Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist famous for her photography, film, and video who lives in New York. As a child, she was enrolled in Catholic boarding school in Tehran so she could be “westernized”. She left Iran to study art in California where she went to Dominican College and UC Berkeley. After graduating, she worked for a non-profit art organization, but she never tried to make art herself. In 1990, she returned to Iran to begin her famous series “The Women of Allah”. This refers to the social Muslim culture and society through a sequence of black and white, very contrasted photos. In 1999, she won the International Award of the XLVIII Biennial of Venice. Shirin Neshat has become one of the most famous Persian artists within the Western artistic world. Her earlier work was a symbol of personal grief, anxiety, and the pain of separation from her home country of Iran. Recently, her artwork has become more political and critical. In 2006, she was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize that is given to a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life. In 2009, she won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66^th Venice Film Festival for her debut “Women without Men”.

Her art interested me because I liked the contrast of the black and white. Her theme of the women from Iran is very striking to the eye, thought I do not like it very much. Her photos look very photoshopped as well because the writing on the people is way too dark to be ink on their skin, which bothers me a lot too because it just looks incredibly fake.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann started taking pictures one day when she saw her daughter's face as it looked like it had been beaten; Sally saw this as art. She loved taking pictures of her children in many different aspects, but usually they were all nude and sometimes very dirty looking. Other than portraits, she liked taking landscape pictures and of people in front of landscapes. When she was young, she always had to get her way, but her parents were very strict. Her father was an interesting man who made awkward sculptures, but never did anything with it. Along with her children and landscapes, she took a lot of pictures of her husband and her dogs.

Her husband was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and Sally was in complete denial about it because he meant everything to her. Once, they received a phone call from the police saying there was a loose prisoner and he was supposedly on their property. Sally's husband sighted him and shot him in the hip, but it didn't kill him so the prisoner ended up shooting himself.

Sally had one dog that was a big part of her life and when he died, she kept his remains until it was completely gone and rotted away except for one paw claw.

She had a show at the Pace Gallery about her photos dealing with death that she took at an anthropology center. Unfortunately, her show was canceled.

Cultural: Amexicano

The movie Amexicano is about an American man named Bruno who needs a new job because he’s broke. His friend gives him a job, put he needs another man to help with the job. He goes to a street corner where the jobless Hispanics stand everyday, waiting for a job opportunity and finds a young man named Ignacio who is able to work with him. The two men work together for many days on construction projects and they sometimes go out together for fun. One day at work, their boss blamed Ignacio for stealing one of his tools from his car and he fired him from the job. Later on, Ignacio gets stabbed and Bruno takes him to the hospital even though Ignacio says not to because he will get deported. But instead of letting him die, Bruno takes him to the hospital where he’s told he will be deported from the United States because he’s an immigrant. After he’s deported, Bruno tries to go and rescue him again so he can go back to his sister in the states, but while searching for him, Bruno finds Ignacio dead in the desert because of dehydration.

This movie is very realistic in showing Mexicans illegally living in the United States. They all are looking for jobs, and many stand on corners and streets waiting for someone to come pick them up to give them a job. Many times, Hispanics get blamed for things they don’t do, causing them to be deported. It’s really easy for an American to get a Hispanic in trouble because they are the minority. In terms of education, this movie teaches American characters how to speak Spanish and teaches Hispanic characters to speak English. The dialect in the movie is very degrading, but it only shows how these people actually speak. In reality, this movie tells the truth about the life of illegal Hispanics in America. There’s a lot of crime and violence in their life, but living in the United States will always be the prominent choice for a better life for them and their families.

Museum Trip #2

Most of the pieces of the Pre-Columbian art were sculptures of humans or animals, though their faces and bodies were somehow deformed or made to look very geometric. These sculptures were made of stone, gold, clay, and jade. These countries were also very famous for their pottery, which many times contained colorful drawings that set a scene or told a story. Many times, the pottery was in the shape of a human or animal, which made it hard to identify as a vase or bowl until you really looked.

The Spanish Colonial Art was based mostly on very colorful paintings. All of these pieces were portraits of adults, and some of adults with their children. For some reason though, many of the faces in each painting looked very similar. In each painting, there was some type of religious affiliation, usually a cross that represented Christianity. Along with the painting, there were also many sculptures that were full of color, family bonding, and religious affiliations.

I was not able to relate with much of the art because I have no connections with Christianity and I am not able to paint or make sculptures. I did enjoy looking at the art and trying to understand how these artists were so creative so many hundreds of years ago. This art compared to the modern day American art that I usually encounter has many similarities and differences. Pottery is still made out of the same materials and with the same intentions, but pottery now is more basic and is not usually made into the shape of a person or an animal. Paintings today are very specific and precise and do not always associate with Christianity.

Though I’m not a fan of museums, this was a good experience and I enjoyed looking at how art has transformed throughout the past centuries.

Sam & Jenn

So I had another photo shoot so I could add to my Blurb book and just my personal photo portfolio. Out of the bunch, I feel like this is one of the strongest pictures of Sam and Jenn because their eyes are pretty ridiculous.

I have finals this week and I'm not excited whatsoever. Studying is already a bitch, and I'm not even almost done with one of my study guides even though I worked on it last night for 6 hours in the library.

So my photos are basically my get away from all my work, but then I take too much time looking through them etc.

I go home in 6 days for winter break, but I'm not sure if I'll be doing any traveling, though I really hope I go somewhere photographic. Is that a word?

Photo shoots

So for my FSEM project, I'm making a book of photos that I've been taking all this weekend. The theme is friends in leaves basically, so obviously the pictures are of my friends in leaves/on the ground/in trees etc. This picture (of Spencer) is one of my favorite pictures that I took this weekend because the colors have no been photoshopped at all, which I find pretty amazing because his eyes are incredibly blue.

I've been trying to start making my book on Blurb, but I really don't like the program and I prefer MyPublisher because there are more options on there. So I think I'm going to end up using MyPublisher because I don't want to spend money on a crap book from Blurb.

In total, I took just over 1,455 photos this weekend, which was more than I expected, but I guess it's good because now I have more to choose from!

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born a Jew in Connecticut in 1949. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute for painting but after some time she found her passion for photography. She began her photography career working as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone magazine and then became a published portrait photographer, where she worked for 10 years. Unfortunately, she attended drug rehabilitation because she was around so much drug use through the magazine. She was the last person ever to photograph John Lennon because he was killed 5 hours after their photo shoot in 1980. In that decade, she started working for Vanity Fair magazine and photographed celebrities and she got her first book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, published. In 1991, she became the first woman, and second living portraitist to have her photographs in the National Portrait Gallery. She has three children: Sarah, Susan, and Samuel and Annie was very close with Susan Sontag, who died at age 71 in 2004. Her most recent book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, includes pictures that she has taken of celebrities, along with pictures of herself with her family.