Critique 2

After my second round of taking pictures I was feeling a little confused.  All of my images for the first critique were taken in one particular neighborhood and I felt I captured a certain look through a certain style.  I wanted to try and stick with the same feel from my previous photos but I found it very difficult to do while shooting in such a different location.  I ended up walking for awhile just waiting for something ordinary to pop out in a peculiar way, I even spent time shooting in a dog park I came across (no, i don't have a dog... one man thought I was some official trying to find evidence to shut them down).  When I was done photographing I sat and looked through my photos.  Although I felt I had some strong images, I wasn't quite sure if they fit in with what I had done previously.  I was still slightly unsure about what I wanted my photographs to convey and so I was hoping that my photos would basically speak to me.  Originally I was hoping to convey some aspect of American life from a different perspective and hold some social commentary on how we live.  However this turned out to be a little more difficult to get across in my photos than I thought.  The feedback I received in the critique today definitely helped me center my ideas.  I  want to show the world very matter-of-factly, but show things and spaces that are typically overlooked, a new perspective on the ordinary.  I am not  a fan of deadpan photography, to me it has little substance and meaning, so I am hoping that in the end my photographs don't completely fall in that category.  Christian had an interesting comment during the critique that I hope to base my final photographs around.  He said that my photographs seem to show a human presence without the actual presence of a human in the photograph. 

The photograph I probably spent the most time editing was the photograph of the sunglasses on the street.  However I spent  a fair amount of time on all of them because I wanted to try and make them all have the same warm feel.  I discovered that even though my images are black and white, I am still able to adjust the temperature and saturation and vibrancy.  I adjusted these all equally on each of the photos so they all had that warmth. Below is my original, un-edited photograph of the sunglasses.

Jeanne Dunning

Jeanne Dunning has focused her photography career on the body (the female body in particular) and food since the late 80’s.   She creates color photographs that “questions issues of identity, sexuality, and the interior and exterior self”(MOCP).  Her photographs force the viewer to look at something that is taboo in our society or consistently overlooked. “In particular, she explores the boundaries that distinguish male from female, normal from abnormal, and erotic from grotesque. Central to her work is perception. Dunning's photographs present unusual, often very close-up views of familiar subjects, ranging from fruit and vegetables to human body parts. In many of her works, first impressions do not add up, and viewers find that the image they are looking at depicts something quite different from what it at first appeared to be”(Jacobson).  Dunning’s work would fall under the genres of landscape, still life, and portraiture.  However, the approach that Dunning takes with these genres is not the traditional one.  Her “landscapes” are extreme close-ups of body parts in a way that resembles a landscape.  Dunning’s portraits are also taken with a different approach, photographing the backs of the heads of the subjects rather than the front.  In a separate series, Dunning has photographed her subjects, as you would see in the traditional passport photo.  Probably one of Dunning’s most recognized series is the “blob”.  In these photographs, as well as in some of her other photographs of women, Dunning has added something unexpected, a large flesh colored sac attached to its subject, and faint mustaches on the faces of other women.  Through doing this, “Dunning explores notions of female beauty and physical identity”(Jacobson). 

Untitled with Food,  1996

In the Bathtub 2,  1999

Neck (+ Detail no. 16), 1992

Study After Red Detail,  1994

Detailed 1 (+ Untitled body),  1997

Hand Cavern, 1997

Untitled, 2001

The Blob 4, 1999

Hand Hole, 1994

Double Mustache, 1992

Photographs courtesy of MOMA, MOCP, and Artnet

I have mixed feelings about Jeanne’s work.  I applaud her for trying to turn the familiar into something unexpected by adding in a foreign prop or by shooting shockingly close up and that her photographs have a very deep underlying meaning.  However, I find her work almost irritating that certain photographs, like the “blob”, appear so unnatural looking.  I had the same feeling looking at Jeanne Dunnings “Double Moustache” as I did when I saw Kiki Smith’s “Wolf Girl”; unmoved.  Although I find Dunning’s photographs interesting, they just seem flat to me and don’t really set off a strong positive emotion.  I think that to know Dunning’s intentions helps make her photographs stronger because then you can think about why she chose to do what she did to express what she wanted.  Without knowing the meaning when I first viewed Dunning’s work I felt frustrated and this frustration seemed to grow after each image.  I attribute this frustration to the repetition within the images.  Each series seems like different version of not just the same idea but also the same execution of that idea with a slight variety. Seeing 5 separate photographs of the back of women’s heads and still not knowing completely what the artist is getting at feels like Dunning is saying “see what I did? Do you get it? Oh, well look at this version of it. Still no? Okay what about this one?”

In my opinion, an artist’s intent and their execution of their intent are weighted fairly equally.  I think Dunning has strong intent that drives her work and she definitely executes the idea in unique ways.  However, I think her execution, although unique, does not reach the full potential that such a deep theme has.