Artist Blog: Ernst Haas

Ernst Haas is another recent artist that i just discovered that i feel is relative to the work i am creating now. Ernst was born in 1921 in Vienna. His passion for photography started when he was just a child, and his first real work was photographing very emotional compositions of prisoners from the war returning in 1950. From then on, he started focusing more on color and the explosion of mixtures between color and composition.
His artwork, like these two pieces, resemble my new exploration with color, and what it represents and resembles through my own artwork. The color is helping me look more at my pieces in association with what i remember and miss from Kenya. The lower photograph reminds me of the beauty, color, and wildness that Kenya reminds me of. This piece was also taken by Ernst Haas, and it reactivates my love with the work i am doing.
Things that i need to draw out from this artist that i feel resemble and will help me in my own work are the vivid, full, and rich color, and the subject matter in relation to what i am going to show in my art.
The color is extremely important because beauty and color in these images give me feelings of what i remember from my childhood. Kenya, in places were dirty, dusty, and unpleasant. However, in some ways, i find those things beautiful, even though physically, it does not resemble anything that someone would want to look at. This idea of 'beauty' is because i grew up in a place that i found beautiful, even if it physically was disgusting. There is also the physically pleasing beauty, such as the above photograph, which reminds me so much of the trips and travels we made, all over the country.
Secondly, the actual subject matter is in itself beautiful, and that is crucial to my imagery as well. Beautiful to me would mean the above definition of what i find beautiful is, the subject matter might not be physically beautiful, but it means something to me, and therefore has 'beauty'.
The next step is to find what i find is the central aspect of my thoughts on beauty in Kenya, because i feel that it would be directly related to the 'thing' that i feel is 'Kenya' to me.

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Artist Blog: Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander was born on July 14th 1934, and studied at the Art Center College of Design located in Pasadena, California. After finishing school Lee explored with his photographs for the next thirty years, and his work varied thoroughly. He started by photographing musicians for their covers and went on to take nude photographs of Madonna. During his career, he also published a couple of books, including a book on self portraits.

In his self-portrait book, Lee Friedlander, he has a quote that i find very interesting about what he feels about a self-portrait, and a face. Quoting him, he says "TO KNOW ONE'S OWN STATE IS NOT A SIMPLE MATTER. ONE CANNOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT ONE'S OWN FACE WITH ONES OWN EYES, FOR EXAMPLE. ONE HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO LOOK AT ONE'S REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. THROUGH EXPERIENCE, WE WILL COME TO BELIEVE THAT THE IMAGE IS CORRECT, BUT THAT IS ALL .

I interpret this as meaning how we can never really see our own face. We have to use other tools that are outside of our human anatomy to visualize what we might look like. His photographs in his book also resemble his work. The examples above show similarities in my own work. My previous work resembles the first photograph, only a shadow of the man, whereas the second reminds me of the work i am constructing now. With this second photograph, it reminds me of my own blending and opposing identities in concept. He has quite a few more of these portraits of identity, which i am continually looking at.

http://graememitchell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/friedlander_nyc_1966.jpg
http://images.publicradio.org/content/2008/06/27/20080627_california_33.jpg