Week 1- An Image Within

Comment on an image with some particular personal significance. Briefly describe the image and your relation to it.

Please do not post your image but keep it at hand for the class

42 comments

  1. The image I found significant is the one I took about a lunch meal, which my grandma prepared each time I leave home to study overseas. For instance, she chose and brought ingredients herself and cooked them full of her patient and love. Gradually, to invite close family members to together enjoy a meal before I go abroad becomes a tradition of our family. However, the more important thing to me is that this activity really contains all of their encouragements and blessings to me as well as my study life away from home.
    As a result, this image is important to me as a commemoration of that particular memory which further emphasizes: This is my home and my family that always supports me and welcomes me to come back no matter how far I go.

  2. I took an image on August 30th, 2014. The image in taken from my point of view standing on the edge of the balcony fences looking down to the roadway from my apartment (18th floor of a building). You can see the road signs and “No parking” prints on the asphalt.
    I took this image when I was in very stressful days of my life. I remember I felt so weak and emotional and I was so upset about that. I really like the image because in fact, I wasn’t even trying to capture anything like that and it was all unconsciously which talks more about my feelings and my point of view towards things.

    The image looks like someone committing a suicide and I titled it “Last Scene”.

    I still like this picture very much since it was like a turning point in my life. After looking at the picture over and over days after capturing it, I saw the weakness and hopelessness in it which made me turn into a new person and react differently in situations like that.

      1. When I look at this image I immediately felt anxious because of the constant struggle of the subject. After looking at it for a while, I started to feel pity and then exhausted by the constant endless struggle. Then I started to feel claustrophobic when I looked at the wormhole but the flashing lights in the background bring me out of that feeling. I find this image tiring to look at after a while because there is so much visual stimulus that I feel overwhelmed. I find that I am focusing more on the movement rather than the juxtaposing colors of the image, I think it’s the different types of movements that caused these reactions for me.

      2. This image combines with 2(3?) GIFs that is visually interesting. I feel trapped and couldn’t escape from this cycle of falling into he hole. The background is shinning flash of 4 colors and the sudden flash hurts my eyes. The marble mid-ground and the human figure is quite modern. Especially the human figure seems like a mannequin. The virtue escape from reality or say this makes me feel like the mannequin will fall into the hole eventually. I feel loneliness, craziness, dizzy, helpless in this image. To me it is pictorial beautiful and fascinating. It creates a dystopia world that needs to constantly avoid falling and also be conscious of the situation. It feels like someone with depression that always have to fight with thought of suicide. Great job 🙂

  3. This was a photo I took last summer on Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, Germany. This bridge was a charming tourist attraction in Cologne, because for several years tourists and locals locks their padlocks as love locks to the railing on the bridge. By doing this, people believes it ensure their everlasting love and then throw the keys into the Rhein river below. I walked along this bridge by holding my then-boyfriend?s hand. We saw couples locking their lovelocks but we never end up lock one for ourselves. I don’t believe by simply locking a lock on the bridge will ensure an endless love and I also don’t believe that anything will last forever. We had a one-year long distance relationship until now just recently broke up, that was the time that I visited him in Germany. After that, whenever I reflecting back to the time we spent together, I would think what if we locked a love lock on Hohenzollern bridge, will this relationship last a bit longer? This photo makes all these beautiful memories remain in this hot summer haze.

        1. Even though I am unfamiliar to the memory inspiring this image, I am able to feel the desolation, estrangement, and discomfort. Disregarding the context of the image is perhaps the most effective way to experiencing feelings of my own, for this and any other image. The sense of abandonment in this image makes it uncomfortable to be there. Simultaneously, however, the essence of sharp pain makes the experience universal and relatable. There is also another underlying feeling to this image: the ‘window’ through which the image is displayed makes me feel as though the place is crowded and I begin to feel suffocated.

