Week 4 Course Update: War! What is it Good For?

Another fun-filled week has come and gone. Where do the time go??

This day in History: October 1st

Monday morning jumped off as usual with digital imaging. Class was spent looking through some of our work and also work that we appreciated that used various digital manipulation techniques. One of the photos I showed was by my current favorite photographer Florian Maier-Aichen. I’m probably the last person to have seen his work but in case I’m not:

Florian has a show up at Gagosian Gallery in London but it comes down in two days (October 3, 2009).

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Monday afternoon was spent reading for Criticism & Theory. I found the readings pretty tough to get through. Them 1930s Marxist writers can be tough!  I was one of the only people in the class not to have read Walter Benjamin’s “The Work Of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” several times before, so I would suggest checking it out.

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Tuesday was more reading for Criticism & Theory (I told you I’m a slow reader) and then class that afternoon. I had a meeting with the professor about my final web-based project, just to get a sense of what interests me. I said I was curious to explore the development of conflict photography and he told me to read some Alfredo Jaar. For next week I have to lead the discussion of Martha Rosler’s essay “In, Around and Afterthoughts (On Documentary Photography)” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 303-342.

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Wednesday was a good day, but long. I had spent Tuesday night at the Moving Walls opening and had a late night. Combine that with my 5:30am wake up on Wednesday morning and I was wiped out. If you’re planning an MFA schedule, try to not have classes from 10am to 9pm!

Lighting was interesting. We began to play with multiple lights. Using 3 crappy lights, we were introduced to 3-point lighting and Rembrandt lighting. We began with what seemed to be a modified version with a background light instead of a back light but then moved the background light around to see what would happen:

In Crit news: Penelope is back from China! Crit was fun, I didn’t show this week but it was nice to be looking at and discussing other students’ work.

Finally, in Past Tense, Present Tense, I had to curate a show. My general idea was a show of work that is exploring 21st Century war in a new and interesting way. While I’ve seen some of these bodies of work shown, I thought that this mix would be interesting:

first up, the stills:

Ben Lowy’s Perspectives (Up right now at OSI):

Peter Van Agtmael’s Grafitti:

Simon Norfolk‘s Missile Launches from Full Spectrum Dominance:

Trevor Paglen’s Limit Telephotography:

Broomberg & Chanarin The Day Nobody Died:

And then a little video (sorry for the bad quality):

Tim Hetherington

We also had to pick a location for the work to be shown. I decided somewhere like The Vietnam War Memorial or Ground Zero. Somewhere that people are in a contemplative mood, already considering the nature of war.

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That was my week in school. Tonight I’ll be checking out a few openings and spending the next few days shooting.