Showing posts with label Black and White Photographs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black and White Photographs. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Moral Function of Art

                                  Last off the Vine  watermedia sketch

Artists make pictorial records of events, emotions, feelings. Some of us try to sketch the simple beauty of mundane, everyday things. But today, I read an article and saw a slide show of something that moved me beyond words. "When he was only in his 20s Ernest Cole, a black photographer who stood barely five feet tall, created one of the most harrowing pictorial records of what it was like to be black in apartheid South Africa. He went into exile in 1966, and the next year his work was published in the United States in a book, “House of Bondage,” but his photographs were banned in his homeland where he and his work have remained little known." Thus began a article in New York Times :  Homecoming For Stark Record of Apartheid.  The accompanying slide show of Mr. Cole's black and white photographs are so very powerful- they  shock, anger  and deeply distress the viewer.  And as the author Celia W Dugger writes, 'Mr. Cole’s captions and photographs are imbued with wrenching emotions.'  On checking his biography I discovered that he  dedicated his life to record and show the world the injustices and exploitation of segregation. But he paid a heavy price for his work and died young, a homeless man and in exile.  

If and when there is an American tour of Cole's photographs, I hope to be able to view it in person.    Coincidentally, over at Katherine A Cartwright's blog, there is a lively debate going on the 'moral function of art.'  She has been reviewing John Dewey's 1934 book "Art as Experience."  She writes that 'it all began with a statement by John Dewey: the moral function of art itself is to remove prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, and perfect the power to perceive.'  I think Ernest Cole's photographs do all that and much more.  

Monday, January 12, 2009

Music in Unlikely Places

Sketching this musician from an old black and white 33 1/2 rpm record cover was  my yesterday's art exercise.  I am trying to get a likeness of objects in my sketching with minimal erasing and measuring. The goal is to get comfortable sketching in public - right now I prefer to draw in the privacy of my home.  I read about an exercise to just sketch only the shadows and decided to simplify the process and and start by using a black and white photograph - besides it was around 10PM  by the time I even got around to my sketch book last night.  

Speaking of musicians,  I heard on NPR about a research that shows the female mosquito's tone is a surprisingly perfect 400-Hz note -'G'.  The male's buzz is 'D' and together they bring about near perfect duet to create an overtone -a third fainter overtone of 1200-Hz - only then will they mate. Check out the link to read and hear the mosquito love song.  Poquoson, where we live, whose name means 'the great marsh' is also home for lots of mosquitos in summer. From now on, I will remember to listen mindfully to the perfect 'G' before brushing those pesky insects away. 



Saturday, January 10, 2009

Hot Shadows

Yesterday I read a review in New York Times about a photography exhibit: Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the early 1930s, Portraits Taken by a Writer as a Young Woman (in Hard Times.) There is a slide show that goes along with the article that highlights the exquisite black and white photos taken in early 193os. They tell wonderful stories and focus on beautiful shadows, expressive faces of the people enduring difficult times, and taken from some unique angles. The show will be up until feb 6 at the Museum of The City of New York. I am so grateful for the internet that I am able to read about it and get a taste of the the photographs in the slide show right here from the comfort of my living room.

Hot Shadows is a miniature painting (3"x3") done in color pencils on watercolor paper. I wanted to show the texture of the gravel on the road and the watercolor paper did the trick. I also discovered that coloring and then erasing with an electric eraser left enough color on the paper because of its texture. This technique gave me the desired look of the gravel along with some depth. I was happy to leave a few jewels of color embedded in the shadows. I took the photographs of my bicycle and its shadows one saturday morning in September a few years ago waiting along the road side to cheer my daughter as she ran her first 5k. I played around a lot with the composition and finally settled on just the shadows.

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