Sketchbook Prompt Twenty-Seven

The Cinemas Project

Photographs and text by Zubin Pastakia

The Cinemas Project visually traces the lives of Bombay’s disappearing single-screen cinema halls.

Once symbols of modernity, the relationship that many of these halls share with the city has changed significantly as colonial Bombay metamorphoses into an increasingly post-industrial Mumbai.

On the one hand, this collection of images is a repository of the architectural form and interior detail of these buildings that range from the classic to the idiosyncratic. These buildings seem to exist today in defiance of the generic aesthetic and cultural experience of the city’s new multiplexes.

However, to view these halls merely nostalgically — and to cast them off to history — would be to deny them a place in the present; our lived present that is in constant play with time past and pending.

As I explored these cinemas, which are simultaneously spaces of dwelling, labour and spectatorship, they revealed themselves to be sites of deep affective investment, traces of which are evident in every nook and corner.

Writing Prompt: Based on the information provided in the imagery itself and the accompanying article, what is the purpose of this photographic series? If you were to create a similar series based on a different, yet also fading architectural form, what would you shoot?

Sketchbook Prompt Twenty-Six

Useless Things

Photographs and text by Leopoldo Plentz

In the series Useless Things I try to explore tiny findings: remains of torn, destroyed, deformed wrappings found on the street. Choosing these wrappings is totally intuitive, just seeing and picking them up, without second thoughts, otherwise reason would take over and then they would be left behind.

The photos were taken in my studio later, without any significant change to the objects — not on purpose, just because the objects made themselves that way.

The images were taken by placing the objects on scanner glass, like photograms at the beginning of photography. This method gave me the coherence and the uniformity of light I desired. A purist may question whether this is photography, even though "photography" means "writing with light".

And my work's making is also contemporary: digital. Guided by my desire to experiment with new paths, along with the freedom granted by technology to edit the images on a computer — where I can impose my will on the images, as I would in a black and white laboratory — I started to investigate the plastic possibilities of color digital photography.

Useless Things is based on the premise that we are the only species that produces trash. Some selection criteria were established: look for shapes with an appearance connected to the human figure; reverse the scale notion, sometimes enlarging the object's original size a hundred times; explore the substance of the objects as paper, plastic, metal; and finally, research color, a new element in my work.

The superfluous, all those things without any value which are generated by mankind in the process and in the consumption of useful goods, materializes in images of what is left behind in our daily life.

While I was producing this essay, there was a basic question always present in my mind: What is useless? Or, from a different perspective: what is essential? By trying to answer these questions I decided to look at the most common things: ghosts of our own existence; to look at what no one notices: beauty and fantasy of those who are carried away by the subtleties of shapes and colors.

And to find in the ordinary, the extraordinary.

Writing Prompt: Is the work presented fine art? Support your opinion with definitive reasoning.

Sketchbook Prompt Twenty-Five

Photographs by Donna Pinckley

Writing Prompt: Choose one of Pinckley's works to produce a formal analysis writing.

Sketchbook Prompt Twenty-Four

Hydrology: Visions in Ice

photographs and text by Douglas Capron

I am inspired by transformations and transitions that occur within nature, people and music.

My photographic opportunities often arrive unexpectedly and I am always fascinated by how our perception of time alternates with various life experiences. I hope my work travels beyond graphic emotional impact and that it will provoke and sustain a subtle dialogue with the viewer.

With my current series, Hydrology: Visions in Ice, my goal was to share with viewers the ephemeral mystery that occurs when water transforms into ice in
a natural setting. The resulting formations are surprisingly dynamic, organically expressive and complex, and pose more questions than are revealed beyond an aesthetic perspective in our relationship with the most basic element that sustains us all.

I was fascinated by the elaborate, unpredictable and beautiful shapes. These formed and morphed on a small lake in a city park over a few days as winter temperatures started to descend and the crystallization process began and then further, gradually evolving into mysterious patterns of solid ice announcing the arrival of winter.

I photographed this project through the use of long exposure times at night to eliminate glare during the day which allowed me to retain detail and texture.


Writing Prompt: What are your reactions to the work presented? When you first viewed the imagery, what did you think it depicted? Did your initial reactions change after discovering the reality of the series through the artist's article?

Sketchbook Twenty-Three

After viewing the work of photographer Priya Kambli, what are your reactions to her imagery? What stories do they tell you as the viewer? In what ways do these images fall into the domain of contemporary photography? In what ways do these images fall into the domain of historical photography?

Sketchbook Twenty-Two

Take a look at the work of contemporary painter, Christopher Nolasco via his website: http://www.nolascoart.com/index.htm

Choose an image to create a formal analysis critique defining his style and approach to portraiture.

Sketchbook Twenty-One

Take a look at the work of famous painter Chuck Close via his website: http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/life/index.html

Choose one of his pieces to produce a formal analysis critique. Also consider the question, how does his work relate to photography?

Sketchbook Prompt Twenty

Attie, Shimon
$300.00
Behind Piazza Mattei, On-location slide projection, Rome Italy, 2002
C-print
6 3/8 x 8 1/2 inches on 8 x 10 inch paper
Edition of 50

Concerned with questions of memory, place, and identity, installation artist and photographer Shimon Attie gives visual form to both personal and collective memories by recovering untold stories, specifically those of marginalized and forgotten communities, and incorporating them into the physical landscapes of the present. In his series entitled The History of Another, Attie uses modern Rome as his backdrop to project fragments of historical photographs of Roman Jews taken between 1890 and 1920 onto the city's ancient ruins and excavation sites. Attie received an M.A. from Antioch University, San Francisco (1982), and an M.F.A. from San Francisco State University (1991). His work has been widely exhibited at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His work is in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; International Center for Photography, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Maison Europeen de la Photographie, Paris; amongst many others. Attie is the recipient of fellowships from organizations including The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York; The National Endowment for the Arts; and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York.

