Artist Talk: Roger Ballen and Caleb Cole

Roger Ballen is the first artist talk I have attended in this semester. It is very beautiful when all my classmates drove 50 miles to the Boston University. From the beginning to the ending, the most frequent word is form. He very cares the frame and design the frame carefully. At the beginning, he shows the album called Boyhood 1973-1978. That was the first few years he spent in the Africa. As usual, the first pictures show the relation between nature and people, the naked bodies show their power when they face to the nature, and those things combine together to demonstrate the harmony between nature and people. Later, he was interested in the cities in the Africa. Absolutely, during the 1980s the Africa is the most undeveloped area in the world, and as an American how he shocks when they face the poverty and hardship are unknown. But the pictures from Roger shows the living standard by his humor and rigorous artistic point of view. The strictly relative symmetrical forms are his characteristics. The most famous picture, Twins are the explain the meaning of the strictly relative symmetrical forms meaning. On the other hand, on my next project his ideas inspire me to repeat and imitate. Relative symmetrical forms leave people a strong mind of the forms and do not few tedious with repeat. Another thing I learned from the Roger Ballen is leave the blank. A photo with full information is hard to control all the detail, and more information you have, the more interests the audiences feel. However, the blank is another way to leave the space for audiences to imagine. With an appropriate blank in the picture, the audiences may not feel too crowd but the space for have a breath.

Caleb Cole is a guest artist to the UNH. He is a very humorous person, and did a very delicate slides show with a good explanation. It makes me feel better than the Roger Ballen, he barely talks about how he thought or the meaning behind the pictures. The first and my favorite part is an idea inspired by his mother and secondary market. The basic of his idea is wearing a stranger’s cloth and replacing them try to see the world from a different angle. Every day, every minutes, every seconds, there thousand people around you, you may do something exactly same or even you are repeating some work every time. However, nothing going to be same. Especially, the mind, the thought when you are doing, what in your brain. The most defect of the human being is self-approbation, and assumes others to be what they assumed. When the Caleb Cole explains his pictures, what he says are the though when he being them, how he feels when he is them. It is the missing part for everyone, have a think of others. The feeling of replacement is next thing I am going to focus on. How to design a frame with the story in one single picture and making the audience to have a strong deeply resonation. 

Foods and Life

Food and Life

When the food comes out, it comes with the happiness of life.People feel satisfied when they have the good foods. There is no way to judge how successful your are but life is different when the food comes. Think about what you eat every morning; it is a way to express what life you are being. In the morning, you just barely have time to eat breakfast, grab one or two pieces of breads and rush out in a hurry. Here is another life. Driving your car in the morning and looking for a Yellow M to get your morning food from the drive thru. It sounds better than the last one,but how about this. You wake up in the morning and sit on the big comfortable dinner chair, enjoying the sunshine. You have the time to cook a cup of coffee, which is your favorite one, fry an egg, make a morning sandwich, you could also do whatever you want. Quietly sitting on the chair, watching the sky, start you life of today.

The food always can represent the life.

Collaborative Project

BALL ball

This is a very good example for the careless work.
Dont move your camera!!!! Carefully!!!!

Silhouette

Short light


Broad light


Split Light


Rembrant Light



Butter Fly

Something Borrowed.

This a black and white image, the man in vest and hat and holds deer’s skull in the middle of the picture and sit there. The background is not clear, could be a stone mountain or a forest. The man looks like mid-age and brown Asian face, he has bread under the nose but no chin. He is staring somewhere and maybe focus on the old memory. His tie is bright, could be white or yellow, and the tie is done by a simple knot, an easy and nice way. There is a little wrinkle in the top of tie, and the left collar is in the outside of the vest. Don’t know it is happened by careless or accident. He wears a tartan vest with blue or gray shirt, all his cloth are nice and neat. He stay here, the environment is quite and peace or distressed. He is frowning slightly, could be a bad memory leads to or maybe he frowning all the time, and then the wrinkle makes him like frowning even he is not. His hand is big and fingernails are clipped appropriately.

Where I am? Who am I? Why I am sitting here?

Ok, let me see, I am an Asian guy, China? Korea? Japan?

No, look my skin, brown, probably I am from the South East Asia.

What I am staring, what’s my feeling?

I am staring somewhere but it doesn’t matter.

I feel lonely? Perplexed? No, I am concentrating on something.

It could be an old memory, maybe I have been here before.

The stone at the corner recalls my old story, so I am staring out of the camera.

What I am holding? Deer skulls?

I don’t know, is the antler mean something? Yes, obviously, all these things are my war trophies.

I am a good hunter. They are the king of the deer, smart and clever or cunning.

But I am better than them, I am the real king of this island.

So, why I am not happy, or even feel sad?

What is the life I want? What is the life?

I am confused, again and again.

From my experience, the hard thing of shooting picture with model is capture the emotion with the appropriate setting. I could do hide and shoot but when I try to shoot in front of the person, they were too nervous to be shoot. So, when I see the picture came out, it’s always not satisfied. This picture shows me a good model, the person and the picture. What the relationship between them.