‘When somebody sees something and experiences it - that’s when art happens’
(Hans-Peter Feldman)
If photography is an event then looking at photography should also be an event.Look again at Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare in Part Three. (If you can get to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London you can see an original printon permanent display in the Photography Gallery.) Is there a single element in the image that you could say is the pivotal ‘point’ to which the eye returns again and again? What information does this ‘point’ contain? Remember that a point is not a shape. It may be a place, or even a ‘discontinuity’ - a gap. The most important thing though is not to try to guess the ‘right answer’ but to make a creative response, to articulate your ‘personal voice’.
Include a short response to Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare in your learning log. You can be as imaginative as you like. In order to contextualise your discussion, you might want to include one or two of your own shots, and you may wish to refer to Rinko Kawauchi’s photograph mentioned above or the Theatres series by Hiroshi Sugimoto discussed in Part Three. Write about 300 words.
I feel like there is defiantly one area where my eyes are being drawn to over and over again - the man jumping, his reflection and the space between them.
However, an interesting photograph, like a piece of good art, will take you on a journey to keep looking at the image and find out more. One moment my eyes will travel to the Railway sign on the left, and then to it's reflection in the water, and the next moment my eyes will bounce back to the man leaping. One moment my eyes will travel to the background buildings and the man in the background, and again my eyes will bounce back into the man leaping and his reflection - and so on...
I think this is what define for us a good photograph, if it keeps us interested. If we want to keep looking at it for a few moments every time we come across it, even if it's for 100 times.
Same happened to me with this photograph of Robert Frank, which I took inspiration from on part 3.
I keep looking at it for so long each time I come across it, even if I have seen it 5 times already within the one day. My eyes are going back again each time to her eye, and it is almost like I feel mesmerised.
Initially I didn't understand why the exercise refer to Rinko Kawauchi and Hiroshi Sugimoto, and I was relieved to read the exemplar of John Adrian Orr said the same. However, I had another think about it, and I'd say the link to both these images is that the eye keeps bouncing back into one significant spot - the spot where the image is over exposed.
I would say, what I learn from that is, when we have a negative space, especially a light colour one in between darkness, and perhaps also a dark one in between lightness - our eye is attracted to it.
I remembered I had a few images I took in Lake Wanaka, New Zealand in 2014 with the mountains and reflections in the water, I wanted to find them and see what my eye was attracted to.
Photos I took in 2014 in New Zealand.
I feel like here again, my eyes were drawn to the light areas of the sky and water, while the darkness of the mountains and reflection was giving a space between.
I suppose in this case again my eye was attracted to the light.
I wanted to take this a step further, and as I have 2 Pinterest boards with shadows and high contrast, I wanted to check whether it is only light my eye is attracted to or also darkness.
What I found was, if the image is very dark and has windows or shapes in light - it would be the light, however if there is a dark subject eg. a person standing within the white space, it was more the person I was drawn to, similar to Cartier Bresson's photograph - where my eyes are mainly drawn to the person's silhouette, his reflection and the space between them.
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