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

RePhotographed

James Casebere

James Casebere's 2005, Abadia from upper left is a quiet image. The entirety of the image consists of the architecture of the hallway and what appears to be its natural state of illumination. The lighting in this photograph is a warm gold, which contrasts the cold of the stone material being illuminated. Each arches' values are different. The lighting draws the viewer eye back into the image by increasing in brightness as the hallway recedes. Emphasizing a vanishing point with the lines of the architecture extending back into the hallway also draws the viewer’s eye into the image. The repetition of the arches adds to the recession of the hall, but also allows the eye to follow the arch around the image as well as back into the depths of the image. Awareness of depth in this image also comes from the depth of field; keep everything in focus as it goes back in space. The Abadia comes across as inviting with warm tones and luring recession into its depths.

Klett & Wolfe Response

Through exploring the images on the site, I am intrigued by Mark Klett's and Byron Wolfe's use of time. The combinations of past and present draw the viewer into a time warp. By combining the images of the present with images of the past, in bubbles and frames of various sizes, causes the audience to look search through the images with more investment than a diptych might. The precise arrangement of the images lining up perfectly from different time periods adds to the intrigue and longevity of nature. The use of nature is especially interesting, because landscapes remain more constant than urban or man-made objects. A single mountain has been looked at and explored by generations for centuries. The eternal structures of these landscapes become apparent, and that for generations to come, the same structures will remain. Nature in the commonality we share with the past and the future.

One of the pieces that demonstrate the continuum of time is the Woman Viewing the Twentieth Century Canyon. All the images recreating the canyon are taken from different periods of time ranging form 1902 to 2011. This image allows one to view the progression of film qualities and styles over time as well as the eternal sense of the Earth.

Diptychs

Anna Atkins

Alaria Esculenta is a cyanotype by Anna Atkins in 1843-53. Cyanotypes are contact prints meaning that the object rests on top of the light sensitive material, which is then exposed to light. Through this contact process a sense of depth is lost in the resulting images. Atkins implies a third dimension to her work mainly though portraying her subjects overlapping elements as seen in the leaf above. Though her work was scientific in purpose, it maintains a pleasing aesthetic. Cyanotypes always come out blue, in Atkins' Alaria Esculenta, the cool blue adds to the clam stillness of its subject mater. The way the plant is displayed causes the eye to follow the path of the organic material. In other words, Atkins sets up her subjects in a way that implies movement, filling the page. The variation in transparency between the organic materials suggests that the leaf, flowing throughout the page, constitutes of a more delicate material than that of the solid base it sprouts from. This image gives no implication of the plants natural coloration, however, the viewer obtains a strong grasp for the three dimensional shape portrayed, and a good sense of the plants various textures all seen through, ultimately, its silhouette. This "photogram"/ cyanotype relies on shape and line to communicate to the viewer.