Kara Walker, Gone, An Historical of a Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994, Cut paper and adhesive on wall, 13 x 50 feet, Collection of Yvonne Force, Inc.

Create a series of images that explore a specific area of history or art history. Your project could take one of the following approaches:

-- Reinterpret an artist or artistic movement.
-- Make a visual commentary on a significant historical period, event, or cultural/societal/political movement.
-- Research and make a visual response to the history of a specific place or event.

Artists to consider: Jeff Wall, Kara Walker, Masuma Morimora, Mark Klett, Ann Hamilton

Sarah Borup

In high fashion, the ideal of glamour is constantly in flux. Trends in the aesthetic of fashion photography have transformed significantly since its beginnings in studio environments. I chose to compare two standards of allure: Richard Avedonís majestic glamour and contemporary avant-garde anti-glamour. Avedon was known for taking models out of the studio and giving an innovative form of expression to clothes. He inspired a new vitality in fashion photography that moved away from traditional static posing. I chose to contrast these classic, black and white, highly glamorized fashion shots with contemporary photographs and ad campaigns with Juergen Teller (who photographs Marc Jacobs lines) and Corinne Day (who pioneered the ìheroin chicî trend). The works of these photographers have been criticized for glamorizing strung out models, and ultimately drug use. Quirky poses, an obsession with the bizarre, washed-out and seemingly overexposed prints, broke-down models and jutting bones are trademarks of this style. Although itís been criticized by the likes of President Clinton, who asserted that ìyou do not need to glamorize addiction to sell clothesî, the lifestyle captured in these photographs continues to be employed by top labels such as Marc Jacobs, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Mui Mui.

Charles Hale

For my historical photography project I decided to use the style of Edward Weston. He was a famous photographer who lived from 1886-1958. The project I focused on of his was “Nature.” I mimicked Weston’s simple yet deep shots of everyday fruits and vegetables. What I changed was I made mine in color, something that Weston did not do. I feel like with fruits and vegetables, the colors are so rich and vibrant that there was no way I was going to match Weston’s style by losing the color. This is in a sense a comment on the time period because black and white was the mainstream medium at the time. I loved Weston’s images because of their simple set up, but the way he portrays these vegetables in a human sense. His most famous shot was of a pepper that looked like it was two people intertwining. The human-like features were shown through in these fruits and vegetables and I enjoyed capturing the Weston style in this project.

Josh Cerf

Jackson Pollock is an established artist known for his style as an abstract action painter. He was said to have “legitimized the convergence and mastery of chance, intuition, and control.” Pollock challenged new methods, and experimented with different materials to achieve his final product. He did not, however, explore the vast possibilities that could be achieved digitally. In an attempt to recreate Pollock’s work, I decided to investigate it with digital means, and more modern materials. My brush and canvas were an L.E.D. flashlight and digital camera. By setting a small aperture and long exposure on the camera, in a dark room, I was able to recreate prominent aspects of Pollock’s work by drawing with light. The result ended up somewhere between Jackson Pollock and Harry Callahan meeting up at a rave or electronic nightclub. Whether or not this is a painting or photography, it is debatable to certain viewers; others may agree that without risk there can be no progression. Who is to decide what mediums qualify as artistic and what subjects are suitable enough to be photographed? Is there a point at which the two can converge?

Courtney Jones

For my project, I chose to reinterpret the work the Surrealist artists, such as Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, and Marcel Duchamp. Surrealism was a movement which chose to re-explore the notions and boundaries of art, and ultimately produced work that commented on the fusion of our society’s conscious reality, and our own personal dream reality. The result: a surreality. This was often achieved by juxtaposing two completely, different ideas, and placing them in a new, bizarre context. Magritte can be seen accomplishing this in many of his paintings. In one, for example, he fuses the head of a fish with the legs of a woman, titling the piece “Mermaid.”
In my series of photos, I’ve tried to comment on Surrealism by calling upon the same technique of taking items out of their original context (such as trying to smoke a celery-cigarette). These photos are meant to not only take the physical item out of their context, but they are also meant to comment on the juxtaposition of ideas (such as, in photo number 5, my symbolic fusion of the creative process of writing, with the destructive quality of a knife).

Xiao Lin

My interpretation of image appropriation during the post-modernism period is based on chosen images of ads that I found in the New York Times. The idea of appropriation is strongly embraced by post-modernism artists such as Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger. For some, a few of these artists are infamous for making exact copies of popular or iconic images their own work. While these accusations are understandable, I have learned quite a bit about the idea of appropriation during the process of this project. By taking these popular or typical ads out of their typical context and making them visible once again to our eyes in a different environment (art) allows us to read deeper into the words and colors that advertisers have decided to associate with these ads. If one reads carefully, many of the words are vague to the point where it can be associated really, with any of the images.

