Yesterday I finally got around to ordering products to start working with Albumen. I've been really excited about this project. I got my ingredients from the Photographers Formulary Inc. which is based in Montana, USA. The woman on the phone was extremely helpful she even gave me information for finding the clear film to Print the negatives on.

To create the negatives I'll be working with my Epson 2200 and Pictorico OHP Transparency Film. Pictorico use to be owned by Olympus, but it seems that you have to order it from Mitshubishi Imaging. It is hard to imagine that I'll be cracking eggs just like they did more then 150 years ago when the process was a standard in the industry.

The ingredients and measurement supplies are in the mail, while I'm waiting I'll be prepping the files from both my archive and some files from historic albumen images that I can download from the Library of Congress Website. I plan to use images from Roger Fenton.

I would like to thank my friends at the Australian Photographic Society, Royal Photographic Society, and Grand Valley State University for all the help and information they have shared with me thus far. I would also like to thank my friend in Plymouth, MI who kindly donated his UV exposure unit to me. If anybody would like to make any comments or suggestions by all means do so. I'll be posting more as progress develops.

It was 10 years ago that I joined the ranks ok the American Red Cross. Being young and just out of high school it really opened my eyes to the world around me. I not only learned how to save lives but also learned how to teach others how to save lives. Through that education I have taught CPR 3 times, helped at several accidents, and taught countless students how to do the same. Before joining the Red Cross I had no idea just how much disasters affected people.

Today as a photographer I can’t help but take in the world around me. At weddings I get to be a part of the most important day of somebody’s life, through my craft I get to etch it on paper to preserve memories for generations. Conversely when something sad or moving happens I feel it is our duty to share what has happened with the rest of the world.

Although I have never photographed the aftermath of a school shooting and hope I never have to. I can look through the photographer’s eyes through the images he or she creates. I have photographed standing behind a police barricade and became aware of how the press is treated. I’ve also photographed a presidential funeral and know how important it is to share what I see with the rest of the world.

What I have done however seems insignificant compared to the photographs I have seen from Columbine, Virginia Tech, or the recent school shooting in Illinois. When I attend college I feel safe and can not imagine what it would be like if a man or woman pulled out a gun in one of my classes. I can’t fathom watching my friends and professors being a target. It is so chilling to know that this has and does happen to students. The expressions on people’s faces in the photographs attempt to show us the utter terror it causes.

Our right to photograph is secured through the constitution under the guise of the freedom of the press. That freedom is important because it acts as a system of check and balances. When bad things happen they need to be exposed and fixed. Bad things are happening, my fellow photographers, students, professors, friends, and readers. If you sense that somebody may do something like this talk with people and attempt to get the person help. These things are real and a little compassion may curve the violence that plagues our schools. I am glad photographers and the press has opened my eyes to what is going on. The press does hard work that is not easy during grim times like this.

I would encourage anybody to join:

American Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org)
Canadian Red Cross (http://www.redcross.ca)
Rachels Challenge (http://www.rachelschallenge.com/)

The photographs discussed in Behind the Masks Portraits of Southern Gothic are interpretive. If the photographer didn’t engage his twist on the portraits when he included things such as the strange masks, broken windows, decayed houses, or the American flags coupled with not photographing them with blank stares or yawns they may be considered descriptive. Rather it is obvious that the photographer had intended for his viewers to interpret his work they gazed upon it. In a secondary sense the photographs could have also been considered slightly ethically evaluative since they went against the grain of the common portrait style that could be considered a notion it is a very strong one.

The paper also notes some of Meatyards landscapes and portraits of which no information is discussed. Later in life Meatyard studied with Aaron Siskind and Minor White. After they taught him the “finer points of black and white” he gained the influence of Zen in his photography. When I think of Zen I gravitate to empty thinking and meditative photography. This type of photography in my eyes is aesthetically evaluative since it’s about art and making things look good without any social issues. While these photographs do not relate to the title of the work Behind the Masks, Portraits of Southern Gothic they are about the photographer and hold descriptive importance to help the reader understand the photographer.

I sense that Grace Glueck reviewed Meatyard’s work with an open mind entered it with an expressionist mindset. While she did interpret his work you could tell she was less into it then when she described things such as the “finer points of black and white” and “he was intrigued enough by the photographic process to start a serious study in 1954 which post dates the photos talked about earlier. She also leashed out things with a negative connotation when describing his work with masks which included; most oddball, creepy, and grotesque. Although she had an open mind she likely had a preference for more of the realist and formalist images judging by what was noted above.

Grace’s criteria must have been more implicit since she did not come out and say it directly. While she did note explicit things such as “finer points of black and white” they didn’t lend themselves in favor of the images. Perhaps the antonyms of her evaluations would imply what she has embedded in her criteria. She did however use the word memorable when evaluating something but she did not attach it to a good memory or bad one which again lead to the implicit criteria.