Writing Prompt: What are your thoughts about this work? How do you feel about the image after looking at the price of the piece? How does the concept of money change the artistic value of an image?

Sketchbook Prompt Nineteen

Prompt written by Val, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the work of Sarah Sitkin.
http://www.sarahsitkin.com/

What makes Sitkin's work so different from other's you have seen? How do you feel when you view her photography?

Sketchbook Prompt Eighteen

Prompt written by Olivia, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the work of Stephen Wilkes.
http://stephenwilkes.com/

What are your first impressions of the work? What do you think the significance of the work is? What do the images represent to you?

Sketchbook Prompt Seventeen

Prompt written by Stephanie, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the work of Mary Ellen Mark.
http://www.maryellenmark.com/



Choose your favorite image by the artist to write a formal analysis about.

Sketchbook Prompt Sixteen

Prompt written by Stephanie, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the work of Ralph Gibson.
http://www.ralphgibson.com/



How do you feel while looking at his work. Choose one image by the artist to write a formal analysis about.

Sketchbook Prompt Fifteen

Prompt written by Stephanie, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the life and work of Ruth Bernhard.
http://www.womeninphotography.org/ruthbernhardAA.html



What inspired Bernhard's work? What was her passion?

Sketchbook Prompt Fourteen

Prompt Written by Brett, Photography 5-6 student

Take a look at the work of Richard Koenig.
http://people.kzoo.edu/~rkoenig/homepage.html



What are your first impressions of the work featured on Koenig's home page? How do you think this image was created?

Sketchbook Prompt Thirteen

Take a look at the website of photographer Yisook Sohn.

http://www.yisooksohn.com/

Look through their portfolio and choose an image from their "Whatever" series to write a formal analysis. Finally, share your reflections of Sohn's work, and the emotions you experience when viewing their work. You may reference Sohn's other series work if appropriate.

Sketchbook Prompt Twelve

Take a look at the website of photographer Rania Matar.

http://www.raniamatar.com/index.html

After reading through her biography,summarize the life of the artist, and her photographic vision. After doing so, look through her portfolio and choose an image from her "Photography in the Middle East" series to write a formal analysis. Finally, share your reflections of Matar's work, and the emotions you experience when viewing her work.

Sketchbook Prompt Eleven

Take a look at the website of photographer Priya Kambli.

http://www.priyakambli.com/

After reading through her biography and artist statement,summarize the life of the artist, and her photographic vision. After doing so, look through her gallery and choose a image to write a formal analysis. Finally, share your reflections of Kambli's work, and the emotions you experience when viewing her work.

Sketchbook Prompt Ten

Visit the website of photojournalist Julie Denesha. Look through her extensive collection of series works. Choose one specific series to speak about at length. Summarize the subject matter and purpose of the series, and then choose one image from the collection to complete a formal analysis. Finally, share your overall impressions of Denesha's work.

http://www.juliedenesha.com/

Sketchbook Prompt Nine

Prompt: After viewing the presented series by Edmund Clark, read the following commentary also by the artist. After digesting the work, go in depth on what you believe the meaning, connotation and significance of the work is.

If the Light Goes Out:
Home from Guantanamo
photographs and text by
Edmund Clark

“When you are suspended by a rope you can recover but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly I am back in my cell.”

—Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458

“I went down to the basement and turned on the light. I wanted to see my room which was exactly as I had left it...It was a strange feeling – seeing my black leather couch, my blue sofa bed, my glass fronted wardrobe, and my model shop again. I’d decorated my room when I was thirteen and had never changed a thing.”

—From “Five Years Of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo” by Murat Kurnaz, Prisoner #061

These images are from three places associated with the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay.

Rather than documents to monumentalize the historical fact of the camps, these images illustrate three experiences of home: the naval base at Guantanamo which is home to the American community and of which the prison camps are just a part; the complex of camps where the detainees have been held; and the homes, new and old, where the former detainees now find themselves trying to rebuild their lives.

The post-prison homes illustrate the contrast between the shared humanity of their domestic interiors and the spaces of the prison camps. Motifs of imprisonment and entrapment are present in both, resonating with the prisoners’ experiences — and coming to terms with them. Glimpsing the evening sun through a window is a simple thing but readjusting to having the freedom to do so may not be so simple. Like a net curtain, memories can obscure the view.

On the naval base an American community lives surrounded by razor wire in the last enclave of the Cold War. This is small-town America with a high school, golf course, a mall and familiar fast food chains. It is home to a community where I found echoes of a wider America traumatized after 9/11 by a new post-Cold War threat from a religion and cultures it does not understand.

The narrative is confused and unsettled as the viewer is asked to jump from prison camp detail to domestic still life to naval base and back again.

This disjointed edit is intended to evoke the disorientation of the process of incarceration and interrogation at Guantanamo and to explore the legacy of disturbance such an experience has in the minds and memories of these men.

Still life imagery of personal space and possessions follows a long tradition of symbolism and metaphor. My work draws on the ‘Vanitas’ style of 17th century Dutch painting in which objects like hourglasses, candles, skulls and flowers symbolized the passage of time and the transience of human existence.

— Edmund Clark took part in the 2009 Rhubarb-Rhubarb International Photographic Review.