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Critique?
nothing to critiq there are butiful Aug 05 14 08:54 pm Link not really a valid subject considering the "art" posted and the sublime mystic point of the OP...art is subjective, no reason or rhyme, Andy W was a marketer, not an artist....the pictures...and I say pictures...are boring...just as mine are...what is the point...who cares what some rich idiot paid for something or marketing, is all a game, you win or lose, have fun and get over it if you lose, have a backup plan tho....lol lol lol Aug 05 14 09:12 pm Link howard r wrote: Quite. I purposefully avoided reading about thirty images I selected over six months that caught my attention and I'd never seen before. Aug 06 14 03:29 am Link A few more replies before I give my first impressions as they were before research. And then I will reveal their origins. So please join in and don't be afraid to play and respond without researching. Trust yourselves.  Aug 06 14 03:48 am Link I still have not researched the last two pictures so here goes my take on them: 2.- It is nice and fine in a sort of evocative way. The kind of picture that might make a certain type of viewer go "I wonder what is going on inside those little buildings. I can imagine the stories of princes and aristocrats and clergy doing their thing within them". I am not that type of viewer but I can see how some might like it that way. I like how the trees at the right create repetition with the buildings at the left. All those pointy shapes heading to the sky. The heavy structure at the right "breaks" the composition but it also provides depth, dimension, scale. I like that. It is a nice looking image but it does not do much else for me beyond the decorative. A lot of people might be into it for its pretty colours and the "stories" they can make up with the elements provided. 3.- Lovely use of the effect. I like how the top part of the body looks like the model is already fading into nothingness, like evaporation. My eye feels drawn more towards the bottom part because it is the darker area and it is less blurry but I do not think that looking at the model's butt was the goal of this picture. I like the two top thirds of the picture, with the fading and the curves. I doubt this picture will do well with the test of time. Out of all the three pictures, I think this is the one that looks more generic and easier to copy and derivate from. Plenty of lousy photographers can replicate the effect. Its importance might be of historical reference? Maybe this picture is already derivative of someone else? I would not hang any of these pictures in my walls but that is mostly a thing of my personal taste. We do not need to like an image just because it is considered a serious work of art. However, anyone who wants to make good pictures should study what curators and editors consider to be "good". Anyone who wants to make good pictures should be able to acknowledge the qualities in such work. Aug 06 14 08:57 am Link 4 R D wrote: Interesting and honest thoughts thank you! Aug 06 14 09:08 am Link Ok, I just researched them. Thankfully, I am not ashamed of anything I said.  Aug 06 14 09:09 am Link mophotoart wrote: Sublime mystic? Aug 06 14 09:10 am Link 4 R D wrote: I recognized the first and assumed the others had similar stories. Aug 06 14 09:19 am Link NothingIsRealButTheGirl wrote: But that wasn't the question. Aug 06 14 09:21 am Link I live near the river in the first shot. To me It's as boring here as it is where it was taken. Dull. The second one looks like a very young child or a zoo animal was given a camera. - Edit - there's a monkey in a zoo somewhere I was told about that has a camera. Though I've never seen what the said monkey produces, this is what I'd expect. The third one completely draws me in. There's a mystery about it that makes me want to know more. Aug 06 14 09:28 am Link None of them interest me enough to critique them. No opinion other than they are boring to me. Aug 06 14 11:08 am Link OK at this point I will add mine. Of course because I selected them, they had caught my attention. That doesn't mean that I liked them particularly. But if an image catches one's attention then it has had a visual impact. Not that it will on everyone or even most. But they did on me. 1.For those familiar with my photography, perhaps the reason for the first one may be evident.  I am just a hobbyist photographer with no technical skill. But I like finding the almost abstract in bleak landscape sometimes. That's my online version and I needed to show the whole feature but I have it abstract cropped for myself. So the river picture I kept looking at as I like the bleakness. I wondered if it was a reduction of geographic and natural or human features to the bare minimum. I thought it was so straight it probably had some at least edited out. As we do this with superfluous detail as a matter of course I liked it. I certainly would hang it in my home maybe filling one wall. I.would probably tire if it after a few years though. As one does wallpaper or those post modern striped Paul Smith style curtains. But for now I like antithesis if you like of those chocolate box full wall pics of the Rockies, or thatched cottages, or New York that were popular in the 80s. This one by contrast to me had no busyness and calming abstraction. I also liked the idea of stillness with the line of moving water. I wondered why the photographer had not reduced that to flat grey. That seemed logical unless he wanted to draw the attention to the movement of the water. 