RECREATION 03: MEMORIES

How was your weekend? - 2011


Composition: A slanted angle of myself in first plane overlaid a shot of my desktop in the same position with lines of a hinted rush created by placing the camera on the tripod and rotating it.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: I wanted to convey the idea of how my weekend usually is. It's me waking up and going straight to the computer to do homework or assignments. I have tons of activities to do and so little time to go out and have fun as the average standard due. (Besides weather didn't let me do so). I also usually eat in front of the computer and have most of my social life through it to catch up with friends and family from back home.

Composition: A full close up shot of my face in five different emotional gestures each one being circled in victorian-esque golden circles with a red background.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: In Mexico is pretty common to have "Caritas" (little faces). Families often go to photographers, who sometimes are located in "Mercaditos" or "Tianguis" (Little Markets) where they go and get their groceries and they get their babies to pose on five different gestures.

This is actually an European old fashion tradition brought up from the Victorian era to Mexico during the conquest of the country. Some scholars point out that it was High Society who often had photographers do this, but as technology became available everybody started doing so.

My family as good Mexicans had this pictures of myself and my sister. Sadly I couldn't get the original one to compare them, but I wanted to recreate that memory of childhood through recreating it digitally and also to bring some sort of that old casual happy feeling that is pretty common on Mexicans.

Recreation 03

Historical Photographer:



Biography: Carleton Emmons Watkins was born in Oneonta, upstate New York. He went to San Francisco during the gold rush, arriving in 1851. He traveled to California with Oneontan Collis Huntington, who later became one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, which helped Watkins later in his career.

His interest in photography started as an aide in a San Francisco portrait studio, and started taking photographs of his own in 1861. He became interested in landscape photography and soon started making photographs of California mining scenes and of Yosemite Valley. He experimented with several new photographic techniques, and eventually favored his "Mammoth Camera," which used large glass plate negatives, and a stereographic camera.

Significance: Most of the work of Watkins is based on the mining scenes of the wild California while the Gold Rush. It's mostly about the historical timing and how he managed to capture that particular movement that was really important in the history of the USA.

Techniques: He used stereoscopy camera in order to create "stereoview" photographs: Two images where placed one next to the other in order to create an ilusion of depth. It was the very first device to "enhance" the reality and to create an illusion of 3D



Motivations: I believe there is a form of metaphor in this as Watkins was a young and naive photographer exploring new techniques and new exciting photograph of a place that was young and just barely explored.



Contemporary Photograph: Takeshi Murata





Biography: Takeshi Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Film/Video/Animation.

Significance: His work take advantage of video art, which is where most of the industry is going forward these days. Most of his work is abstract creating hallucinating experiences by piecing together different video clips.

Composition: The author construct video art and sequential art in movement completely different from the standard way we think of video art. He usually mixes clips and media or sometimes creates psychodelic experience through using bits and parts of film and reconstructing them by placing them together or juxtapozing it.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: I think that he is trying to show how much we can do with so little and go beyond this idea of "sequential" art as having a structure or a solid foundation. Also, how the experience of mass media (since most of his clips are from media broadcasting) can be somewhat dazing and intrusive.

Method: What I find interesting is his take on sequential art and how much he can create on moving images with only little effects and clever editing.

Motivations: At the time he is presenting his art, video and broadcasting media were the rulers and dictators of what the average user knew about the outside world. They were the primary dealers of knowledge and as a visionary, he defies this concept by destroying it using simple editing techniques. Now with the appearance of the internet, we question the knowledge and utility of broadcasting media, since we can get the information through using the social media.

Your Opinion: I find incredible interesting that he creates appealing art out of ordinary and casual clips. I also find the psycodelic experience to be original and as an audience it intrigues me and draws me in.

Blog Prompts #11 - 15

#11 I am surrounded by my friends in the middle of the night, in my granny's house. We are eating dinner that my mom made for us. It's the second time I go back from MSU to my home during and it was this past winter break. We are using this white plastic tables and white plastic chairs, eating and having a good time. The conversation goes around us having fun and us catching up. The weather is sorta cold since we are in the outside, however it's a port, so it's really not that cold (70-80 F) We are iluminated by some yellow bulbs and some of my friends are smoking, the ambient is nice and I couldn't feel more happier among those dudes.

#12 The photo that I remember the most is the one of my dog. Is my dog in front of the window, with his paws on it, trying to reach outside. It's a little bit overexposed, so you can't really tell much on the outside other than a couple of trees and the metal bars for the window. The picture is dramatic and has this sense of "inside" and "outisde" considering also that the personality of my dog is hyperactive and having him quiet and calm for a photo is an achievement by itself.

#13 I took a picture once of a playground near my house. Problem was that the playground was constructed in the middle of a green area so the plants usually outgrow the place and stuck on some part or made some of the structures unusable, like the slide, which was dominated by a weed that grew all over it and made impossible to climb it without hurting the plant. Also the the tear and wear of the use was evident and there was no way of actually reparing it.

For me, it was amazing to see how the nature was retaking what was rightfully hers and how we as humans forget about this. I do not know the actual state of the place, but I am certain is not nice.

#14 A familiar place: My home. My place. My room. Maybe even my clothing and my underwear, that's kind of the thing that is around me everyday.

An unfamiliar place: the inside of other's bags. My own insides. The insides of my computer or the insides of my camera. These are unfamiliar places, places that I haven't been gone to.

