Analigital

Landscape I am not a landscape kind of guy. I do a lot of travel photography and thus if I do take landscape photos, most of them came from my travel. I like playing with lighting in my photos and I feel like I can only take good photos when the lighting is right (also the reason why I don't do much landscape, I rely too much on sunlight - sadly - and I normally wouldn't waste a frame of film even when the scene is nice but the lighting is wrong). However, there is one relevant (I guess?) type of photography which I do excessively, skyscape! I don't know what is so interesting of the clouds and sky, but if you will definitely see me pointing my camera up during a nice weather day (It got to point where it became my habit to always have my camera in my hands whenever flying, during takeoff)

In this chapter, Rexer discusses landscape photography and its meaning. He posed questions such as "People still make such pictures by the tens of thousands, but for what purpose, exactly? For memory's sake?" [p.78]. To me, landscape photographs are exactly memories of myself, of places where I visited, so that in the future, I can browse through them with my children, pointed at places telling my stories and experiences regarding to those particular places, and say "that's how they look back then". Nature changes, and now under the influence of human, changes even faster and more drastically. We see how development takes place by looking at historical pictures of New York City, we see how destructive we are by looking at old pictures of the Amazon rainforest. Landscape photograph is the memory of human being. And, now I know where they got the names MacOS Yosemite and MacOS El Capitan from lmao.

Abstraction "It offers an occasion to see beyond images with  the mind's eye and memory's lens" [p.114] I like to think of abstraction as a means for a photographer to express emotions and feelings without their photographs being representational. In that sense, photography opens a whole world of interpretation, and becomes truly free. While these pictures aren't as "abstract" as some of the examples in Rexer's book, I still feel like they have some mysterious aspects that are somewhat abstract to me... in some sense. To me, they all share a certain mood but also it is hard to explain since they all lack a context that usually helps convey the meaning of a photograph.

Response to The Critical Eye - Abstraction in Photography: Picture Nothing In this chapter, Rexer discusses a rather unfamiliar way of taking pictures and how photography can be abstract. He states that the act of taking a photo itself is abstract in its own way: "The act of carving an instant out of temporal  context and holding it open produces something truly foreign to experience." I find this statement to be very interesting as it sheds a new light into photography, a perspective that I have never thought of before. Rexer supports his claim that photography can be abstract by providing the example of Ellen Carey's Mourning Wall . It is true photography in its own sense, since it consists of pictures taken from a polaroid camera. And, instead of capturing representation of the real worlds, Carey decided to capture an abstract surface, giving viewers the opportunity to see beyond the images itself.

Selfies were never my thing. First of all, I am very bad at acting and posing and secondly, the position behind the camera is always where I am most comfortable with. Nevertheless, it's not that I don't do selfies. Actually, I take quite a lot of selfies (of my feet to be exact! No fetish lol!). I like the idea of capturing myself in places that I like, where I feel the most comfy. Probably the most unsophisticated kinds of photos, but I like how they are versions of me exactly like what I see with my own eyes. Probably looking at my pictures, you can never know where I was at, or how I was feeling at that moment, but they are pieces of memory to myself, like a kind of diary that only I understand. Probably it's also a kind of narcissism just like how Rexer referred the film camera as "the original machine for making narcissists" ?

From self-portrait to Selfie I always find the term self-portrait and selfie to be interchangeable, both taking form of having oneself as the content of one's photographs. And, in my opinion, selfies do not necessarily always go with narcissism, since every photographers (or, in the case of present day, everybody) seem to have different purposes other than narcissistic reason when taking self-portraits. For example, in the case of Vivian Maier, her selfies seem to be means of her capturing and archiving moments in her life, and she was never meant for her photos to be seen by anybody other than her. In selfies, I believe the photos are not the artwork, but photographers themselves. To create a selfie, a photographer turn himself/herself into an art object and perform for his/her audiences. Selfies give artists a world of freedom. And, it is fascinating to know that our grandmas used to take selfies lol!

I feel disconnected.  Quarantine is not easy to enjoy, especially when family is thousands of miles away.  I find myself spending more and more time doing useless things. I do hope things will get better though. But for now, I find myself locked inside a box.

In this chapter, Rexer discussed about biography and the connection between an artist's life and his/her artwork. We are able to go along with Rexer in a train to Andre Kertész the photographer's life, and see how his images change and reflect different periods of his life. I really like how Kertész always found metaphors for his inner emotions and expressed them inside his photographs, like Rexer wrote: "In an age of confessional photography, the career of Kertész shows how revealing and personal photography can be without always referring directly to the person behind the camera. Reading through this chapter, we, as readers, might not know how he look like, but we could definitely feel like we know him as a person, feeling his emotions, just by looking at his pictures.

"Formally speaking, haven't all the pictures already been taken, even if the content changes? Is there any image that is not already so familiar as to avoid becoming a cliché?" [p.142] With the help of technology and the popularity of social media, taking photos has never been so easy that photography nowadays is becoming more and more diluted. Everything has already been captured such that originality and creativity in photography has become more difficult than ever. For this project, I tried using my photos, combining with editing tools in Photoshop in order to create a new perspective into the cliché. Each of these photos is two photos. Tropical island - view from Hiett 421 Hiking from San Francisco to Colman New York - Chicago line

"As photographs have become easier to make, faster to process, and easier to transmit, the importance of their existence as objects has diminished.  As a film photo enthusiast, I really feel this way after I started switching from digital to analog. Like most people, I picked up my photography hobby with a digital camera (I still remember it was a Nikon D70s). Due to its convenience, the process of taking photos was quick and easy. I was able to develop my interest in photography and learn quickly how cameras work (apertures, shutter speeds, etc.). After a year, I started to get bored of my lens and wanted to get a new one. I picked up a film camera lens because I did not have enough money for a modern digital lens (luckily lol) and slowly started stepping in the world of analog. Initially, the limitation of only 24 - 36 frames per roll and the fact that I cannot view my photo after shooting were ridiculous to me. However, after a while, I realized it was due to this limitatio...

"This is the age of sourceless images, 'just pictures,' itinerate images, divorced from their original contexts, circulating in digital space with completely fungible dimensions, colors, and resolutions, none unique or expressive, defeating the mind's ability to organize them all and forming a kind of atmosphere." [p.12] I find all those "just pictures" photographs to be quite interesting. It incorporates a randomness into images, possibly so random that you could hardly notice in everyday life unless you randomly capture a moment of it. These are pictures that I don't even remember taking, or where they were taken. They are "just pictures," divorced from their original contexts, but unique and expressive. They are random pieces of time, capturing memories of everyday life that's often go unnoticed.

The Critical Eye: Introduction In the first section of the book, Rexer questions the nature of photographs and photography in modern world. I agree with his idea that photography can be divided into fine art, commercial and vernacular domains, and that "art is a small island in an ocean of images". Now, with the help of technology, photography has become so popular as a medium that it is accessible to almost everyone. I guess in this modern world, every one of us is a photographer. Many people may disagree with me, but I believe every picture we take daily serves as a means for self expression (whether it is a carefully edited portrait uploaded on Instagram, or a simple fun selfie), and art, to me, is a form of self expression. Another idea that I find interesting is the fact that "photographs need words in order to be understood, appreciated, and shared." This may be true for some, but not all photographs in my opinion. Take the first photo in the book, ...