  4. The art piece titled US Highway 1 appears to be one of the quintessential examples of D’Arcangelo’s art, an American Pop artist, whose art is a constant source of inspiration to me. As a matter of fact, it is through the study of Allan D’a Angello a series of pictures which portrays American landscapes, such as US Highway 1 on the East Coast, that emmanated my interest for the pop artistic movement. US Highway 1 represents a long strip of asphalt cutting through the landscape and plunging toward a vanishing point on the distant horizon. Surrounding the two lines of the highway, dark green silhouettes of trees contrasts with the sky above, which is a solid plane of dark blue. The space is both flat and penetrating. The signs along the highway don’t seem to be bound to anything and hence, they appear to float over the road as if the time had been suspended. This large-scale canvases visually transport the viewer through a time sequence, as if he was traveling along a highway, catching glimpses of trees, dividing lines, signs and route markers.
    In this series, the road is depicted as a place without time and without characters. The highway is then the hypnotic repetition of road signs and billboards and the forward motion of the car. I was particularly attracted by the way Allan D’angello ‘s art work represents the artist surreal, and almost dreamlike style, since the elements in this painting, the signs along the highway or even the trees, create an ambiguity between a space that can appear both real and fictive. Indeed, in this art work, we can clearly see that throught his expert utilization of color tones and shadows, D’angello defies, and document, spatial relationships.

    Thus, I admire Allan D’angello’s US Highway 1 as it appears to be both essentially impersonal, and appealing. Indeed, this artwork represents no more than a simplified, flat color planes and fragmented geometric forms, a cropped road sign, and vague highway imagery. Yet, This highwayis actually depicted from the driver’s perspective, thus creating a deep perspectival vista, and show a modern as well pop treatment of the American culture and landscapes. Consequently, this duality allowed him to suggest an illusionistic space , that actually discloses an archetypes of the contemporary American culture.

  5. This photo was taken on a beach in Hawaii that my family and I have grown very fond of. This beach has become my families favourite beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. Not many locals visit this beach so it is usually pretty empty, especially in the mornings. We usually stay at a place that is a short drive away from this beach which makes it easy to access for quick trips like sunset walks. I took this picture on one of our sunset walks a few years ago. This picture brings me back to the feelings of peace and comfort I feel whenever I’m on this beach with my family. The picture encaptures the soft waves rolling up on the sand and the slow swirls it makes as they descend back. The sun is just hitting the horizon, leaving the strongest colours in the sky at this moment. The memories this photo brings back of countless fun times with family always brings me a sense of happiness. I was lucky enough show two of my friends this beach when they were on the island at the same time as me one year. This was a cool experience since I had previously only enjoyed the beach with my family. It felt good to share such a special place with other people I care about.

  6. Untitled Scan
    An image of the scan of an image or simply a scan of an image, but an image nonetheless.
    9 in. x 12 in.

    I am fascinated by the layers of meaning created through the process of digitalization. I am interested in the effect time has on physical entities, like the pages of a magazine, and how the presence of technology alters this effect. It is perhaps a strong sense of melancholy for ‘what has been’ that creates the urge to preserve the material. I could discuss the content of the image within this image by explaining how it relates to my nationality, the country where I was born or the way I perceive that place currently. I could include that the physical version of what is represented in this image inception is a product of the way the west chose to represent the different ‘other’ across the world. I could explain I feel compelled to bring this kind of archive into my work because I find it the most logical approach to contest misrepresentations of race and culture through time. I would say this archive I have created of an archive has no expiry date, but is bound to obsolescence.

  7. The painting is named “The Angelus”, an oil painting drawn by French painter Jean-Francois Millet, between 1857 and 1859. Millet is an artist who has peasant background and spent his early life in a village in Normandy. He devoted most of his works depicting farmers and people struggle to survive in rural urban area. And this painting shows us two peasants praying with the rinding of church bell at the end of their work.

    This painting has significant personal meaning for me because it related to my own changing attitude about peasant life and the whole social class. I was raised by my maternal grandparents who were both university professors in China, but my paternal grandparents are all from peasant background. I lived in the city since I was born and only occasionally I was brought to urban village to see some relatives during Chinese Spring festival. When I was young, I saw and was aware of the difference between the life in the cities and urban community, and I had a hard time to accept the less developed technologies, less advanced educational resources and less elegant (let’s just say) living environment in village. At that time as a small kid I was too naive and only noticed these facts but did not feel sympathy, which I now think is a kind of shame.

    But when I grow up and get alone with many friends who have peasant background I found they are less self-centered, warm-hearted and willing to help others, which are some really valuable personal characters.

    My current attitude about peasant–changes gradually, from slightly negative to non judgmental, appreciated, grateful and respectful (positive feelings).
    Let’s put the attention on the painting again. This painting’s depiction about peasant life really gives me a sense of moving. It’s not realistic to say that when I see this artwork I suddenly feels that all positive feelings about peasants are bursted like a volcano, but I think it’s really soft, tender like a river.

