Vernissage in Lacoste Spring 2010

Vernissage is an exposition or gallery show that all the students of Lacoste participate in. This quarter we have photography, printmaking, creative writing and illustration, and a few more too. I’ll be showing my photography for the show. I’ve chosen 6 photos to frame and hang in our gallery. I chose to put them in black and white to not only to emphasize the formalist aesthetics but also to avoid color issues with the printers here, haha. This project was also another side project I did, it all started with the first photo of a rectangle cut into the stone at Forte de Buoux. I loved this strange geometric shape in the natural environment; it is forever evidence of human inhabitance of the area. This didn’t become a true side project until I found the second photo at the Pont du Gard. It is a lovely little square amidst the moldy stone and grasses. The third photo was of a circular mark at St. Saturine d’Apt, though I’m not sure what it was originally used for. The next three photos are not of geometry in the natural world but rather holes in the stonework that not only serve a purpose but also provide an aesthetic reprieve from the blank stonewalls of the city of Opede. I especially like the fourth photo for its lighting and detailed stone texture. Hopefully it is not noticeable, but I rotated the image because I liked this composition the most. I’m really happy with this mini project and I’m excited to show it in the Vernissage. I’ve been struggling to think of prices for my work. Many people are pricing their smaller works for 20-30 euro, which seems a bit pricey for me, but at the same time I don’t want to under price my works. I think for my smaller photos I’ll price around 10 euro, that’ll cover the cost of materials and give me extra money. I think 20 euro is reasonable for the large prints especially since the frames were free. So if I did sell all of them, the large prints would make up for under pricing I did for the small prints. I hope all goes well!

Panoramas of France

Click to enlarge

While traveling through southern France, as a little side project I took panoramas of some of the landscapes we visited. I did this mostly because the panorama is a great tool to describe a large amount of land and grandiose feeling you get from seeing it. I put together 6 panoramas with photoshop, of the different areas I visited. The first panorama is of Bonnieux the Grand Luberon mountains behind it. I took this while coming back from a hike through the woods near Lacoste. As you can there is a lot of farmland and Bonnieux is a great example of the villages on the hill side, as it is incredibly common for this area of Provence. On the right side of this photo it is a little stretched, I didn’t crop this out because it reminded me of the motion blur of moving your head to see something. The second panorama is smaller because it only used three images to create it. On a different hike, I went around to the backside of Lacoste and found this nice viewing spot; I think you can see Lumieres and Gordes from here. You can certainly see Mount Ventoux with its snowcap. There is a great depth in this photo and you can see the various levels of atmospheric perspective. The next little panorama is of the only pass through the Luberon, as seen from Forte de Buoux. There is a lot of rock climbing areas in this region and there are few residents in the valley. It is really neat to see the rock layers in this photo. The fourth panorama is my second favorite panorama; I saved the best for last. Here you can see Bonnieux on the right and Lacoste on the left. I like this photo because of the rich green and foggy atmosphere. This was taken on our way back from a hike through the Cedar Forest with Forest (our photo professor). I seem to be hiking a lot. The fifth panorama is a neat one; it’s of the Rhone River looking from the Palais des Papes gardens. This is a fun photo because you can see the medieval fortresses throughout the new city area in Avignon. And last but not least, the panorama from Opede. Opede is really beautiful, it is an old village but it hasn’t been lived in since the 1920’s and is almost entirely ruins. There is a beautiful Chateau at the top, which is just entirely ruins and you can climb all over them. I’m not sure of the area this panorama is looking over but I especially like the play of light and clouds you can see in the valley. This was a fun little side project, and photoshop makes it so easy now.

The Corners of Paris

While I was in Paris, I was particularly fascinated by the web of streets and the corners they created. These little points of emphasis, which are convenient for pedestrians and drivers to take note of. Maybe I am not accustomed to large cities and this is common, but I particularly like the bottom floor used as a place of business while the upper floors are for living or office purposes. Many of my corner-building shots were taken while I was walking to another place. These snap shots reveal my interest for this occurrence. I also noticed that by taking pictures of these singular buildings they seem almost monumental in size, which also reflects this overwhelming feeling I got from Paris during my stay. The city of Paris is the largest I have ever visited, everything was going by so fast and everything seemed to have so much more weight. So taking these photos really emphasizes this to me.

