Three recent images: process snapshots

This photo interests me because it is a photo of someone taking a photo of someone deliberately posing in someone else's artwork.


This image interested me as a very rough snapshot that combines elements of self-consciousness with candid spontaneity. It is in a celebrity's house, but no celebrities are pictured.



I am looking at this photo as an example of celebrities who are both self-conscious and not self-conscious of the act of being photographed. It is a very rough snapshot taken in a VIP locations, so it also serves as a trophy for me.

Three images from exhibitions in New York City that attracted my attention

from the exhibition Polaroids: Mapplethorpe:

"on view through September 14, 2008

"This special exhibition traces Robert Mapplethorpe's use of instant photography from 1970 to 1975. Created in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the show brings together one hundred objects, many never exhibited before. Included are self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, and portraits of lovers and friends including Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff, and Marianne Faithfull. Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability. Others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. Unlike the highly crafted images Mapplethorpe staged in the studio and became famous for, these disarming pictures are marked by spontaneity and invention. Together, they offer insight into the artist's creative development and reveal his pure delight in seeing at a formative time in his career. The show will be accompanied by a book that places this early work in the context of his life-long artistic production."

I selected this image for its snapshot quality and how it differs from Mapplethorpe's more formal work. I can sense the spontaneity that is possible with polaroids.

Louise Bourgeois being photographed by Andy Warhol in 1987 in front of her painting 1932 (1947) Photo by Baird Jones.

It is from the exhibition A Life in Pictures: Louise Bourgeois currently at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

I selected this photograph because it depicts one celebrity photographing another celebrity, and makes me conscious of the act of photographing itself. I also enjoy photographing other photographers photographing.

Tomoko Sawada
From the series "School Days," 2004
© Tomoko Sawada
Courtesy of MEM Inc. and Zabriskie Gallery

This photograph is currently part of the exhibition Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan at the ICP International Center for Photography. I selected it because I saw in it an odd disparity between the feeling of a uniform group of people and the individuality I can see in each student's facial expression & hairstyle. Also I read a similar disparity in the juxtaposition of the traditional cherry blossoms and the high modernist structure in front of which the class is posing.