Old Is New Again
For this work, I developed a concept that relied on a sense of irony. I used a picture of myself when I was a flower girl at six years old, and added an iPad to connect the past and present. I wanted to explore the friction between new-age digital dependency and historical permanence by creating an anachronistic contrast between the birth of photography and the height of the digital age. This project comments on how quickly our tools for capturing reality have evolved by rendering a modern memory through the lens of the historical collodion process.
I utilized two images from The Library of Congress for the background and chair, removing the subjects from each photo and scaling them up for the composition. I blurred these images since they are farther away from the camera.
This work that I will be critiquing is by Kyiah Vann. The subject of the piece is herself as a young girl, age six, when she was a flower girl in a wedding. The young girl is essentially centered in the frame. However, she is not facing directly towards the camera. Instead, she is angled and looks downward at a glowing Ipad screen in her lap. She sits in a room that contains a banister or decorative column of sorts. It also has curtains in the background. She utilizes texture heavily in this work. Not only does she have grain, but she also created cracks, smudges, drips, blurs, and more. She layered many different compositional elements to form her final piece.The tone of the piece seems to be a bit somber. The girl’s face shows little to no emotion, staring blankly into the Ipad screen. There is no sign of color, just a black and white composition. The composition itself is vertical.
ReplyDeleteIf I had not seen an explanation for the work, I would assume that it would be about how electronics are impacting kids’ childhoods. While the subject seems to be in a formal, almost “rich” environment, she only focuses on the screen. It is like she cannot see any of the novelty around her and can only keep her eyes on the things that are not real. It seems like a commentary on how growing up with electronics takes over many kids’ minds and leads them to become blind to the outside world. There are black smudges right above the screen that could almost function as burn marks, showing the dangers of the electronic. There are also a few scratches that seem to come from the screen itself, one that goes specifically towards the head of the child. The edges of the frame are all distorted or blurred, and to me, shows how her outside world is being limited by the Ipad. This is further pushed with how bright the screen is, drawing your attention as the focal point of the piece. The dreamy like quality of the piece does give itself to the intended purpose of the piece and makes it seem as though it is a memory.
Immediately, this piece is obviously blurred similar to how a wet-plate collodion process would create an image. The creator of the piece did well to show a sharper focus by the subject’s face, while blurring a lot of the surrounding imagery. It also helps to highlight the subject further. The ratio appears to be at least close to a 4:3 ratio. It is black and white, straying away from the sepia tones, but not in a way that is harmful to the composition in how it ties into wet-plate collodions. There are obvious scratches, marks, smudges, and various other imperfections that also show an understanding on how this process may create issues with the final print. Since these prints are often older, it also shows how storage of the print may have contributed to the final version of it. There even appears to be a “drip” on the image that speaks to the process of wet-plate as well. I do not see any visible writing or text on the piece, but that was not uncommon. There is an obvious irony to the piece as the child is holding a glowing tablet. The tablet is even the brightest object in the piece, further drawing attention to itself. The only piece that I think I would like to see more, is a radial blur on the foot of the child that is in the air. I see that it is blurred generally. However, showing it moving back and forth like a child would likely be fidgeting in a chair would work quite successfully to further drive the concept home.
This work shows an understanding of wet-plate collodions and a creativity to connect an interesting concept to the project itself. Combining a childhood photo with the dreamy-like quality that wet-plates often have works well in this composition. There was obvious thought put into the piece itself and overall, functions to create a visually-appealing and well thought out piece.
Thank you!
DeleteThe work I am critiquing is by Kyiah Vann. The photograph features a picture of herself from when she was six years old. In the composition, she is seated on a chair with an iPad. She uses two images from the library of Congress to create the background. The tone is well done giving it a Wet-plate collodion look, giving it the monochromatic silver gelatin look, and the surface cracks and tear texture gives it an aging element having survived all those years. The piece is deliberately using irony to bridge the gap between the past and present. By placing her with a iPad in a 19th century photography method. The artist effectively removes the original subject from the photo and restructuring the background builds a convincing vintage environment. Diving deeper into the Digital Composite. The iPad can capture and store multiple things into its storage whereas the wet plate is printed on a fragile piece of glass representing how far technology has come and what we are able to store into devices. In conclusion, the artist communicates their intentions clearly and highlights the rapid evolution of documentation and successfully communicates the irony of the photo.
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ReplyDeleteI feel like Wrapping Technology in Collodion by Kyiah Vann has a strong concept that is executed successfully. The picture she used of herself as a little girl holding an iPad to signify the disconnect between new age technology and historical permanence is effective with the wet plate print. Her clothing looks like it could belong in a past time period and the scarp draped over her shoulders helps push that narrative. The chair is not some basic modern chair you usually see in our time but a more elegant fancy cushioned chair. The background she used, I would've liked to see more of it because its set up from the 1800's but you can see a little bit on the left-hand side. All of those contrasts with the very modern iPad she's holding, an evolved way to saving memory's connecting with others. The textures she used, the fingerprint smudge placed on the bottom left corner, the 2 paper tears convey the wet plate aged look.
Thank you!
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