Andreus Gursky and Muhammed Muheisen.

Fig. 1. Andreus Gursky

Fig. 2 Muhammed Muheisen

Fig. 1- Gursky's prints upon my first viewing were not all that wonderful and in some ways were mostly good enough for a computer wallpaper. It showed no real concept other than "it is pretty" (Bethny Barrett).

Upon further inspection though, and many hours of staring at the computer, his images are quite strong. They show a superior sense of design and an esthetic that is quite organized and uniform, with straight lines and like line. The images themselves seem to convey the mass uniformity of humanity; the way that we have made everything to look the same, even and uniform. This has a mass appeal as the images deal with the places we live and dwell, in essence the make up of all of us or in other words what makes us us.

The scale lends itself to the subject in that that the subject matter is quite massive in scale so the images in turn are also quite massive. I wonder what sort of message these images would have in the opposite way. In other words quite small, such as 2x2 which would be a direct contrast to the subject matter. This would make a completely different message for the images. A possible interpretation of a small print of a Gursky might convey how we humans cram ourselves in uniform spaces all trying to conform to an established norm which no person can accomplish as no one is "normal". We all (or most) want to be like one person or another and so on and so forth all eventually striving to be a standard, though unique in one way or another because we are all "special".

Fig 2 Muhammed Muheisen- Muheisen's images to me have immediate appeal. All Images i saw have individually tell a story such as fig. 2 depicting a balloon salesmen in Afghanistan. The image itself has a hopeful tone with an undercurrent of dread and general badness in the world. The image depicts children buying these balloons excitedly which on first glance there is nothing special about the scene till we discover that untill recently no one could buy a balloon in Afghanistan because Al Qaida simply would not allow it. This lends to a hopeful tone to the image until we peer into the background and see the factory spewing out harmful smog into the air. This can be a critique to America, first we go into an area and take it over to free the people from oppression i.e. Al Qaida. Then we "rape" the world in which they live by setting up all kinds of manufacturing businesses that harm the people of the area either by the toxins that the factories spit out because there are no regulations or very little there, or by the people there actually working in the factories in which they are given minimal pay with long hours in a job that is quite dangerous, sometimes hiring children.

This is of course just one example of his work, obviously; but on a more broad basis of his work as a whole we can see he intuitively has a strong sense of design and how to frame the shot. The misen sein of every shot is a strong one or in other words everything in frame is strong conveying the message in which he is trying to convey and the story he is covering.

1st critique

In first critique my photos were deemed awkwardly cropped and off colored. The idea behind my prints were the concept of yesterdays yellow, and the idea of abandonment in conjunction with a series I have been working on for a semester now based on the idea of abandonment and loss of identity. Croppings and color was off because I wanted to show that there was an oddness about the scene. All crops and color decisions were completely intentional.

It was interesting to try and not use the words like or dislike while during critique. It was a challenge because there were so many prints I disliked and thought were not good at all that had no concept at all behind them, the simple fulfillment of the assignment to get the colors.

I fully intend to reshoot this assignment to prove Im not a dummy.