This is not only a beautiful image but also an excellent representation of contemporary issues. "Beth Dow is a photographer who uses historical references and traditional processes to address contemporary issues of land use and our experience of time."her ability to capture the essence and beauty of nature while still retaining a deeper meaning and emphasis on environmental issues really speaks to her character. It is interesting to view her work through very traditional processes which reflect the history and of nature. She seems to be making a statement on the age and origin of land, and how our environment has been around long before human inhabitants yet we still view land as if it is solely ours. Her use of black and white photographs gives her work a feeling of age and also expression of time while still commentating on her perception of land and land use. It is nice to see an artist take a stand on contemporary issues without overwhelming her work with opinions. Dow still creates beautiful and aesthetically pleasing pieces while still retaining a deeper opinion on contemporary issues.
Looking through Beth's Dow's website and porfolios was quite an experience. Her images are very surreal. Everything about each photograph feels serene, calm, peaceful, and quite. Yet there is still the existence of tension. I feel slightly uneasy looking at each photograph and I can't explain why. Each picture feels like an intricately done pencil drawing. I also think it's an interesting subject choice. I was particularly intrigued by her photos of ruins and nature. I see the correlation of returning to nature and the use of the land. I think her work is very quite and calm, yet upon further investigation speaks quite loudly.
10/26/10 Jackie San Fillipo ADPIII Weekly Statements
After watching the documentary about factories in China and looking at Beth Dow's portfolio, I saw an interesting correlation between the two. The Documentary was moving, shocking, and sad to me. The factories are huge, almost the size of small cities, and all the workers wear the same yellow jackets and are treated as robots. Children learn to piece together complex equipment in a number of seconds. One girl that was interviewed who was no older than 16 could make over 400 small electronic products a day. The workers did not seem unhappy, but the amount of E waste and manufacturing that surrounded them made me think about our surroundings and just how much they have changed. Small children in China played in large piles of CDs as if they were huge snow piles. This scene pretty much embodied how much technology has affected out society. Beth Dow's photos struck me the same way, her landscape series made me think about how everything in our lives today are manufactured; even nature. We cannot even let trees go untrimmed. Though at first glance her scenes are beautiful, they make me think about how we have a perverse obsession with manufacturing everything around us.
After looking at this image on the blog, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about Beth Dow and her work. After viewing her portfolio and reading about her work, I liked this image even more. At a first glance, I was unsure if this was a photograph or a drawing. However, after looking at her website I found out that this series of garden images were all photos that she manipulated by burning and dodging them. She compares herself to a "gardener" because by manipulating these images she is shaping the land and changing the way the audience sees the setting she is depicting. I think that this technique helped her elevate the photographs and make them more visually interesting for the viewer. I thought that each one of these images were beautiful, and worked well together as a collection. What I liked the most was how the sense of beauty was contrasted with a sense of loneliness. Because these images are all black and white and have mostly a range of gray tones with no people in any of them, it creates this isolated feeling.
The Documentary that we watched during lecture was an honest portrayal of technology’s impact on the developed globalized world. The images of factories and landfills were mind numbing at such a gigantic size. The Chinese have long produced the goods that we own and cherish. Most people know that the objects that we see on a day-to-day basis are from China, due to the labeling of the goods. However it is one thing to “know” where goods come from and another to see the process by which they are made. One of the images from the movie that stuck with me was the still of workers dressed in blue coats looking idly at the camera. This image showed the layered quality of a factory sweatshop and the despondency of the workers blank stare. The work produced in sweatshops is so mindless and sterile. The workers loose all form of identity and become lost amidst repetitive labor. Another striking scene from the movie that caught my attention was the woman who was eighteen and a ship welder. The ships that she works on are huge and transport millions of pounds of oil from one side of the world to the other. She said that she became a welder because she didn’t have the grades to get into high school. Welding a Ship is so labor intensive physically and intellectually I feel. I cannot imagine how the modern world would function without those ships carrying resources across the globe. These people are lost and it is scary that they go so unnoticed and so objectified by the system that they did not have any part in creating.