I think if I returned I would take more time and definitely take more photos. I wonder what time of photos I would take in a more leisurely atmosphere. I know I would like to focus more on people next time I visit a big city, because the people are what define the city. Also, I don’t usually take photos of people as it is unpredictable and to me a usual choice for photographers. But I would like to break away from my formalist aesthetics and try something new. I will be traveling to Italy soon and I will be taking Travel Photography while there. One of the objectives is to find something familiar in the unfamiliar. I think for me, photographing people would be the most interesting and challenging way to find the familiar in Italy. Although, I will of course photograph architecture as it near and dear to my heart and I wish to honor my late grandfather with a portfolio of architectural photography. So here’s to challenges to come!

Windows in Provence

Throughout my travels in France, I've found myself drawn to taking photos of windows and I think its worth discussing. On their physical quality, the light in Provence particularly makes the windows stand out in the most interesting of ways. Also, the variety of shapes and colors add another level of interest, from the stained glass windows to the glass-less windows of ancient structures. I like photographing the various gradients the light from the windows makes on the surfaces around them. Like in the photo of the thin window that casts a warm yellow light on the stones that make up the structure around the window. Or the light coming through the church, giving the space an other-worldly atmosphere, it is evident that windows define a space. These are just a few of the physical aspects of windows that draw me in, but I'd have to say most importantly, windows draw me in conceptually.

This whole experience in France was based entirely on a whim as I went to one of the informational meetings on a free afternoon. It was the last informational meeting of the quarter before having to sign up, it was the last “window” of opportunity, which of course I have taken. Thinking about this, I started to think about the many meanings of window there is other than the obvious physical ones. The word window was created to describe an opening that lets wind in, but it also does so much more, it lets in light, sound, color if there is glass and creatures if there is no glass. Most importantly, however, is that a window lets something else in, it is an opening for experience be it sensual or literal. Another way to describe a window, is a window in time, a short period of time that can be accessed but will be closed shortly. Also thinking about windows as an opening, it is an opening you can't go back through, once you jump out of a window there is no going back, once you've made your commitment there is no going back. All of this has great meaning to me as I have made a commitment, I have taken an opportunity, and as I jumped through that window, I fell into the whole world of new experiences that France and art has to offer. So for my final in Light in Provence, I will focus on windows for their formal qualities as well as their meaning to me.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres

The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres is the largest building in all of Chartres, France. It is also the center of the town and for good reason. Known for its asymmetrical bell towers and particular blue stained glass, Notre Dame de Chartres is easily one the most iconic French Gothic cathedrals of France. As the only student that opted to go on that trip, during our time in Paris, I was happy to have the whole building to myself as you would say. However it was also difficult since I didn't have a tripod for the interior of the structure, so again I found myself tucking the camera under my chin and hoping for the best. Luckily with such a beautiful structure its hard to take a bad shot, though many were blurry.

In the interior of the cathedral, I was especially drawn to the stained glass windows as I imagine most other people were too. Unfortunately, nothing can really recreate that specific blue in the glass, so my photographs do it no justice, the windows are definitely something only the human eye can see. At history goes, the master glass maker (I don't know the proper term) died with the secret chemical mixture to make that blue in the glass. The blue of the glass is most amazing when light is shining through it as it is the most luminous, richest blue I have ever seen in my life.

Another interesting part of the cathedral is the restoration work being done on it. As you can see in the photography of the choir, the white of lime stone just radiates in the interior of the building. 800 years of soot and build up has been removed to show the brightness the structure would of originally been seen in. It will be a worth while trip to visit Chartres again after the cleaning has been finished.

The exterior of the building as equally as interesting as the interior. The play of the light falling in and out of the recesses of the walls and sculptures, gives the building an odd feeling of lightness despite it being so incredibly large. The buttresses were rather eye catching in the afternoon, as the sun was at an angle and caught the high lights of the roof and casted shadows onto the walls. Notre Dame de Chartres is definitely one of my favorite churches in France.