2. This took my attention because it slightly disturbed me. Somehow evocative of some Herzog or John Carpenter or David Lynch imagery. I wanted to put some weird buzzing on while I looked at it. It seemed to me to be not only anti art, but reduced to random fleeting impression. As others have said like an accident. Even worse, like it had been taken like those night time nature images where you don't know what you are going to get. Or a snap from a drone. Disturbing because if that maybe - it's Russia...legacy of cold war movies paranoia. A soy drugged in Moscow I don't know. Somehow, random ; without feeling. Utter abstraction if something beautiful. Almost nihilistic. In a way that seemed to be making a comment on those tourist mistake throwaway camera pics. Again, I'd hang it I thought. This photographer is a real artist. He/she managed to fascinate me and disturb me and somehow make me nostalgic for a place I've never been. Is it my childhood snaps that I harbor memories off? Could be. Exciting exotic fleeting and the only memories left my badly framed childhood snaps. 3. I think this ethereal, a lost moment that perhaps never was. Transient, but in the opposite way to 2. It haunts me with its beauty. She exists, barely. Fragile. A real person for a moment I want to touch to see if she is real, was real. The jacket, movement dynamic, luminous blonde quality is almost abstract but it's so gently and sensitively observed. So.much so the fleeting moment is like I was there. I remember the image as though I was I think because my mind had made me make sense of it. My favourite. Def do tf with him/her. Figure seems confident yet vulnerable becaus she doesn't know I'm there. It's also to me a great fashion mag pic because it makes me want to see more of the jacket. But all that lingers - she's long gone - is maybe her perfume. If I was in advertising, I'd use this to advertise a perfume with an ethereal name. Somehow this is a woman I want to be, smell like, and then gone leaving you with just an essence. That may sound naff but I'm being honest, and I'm certainly no advertising person  But I like them all. The abstraction is like music somehow I can't explain. So I assigned them music. I sometimes do this with pictures. 1. Kraftwerk autobahn because the river is reduced to motorway 2. Bauhaus The Passion of Lovers . No idea why. It's buzzy. And disturbing. Yet romantic, like the Russian looking city skyline in pic yet there's no romance where there should be. 3. Blondie 'Touched by your Presence Dear' Because I was. I won't say anything about the stories behind them until tomorrow in case anyone else wants to play. Please don't let on if you know. I only now know the titles and photographers and values. I haven't read anything about them on purpose. I'm WAY off the mark on one of them though . I know that! Don't laugh Probably on the others too. But those were my honest responses on seeing them and looking at them a lot. Strange though. Why do I detest abstract painting yet love it in photography? I am far from knowledgeable about art or photography and don't even have a gcse. But I'm not a 'I know what I like' person either. I picked up lots of stuff from artists and photographers, but I don't read about it much. So haven't any preconceived ideas where the thread would go but thx for contributing so far. Hopefully we will get a few more. And maybe discuss after I reveal the details. Aug 06 14 01:32 pm Link Are models allowed to play? I don't necessarily have the language to explain what I like or dislike about the images and as there's no artist statement I can only go with how I see the images and generally provoke. The first one I really like. I like the use of colour and repetition of shape/line ect. It's satisfying and somewhat conveys emotion to me. The second one I found 'meh' overall, but I did like the use of colours. The third I was just 'meh' about and couldn't really appreciate in any meaningful way. Aug 06 14 01:47 pm Link Emily Decoteau wrote: Yes everyone is allowed to play. I don't think there are right and wrong answers. It's just interesting how we all respond differently. Aug 06 14 01:57 pm Link Eliza C new portfolio wrote: Ah, I agree, you are right. Aug 06 14 02:52 pm Link Addendum to My Previous Response to Photo 3 I recalled a very disturbing cinematic special effect after observing photo 3. I don't know why I didn't mention it at the time, maybe I was too frightened. I cannot remember if it was in Jakob's Ladder or 12 Monkeys. Might have been both or neither. I'm pretty sure the cinematographer dragged the shutter and the actor, in character and costume of someone in a filthy insane asylum moved their head vigorously while keeping the rest of their hunched body still. This was an hallucination by the films protagonist, recently brought into the asylum and very fucked up. In addition to the visual there was a disturbing guttural sound, coming out from deep in someone's throat. Quite effectively frightening. For some reason photo #3 brought this image to my mind several times even though it really only vaguely seems to use the same effect (perhaps with the billowy arms) and seems to be otherwise a mellow man whose head is very still. Aug 06 14 03:04 pm Link |
