I was excited to hang the pi
cture up, but very scared at what the reaction would be. When we started class, we were told to write a question for ourselves and then write a question and post it up next to each picture of everyone in the class. I think this is both an incredibly helpful and incredibly scary exercise. When you are free to
ask what you like in an anonymous fashion you may feel unchained to protect feelings of the artist because they won't know who you are. So my thoughts immediately went to "if anyone absolutely hates this, they now have free reign to express it without me knowing who it is". Most fortunately, the questions I got were mostly "I really like this but, how in the world did you go from bands to penguins". Obviously without previously releasing to the class that my entire thesis had changed pretty much on a dime, this photo would come as a huge shock. I told them how my last thesis review went and told them that I have come to the point where just because you absolutely love something and love to take thousands and thousands of pictures of it does not mean there is enough power behind it for it to become a thesis. I used the example that I
absolutely love my cat, Mowgli Sebastian. He means the world to me and I have probably have well over 20,000 pictures of him in my iPhoto on my Mac. But I have never considered doing a thesis on him, because I know I love him, but why should anyone else be forced to or made to feel that they should also love him. I told them that from the get-go I never was planning on doing a thesis on Mowgli, and so likewise, I can absolutely love my bands and continue to take thousands and thousands of pictures of my bands but not have them be part of my thesis. I shared with them my new idea for my thesis and got their take on it. Janie asked me "What other pictures were you planning on taking? Were they all going to be penguins or other animals?" I told her the current one I am working on is a cheeseburger and then I was going to do a car maybe next. Janie immediately made the connection with a cheeseburger from McDonald's "Isn't that funny? McDonald's is not exactly real food and you are replacing the 'fake' burger with a new fake burger but one that you made". Then the suggestion was made by everyone "why not only crochet food? forget about the animals - just do different types of food making a commentary on this 'fake processed food'." This food is processed and I am processing my own "fake food" through crochet. I feel it necessary to use all caps for this: I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!!! It went from depicting a false reality on everything to a false reality on what we consider food, which I think is so much more powerful. I am very very excited for what is to come out of this project and am actually excited to work on it and talk about it now! This was one of maybe the most helpful critiques I can think of having in my entire DAAP career. I normally leave critiques feeling very angry and sad at how it went, and now, well lets just say everyone close to me is getting sick of me for making them listen to this new idea again and again- and it's only been 24 hours!!! (Sorry Emily haha). And I know that I am not supposed to really think about titles until I have all my work to make it work well, but I have thought of a title already that I LOVE!! "Is There Enough Fiber in Your Diet?". Awesome right? Anyway, till next time!
I am really glad that you realize that it is important not to take fine art photographs of something simply because you like it. I would encourage you to try other forms of creating fake foods or objects, because I feel the only reason you are crocheting them is because you like to crochet. I mean crocheting is cool and all, but explore other methods maybe and see what you like best (it may end up being crochet after all). But don't settle on one method just because you already know how to do it, you may find something else you like to do in the process.
ReplyDelete"is there enough fiber in your diet?" niiiice.
ReplyDeleteand although photography is your major dont feel limited to it. Like bailey said- explore other ways of creating objects-
but also keep in mind what you are doing is sculptural and performance art.
i like to work in a way where I think of a cool idea (in your case drawing attention to the unfoodness of processed food) and then think of the best way to communicate that idea.
I understand for the sake of school you need to continue your photo series- but there's no need to stop there. You might really need to replace frozen pizzas with crotched ones!
I'm excited to see the result of the food idea. How long does it take you to make an object? Are you going to be able to do several kinds of food in five weeks?
ReplyDeleteUsually it only takes a couple hours to make one object, so in result with school and such it ends up being a day cause there's an hour here and then some class and so on. I am planning to have several kinds of food in five weeks, but at the final review, my project won't be completely finished, close to it but not all the way since it is my thesis project and will be going into Spring Quarter.
ReplyDelete