As I was reading the beginning of Culture Jam, I found it very interesting in that it just complains about what is wrong with America. It seemed like the author was trying to categorize Americans as all being the same. However, on page xii, it says, “Ware are a very diverse tribe.” I disagree with the idea of Americans being the same cause I do think we are all different. Everyone here has different religious and family values, clothing styles and houses. Another thing that I found highly agreeable is that “American culture is no longer created by the people” (pg xiii). Most of the time people follow what celebrities are doing and that is what has become our culture. Even the times before Jersey Shore, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and E News, people were always trying to look like their favorite celebrities. A good example of this would be the grudge era of the late 80s to early 2000s. Though this style was never too main stream, many college students (main participators in the grudge movement) listened to various grudge bands, showered every so often and wore plaid everything. Fashion is the number one culprit of controlling American culture. Though the first settlers to North America were modest, after a few years, the wealthier people started to wear more elaborate clothing. This started a new thing, especially with women, to out look others around them. The development of fashion magazines such as Vogue, and Harper Bazaar made fashion really mixed up styles from all over the world. Though Italy really dominates in high fashion, New York Fashion Week dominates as one of the most important weeks in the fashion world. Also, fashion in America is advertised so much. Advertising in America is in general huge cause even in class we learned that America does the most advertising in the world. America not only advertises fashion and celebrities, America advertises laziness with all their fast food, house hold devices that make cleaning, cooking and over all life easier. All these things define American culture. Even fashion icon and celebrities, which are people, are defined by products made up.
Beth Dow’s In The Garden collection is so beautiful and detailed that it transports you to a historic place where you can lose your sense of reality. I can imagine being a kid growing up there and having the best time frolicking amongst the finely manicured hedges. It’s definitely a bit strange but I respect the expertise and curation that is orchestrated. I feel like the aura of the garden changes drastically with the weather, on a sunny day it’s the best place to sit and meditate but on a cloudy day I would be scared of wondering through the tall hedges afraid that somebody would be waiting, it has a very powerful presence. It’s also as if the hedges are mocking your imperfections, the detail and soft touch that the garden possesses is incredible. It’s strange going from learning about the destruction of our environment and then seeing this. So much concentration was needed for the creation of the garden and I carry this ideal now that would guess these gardens don’t exist anymore because people don’t find it necessary to preserve wildlife to such a great extent. The emptiness of these photos is very unsettling. It’s totally void of the human touch and by human touch I mean human error. In these photos there is no hint of any flaw, everything is so executed that maybe humans don’t deserve to wonder in it. Beth Dow did a good job in recognizing and displaying the garden as a historic paradise. It’s interesting to notice changes and similarities of a person’s view of what paradise is through the ages. Today, it would most likely be a beach sipping on a mohito but the thing that remains constant is the notion of being alone or in little company. I believe the garden is to be experienced on your own just as art has historically been viewed in galleries with little commotion to distract you.
I am going to admit, I am a little upset over how the exam was handled. It was more of an exercise in how well you could catch the tricks put into the questions, not just your knowledge of the basic topics covered in the class. A big example of this was the true or false questions. They were written as very basic statements, with one word thrown in there that, if not read carefully enough, could make someone who did actually know of the topic, get the question wrong. Although I did not appreciate the True or false questions, the essay questions were not horrible at all, and were well covered by all the reviews I went through. Besides, the exam, the movie we have begun watching in lecture is very interesting. The opening shots of the factory were full of so many little pieces and parts, the machinery and parts alike. Although I was not really sure what was going on, I enjoyed watching it. It was this feeling of being overwhelmed and in awe that made the movie interesting to watch. It had shots of beauty, even in the destructive pictures of the shipyard, or the computer junk cities in China. It brings a form of art into the documentation of the destruction of our world. If more people were to adopt this way of documentation, that is not all numbers and figurers, I think this could become more accessible to everyone.
