Final Project: Holographic Travel Chamber

Here is a link to my final project:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwBpFnjRdXLpaFZ3cVlCZEVfOVk/view?usp=sharing

Event 3: Getty Museum's Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography

For my third event, I decided to visit the Getty Museum, one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. I have been to the Getty Museum on several occasions, as well as the Getty Villa, for past classes in the Classics department. Instead of viewing the vast collection of ancient Greek sculptures and architecture, I decided to take a look at the Reinventing Photography exhibit.

Although I have always been interested in photography, I have never studied the subject. My knowledge of the field only extends to what was taught in the Introduction to Cinematography classes on campus. The art in the exhibit really showed me how photography has come. Photography today does not necessarily have to be a single moment in time anymore, as shown by the multimedia artists contained within the exhibits. 

La Brea D2AB, 2013 - Matthew Brandt

One of my favorite pieces within the exhibit was Matthew Brandt's La Brea. He was inspired to create the series after photographing exhibits of prehistoric animals at the Page Museum. Brandt then utilized the labor-intensive heliograph process to create the piece, where metal plates are coated with a sticky, tarlike substance that hardens with exposure to sunlight. More interestingly, Brandt used actual tar from the La Brea tar pits to create the work of art. Looking at the image, you can see that Brandt intended to convey a sense of loss for creatures that no longer exist, using the fossilized skeletons of animals to represent their memory.

Lunagrams, 2010 - Lisa Oppenheim

The other work of art I enjoyed was Lisa Oppenheim's Lunagrams #1-13. To create the series, Oppenheim borrowed glass-plate negatives depicting the moon made by John and Henry Draper in the 1850's. "She then made large-format copy negatives, placed them on photographic paper, then exposed them to the moon at the time of the lunar phase depicted in the original" (Sholis). In this piece, she shows how photography can capture durations of time using different photography techniques and new mediums. The series is as mesmerizing as it must have been for the first astronomers to study the moon's phases.

After going through this exhibit, I realized how dynamic of a field photography actually is. There is a variety of ways to bring new twists to traditional photography, such as was depicted above. Throughout the exhibit, I could see the effortless crossover between art and various fields of science, such as paleontology and astrology. Without this course, I don't think I would have been able to recognize that the interplay between different fields in each work of art.

Works Cited:

Brandt, Matthew. "Matthew Brandt." Yossimilo.com. Yossi Milo Gallery, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015. <http://www.yossimilo.com/artists/matthew-brandt/>.

"Lisa Oppenheim." Klosterfelde.de. Klosterfelde, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015. <http://cgi.klosterfelde.de/user-cgi-bin/exhibitions/?s1=previous&s2=2010&s3=Lisa_Oppenheim>.

Sholis, Brian. "Lisa Oppenheim: Elemental Process." Aperture Foundation NY. Aperture Foundation NY, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015. <http://www.aperture.org/blog/lisa-oppenheim-elemental-process/>.