The artist that we used in class was Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He was known for his modernistic ideas abstract art forms. He was a strong believe of modern industrial ideas and used them, applying those ideas to some of his work. The photo that caught my attention by him the most was his photograph of the hand and paintbrush “Photogram.” What is most interesting about this photo is that it is not a photo at all considering that he didn’t use a camera. Instead he placed his hand, among a paintbrush and other objects, on to photographic paper before exposing it to light.
During class we were told to select one of our artist’s photographs and try to emulate his ideas through a photograph of our own. I do not own a camera, or at least one that works anymore or isn’t missing, so I had to use my cellphone in place of one. It’s resolution wasn’t very good, so the image I managed to capture wasn’t all that clear. I took a picture of a staircase inside one of the hallways and used a bird’s eye vantage point so that the lens was facing straight down. This made the stairs look completely parallel to one another, as though there were no difference in height between each individual step.
I was trying to emulate a concept that I noticed in all of his photographs. Lazslo’s photos all have a similar quality that caught my attention: all of the images look oddly flat. It’s as though all of the subjects have been pressed firmly in the photo so that there is no difference in depth. I tried to emulate that in my photo by making the stairs look the same way. My hope was that by doing so I would remove the depth from the stair case and make them look like flat rectangular shapes next to one another.
arth318snapshot 