I found today’s movie, Manufactured Landscapes, very interesting in that the average person doesn’t really get to see what goes on in manufacturing and the making of products for consumers. Edward Burtynsky is able to portray raw images of what we can do the very environment we live on and how many cultures and ways of living have been disrupted even changed by them. I found it sickly horrifying watch workers put together pieces of a circuit breaker or other item in mere seconds, continuously on end for hours. This talent shows how much potential human being have and skills but at the same time depresses me because the workers do this mind-mulling work day-to-day all year round. What is even more sad is the stories they have of why they do it like the girl who wasn’t accepted into high school and so had to become a welder on gigantic tankers. While the people behind the industry are interesting the places themselves even more so. The breathtaking images of the quarries and mines were really spectacular and were places I’d never seen or imagined. I think Burtynsky’s work can make more of an impact on consumerism and waste than Chris Jordan ever could. For the midterm I felt relatively comfortable with the questions and essay because of the depth of Trumpey’s lectures. He reviewed each previous lecture at the start of each new one and this overlap really helped me in remembering key events and movements. With this in mind I’m hoping though for some more clarity on discussion readings and some more reviewing of questions pertaining to our individual discussion group.
I feel that the exam wasn't like I pictured it but it still had information that I was famliar with. There were a few things that were on there that I didn not study for and things I'd studied that wasn't on the exam. On the other hand, the film/documentary that we're watching Manufactured Landscapes was interesting. It's kind of hard to believe at first that there is an actual place like that, but after you think about it someone has to make it. The warehouse that they'd seemed to be working in, was later shown as a complex of warehouses in which they built numerous objects. The workers had become more of robots. I feel those working conditions are ridiculous. No one should be worked in conditions where they almsot go into a trans. The young girl that put the circuit breaker together in a matter of seconds was a scary thing to see. It seemed as if she had no control of what she was doing once she got to work.Burtynsky captured pictures that depicted the workers, the workplace, the progress of them working, as well as the conditions and printed them large scale. To be around them I would simply be saddened because it seem as if they have no life, no willingness to actually do the work they are doing.
This is not only a beautiful image but also an excellent representation of contemporary issues. "Beth Dow is a photographer who uses historical references and traditional processes to address contemporary issues of land use and our experience of time."her ability to capture the essence and beauty of nature while still retaining a deeper meaning and emphasis on environmental issues really speaks to her character. It is interesting to view her work through very traditional processes which reflect the history and of nature. She seems to be making a statement on the age and origin of land, and how our environment has been around long before human inhabitants yet we still view land as if it is solely ours. Her use of black and white photographs gives her work a feeling of age and also expression of time while still commentating on her perception of land and land use. It is nice to see an artist take a stand on contemporary issues without overwhelming her work with opinions. Dow still creates beautiful and aesthetically pleasing pieces while still retaining a deeper opinion on contemporary issues.
ReplyDeleteLooking through Beth's Dow's website and porfolios was quite an experience. Her images are very surreal. Everything about each photograph feels serene, calm, peaceful, and quite. Yet there is still the existence of tension. I feel slightly uneasy looking at each photograph and I can't explain why. Each picture feels like an intricately done pencil drawing. I also think it's an interesting subject choice. I was particularly intrigued by her photos of ruins and nature. I see the correlation of returning to nature and the use of the land. I think her work is very quite and calm, yet upon further investigation speaks quite loudly.
ReplyDelete10/26/10
ReplyDeleteJackie San Fillipo
ADPIII
Weekly Statements
After watching the documentary about factories in China and looking at Beth Dow's portfolio, I saw an interesting correlation between the two. The Documentary was moving, shocking, and sad to me. The factories are huge, almost the size of small cities, and all the workers wear the same yellow jackets and are treated as robots. Children learn to piece together complex equipment in a number of seconds. One girl that was interviewed who was no older than 16 could make over 400 small electronic products a day. The workers did not seem unhappy, but the amount of E waste and manufacturing that surrounded them made me think about our surroundings and just how much they have changed. Small children in China played in large piles of CDs as if they were huge snow piles. This scene pretty much embodied how much technology has affected out society. Beth Dow's photos struck me the same way, her landscape series made me think about how everything in our lives today are manufactured; even nature. We cannot even let trees go untrimmed. Though at first glance her scenes are beautiful, they make me think about how we have a perverse obsession with manufacturing everything around us.
