Midterm

    The artist I was assigned to talk about is Catherine Opie. Catherine Opie is an american artist. Her work is based on documentary photography. She was born in 1961 in Sandusky, Ohio and then later on moved to California when she was a teenager. Catherine talks about how she was only interested in the architecture of American cities. She would "empty" out these cities and just take photographs of building and structures by itself. You would not see any people or animals inside of these portraits. After she started to photograph in the streets again though, she explains how she was brought back to the roots go street photography. She also talks about seducing the viewer in a different way to pictures besides just relying on the body and color. She realized that it was time to stop emptying out cities and start documenting notions in time. Notions of American landscape in terms of identity. Catherine tells about how she photographed Lake Eerie in Ohio but one of the things she did not like was the waves. There are photographs that she takes of the same thing but just in different seasons. One of her photographs she talked about is one that was going to to be placed in a hospital. She wanted it to be just right, to be life changing whether you were in the hospital receiving good news or bad news. I found what she said next extremely interesting. She said wanted people to look at her picture and for it to make them feel like an escape for them. This was how she got through hard and emotional time during her life. As you can see in the above photographs the first one could be considered an empty portrait because all it is, is a mountain, trees, and water. The second photograph though is more when she changed her view and started photographing notions in time. This photograph was from the Inaugural series in 2009. When choosing her photographs she lines then all up on the wall so she can compare them and see which aspects she likes from them the most. She explains that it's more than just getting a nice shot of something that makes a picture good. The light and image needs to be balanced to really have a portrait.  You can see the people standing up watching the screen to see the president. This is capturing a specific moment in time. The materials she basically uses is her camera and paper she prints the pictures on. I think that her work is successful and complete exploration in her ideas. You can tell by her photography, it speaks for itself. She captures a time and events in some of here photographs such as the Inaugural photograph and then captures a soothing more comforting photo where you can envision yourself in such as the mouton picture or the picture of the man with the surfboard at the beach. This video definitely made me think differently about the way artists work. It made me think about what exactly the artist is trying to explain or what the reason is for creating that piece of art they made. What story is it trying to tell? Why did they pick this specific thing? Is the art supposed to have a deeper meaning? Is it supposed to be soothing and provide a way of escape like some of Catherine's works do? These are all questions that I will ask myself now when looking art different types of art. The only thing I did find surprising is the pictures of the emptied out cities. I found it surprising because sometimes pictures like that can be bland or boring but the pictures that Catherine took gave you a look at the architecture and the emphasis that was put in to build certain buildings. Along with that it also left me with a sense of intrigue. It had me wonder about what was actually happening at that place in that specific time that the picture was taken. There are no people in the pictures to help suggest what's taking place, you are only left with your mind to help you imagine what could be taking place in that city in the photo.