brutal honesty

Slowly, but surely, this blog is doing what I want it to do. Well, at least I'm getting some participation and it is really helping me. Thanks. :)

There's an article about photography and digital re-imaging that I will be writing about soon, so keep posted.

*****

While taking color photography last semester, a friend of mine had, what I thought was, great conceptual work that I actually understood for the first time. Honestly, conceptual art is not my forte, so to see something which actually caught my attention is a big thing. (Side note: this is another one of those entries which expresses my frustrations with professors).

Well, to start off, we were given the "freedom" to photograph whatever we wanted to - a semester long project, you can say. My friend is a musician and figured to incorporate his two passions and put up semi-installations for his project. Since, I don't have photos, I'll try my best to describe the experience.

One project, in particular, he used a tripod and shot a series of photo of a girl dancing to a song in shack or abandoned home. As a part of his presentation, he put up his iPod and headphones along with the photos so we, as the viewers, could take part in that experience. The figure was usually a blur of movement, which I thought looked beautiful. I agree there were some technical/compositional issues, but overall, I didn't think the project deserved a "C".

For the sake of keeping this short, he received a "C" on every single project last semester. I saw him working in the lab constantly, yet, his work was considered "half-assed." He took on every suggestion from the professor, but never saw an improvement on his grade or critique.

Eventually, for his final project, he decided to abandoned his semester long project and take on a satirical approach to what he was taught throughout the semester (which was nothing along the lines of constructive criticism). He took a series of photos with captions underneath, and each caption was a quote from the professor or something along the lines of "after some artist, probably William Eggleston..." (side note: there were certain artists that were constantly ingrained into our heads and that was William Eggleston and Nan Goldin, which was why he referred to them).

I thought compositionally and technically, this was his best project. The idea behind is was so... honest. He was showing his frustration through his art, and it showed. I thought it was brilliant. Apparently, the professor didn't think so and took it very offensively.

Now, I think if we create art that raises such emotions: confusion, anger, laughter, etc, in a sense, we have succeeded as artists. It's better than someone looking at your work and simply turning their head away without a thought in the world. I feel like that's what I was taught in art school. To be challenged by the art that you see; to feel uncomfortable; to feel anything but nothing.

So what was the verdict on his final project?

"C."