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.
2 comments:
My belief is that anything that can be taken from nothing and made into something worth noticing is fine art. It is a difficult task to turn garbage into a masterpiece. I think anything can be made into art, it just depends on how much effort you put forth. I believe this work reflects recycling as well. It shows how you can recycle something into art with a bit of creativity.
Stephanie Latendresse
Period 5
5-6
I believe that anything can be considered art, but it takes true talent and creativity for it to be considered fine art. Fine art isn't just something you see everyday. It is something that an artist is truly passionate about, not just throwing a bunch of scraps together to form random shapes. I believe that these images are a waste of space, and the artist should not be paid for this randomness. Opa.
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