    The power and usefulness(technically) of painting–really make people think about other possibilities of life, and for great artist, they do have this kind of emotionally influence that can bring to people, it’s just like the devoutness about their land and their life are well-perceived through this painting, through the atmosphere, the tone of colors and the texture of brushstroke and the artist own sympathy towards peasants. As a viewer, I think these technical details and emotional aspects was well translated through the painting and I really appreciate it.

      1. As I’m looking at this work, it’s different in its representation as a drawing rather than a digital product, which really draws my attention into it. For instance, it brings me the peaceful and harmonious feelings especially towards the central human figure accompanied by an animal. As a viewer, I feel like I’m being welcoming to join in the space and atmosphere you created to enjoy a cozy and leisurely time.

  8. This painting is Alice Neel’s “James Hunter Black Draftee” which was drawn before the Vietnam War in 1965 and was never finished after the person that in the portrait is drafted for the war. Nobody knows what happened to James Hunter and the painter call this painting is finished anyways.
    Before I saw this painting I felt like conceptual art was beyond understand by normal people like me. However, by studing this painting, I start to have an idea of what conceptual art is and opened up my mind to contemporary art and conceptual art.
    The unfinished painting makes me think of why it is paint like this, and what the painting have thought when she calls it “finished”. Why James Hunter didn’t come back for the second sitting and finish the painting? As the result of my research, his name is not on the list of Vietnam Veterans Memorial, so is the War changed his decision?
    I’ve never think of unfinished job before I saw this painting. I was used to think that every art work should be perfectly done to the very last detail. Even the simplest work should have finished. It is interesting that how unfinished work implies the interruption and the meaning behind the interruption. I’ve researched more unfinished art pieces and the reason of being unfinished is quite a lot, and those art pieces are not only interesting but also masterpieces. The point is not the aesthetics or the degree of completion, but the artists’ decision – “A work of art is complete when in it the artist has realized his intention.”

    1. So there’s my image: http://newhive.com/iris91/2017_02_02

      They are all photos from my life and all of them are missing certain information. The previous painting that was metioned in my first assignment is about missing information and the possible story behind it. Therefore, I want to create a feeling of losing clues in a story, and show how those information that is missing is important in those images. All the details that are missing are not essentials about the images – most of them are background information, but they are elements that influence our judgement and feeling. I tried to make the viewers to think about why those information are missing are want they automatically fill in those empty spaces. Moreover, the use of color blocks are my attempts of see how color affect the whole atmosphere in images.

  9. The image of some personal significance to me is a photograph of my grandfather, cousin and I. My grandfather is sitting in a chair and has my cousin and I each on one side of his lap (I am perhaps at least a year old in the photograph). This photograph has always been framed in and displayed in my parents home. I have always wondered why my parents chose to frame this specific photograph since there aren’t many framed pictures. Every time I saw it growing up I wondered (and still wonder) what my life would have been if my parents hadn’t chosen to immigrate to Canada. I feel alienated when I see the photograph of me smiling next to two people I barely know, despite this I still find myself stopping and staring at it whenever I pass it. Overall this picture creates a sensation of longing, displacement and curiosity.

      1. The visual and sound elements of this image give me an interesting sense of wonder and curiosity but at the same time a sense of caution. I get the feeling of wanting to know where I am but also a negative emotion of not having the means to find out.

      2. When I saw this image (and heard the sound) I have the feeling of loneliness and isolated like I’m the last man standing in this white world. Those old surfaces remind me of things that have been disappeared in my life like the old house in country side that I used to live in and I start to have the feeling of nostalgia. The sound, too, also makes me think about my childhood. All the memories are pale and vague, and I can’t tell they are good or bad memories at all. It seems like the memory is in a long distance from me right now. I can’t say that I love this image but this one attracts me most and keeps me thinking about it.

