.

Side Project: Hometown Parallelograms

Shot at my parents's house in Vermont. So this is what light looks like coming through a real window.

Second Project: Charlotte on Elm Street

A formal study of a nude body situated in an unfurnished, undecorated space. With so many typically available signifiers stripped from the scene, I was curious in what moods could be conveyed by composition and gesture alone.

Studies for Second Project

First Project: Reenactors of the Canfield Fair

I photographed Civil War reenactors as a way of exploring the role of subject self-presentation in portraiture. These men are extremely knowledgeable about the roles they play. In posing for the camera, they offered me an odd mixture of themselves and the anachronistic image they seek to (re)construct.

BONUS: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Impostor. Photo Credit Leah Greenberg.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Nicholas Haggard

Quiet, sensual, simple, soft. Nicholas Haggard, of the Tinker Street Collective, makes photographs that are lighter than air. So much of this reminds me of what's been coming out of senior studio at Oberlin the last few years.