Landscape: Activity 3

Activity 3

Compare and contrast a landscape photograph with a landscape painting. Discuss the expressive possibilities of each medium using your examples to illustrate your argument. Choose your examples carefully as representative of the medium.

Example: The two images below are similar in subject matter, how are they similar? How are they different? What options does a painter have compared to the options a photographer has in terms of expression.

David Edwards
A Monsoon Storm In The Grand Canyon

Ed Mel
Ascending Storm

My Response

Al Levenson
Montezuma's Castle

Teresa Beyer
Montezuma Castle II

The subject for both of the images above is obviously Montezuma Castle, but the two pictures are easy to tell apart from one another. The top picture is a photograph and the bottom one is a painting. Both images take place at the same time of day, but with different angles and colors. These are some of the options a painter has that a photographer doesn't. Painters can choose the colors they work with to make the picture, while a photographer would have to edit colors and brightness during post processing. Another one of the options a painter has is perspective. Since Montezuma Castle is a national monument, the top picture is the closest someone is legally allowed to get to the site and capturing a close up picture is difficult unless one has the proper equipment (I would know, I use to live there). I guess some things just turn up better in a painting than they would in a picture.

Landscape: Activity 2

Activity 2
Find two landscape photographs that question social values or act as a metaphor for personal issues that the photographer is trying to express. Discuss whether the communication is clear or ambiguous and how this communication is conveyed.

Example: What does the image below say about humans need to control the environment? Or, does it indicate an attempt to recreate a time long past and remind people of their outdoor beginnings? What do you think? Does it say anything different?

My Response

Demolition - Joe Trevino. This picture depicts a house about to be demolished in Buckeye, AZ. The social value in the picture is change. The house in the picture is damaged and has a pretty messy yard, but there is an office in the background (the grey building to the left of the yellow one). The message is pretty clear that the house is about to be brought down but the "why" is unclear, is the house being razed to make way for an improvement to the aforementioned office in the background or is the house just an eyesore? Who knows, all that can be said is, change is on the way.

Outreached Hand - DeviantArt.com. This picture is shot from a first person view of a hand reaching out. Although blurred (due to shallow depth of field), cars and a street are visible in the background. I believe the picture to be a metaphor for a social value of helping one in need. The hand represents a man in need (which explains why it is held out) and the blurred cars represent all the people that pass the man without stopping to help or ask what's wrong. I The communication is rather ambiguous, for all I know the picture has no meaning and was just meant to look cool, but I could be wrong. 

Landscape: Activity 1

Activity 1
View the image by Walker Evans on this page and describe what you can actually see (objective analysis) and what you think the image is about (subjective analysis).

Discuss how effective Walker Evans has been in using a landscape image to communicate a point of view. Can this photograph be considered as Art? Give two reasons to support your answer.

Make sure you include the image in your blog post with credit in the citation. When you analyze the photo, look for deeper meaning beyond the literal description of the Photo.

Bethlehem, Graveyard and Steel Mill - Walker Evans 1935 © Walker Evans Archive, 1994, 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

My Response

I believe Walker Evans was effective in his use of this landscape image to document a time in American history. Walker Evans was tasked by the FSA (Farm Security Administration) to document American life during the great depression, and this picture is one of the results of that task. I believe this image can be considered art because despite being meant to document an era, it can still draw an emotional response from whoever views it and the picture expresses an idea that gets people (or, at least me) to think. 

The message that this images gives me is that you work, you go home, and then you die, but the world keeps going on without you. I get the first part of that message because of the order of the buildings: factories in the back, houses in the middle, and then the graveyard in the foreground. The last part comes from the observation that the far right factory has smoke coming out of the plume still. I could be wrong, but since Evans never said that there was a specific message within the image, everything is up for interpretation.