Liam Drury's ART 240 Blog

 Abelardo Morell is a Boston Based photographer who was originally from Cuba. His works throughout the years of landscapes shown through camera obscuras inside of different rooms are some of his most famous works, some of which I will be looking at. This first image, taken in 1990 in the Hotel des Grandes Hommes featuring a projection of the Pantheon Hotel. This image on the wall is created not by a digital projector, but by a camera obscura, a small cut of light in a completely blackened room, almost acting as a shutter radius, and projecting an image upon the wall. Usually these images are not very sharp, but Morell may have made his shutter speed a bit longer, allowing his camera to capture more light. This second image is of another bed room featuring the projection of the Washington bridge. This time however, instead of using a camera obscura, Morell seems to use a projection of an image, as a camera obscura would normally flip the image upside down. There is also the possibility

 Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer. His works mainly consist of high detail black and white images, featuring heavy contrast and lots of negative space. Sugimoto also uses quite a bit of long exposure, ranging anywhere from minutes, to even a few hours to capture a single shot.  This first image is of the U.A Playhouse in Great Neck New York, taken in 1978. For this image Sugimoto enters a cinema that is playing a film. He captures every single minute of the film on his camera, not as a video, but as a single image with a very long exposure. That is why the screen is totally white, as it is where the camera captures the most light from the image as the screenplay commences on. The process doesn't seem to capture any audience members, meaning either they moved around at some point or just weren't in the camera's line of vision. This next image is from a series titled Lightning Fields.  I suspect this image was done using long exposure of some kind, creating pure da

 Alec Soth is an American Photographer. His work consists of many portraits, self portraits, and landscape paintings. Many of his portraits all share a somewhat rustic mood, looking just slightly faded. They give the feeling of nostalgia. His landscape images on the other hand are very enticing, and makes me as a viewer want to fully experience the emotions the image or scene conveys to me.  This first image is titled Fort Jefferson Memorial Cross, Wickliffe Kentucky and was taken in 2002. The image displays yards men, who look to possibly be prisoners in their orange jump suits who are tasked with maintaining the spot. Soth's image looks to be grainy, and faded. The use of an older vehicle also implies it may be sort of a mock of an older time? Soth does an excellent job at posing his models too, making them look candid.  This next image comes from his series titled Sleeping by the Mississippi.  The cabin in the image is pushed off into the right third of the frame, leaving the mi

 Jeff Mermelstein is an American street photographer, known for capturing very cinematic scenes in the everyday world. His work mainly consists of taking photos of people, animals, or just areas in general in New York City, and giving them a very cinematic appearance, almost looking scripted or planned.  This first piece from his series Sidewalk  from 1993 features a police officer standing outside an adult entertainment store. The officer is captured in a bright almost spot lit look, posing as he speaks to someone behind the lens and out of view. Mermelstein captures the scene and makes it appear almost as a set for a play, with the blue lights in the background and the major contrast from the figure vs the rest of the scene. The officer's facial expression looks like something out of a comedy or a TV show, almost like a screenshot right from a series. This next image, also from his series Sidewalk  which was taken in 1996 shows a van that is on fire. It's positioned like a mo