Flowers in Provence

While the vegetation of Provence isn't lush as a rain forest it certainly produces beautiful flowering plants. As an assignment, my photo class had to focus on the natural world and while shooting for this assignment I noticed the amount of purple flowering plants. I suppose the amount of iron in the soil creates a lot of purple flowers.

The three images of purple flowers are just a few of the many other varieties in the region. The first image of red-violet flowers was on a hike down the foot path to Bonnieux, it was morning after breakfast and the light was lovely at that time. It was a good day to go because the night before it had rained so there was extra dew on the leaves of the plants. I found this little patch of weeds and loved the color contrast of the flowers and how the light illuminated some areas but shaded others. It created this extra depth within the photo. The other two photos were also on hikes, the tall flowering plant was on an afternoon hike in a more aired area that had less trees, where the low lying flowering ivy was on the other side of the mountain in a heavily wooded area. These flowers easily catch your eye amidst the dark green and browns of the garrigue. Though it may be an obvious choice for a subject of a photo, I think they are unique to this area and represent Provence as a fertile and peculiar land.

On the subject of what makes Provence different, I'd like to talk about the other two photos. Provence is heavily farm land and has a warm climate suitable for cherry trees. Rows and rows of these flowering trees stretch endless throughout Provence and especially in the Luberon. The beginning of April seems to be their main blossoming time and luckily we here in Lacoste get to see it. I've only had short encounters with orchards in the United States (not counting oranges) and I have come to enjoy them more and more. The photo of the cherry tree orchard is also on the same foot path to Bonnieux, also taken that morning. I was delighted with how the light shown through the with flowers of the trees. On the other hand, with the last photo of moss on a rock, I took this photo because of the textures of the moss and rocks. Something you see often in Provence, due to the aired climate, is this multi-colored squishy moss that absorbs the water that comes pouring out of the rocks here. This was at Forte De Buoux on a class field trip and it was hard not to notice all the moss on the stones there. I had to climb a bit to find this specific moss though, its different from the kind that is closer to the ground as it isn't as leafy or as green. Though it isn't one of my strongest photos, I have a strange attachment for it and find it rather soothing to look at. All in all the nature assignment was not quite the success as the urban assignment, likely because I enjoy to photograph architecture more, however I was able to see first hand the landscape and vegetation of Provence, which is undeniably valuable.

Architecture in Provence

One of the most interesting aspects of Provence is the architecture. There are so very many centuries of buildings here and it is fascinating for me because in America all of our architecture is so young in comparison. I especially enjoy photographing buildings because of the geometry and graphic quality the photographs produce. On Saturday my Treasures of Provence (art history class) went to the Abbaye de Senanque near Gordes. The main building is Romanesque from the 12th century, it is a Cistercian Abbey which means the architecture is very simple, no decoration and little ornamentation. I like Cistercian architecture because of this simplicity, I agree with their beliefs against materialistic and highly decorative monasteries/churches because it makes sense to me and if you want to be closer to go you must be further away from worldly things. As a formalist I find the greatest beauty in the shape, lines and forms of architecture and Senanque focuses on just that.

Trying to photograph the interior spaces was somewhat difficult, navigating around 30 other students, trying to hold my camera steady and still trying to listen to the tour guide. I found that I would have to hold my camera against my chest in a somewhat locked position to keep it from moving, but this meant I wasn’t able to look through the viewfinder to see what I was taking a picture of. It was fairly dark inside so I had to use a wide aperture and slow shutter speed to take the photos. A tripod would have been most useful at this time. Even though I didn’t get to hear that much of what the tour guide was talking about, I felt I really got a good look at the structure due to me being the straggler still taking photos. I’m glad we went in the morning because the light was beautiful; morning light is so pretty to me since it is a brighter more blue light. And since the walls were bare, blue light makes the stones look cooler, which to me helps describe the space because it was like a refrigerator in there. I think the Abbaye de Senanque is one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in and it will forever stand out in my memory.