Author: kaylynthom

I chose to imitate Dyan Marie’s photo from the chapter reading of the palm because the misshapen swirls that interfered with the original lines on the hand caught my attention. I thought it was interesting that she tampered with the “life lines” of the person’s palm, showing that things in life may not go as planned. As I looked more into Dyan and her work, she does not use the swirling technique as she did in her work showed in the chapter. She uses other unique ways of altering her photos, to deceive the human eye. I adopted her way of developing her photos because, first, I have never seen any photos post processed like that before and having it mean something other than it just being a surrealist photo. Another reason why I wanted to take after Marie’s work was because I wanted to be able to take normal, everyday subjects and put a slight twist on them to make the viewer more intrigued and being left wanting more. My focus with this project was to allow the viewer to have to analyze the photos a little longer than they are used to. My goal with these photos is to catch the viewers a bit off guard and compel them to come back to it, and look a little closer. By inserting these swirls and other odd alterations to these, average and normal looking photos, it causes people to have to search for the bizarre alterations. Another, more deeper meaning of these odd adjustments is to let my viewers be just as intrigued as I was when I first laid eyes on Dyan Marie’s work, and to be able to cause people to think about life a little differently. Be able to help them understand through my pictures that life itself will not be an easy path or straight line, but some things, or events, are going to seem like they came out of nowhere, unexpected, just like the alterations featured in the photographs. And sometimes we won’t see those obstacles the first time around, making us dig deeper into those situations to get through them and to learn from them.  

For my photos I wanted to recreate the theme of photographers purposely making there subjects blurry because I thought it was an interesting approach to photographing. By making odd/different parts of the subject in focus instead of what most people would expect, makes these photos a little unusual. The blurriness of a photo can also up the intensity of a moment more than it actually was. For example, “Shot Down” by Gerhard Richter could just be a man lying down on the ground but the photo makes it seem more intense and have a deeper meaning. The moments can range from subtle unfocused eye to an intense moment of a man lying on the ground looking distressed.

I found this photo by Dyan Marie very interesting, I loved the concept of it. So I tried to recreate it, as well as using different parts of the body and using the same procedures. When I see this picture by Marie, it makes me think of palm readings, if they’re real or not, it makes me think of the different paths life can take you. And those paths will not be perfect and smooth line and they will include all different kinds of swirls, bumps, and waves, which is why I was so intrigued by this image.

The name of my photographer that I chose is Elliot Erwitt. He’s a photographer that has been a Member of Magnum Photos since 1954. He is still alive today, he is 91 years old. He was born in France but he works in American advertising. I wanted to try and recreate this image because I thought it was interesting how he got that angle of the couple in the small mirror.    

Albert Renger Patzsch was a German photographer from 1867 to 1966. He was always interested in photography, even at a young age, but he took this photo in 1922. He had a variety of different photography projects throughout his life. The relationship between Patzsch’s photo and my photo is the texture both of them hold. I wanted to capture the up close and personal affect as he did as getting all the textures from the plant. Before going out to shoot, I searched for photographers from the 1920s to the 1930s and Albert’s work caught my eye. His work consists of still life, to industrial, to macro. I went to the arboretum to get inspired, because I did not know what I wanted to photograph to try and relate to Patzsch. But when I saw this type of plant, it instantly reminded me of the picture above from Albert, yet it was different and unique in its own way.