Again Grace did not emphasize any theory in her writing. What I implied from the work itself was that it functioned as art that and the disguises added a sense of mystery to the images. What struck me was the thought that the masked may have implied death in death masks or a type of veil. While veils are also used in happy things such as weddings the undertone that Grace described led me to think one of the things it was about was death. People were also photographed around houses with broken windows which gravitate to decay as another subject matter. With regard to modernity the images are set up and heavily posed. By the writing it sounded like Meatyard took his time when executing the images he thought of.

Death and Decay is not the easiest subject to photograph mainly because of the taboo our society has placed on it. Seeing a photograph of a dead body is the easiest way the depict it but photographing the dead under forms of decay shifts to a little too morbid. A decaying dead body in a gallery would have more shock value then meaning. At the year of his death Meatyard photographed himself as old with “unkempt hair” on a umkempt grass hill. He is depicted through the last two images as getting up and leaving which lets us know that he has told his story.

Few people stop to put surrealistic concepts or ideas that exist in the mind onto a medium for others to see. The rationale behind this is because it’s generally more difficult to create something from bits and pieces then to just walk up, compose the image and click the shutter. The creative Maggie Taylor decided to do things the hard way and let her imagination run wild. Her work usually is composed of individuals acting out situations or posing in human form. Some of the forms have bird or mammal elements such as heads. What Maggie creates is usually from a vantage point looking dead on, and rarely has any dynamic angles that pop out or draw attention. Taylor’s creation titled the Late is read from right to left and hosts a childlike figure with a bird’s head traversing the mystic blue skied night on a bicycle with a light shining onward attached to the handlebars. The bird child has wings that look as if they were crafted with bright blue butterfly wings. While the ground is green the horizon fades away into a mountainous background. The green area in the foreground is sprawling with small lavender flowers. In the composition the creature has a hurried expression. This coupled with the night solidifies the title of the image which was created in 2000 with an ink jet printer.

In our semiotic world littered with advertisements in every avenue of our life, few people actually stop to look notably at the aesthetics and compositional elements. Over time, most advertisements are left neglected and decompose which is considered to be an eye sore by most people’s standards. While in New York Aaron Siskind went against this grain and stopped to notice the decay of forms in the city. He then went on to make compositions in New York. A brilliant work of his named New York #56 hosts a sign that without a close look would be next to unidentifiable. He chose to compose this image in an abstract way; while it is balanced it creates tension because you cannot read what the sign says. Beyond the decay with time you can distinguish an element that says “AREA”; directly above it you notice bits and pieces of a word but it is undistinguishable. Above that word a line exists then another word in a lighter shade ending with the letter “R”. The decay in the photograph is composed of organic shapes and under the decay the sign is composed in organic lines and letters. This silver gelatin print was created in 1951 with a series of many other abstract images that focus on elements and decay.

There is no doubt that Joel Peter-Witkin has had a share of life altering experiences from witnessing the decapitation of a child after an accident when he was a child, to photographing the Vietnam War. Most of the work that Peter-Witkin does is considered grotesque and morbid mainly because of his ideas, and even more with his use of human body parts and corpses. The silver print by Joel Peter-Witkin, Daphne and Apollo, c.1985 interprets a myth in which the nymph Daphne never wanted to be married but Apollo loved her and desired to have her. Later in the chase the nymph turned into a tree and while Apollo could not have her he could have the tree. The image depicts this is happening in a wooded area in front of a dark rock like figure. To the distant left atop a hill is a domelike building. The artist’s interpretation of the nymph is a nude dwarf with a tortured expression on her face and Apollo is depicted as a goat-like creature with wings. The photograph has a great deal of contrast which aids to the nightmarish feel. This is an interpretive photograph because the photographer portrays the myth of Daphne and Apollo through his imagination and etches it photographically onto something that we can all see.

Most of the fountains that surround us are in place to add a sense of elegance to a setting. While toilets are seen and used on a daily basis by most of us, very few people stop to notice its aesthetic qualities. This is because most people think of toilets as dirty and smelly. It also has to deal with the excrement process, so it’s typically taboo for discussion and most would consider preposterous for art. This is why you never hear anybody say “that is one beautiful toilet.” Edward Weston however went against the grain and photographed a toilet against a tile wall and floor from the perspective of a bug on the floor. Although his photograph was by no means normal, he was not the first; in 1917 Marcel Decamp featured a urinal in a gallery which was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz and various other photographers. While it is easy to say that the silver print Edward Weston, Excusado, 1925 was created for aesthetically evaluative purposes, one could also argue that that it is ethically evaluative since it leaves people questioning what is defined as art.