Benjamin Michalak

This project went through several stages before reaching this one. I firstly attempted to recreate some Matisse paintings, intrigued by trying to use Photoshop to recreate his paintings (a medium limited only by imagination, whereas photography is, at least arguably, limited by what you can take pictures of). I failed at that. In browsing through works of my other famous artists, I suddenly remembered, and was struck by, a story dealing with Picassoís portrait of modernist poet Gertrude Stein. Painted mostly from memory, the portrait was questioned when it was revealed. It didnít look like Gertrude! Picasso, in his infinite wisdom, simply replied (and here I paraphrase) ìit will.î My thinking moved away from strict art history and towards history in generalóhow do we strive to make our mark on the world, and how are we remembered once we are no longer current (having ëmoved oní, in one form or another)? Many people are concerned with putting their name to something important; some are remembered beyond their control, mythologized and memorialized. On the other hand, the earth itself is imprinted with memorials of everything that has passed over it, ephemeral but still just as, if not more, galvanizing.

Duy Nguyen

Photography is a very young art form, being accepted accepted by the English-speaking art world and the gallery system during the twentieth century. Many photographers spent their lives advocating for photography as a fine art.
The aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly, especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determining what component of a photograph makes it beautiful to the viewer. The controversy began with the earliest images "written with light", these works were met with acclaim, but some questioned if their work met the definitions and purposes of art.
So what distinguish art from what is not art? Just because shooting a photo takes one second doesn’t mean it is not art. To me, art may or may not require long hours of hard work from the artist; as long as it provokes some sense of aesthetic emotions , it is art. In this respect, there is no difference in a painting, a music composition, a play or a photograph. To demonstrate this, I’ve created a series of half-painting, half-photo for my project.

From the feminist movement, which began in the 19th century, emerged the notion of feminist theory. Among the concepts often addressed within feminist theory are discrimination, stereotyping, patriarchy, oppression, and sexual objectification. The series of images I have created is a response to the particular area of the feminist movement that deals with the sexual objectivity of women. Female sexual objectivity is the reduction of a woman from a person to a sexual object—an instrument. Personality, individuality, and intellectuality are undermined by physical attributes and sexual characteristics. Part of sexual objectification is the idea that women should be objects of observation, as well as objects of sexual pleasure. Makeup brings women closer to the “ideal beauty,” and can therefore act as an aid to sexual objectivity. For this reason, I chose to use makeup as a representation of sexual objectivity. Consider the camera lens to be a mirror, and we are seeing the girl as how she would look at herself in the mirror. The series begins with the model wearing makeup; as the images progress, she becomes upset and uncomfortable with her appearance, and begins removing the makeup and smearing it on the mirror in her frustration. Removing all of her makeup acts as a metaphor for overcoming sexual objectivity.

Emma Schwartz

This series of images represent the loss of human identity to those affected by the Holocaust. Six million is arguably the most accurately estimated number of deaths during this period of time, but this does not even begin to cover the personal losses felt by an unfathomable number of others. In each image stands a single figure, staring blankly into the lens, wearing a nametag that reads “Hello, my name is…” with no name, only a Star of David (similar to the ones worn by Jews in Nazi Germany). The images are shot in black and white to add more depth to the issue of prejudice, showing these victims of racism and anti-Semitism living in a world of black-and-white.

Jennie Seidewand

Since last semester, I have been really intrigued by Fredrick Sommer’s work that photographed cutout paper. It came to me long after the fact that I wished I had done my last semester’s reinterpretation in color, which led me to working again with this artist for the project. I was also interested in Sherrie Levine’s idea of just plain photographing other people’s photographs but, claiming that it was an object, it was hers to basically steal. I was interested to see if I could combine these two artists into a project that didn’t quite steal another person’s work, but, instead took some liberties to cut up that work, rearrange it, and to take some ownership of the piece before photographing it.
Thus, for my project, I took magazine photographs (specifically ones from girly magazines like Teen and Cosmo because of their highly colorful pages), cut them up, twisted them, and photographed them. I varied between trying to focus on the photograph (which felt more like a Levine piece) or focusing on the cut paper (which left the pieces more abstract like Sommer’s work). I think that I tended to like the latter better, coinciding with how much I like Sommer’s work.