Lindsay Avino
ReplyDeleteADP III
10/26/10
Weekly Statement
After looking at this image on the blog, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about Beth Dow and her work. After viewing her portfolio and reading about her work, I liked this image even more. At a first glance, I was unsure if this was a photograph or a drawing. However, after looking at her website I found out that this series of garden images were all photos that she manipulated by burning and dodging them. She compares herself to a "gardener" because by manipulating these images she is shaping the land and changing the way the audience sees the setting she is depicting. I think that this technique helped her elevate the photographs and make them more visually interesting for the viewer. I thought that each one of these images were beautiful, and worked well together as a collection. What I liked the most was how the sense of beauty was contrasted with a sense of loneliness. Because these images are all black and white and have mostly a range of gray tones with no people in any of them, it creates this isolated feeling.
Caitlin Murphy
ReplyDelete26 October 2010
Weekly Statement
The Documentary that we watched during lecture was an honest portrayal of technology’s impact on the developed globalized world. The images of factories and landfills were mind numbing at such a gigantic size. The Chinese have long produced the goods that we own and cherish. Most people know that the objects that we see on a day-to-day basis are from China, due to the labeling of the goods. However it is one thing to “know” where goods come from and another to see the process by which they are made.
One of the images from the movie that stuck with me was the still of workers dressed in blue coats looking idly at the camera. This image showed the layered quality of a factory sweatshop and the despondency of the workers blank stare. The work produced in sweatshops is so mindless and sterile. The workers loose all form of identity and become lost amidst repetitive labor.
Another striking scene from the movie that caught my attention was the woman who was eighteen and a ship welder. The ships that she works on are huge and transport millions of pounds of oil from one side of the world to the other. She said that she became a welder because she didn’t have the grades to get into high school. Welding a Ship is so labor intensive physically and intellectually I feel. I cannot imagine how the modern world would function without those ships carrying resources across the globe. These people are lost and it is scary that they go so unnoticed and so objectified by the system that they did not have any part in creating.
Rebecca Aguilar
ReplyDeleteOct 26
Weekly Statement
As I was reading the beginning of Culture Jam, I found it very interesting in that it just complains about what is wrong with America. It seemed like the author was trying to categorize Americans as all being the same. However, on page xii, it says, “Ware are a very diverse tribe.” I disagree with the idea of Americans being the same cause I do think we are all different. Everyone here has different religious and family values, clothing styles and houses. Another thing that I found highly agreeable is that “American culture is no longer created by the people” (pg xiii). Most of the time people follow what celebrities are doing and that is what has become our culture.
Even the times before Jersey Shore, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and E News, people were always trying to look like their favorite celebrities. A good example of this would be the grudge era of the late 80s to early 2000s. Though this style was never too main stream, many college students (main participators in the grudge movement) listened to various grudge bands, showered every so often and wore plaid everything. Fashion is the number one culprit of controlling American culture. Though the first settlers to North America were modest, after a few years, the wealthier people started to wear more elaborate clothing. This started a new thing, especially with women, to out look others around them. The development of fashion magazines such as Vogue, and Harper Bazaar made fashion really mixed up styles from all over the world. Though Italy really dominates in high fashion, New York Fashion Week dominates as one of the most important weeks in the fashion world. Also, fashion in America is advertised so much. Advertising in America is in general huge cause even in class we learned that America does the most advertising in the world. America not only advertises fashion and celebrities, America advertises laziness with all their fast food, house hold devices that make cleaning, cooking and over all life easier. All these things define American culture. Even fashion icon and celebrities, which are people, are defined by products made up.
