Hank Thomas talked alot about his varying work, and jumped around a bit in his styles and focus. I do feel that one of the most important pieces that he focused on was actually how he went discussing his cousin's death. His cousin was robbed, and then killed, and he dealt with it by expressing it through a few different mediums and art styles. One way he expressed the story was through a stop motion film with action figures, and he re-enacted the whole story out, and how it happened. This of course is such a personal, and I imagine painful way to express his emotion, but in ways I feel it is similar to me, the way we both try and react an emotion of uncomfortability from the viewer, by expressing an event extremely personal to only the artist that creats it. I think the difference is that I am struggling getting my artwork of this personal matter, to be easily understood and seen in the artwork. I learned a few different things from seeing his work, and the way he presents it, so that the viewer can understand and follow. Here are some stills of his work, which he also created to stand separately from the film.
He also went another way with this, which I found even more intriguing and creative, taking the art of concept photography, and crossing it over into the world of commercial photography.
In this work, he portrays the story of his cousins death, and markets it as if it was a commercial for Mastercard. The insanity related this, at least to me, stands out like a sore thumb. The use of a slogan like this, gives me thoughts of how i could possibly market my work as if it was a product. My immediate thoughts bring about how my constant motion and restlessness could be a commercial for Traveler's and how my identity, and all the personal issues inside that deal with this work would just be thrown out the window with no regard to what it might mean. This is definitely something to keep in mind while creating work, and how someone might want to use your photography for something that it was not intended to.
Hank Thomas went on to explain how this launched him to figure out stereotypes in commercials for products of today, and how strong, and abrupt some of them still are. He also created his own pieces that resemble commercial product advertisements, yet had extremely weighted and stereotypical issues and hidden meanings. Overall, I found Hank Thomas's talk really useful in giving me more abrupt and expanded ideas about how identity and my personal issues in my work relate to the outside world.
http://81press.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/priceless.jpg
http://chic-cityrats.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452021d69e201053613009f970b-800wi
