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.
