“Frozen are the winds of time”
by Wang Lu
Wang Lu is a photographer based in Tokyo, this series centres around her awareness of the changes in her hometown in China as it continues to develop past what she remembers from childhood. it also reflects on the refusal to change from those who live there, her own father suffers from partial memory loss due to an injury and remains “frozen” in time as it seems so has the rest of the people from her town. I was drawn to Lu’s work as it is very descriptive using mundane settings and similar to what I liked to do in my photography for this task, she took something that seemed liked nothing and gave it a personal meaning as it is her beloved home town. Its as if she is taking us on tour of her home and how it has changed and stayed the same in areas similar to her fathers mental state.
“Gaps”
by Cocoa Laney
Laney created the photo series “Gaps” in response to the culture shock she felt when moving from America to Italy, she created these photographs to document this feeling of there being something missing as she becomes accustomed to this new culture. The photographs themselves often strategically block out faces using scenery in the foreground that remains blurred while the background is perfectly focused. This is as if Laney is taking these pictures through gaps in the scenery allowing the viewer to only partially see through slightly obscured specifically the faces , this conveys the gap in communication she feels due to learning the new language and her struggle to connect. The photo series conveys this unique outsider perspective of Laney’s, the photos are looking in and observing a culture unknown to her that she is intrigued by despite the missing pieces of visual information which again convey the nuances of a learned language getting lost in translation. The scenes in the photos are detached from Laney, she is paid no attention as she looks in strategically framing the photos through windows and curtains as if she is observing from afar curiously yet with the desire to understand and fill in these gaps.
“American Surfaces”
by Steven Shore
When creating “American Surfaces” Shore intended the series to be a diary of his travels from his point of view capturing the people and places he saw as well as even the food he ate. Shore wanted to truly capture his own perspective and share it, taking inspiration from colour postcards, these shared a viewpoint in time without placing too much importance on the technique or subject of the photograph. In this he wanted to focus on taking photographs consciously concentrating on his own viewpoint and what he could see in front of him at any random moment and then translate that into a photograph. Through this visual exercise he was able to get a better grasp on natural photography and creating a presence within the photograph. He used specifically chose coloured photographs as well to go against artistic photography convention at the time which centred black and white photographs as well as liken his work to postcards.