Friday, November 14, 2008

I have started to take some pictures for the stranger assignment and have been thinking about two photographers, Adrianne Salinger and Trevor Paglen (an artist I discovered at the Berkeley Art Museum).

Salinger frequently interacted with people she did not know. When she photographed middle-aged men in her home studio, Salinger seemed to somehow turn each photograph into a relationship in itself. It seemed that when Salinger photographed people she did not know, there was a compelling discomfort within the subjects' expressions. The photographs forced the viewer to question their initial reactions through the mysteriousness of a person portrayed as unknown.
Trevor Paglen's work is more abstract, with politically charged photographs documenting secretive sites, often linked to the CIA. In the exhibit, there was a powerful art piece that reflected the numerous surveillance satellites focused on Earth. Paglen's work tends to have a very eerie side to it. With many of his photographs, I felt like I was looking at something forbidden to me.

Here is one project I found on Paglen's website that I found very interesting:
http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/photos_images.htm

I think it would be interesting to incorporate some ideas from both of these photographers. From Salinger, I really like the concept of viewing the photograph as a relationship between you and someone you do not know. From Paglen, I want to stress the strange feeling I get when photographing a stranger, like I am invading their identity.

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