Two Weeks til the Deadline

We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty here, folks. As I’m writing this, I can’t help but think I should be revising my capstone and/or writing my last research paper for the other class; the latter I haven’t even started. Hey, everyone needs a break, right?

A question that gets thrown at me quite often is what I will do after I graduate. Well, I’m not 100% sure. There are choices, of course. I could stay right where I am and pursue my own art…I just have to actually do it. School slows the creative spirit a tad, but it’s also brought out a creative side of me I didn’t know I had (or one that I didn’t think I’d be interested in), which is fine art photography. It’s an interesting medium. A photograph is like a Rorschach test in a sense because one sees different meanings in it. Maybe that’s true for fine art as a whole, too. It’s hard to see past van Gogh’s starry nights, but, once you do, you see a whole new world through his eyes.

I’ve considered trying to get an online adjunct teaching job in art history. I gotta tell ya, it scares me because it’s out of my comfort zone. I also don’t have any teaching experience, which could hinder things. But…I could try and that’s the point, right? The way I see it, I’m trying to educate others about the art world through this blog and my Facebook page, so why not actually teach a class or two? Professor Weber has a nice ring to it, yes?  

Working in an art museum has been a goal of mine for a while now. I’ve found over the past several years it’s difficult to get your foot in the door, at least for me it has been. I will keep trying that avenue, too, because you just never know when they’ll finally say yes.

First things first, though: getting the degree in my hands….

mw

The Draft

It’s week 9 and I’ve just turned in my draft for the capstone project. I must admit that it feels good to have gotten this far when, just a few weeks ago, I had no clue of the direction in which I was headed.

It’s turned out to be longer than I thought (68 pages…so far), 20 pages of straight writing and the rest are made up of the five photo series that my project surrounds. The question I propose is “is there truth in photography?” In trying to answer this, I have created five series of black and white photographs with text panels based on the roles women take on (homemaker, worker, wife) and issues they deal with on a daily basis (weight and stereotypes). You may remember that my influences are Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems who both use black and white photographs juxtaposed with text panels in their works. I have modeled the way I present my series around these two wonderful ladies who are still working today.

I can’t, unfortunately, share any of my series with you as of yet since they haven’t been graded and whatnot. That just wouldn’t be right. I do hope, however, that I will be able to soon because I would like to see if you think there is truth in photography…and specifically in my series.

Until then, I wait to see what the professors and my other classmates think of the draft I’ve turned in. I have no doubt that my classmates are going through this same anxiety of waiting so we can get back to it and really finish it for next month’s official turn in date. Wish me luck!

mw

The "Selfie" is Older than You Think

Although this term may not seem art related, it is. Long before the term “selfie” was even a thought, artists were creating their own. You know these as self-portraits. Granted, when we think of a selfie today, we think of a photograph instead of a painting or drawing. With that said, if you thought the first people to take the photographic selfie were in this century (or last century), you’re very wrong.

Without getting too involved with the history of the camera and photography, here are a few things you may not have known about them. 

• The first invention of a camera small enough to be user-friendly was in 1685; before that, they were the size of a room. The hand-held versions weren’t around until the 1870’s.
• People were not able to develop permanent photographs until 1826 (the earliest known photo still exists, see below). 
• A Kodak box camera was first for sale in the late 1880’s, and in 1900 a small box camera called the Brownie was introduced and stuck around until the 1960’s. This camera is where the snapshot originated.

The earliest known photo from 1826:

View from the Window at Le Gras by Joseph Nicéphore, 1826

To completely blow your mind, here are some pretty cool photos of the earliest known selfies, the first of which was 175 years ago.

Chemist Robert Cornelius, 1839

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, 1914.
She is using the Kodak Brownie here.

Gunner Thomas Charles Richmond Baker, 1917