Weekly statement
ReplyDeleteAdp 3
10/26
Ben Paskus
Beth Dow’s In The Garden collection is so beautiful and detailed that it transports you to a historic place where you can lose your sense of reality. I can imagine being a kid growing up there and having the best time frolicking amongst the finely manicured hedges. It’s definitely a bit strange but I respect the expertise and curation that is orchestrated. I feel like the aura of the garden changes drastically with the weather, on a sunny day it’s the best place to sit and meditate but on a cloudy day I would be scared of wondering through the tall hedges afraid that somebody would be waiting, it has a very powerful presence. It’s also as if the hedges are mocking your imperfections, the detail and soft touch that the garden possesses is incredible. It’s strange going from learning about the destruction of our environment and then seeing this. So much concentration was needed for the creation of the garden and I carry this ideal now that would guess these gardens don’t exist anymore because people don’t find it necessary to preserve wildlife to such a great extent. The emptiness of these photos is very unsettling. It’s totally void of the human touch and by human touch I mean human error. In these photos there is no hint of any flaw, everything is so executed that maybe humans don’t deserve to wonder in it. Beth Dow did a good job in recognizing and displaying the garden as a historic paradise. It’s interesting to notice changes and similarities of a person’s view of what paradise is through the ages. Today, it would most likely be a beach sipping on a mohito but the thing that remains constant is the notion of being alone or in little company. I believe the garden is to be experienced on your own just as art has historically been viewed in galleries with little commotion to distract you.
Teresa Dennis
ReplyDeleteADP III
Weekly Statement 10/26
I am going to admit, I am a little upset over how the exam was handled. It was more of an exercise in how well you could catch the tricks put into the questions, not just your knowledge of the basic topics covered in the class. A big example of this was the true or false questions. They were written as very basic statements, with one word thrown in there that, if not read carefully enough, could make someone who did actually know of the topic, get the question wrong. Although I did not appreciate the True or false questions, the essay questions were not horrible at all, and were well covered by all the reviews I went through.
Besides, the exam, the movie we have begun watching in lecture is very interesting. The opening shots of the factory were full of so many little pieces and parts, the machinery and parts alike. Although I was not really sure what was going on, I enjoyed watching it. It was this feeling of being overwhelmed and in awe that made the movie interesting to watch. It had shots of beauty, even in the destructive pictures of the shipyard, or the computer junk cities in China. It brings a form of art into the documentation of the destruction of our world. If more people were to adopt this way of documentation, that is not all numbers and figurers, I think this could become more accessible to everyone.
ADP III Weekly Statement 10/26
ReplyDeleteLyle A. Murphy – Sec. 003
I found today’s movie, Manufactured Landscapes, very interesting in that the average person doesn’t really get to see what goes on in manufacturing and the making of products for consumers. Edward Burtynsky is able to portray raw images of what we can do the very environment we live on and how many cultures and ways of living have been disrupted even changed by them. I found it sickly horrifying watch workers put together pieces of a circuit breaker or other item in mere seconds, continuously on end for hours. This talent shows how much potential human being have and skills but at the same time depresses me because the workers do this mind-mulling work day-to-day all year round. What is even more sad is the stories they have of why they do it like the girl who wasn’t accepted into high school and so had to become a welder on gigantic tankers. While the people behind the industry are interesting the places themselves even more so. The breathtaking images of the quarries and mines were really spectacular and were places I’d never seen or imagined. I think Burtynsky’s work can make more of an impact on consumerism and waste than Chris Jordan ever could.
For the midterm I felt relatively comfortable with the questions and essay because of the depth of Trumpey’s lectures. He reviewed each previous lecture at the start of each new one and this overlap really helped me in remembering key events and movements. With this in mind I’m hoping though for some more clarity on discussion readings and some more reviewing of questions pertaining to our individual discussion group.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the exam wasn't like I pictured it but it still had information that I was famliar with. There were a few things that were on there that I didn not study for and things I'd studied that wasn't on the exam. On the other hand, the film/documentary that we're watching Manufactured Landscapes was interesting. It's kind of hard to believe at first that there is an actual place like that, but after you think about it someone has to make it. The warehouse that they'd seemed to be working in, was later shown as a complex of warehouses in which they built numerous objects.
ReplyDeleteThe workers had become more of robots. I feel those working conditions are ridiculous. No one should be worked in conditions where they almsot go into a trans. The young girl that put the circuit breaker together in a matter of seconds was a scary thing to see. It seemed as if she had no control of what she was doing once she got to work.Burtynsky captured pictures that depicted the workers, the workplace, the progress of them working, as well as the conditions and printed them large scale. To be around them I would simply be saddened because it seem as if they have no life, no willingness to actually do the work they are doing.