Tore Yngve Johnson - Untitled, c1949.
… via inspirata
Chuck Close: Daguerreotype Portrait of Kara Walker
A good portrait should reveal answers about the person, yet leave enough room for more questions. In some cases, the old ways become exciting methods for producing refreshing images and themes. A good example of this is Chuck Close’s daguerreotype portrait of Kara Walker.
Chuck Close is one of the most prominent portrait artists of this generation. He is famed for his extremely large canvas paintings of people’s faces, using varying grid and pixel methods to create smaller artworks in the larger portrait. Despite having prospagnosia (face blindness) and having suffered a seizure which left his arms and legs weakened, he continues to produce artworks on the same scale. Over the last decade, he has experimented with different forms of photography, with most of his famous photographs done with the daguerreotype process.
This particular portrait is a collaboration between Close and his artist friend Kara Walker, known for her work dealing with race, sexuality and identity. Walker poses in profile and is captured in silhouette, a more common form of portraiture in the 19th century. Close used daguerreotype photography, of the earliest photographic processes over a century old which involves long preparation, exposure and developing times.
The end result of these artists experimenting with old processes is a beautifully haunting profile portrait in the shadows, the outline of Walker’s shoulders and head clearly visible, with the bare minimum amount of light showing enough detail on her face. For this 2007 portrait, Close was awarded the 2nd prize in the Portraits category of the World Press Photo.
For more on Chuck Close, check out this previous entry on him and his not so typical daguerreotypes. Time magazine has a good profile on Kara Walker. To find out more about the daguerreotype process, have a look at Louis Daguerre, the father of photography.
Sunday project: “A trip through my eyes”
If there´s one thing I love about Tumblr and the amazing photogs community is that watching their work not only you get inspiration, but it is a very special way to “visit” other parts of the world, where they live.
There are some images that reflect to the core the essence of a place, images that hide stories, images that when a local would watch them would say “Oh yes, THIS is so ________ (insert the name of town/city/country here)”.
Here´s my photo, and the story behind it:
When the good weather starts to show in any part of Spain, you can see chairs out of the their houses, empty chairs waiting for the evening to come and their owners to sit in them in the cooler hours, usually elder people who just sit there and chat or simply watch people passing by.
THIS is sooooooo Spain I don´t even….!
So I´m asking you all to take a photo (accompanied by a story) that resembles your country, or hometown. No matter what´s in it, it could be an abstract, food, urban…you name it.
Post it in your blog and tag it with #a trip through my eyes# or #sunday project# and I will track these tags every week, then reblog ALL of them in my own blog, so I won´t be posting on Sundays my own stuff.
If the project is well received, I will make a book with all photos/stories for those who participated.
Are you in?
The Great Escape: During a lovely morning in July I was out photographing Great White Sharks in False Bay, South Africa. We had two days when the sea was so still you could barely see a ripple. (© Tonya Herron/National Geographic Photo Contest)
Sunday project: “A trip through my eyes”
If there´s one thing I love about Tumblr and the amazing photogs community is that watching their work not only you get inspiration, but it is a very special way to “visit” other parts of the world, where they live.
There are some images that reflect to the core the essence of a place, images that hide stories, images that when a local would watch them would say “Oh yes, THIS is so ________ (insert the name of town/city/country here)”.
Here´s my photo, and the story behind it:
When the good weather starts to show in any part of Spain, you can see chairs out of the their houses, empty chairs waiting for the evening to come and their owners to sit in them in the cooler hours, usually elder people who just sit there and chat or simply watch people passing by.
THIS is sooooooo Spain I don´t even….!
So I´m asking you all to take a photo (accompanied by a story) that resembles your country, or hometown. No matter what´s in it, it could be an abstract, food, urban…you name it.
Post it in your blog and tag it with #a trip through my eyes# or #sunday project# and I will track these tags every week, then reblog ALL of them in my own blog, so I won´t be posting on Sundays my own stuff.
If the project is well received, I will make a book with all photos/stories for those who participated.
Are you in?
“Reflection Pool”
Nature provides wonderful colors, even when the summer sun burns the greenery to a drab brown, and the water dries in a stream leaving the muddy banks grey. It’s like mother nature is holding fast to the memories of spring.
Rock Creek, Hillsboro, Oregon.
Iain Baxter - Golden Gate Bridge, from the series Reflected San Francisco Beauty Spots, 1979.
(My Beautiful City) … via the SFMoMA