  10. In 2013, my family and I took a trip to the Philippines to visit my mother’s family. While I was there, I managed to collect a number of old photographs of my mother as we visited our family. This was a really big deal for me because I never saw any photos of my mother in her childhood or youth. To me, my mother’s past was a mystery and I felt like these photographs could at least give me some answers. This image I have selected is a photo of my mother when she was living in Singapore during the 1980’s. She is smiling at the camera sitting on a couch with two children in a middle-upper class home. My mother worked as a caretaker for the family of these two kids. It’s a pretty longwinded story about how my mother ended up working for this family and the strong “guardian” role she had in these children’s lives so I will not go into much detail about it. But one thing that kind of concerns me is how affected I am by this photo and the people in it. Not only do I wonder who these people were and how they view my mom (do they still remember her? What memories do they have of her), but I also keep comparing myself to these kids as we both share this connection with my mother. When I look at this photo, I can kind of see my brother and I in the same positions as these two. It’s as if these were the children were my precursors. As if I am the end result of my mother’s experience with these families.

  11. This was a photo I took of coffee cherries while I was on a coffee farm in Kona this summer. Even though this photo not might look like much, it is what I turn to when I am going through rough times because I am not only reminded of the fun I had on the Big Island but it also pushes me forward when I am struggling with school or life and serves as a reminder of what I have to look forward to in the future. I want to puruse a career in the coffee world with a focus on farming and exporting/importing. This photo captures one of the first times I was able to experience and learn about coffee farming and production so it holds a special place in my heart because it was also the first time I was able to feel so close in achieving my dreams.

    The photo is a close up of some of the harvested coffee cherries we collected before they were pulped.

  12. The photo I am mentioning was taken on the Eiffle Tower in Paris, France, while I was on my senior year of high school around the middle of March. I was on a 2 week Europe trip, with around 30 other students and 3 supervising teachers, in which we visited England, France, and Belgium with a focus on the subject of History. Despite being a photo that I had initially captured for purely aesthetic purposes almost two years ago, I find myself having a sense of pride and attachment to the photo. At face value, the photo was taken on a school trip in a country half way across the whole, which in itself, holds a significant memory for me in my high school memories with some of my best friends and favourite teachers. It was amazing to travel with a group of peers, rather than a typical family vacation I was used to travelling in. Thus, this photo embodies this exciting moment of travelling in my life. Beyond the subject of the photo, this image also represents my development for my love of photography. I had only begun to learn photography on a DSLR a few months prior, and this trip was the first journey that I would be able to capture with a higher technical skill in photography rather than on my iPhone. In summary, this photo marks both my first real sense of independence in travelling and exploring a new portion of the world, and the beginning of a skill that would have a significance in my life.

  13. This is a photo I took of my dog when i went back home China in last summer. It looks like a very ordinary photo. The dog was sitting in the car while my mom was holding it and my dad drove the car while playing music. I sat in the back. My dog likes to look outside with the window open . I feel this is the happiest moment when our three people are together with my dog. We are not busy and have nothing to do, just enjoy the time with families. The time we spend together are not that much because I study abroad and they are busy at work. We usually drive to a park to walk the dog. The park is pretty big and has lots of grass. My dog likes to run around and jump into the grass after staying at home for the whole day. Studying abroad and going back home only once a year makes me realize the time I spend with my families is really precious. I bought my dog when she was just 1 month old. Because I study here I seldom see her. Seeing my parents take good care of her and she grows big and healthy makes me really happy. The dog brings a lot of happiness to our family and even make us closer and closer. I don’t know why I feel so touched at that moment and I took a photo to save this moment. And I really think happy is very simple is just in our life.

  14. The image that is important to me is a picture of a drawing that I did few months ago. It’s a realistic sketch of Audrey Hepburn. This image is important to me because it invokes the emotion of triumph and exhaustion. I spent 40+ hours on working on the drawing and the quality of the work was satisfactory. This drawing made me reconsider if I want to pursue art because 40+ hours of work to accomplish something like this doesn’t seem worth it to me. On the other hand, the accomplishment itself is so satisfactory that I want to do it again. This image represents to me a conflict within me.

  16. The image I chose was from the summer prior to my move to Canada – easily one of the best and most memorable summers I’ve had. I attended the concert of an artist I’ve loved since 2008, so seeing her perform live was overwhelmingly wonderful. Luckily for me, my best friend was seated opposite my seats and she caught a photo of my favorite artist with just a hint of me and my other friend in the background. The image is so lively; it just takes me back to the Philippines and reminds me of the wonderful memories back home.

  17. The combination of the sound, colours and selection of images in this image gives me a feeling of warmth and calmness along with experiencing new things. I like the feeling of adventurousness and the joy in this image.

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