Dash Snow

I have been following Dash Snow for quite a while. He is the kind of photographer that really disturbs you, yet you feel like you NEED to see more. Before I start picking apart his photography I feel that it is necessary to discuss the ironic nature of Dash and his imagery. When I first stumbled across his imagery I was in Europe and was reading this... thing (for lack of a better word) that seemed almost like a paragraph written by a friend of his that I found in the entrance to a gallery. It was literally a photo-copied piece of handwritten notebook paper. I wish that I still had it because the description envied this "free" lifestyle being documented at every interesting and controversial moment. The description alone brewed a great deal of curiosity within me. At the time, it was truly hard for me to figure out the art behind what he was doing. It was fairly early in my blogging/research experience (aka: my extremely lazy stage as a student) so I was unaware of the various photography cultures that exist. Although I was not interested in his subject matter(s) at the time, his style and medium definitely caught my attention. It pushed me to learn about the different possibilities that I have besides the classic 35mm SLR or D-SLR formats.
To get to my main point, Dash died July of 2009. Since I know how much everyone loves Wikipedia I figured I would pull a quote off of there that I found extremely interesting and fitting after going back and reviewing his photography: A New York Times article commented that Snow "met a junkie’s end but did so in a $325-a-night hotel room with an antique marble hearth." I began revisiting Dash's work at the beginning of Intermediate Photography (early 2009) so his imagery was extremely fresh in my mind when I read about his death. I had not researched his past much before I read about his death, and frankly (and embarrassingly) I had not researched statements that he had given or any information about the guy before he died. I did not understand that these photographs are the REAL Dash Snow. They are a unique look into this personal hell that Snow had entered after leaving home as an early-teen to live on the street. I was familiar with Nan Goldin and the great work she has done, but to me there was more with Dash Snow. He began taking pictures to see what he did not remember from the previous night and became aware that what he was experiencing and the people that he surrounded himself with were not ordinary people, and that he had an opportunity to show the world what HIS world was like. Because his lifestyle was so different to mine, it made me thirsty for more even though it grossed me out.

The film medium that is used fairly religiously throughout his photographs is Polaroid. It added to his aesthetic. These beaten, underexposed, gritty, light-leaked, scratched photos have the look and feel to go along with the look and feel of the lifestyle that he and his acquaintances lived. Even if you do not appreciate his subject matter (it takes time to appreciate it), appreciate how aware he became of what he was doing by a long process of experimentation. His awareness drove me to look into various cameras that I can EXPERIMENT with.

Just ask yourself this: Are you using the right films/photographic medium/camera for your photography?

*Corbis/Daniel Morel*

I do not have a specific artist to portray, but I read the first article that came up on the great Conscientious blog. This is something I struggle with, with my art alot of time. I like to think emotionally about my photos. My past photos in Intro, were all emotional based. Pictures I took of the place where my mom passed away. This was something that brought tears to my eyes. At first, I didn't want to use my photos I took last semester because they didn't ignite any emotion in me, but in the end they WERE super emotional, because I was super proud of them, and that was an emotion I didn't often have with my art, and it was fantastic.

However, to get back to my point, I was reading an article about the Haiti photography, and they are calling it "disaster porn." The controversy behind submitting photos to the world of the horror that happening around the world. Haiti is a disaster, and I think photography is what has allowed us to see that horror and make us step up and take action. Without reality, and horror shown to us, we have no way of knowing that it is truly "real." I would love to have my work show the problems we face in the world. Homelessness, poverty, abused sex, genocide, drugs etc... Again, back to the emotional side of me I guess.

My space

Do we obsess over owning our spaces? Does this make us feel more accepted into it? I have been wondering a lot about how we personalize the space we are in, mostly by possessions that we own/gather. This action is so routine that, I, certainly become numb to it. I would like to break myself from this obsession of gathering things but also am somewhat prideful of what I have or can obtain. I guess a good illustration would be how a person organizes their room and presents it to others. Also daily routines of dressing and makeup present to others how we want to look to them. I have a weakness for boots...loud looking boots. But I don't want to pride myself on possessions. I suppose it is a dual identity issue.

My thoughts are a bit scrambled tonight so I will just try to get to the point. I have been wondering what life is like for the incarcerated. They have only a public space. The clothes they wear are not "theirs," and the space is minimal. How can they express their identity if they have no possessions. I think this culture stresses autonomy, so how does this population display who they are/ want to be. Are they prideful of being in this space, as many of us are with our own space? I would like to pursue these thoughts by possibly taking a camera to their "space".

Artist Song Dong displays well what I am trying to get across. From what I gather he did a collaboration installation piece with his mother who gathered all of her possessions from a decade, after her husband's tragic death, and put it into a display. I think this shows how much we are capable of consuming without a second glance. I wonder how and why do the possessions we own attain so much value? I know personally that objects can hold sentimental value, possibly too much. I will close with a quote from fight club. "The things you own end up owning you."

Josh Quigley

I have looked through Josh Quigley's photographs a few times and my mind can't wrap around what topics he's addressing or not addressing. The two that I posted are the ones that catch my attention the most out of what I have seen. I read a few sentences about the general concept, that they are "capturing unabashed performances of sexuality and domesticity in contemporary American society." Knowing that they are staged makes me feel like there is something more that he is trying to get at than just capturing a moment.. that's my question.

It has to be more than just her getting out of the hot tub. The light is focused on her, accentuating her curves as she emerges from the water while the other figures are in the shadows. The other girl in the hot tub is holding a glass of wine, and she doesn't look like she's 21+. I am not naive enough to say that any of these situations don't happen, so I feel like it's a good thing to surface what people aren't accustomed to seeing since we are such a private society.

In the second photo of the little boy holding the remote to a television full of nude women, I feel like I can pull more meaning out of it. Technology provides so many outlets to access pornography, it's sad to think that the media can get to your kids faster than they are able to grow up not knowing about these things till parent figures think that they should hear "the talk" or what have you. This younger kid could have stumbled upon this, or could be curious after having seen it before. With the kid being the only one in the frame I feel like I have to do something to protect them. I feel like there should be a slogan like "this is why you shouldn't leave your kids alone with your cable provider" or something along those lines. But of course anyone can write more with something they don't agree with. Some of Quigley's other photographs are more lighthearted. I think the fact that they are staged representations of everyday life is what gets me. Are staged representations supposed to be just that or more?

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