Diana Siegel

We experience our environments in many different ways. Photography captures pieces of our world but can never completely recreate what we see with our own two eyes. Sometimes what we see with our eyes however is less than what we can discern by looking at a photograph. By framing our view we see different things and notice different relationships.

The photographer Mark Klett used several images of San Francisco, California as his canvass for a pieced together panorama. By doing so, our understanding of San Francisco changes as we see the frames within which he has placed the city and how they work together and separately at the same time. I have tried to channel this theme into my photos of the pond near the Carriage House to refocus our attention on a space that is beautiful but vastly overlooked. It is my intention to draw attention to this space that extends beyond the façade of the Elliott Studio building and has a vista out to the graveyard behind the Carriage house.

Simone VerEecke

For this project I decided to explore the surrealist era. Surrealism is a cultural movement which began in the early 1920’s and took the form of many types of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. Deriving from the Dada art period, Surrealist works emulate the element of surprise, weird juxtapositions, and new artistic techniques that challenged the pre-determined definition of art. Surrealism for me has been a very important and interesting continuous study, since it is the focus of my honors project. Nonetheless, for my honors project I concentrated more on the artist Max Ernst, rather than my other favorite Surrealist artist, René Magritte. René François Ghislain Magritte, (1898-1967) was a well-known artist from Belgium. His images were very confusing, haunting, and all together, thought provoking. My main attraction to re-creating his works, was to construct his surreal world using “real” images taken from my camera, and then combining them with innovative Photoshop techniques. The works that I have chosen to inspire my projects are, The Lovers, The Treachery of Images, The Son of Man, The False Mirror, The Empire of Lights, The Portrait of Edwards James, and the Invention of Life. All these images are listed below with links to see the original work.

The Lovers, 1928
http://cafasorridente.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/magritte-the-lovers.jpg
Blog @ Worspress.com

The Treachery of Images, 1928-1929
http://interactionculture.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/treachery.jpg
Blog @ Worpress.com

The Son of Man, 1964
http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Rene_Magritte/son_of_man.jpeg
© 2008 artinthepicture.com

The False Mirror, 1928
http://temavercomigo.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the-false-mirror-rene-magritte.jpg
Blog at Worpress.com

The Empire of Lights, 1954
http://www.planetperplex.com/img/magritte_empire_of_light.jpg
© Stefan Van den Bergh. All rights reserved. Affiliated with Interesting Illusions.

Portrait of Edwards James, 1937
http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/d50/c73/d50c730c-f416-497f-bcc2-3d5fc5a01a87
© 2009 Utah Street Networks, Inc. All rights reserved

The Invention of Life, 1928
http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_1161_45634_rene-magritte.jpg
© 2009 artnet

Jenny Zhao

The artist's style, which I chose to reinterpret, was Adrienne Salinger's. She photographed teenagers in their bedrooms. Everyone's bedroom is a private area, a place where one feels the freedom and comfort to do whatever one feels like doing. I was interested in photographing people in their bedrooms because a peek into their bedroom might reveal a lot about the person. †Perhaps, you might be able to see their bubbly personality in their choice of wall decorations or what their interests may be. Stuffed animals on beds, floral or stripe patterns on their bed sheets show people's preferences and is another piece to their story. Salinger believed that bedrooms ìbecome the repository for our memories and the expression of our desires and self-image.î Since I photographed college students in their temporary dorm rooms, many of them might not have as many personal items as Salingerís subjects. Rather, many of us might bring what may be the most important to us to school because we cannot live without it even for a couple of months.

In addition to her photos, Salinger also interviewed each one of her subjects. I decided against that because I felt that images might speak for themselves.

Yeasmine Khalique

My inspiration for the art history project came from the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall who goes through elaborate procedures to create images including props, actors, a stage crew, etc. A great deal of his photographs involves interest in the elements such as a windy day or an approaching storm. His work is not just concerned with the natural process of this subject; instead he emphasizes this natural process with the inclusion of people and props to create stories. In my photographs I wanted to explore this creation of a mood which is depended on natural processes such as the weather. In addition I wanted to use his technique of setting up a stage with props to create a story. I choose not to include people to maintain a sense of mystery as much of Wall photos have this ambiguous quality. His photograph “A Sudden Gust of Wind” is a contemporary version of a Japanese print by Hokusai, was my main source of inspiration. In Jeff Wall reinterpretation he went through elaborate procedures to create the image. His work is known to have the quality of a movie still. With my set of images I wanted to emphasize the effects of the elements with the snow, as Wall does with wind.