Final Project: Time Lapse

Karl Bossfeldt

Karl Bossfeldt's Aristolochia clamatitis is a simple photograph focusing on only a few leaves. Bossfeldt  (1865-1932) was a professor who taught sculpture. To teach his students design elements of nature, he took photographs of plants. He created his own camera which could magnify his subjects almost thirty times there actual size.
Through the lighting and magnification in Aristolochia clamatitis the veins of the leaves appear more predominate and three-dimensional. Side lighting helps add contrast to the protrusions of the veins making them pop out of the leaf which is generally perceived as mostly flat surface. The entire specimen remains in sharp focus adding to the three-dimentionality of the plants structure. Providing a stark background guides the viewer to observe the forms of the selected leaves and the shapes that they create. The dimension Bossfeld gives to the plants through his lighting, focus, and magnification, present these delicate leaves as though they were strong and durable. His photographs read as though they where sculptures and not just plants.

"The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism; it fashions and shapes according to logic and suitability, and with its primeval force compels everything to attain the highest artistic form." -Karl Bossfeldt

Final Project Proposal

For my final project I would like to explore the life cycle through some stop-motion, time lapse of plants blooming and decaying. I would like to do this because my photographic work usually involves close ups of aspects of nature and plant life. I am also studying movies, so bringing an element of time into photography intrigues me. I am also interested in visually expressing life death because my grandmothers recent passing.
Some projects/ artists that have stuck with me are a stop-motion of a dead rabbit's decaying carcass. The "beautiful in the grotesque" of Joel Peter Witkin's work fascinates me. Work such as Abigail Reynolds which deal with time and rephotographing subjects also play into this project about a change over time.

Harvest by Joel P. Witkin

The technical skills I need to improve on will be experimenting with the best way to display the work with the movement through time. I plan on exploring how to make and display gif files, flip books, simple quicktime, or a zeotrope. Consistency in framing, lighting, and coloration may also be a problem if I am shooting more that one subject.
Some test examples:

Abigail Reynolds

Abigail Reynolds The Universal Now: Centrepoint 1975/1981 2010, is a multidimensional image. Reynolds combines pictures from different times in a way that causes the surface of the image to become three-dimensional. Inspired by theories about the time continuum in quantum physics, Reynolds searches for pictures of the same landmark from different points in time to fuse into one image.

In Centerpoint the combination of the two images revolves around the skyscraper. The manipulations Reynolds made to the image mimic the shape and structure of the skyscraper showing it is different time periods and in a different dimension. She even extends the bottom of the image with strips of the colored image hanging out of the frame of the black and white image. They way she combined these images suggest that only the building is the same from the two moments in time and that the surrounding area has changed. Using the colored image just as accents leaving most of the black and white image, causes the alterations to standout more than if it where reversed. This draws the eye to the intricate shapes and folds capture the viewer’s attention, especially to see where things line up perfectly and what is different between the images. I truly enjoy Reynolds play with dimensions of 2D and 3D meeting different "dimensions" of time.

"The repetitious perspective in the found book pages confirms man’s conscious or subconscious impulse to represent place with strict precision. This synchronistic popularized documentation inevitably influences society’s relationship to place through democratic identification and classification, replacing objective experience and associations with superficial constructions.In the process sites become cultural signifiers with impenetrable auras, fixed in the infinite present." 

Stop-motion inspirations

Previous videos I've made.

Inspirational stop-motion video:

Altering the Print

Diptychs using physical alterations to prints (in honor of my grandmother):

InstaMadkin