Project Proposal

Right now I’m photographing old mattresses that people dump on the street. I became interested in them through documenting the grime that my housemates live in especially in relation to very intimate objects. Has a mattress become so disgusting because it was so necessary and thus used as much as it possibly could have been? Or was it the opposite, neglect of the object? I’m also interested in the mattress itself as a reusable entity; what is it about mattresses that makes them so unappealing to have a used one when other items like clothing that have generally come to even more close contact with the body are so easy for people to come to terms with wearing used? I’m also interested in the prints that are on mattresses, the prints and colors no one sees until the mattress is dead in a gutter (which is why I need to photograph in color). I also love the human shapes they tend to take, the way they lean and bend in a tired sort of way. I am used a digital SLR to document these mattresses because I need to be able to shoot them on demand whenever I run into one because I have gone back to shoot a mattress and had it be gone, also this way I can shoot as many as possible and since the only camera I own myself is a digital that why I am using it. I have also been documenting the city and intersections where I find the mattresses and will maybe use that information to make a mattress-map or something else later on.

Because we are learning the 4x5, and medium format but I can’t really apply that to my current project I divulged separate projects I would like to also start. I would like to take portraits of the back of people’s heads. This would be a studio set up which seems good for a beginner user of the 4x5. In the past year I’ve become more acutely sensitive to relationship changes in my life. I’m interested in taking portraits of the back of people I was once close to (either in real rapport or in my mind (ie someone I looked up to but didn’t interact with much)). I’m thinking about how we lose memory of people that were once a part of our daily life, and when a break in a relationship is against our will or more natural- sometimes situations just cut us off from someone completely and sometimes we drift apart gradually. In this series I would have to contact and meet up with people whom I’ve lost touch with over the years. I would like it to be in color to differentiate more easily between the heads.

I have been spending a lot of time in the Sunset district of San Francisco. My boyfriend lives on the last avenue before the ocean so when I go to see him I am riding my bike pretty much the entire width of the City and seeing each avenue in the sunset. In the sunset there are no front lawns, and the front “yard” where normally you’d expect a lawn to be, is completely paved, few trees, and all the houses look the same. Ironically it is know as the area of the city that on one side is bordered by the beach on another, by Golden Gate Park, and inhabited by a lot of surfers and hippie-types who love to be outside. I would like to document in film (I’m thinking medium format) each avenue (the sunset is roughly defined as the streets numbered 2nd-48th Avenue) from Judah Street. Looking south from Judah, you can see all the way down each avenue for about 2 miles because it’s a grid set up. And, because of the earlier described qualities of this area, every photo would look quite similar.

These last two projects may not get started until after the senior show because of the time crunch.

here's a article from the sfChronicle about that "great-pacific garbage patch"

I want to see photos of this thing...I tried to find it on google earth with no luck.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL

Self Portraiture

Two things:

First, this is an image from Yosemite. I took it with my Nikon 35mm camera. The light was bright and muted that day.

Second, Here is my proposal.

The content of this project will be an exploration into self-portraiture. I am fascinated by identity and my role in the world surrounding me. I would like to work with 4x5 film, in a studio setting. I will develop the 4x5 negatives in the dark room. I am going to incorporate the digital medium to embellish the self-portraits with digital color pictures that represent other aspects of my life, and up-brining. The final images will be color and black and white, on black matt paper. The images inserted into the black and white portraits will be things such as my orchid’s flowers and agates I collected from the beach. I will photograph them in color with a digital camera. This project will be an exploration of self, and the challenges that arise with self portraiture. There are aspects to my ethnicity that play a large role in my life which deserve expression in an artistic medium. I want the images to be thought provoking, and invite the viewers to reflect upon the external environments that have helped define their view and interpretation of the world. 

There are different ways of exploring the ideas surrounding stereotypes mixed with identity and defining aspects of personality. Being raised in a bi-cultural home environment I have felt different and out of place in main stream American culture.  I would like to use this project to investigate my self image, and my relationship to the aspects of my environs that define me. 

For the time line, by the first critique I plan to have three of my final eight images done by March 12, and at least six done by April 14th.  I am considering making a coffee-table style book with four diptych sets of images. I am going to make the book and use the exterior and page paper as an extension of the investigation of the self and the environment surrounding. I will also research other self portraiture artists to expand my ideas.

New on Juxtapoz

Hey everyone, I'm sure most of you have heard of or are familiar with Juxtapoz magazine- if you aren't you should seriously check it out, it's my favorite and they are online http://www.juxtapoz.com/. Anyways I mention it because they have a new posting, "Kubikfoto: Interactivating Photography" which leads you to a website. I thought this would be a good site to checkout for anyone who is interested in Digital or interested in making their own website:)

Life is rough

Ok, so the weekend is always too short in my opinion. But rarely, as a student, do I have time to go to the beach. This semester, however, my main focus needs to be my artwork, so the beach is fair territory in my opinion... I was collecting seaweed for my sculpture project :-)

Here is an amazing chunk of driftwood...

Lonely ghost...

It was a magical day in Carmel.
There was a misty overcast, which brought out an interesting depth in colors.
The photo was taken with a polaroid land camera using 669 color film.

first post!

This is an image that was taken a couple of years ago. I love it because the camera caught the moving lights, yet focused sharply on my body. A neat effect! No photoshopping involved!

Lily