#15 I would use to take two portraits of the same photo: Me now and overlaid a photo of me when I was ten, or try to emulate and recreate a photo from the past. There is one particular photo that I like where I am lying naked on the bed as a kid. (I do not know what is the obsession of parents and naked kids... ) but I like it because it reflects so much innocence on it and I'll try to recreate that. I have also a pic of myself on a photostudio when I was so little, I might as well take a new photo of me inside a photostudio with lights, to show how that baby from the past has grown into this artist now.

Contemporary Photographer: Andres Serrano

Biography: Serrano is from a half Honduran, half Afro-Cuban background and was raised a strict Roman Catholic. He studied from 1967 to 1969 at the Brooklyn Museum and Art School, and lives and works in New York. Serrano is represented in New York and Paris by Yvon Lambert Gallery.

His work has been exhibited in locations as varied and prestigious as the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre in London (2001) and in the Collection Lambert Avignon France (2006). (from Wikipedia)



Piss Christ, 1987. Type C Photographic print. Dimensions vary with edition.



The Morgue: Burn Victim, 1992 . Cibachrome Print. from edition of 3.

Significance: Serrano is mostly know for being part of the "shock art" movement, a term described for an artistic movement where the author tries to shock the audience with the gruesome and powerful art present, often times with them trying to find the beauty even in the most despicable situations.

This particularly can be seen in his "Shit" series, where he takes macro photograph of feces, often times, turning the gruesome picture into a well crafted product shot. The same can be said about his "Morgue" series, where he shot different corpses and the well crafting of lighting and frame created unique pictures turning something horrid into something beautiful.

Composition: Most of his work is often carefully framed and lighten in order to create a sensation of contradictory feelings: a vogue feeling of inspiring beauty and a primal natural rejection feeling due the element portrayed. Most of the time he uses elements of fashion photography and fashion elements for over produced photos applied to gruesome or shocking elements.



Heaven and Hell, 1985. Type C Photographic print. Dimensions vary with edition.




Concept/Aboutness/Idea: I believe that he speaks for a current time that we live, where the true values have been lost over the idea of the "facade". We live in a particular world where the carcass seems to be more important than the whole content and what is inside.

Serrano portrays this idea by presenting images that are extremely beautiful crafted, but the subject in the picture is often times in a pose or in a way that defies this idea of "beauty". The juxtaposition of both ideas create a meaningful experience for the audience, one that they may not forget and defies the cannons of what the scholars and the average people consider as "art".



Method: What I've seen is that most of the times the images are all created on studio: the use of carefully placed lightning and background drops gives this vibe of crafted photos, but at the same time, the subjects are somewhat taboo for the idea that society has placed over them.

Motivations: I believe Serrano tries constantly to go beyond and shock the people with his work, often times going further. Particularly, he goes lengths constantly to find how to shock them and I personally think this statement has to be taken into careful consideration, as there is a fine line between the transgressive and the downright aggressive.

Your Opinion: What particularly made me choose him was this idea of crafting and finding the beauty even in the most horrible elements. I believe that beauty, specially in photography, is quite playful and sometimes, even avoiding; often times photography is used to convey what we believe is beautiful to be kept, but we often overlook or frown upon those negative things on life that balance it.

Blog Prompts #8, #9 and #10

#8 “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” ~Richard Avedon.

I agree up until the point that the photographer is owner of the camera and he knows how to wield it in order to portray specifically something. It's the camera man who knows what he wants and where he wants it, so it's only natural that every portrait will stare back at the audience with the eyes that the camera man placed on.

#9 “You don't take a photograph, you make it.” ~Ansel Adams

I agree on this on may levels. First of all I think that no matter how spontaneous the moment you snapped, the photograph is not. It requires the photographer to frame, think on lighting, bracketing, levels, ISO and many other technicalities that bring on the exquisite taste on art. It's the search for this that makes a photography.


#10 “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.” ~John Berger


I agree and at the same time, I do not agree.

I do believe that photography is there to remind us of the things that we forget, because there are so many elements imbued in the artistic crafting that definitively gives a lot of sense to the audience of a photo and to the creator.

However, me being practiced painting and drawing in the past (and considering myself a creative artist) I have found that it doesn't matter how abstract or difficult is the painting, the audience will be remembered of something and the author again, will remember and give a specific on why he painted this, or why he used the colors or what he wanted to convey.

Class Portrait

It's not my fault! freeballing feels amazing! ;)

Recreation No. 2

Original Picture:


August Sander's / Young Farmers (1914)


Biography: August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander's first book Face of our Time (German title: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century."

Significance: What Sander tried to do was capture a moment and a specific time in space. Something was changing socially in the Germany (the entrance of the Nazi party to the power) and he was capturing that moment through the people that he portrait.

Composition: A mostly dark photograph showing three guys in the midst of a walk, somewhat posed and somewhat natural, they see straight at the camera in the middle of a blank dark field.

Concept: Capturing a moment straight out of the people that were living it. The art of Sanders is on the people that was living a change, that was living a social turmoil and on the event, rather than on the photograph.

Motivation: The motivation comes mostly from portraying the German fellowmen in an original and authentic way, without taking away any emotion, (happiness, worry or anxiety) from it.

My Recreation:

Composition: The idea of capturing an event and let it be shown in the faces or in the poses of the models is what captured my idea. I tried to emulate the "three figures" composition on my piece, yet take another turn and make it a photograph that could stand by it's own.

Concept: Again, trying to capture a moment that was happening. The three guys are just like Sanders' Countrymen: friends and people that are sharing with me a goal and a terrain (being all CAS students and we were all part of a GameJam event at that particular time). I tried to take them as natural as possible, letting them do as they needed to do.