My concept is based around how these old photographs inherently stand as very static and unchanging captures of a person's entire identity. Given how infrequent these would be, many of these old photos serve to create one singular vision of how these people look when the truth is that an entire person can't be distilled into one image. I wanted to capture this through the slow shutter speed method and essentially obscure my own face, figure, and identity to create a more dynamic and hard to pin down identity. In a way, this feels inherently personal in that I am constantly changing from one moment to the next and given how long these photos would take, I've tightened this sense of change by implying that so much change is happening over the course of a short period.
I used the border from an old photograph off the library of congress:
https://www.loc.gov/item/vt0145/
As well as several textures I overlayed:
https://jooinn.com/img/get
https://www.needpix.com/photo/1479118/grunge-texture-grungetexture-wall-antique-vintage-retro-old-damaged
https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1100381
I chose the work by Noelle Greene. I think it has the strongest concept because the wet-plate style connects directly to the meaning of the photograph. The image shows the artist as the main subject, but their face and body are blurred and repeated. It makes them look like they are moving. The sepia tones, scratches and dark edges make the photograph look like an old wet-plate image.
ReplyDeleteI think the concept is effective because the artist is showing how one photograph can’t represent a person's entire identity. In the mid-1800s, photographs required long exposure times, so people had to stay very still and they usually had one image taken of them. This photograph uses that idea in the opposite way because instead of staying still, the artist moves and it makes their identity difficult to capture. The blur shows how a person is always changing.
The reference to the mid-1800s also makes the meaning stronger. The wet-plate look makes us think of photographs as permanent records of the past, while the movement in this image shows that identity isn’t permanent. I also like the details that make the photograph look physically old. It looks like the image was taped together in one place, and there are numbers written on the side, which makes it feel even more old. These details make the image feel more authentic.
Overall, I think this work has the strongest concept because the technique and meaning work together very well. The wet-plate style is not just used to make the photograph look old because it helps communicate the artist's idea about identity and change.
I am critiquing Noelle Greene’s Old is New Again project. They captured themselves as the basic subject, utilizing a slow shutter speed to frame the everchanging essence of identity and what it means to be human. Noelle shoots multiple frames of themselves in a warm, homey environment and composes them together to create a visual distillment of a sense of self. This distillation is paired with scratch textures and a sepia tone to highlight energy weariness.
ReplyDeleteFrom the formal treatment and elements presented in the frame, I interpret the work as a distilled flow of identity. The meaning behind this work lies in the obscurity of the figure due to one essential element: speed. Greene explains that the essence of their being is constantly being tossed between moments of time – resulting in a paced ambiguity of self. They hug themselves, then unfold into an array of beings – allowing the viewer to seep through the blurred lines of their entire identity. The scratches and cracks are metaphorical for the passage of time and the experiences that shape character.
Noelle arranges the content to favor a prolonged exposure to light, which is what the wet-plate collodion process is known for. This is accompanied by editing techniques, such as scratches and cracks on the glass plate to emphasize the trials of the wet emulsion process. They also emphasize a shallow depth of field and mobile subject by blurring the image in specific areas such as the hands and face. It is a black and white monochromatic image with sepia undertones and writing on the glass negative, which is paired with a black border around the picture. There are minor light leaks around the composition which is aided by the slow shutter speed.
In conclusion, Greene distills the reality of identity into a singular composition that frames change through the wet-plate collodion process. They execute this by playing with speed and exposing their camera sensor to light for a longer duration of time. That is what intertwines the elements of the composition, editing techniques, and concept. The artist describes a dynamic, unheld sense of self due to fleeting moments of life. This concept is paired with photoshopped scratches, cracks, and writing to produce the wet plate look. There are also light leaks, blurred movement, and borders around the composition. Greene embodies the ambiguity of being and evolving through the passage of time with a black and white, sepia-toned distillation of blurred identity.
Noelle’s composite image, in my opinion, is the most interesting conceptually and visually. Wet-plate damage such as scratches, stains, and cracks frame and position the primary subject of the piece. Noelle stands front and center against a blank background, and is actively moving, creating heavy blurs and copies that are layered on top of one another to show the progression of the entire motion through time. The image appears to be quite healthy in terms of the conventional wet-plate photo damage we’re used to seeing. I think this was a good design decision because it allows the main subject’s complexity to have more breathing room in the space and have more emphasis.
ReplyDeleteConceptually this interests me because unlike the rest of my peers, Noelle focused on manipulating the technology of the time, rather than making a statement on the time-period itself. In doing so, she creates an insightful self-portrait and commentary on the nature of identity, and how despite the technology being advanced for its time, it could not hope to capture life in full because of how static the photo sets must be.