Threshold Concepts
(QUESTIONS FOR THE 4 IMAGES ABOVE)
What types of photographs are these? (You might consider genres such as Photojournalism, Street Photography, Still-Life, Snapshot, Candid, Abstract)
Which (if any) seem obviously staged? And if so, why? What are the clues that suggest these might be 'constructed' images?
Why might the artist want to mislead the viewer (but perhaps not fully)?
Do any/all of the images leave you with questions or wanting further information?
What role do the titles of the photographs play in shaping your understanding?
Do some/all of the images have a similar style?
What types of photographs are these? (You might consider genres such as Photojournalism, Street Photography, Still-Life, Snapshot, Candid, Abstract)
Which (if any) seem obviously staged? And if so, why? What are the clues that suggest these might be 'constructed' images?
Why might the artist want to mislead the viewer (but perhaps not fully)?
Do any/all of the images leave you with questions or wanting further information?
What role do the titles of the photographs play in shaping your understanding?
Do some/all of the images have a similar style?
The types of photographs show above would be Street Photography, Still-Life Photography, Abstract and Snapshot. In my opinion they all look staged and mostly directed / set up to look they way they are except from the street photograph, that one looks like documentative photography. The top right photograph that shows the 100s of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling that can be obviously shown to have been put there. The clothes and the man sitting in the chair look out of place as if they don't "belong" there. They might want to hide the story behind all of the lightbulbs, the abstract 90 degree angles, the people walking down the street and the "destroyed room". They leave me thinking about "why" for all of them and "how" they have created those photographs and for what purpose if they have any.
"The Destroyed Room, 1978" really makes me ask the question, what did it look like before it was destroyed and why was it destroyed? The Mimic is the most confusing here because all it looks like is 3 people walking down a street being documented for whatever reason by the photographer, it doesn't look like anything or anyone is "mimicking" anything or anyone. All the images have a certain uncanny feeling to them that make them all seem abstract and obscure. It's like they have some kind of purpose but either it is not present in the photo's when they were taken or it's hidden behind all of the obscurity in the photo's.
"The Destroyed Room, 1978" really makes me ask the question, what did it look like before it was destroyed and why was it destroyed? The Mimic is the most confusing here because all it looks like is 3 people walking down a street being documented for whatever reason by the photographer, it doesn't look like anything or anyone is "mimicking" anything or anyone. All the images have a certain uncanny feeling to them that make them all seem abstract and obscure. It's like they have some kind of purpose but either it is not present in the photo's when they were taken or it's hidden behind all of the obscurity in the photo's.
A Threshold Concept is a complex idea in photography that can produce a range of photos and development processes through it. Threshold Concepts teach us, in photography, that even though the photo is not taken by a camera, it is still classed as a photo (a capture of light) just like the photo says, "Photography is the capturing of light; a camera is optional". Threshold Concepts help me think about photography by saying that not only can a picture be taken using sunlight, red light or any other source of light, it can also be projected by using the pinhole camera (A pinhole of light is used to produce an image on a wall, sheet of paper or some flat surface / surface where the image / photo is visible).
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Obscura
A Camera Obscura is a dark room with a small hole in one wall. When it’s bright outside, light enters through the hole and projects an upside down image of the outside world onto the wall opposite the hole. The earliest known use / existence of a Camera Obscura was by a Chinese philosopher called Mo-tzu in 400BC. He noted that "Light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted image of the original object". Other scientists experimented with light passing through a small hole, but it wasn’t until the 11th century that a viewing screen was used to see the inverted image not inverted. Alhazen is said to have actually invented the camera obscura (the non inverted version), as well as the pinhole camera (based on the same idea as the camera obscura).
Abelardo Morell
Morell served as a professor (now emeritus) of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art. Edwynn Houk Gallery is his exclusive representation, with his first show with the gallery displayed in their Zürich, Switzerland location in June 2013. Morell is well known in the photographic community for creating Camera Obscura images in various places around the world and photographing these. Morell was awarded the Cintas Foundation fellowship in 1992 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1993. Other awards he has received include the International Centre of Photography's Infinity Award in 2011.