Medhavi's Photography Blog

Poached Eggs and Salt, 2001   Irvin Penn was born in the early 1920s in New Jersey. He was exposed to modern art and design during his time at Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. Shortly after World War II, he was hired by Vogue to be the associate art director because he was already known in the industry for his still life and portrait pictures. He was also a painter but he was not satisfied of his works and decided to have a full life career being a photograph instead where he could capture life in his lens perspective. I find that he is a very interesting artist because even by being a travel photographer where he would capture sceneries and portraits of different persons, he would make very dynamic and textured still life projects. In the Poached Eggs and Salt piece, I really like how he arranged the different colors of salt and how he meticulously arranged the egg one over the other. He captures the moment in time but the picture does not lose its liveliness of the s...

  Ralph Gibson is a photographer who does mostly high contrast black and white compositions. He does a lot of close up of the human body and other still lives. The way he executes his compositions give off a lot of emotions. In his 2003 Light Strings, he showed by using just an object - guitar as base subject that he could juggle with different ideas altogether. In the series, the guitar was dismantled and the different pieces was used to create different pictures. The second picture shows the shadow of the guitar onto the velour linings of the guitar box. While the third pictures of the backbone of the guitar over the model's back. The perfect line symmetry shows a wonderful aesthetic. I believe that not keeping his series limited to a coherent style or color palettes makes him intricate but powerful. 

Micheal Kenna is a black and white landscape photographer. Saying out loud makes him sound pretty boring! Well Kenna is not a boring artist. The way that he sees the world is different; instead of taking pictures of landscape that contains lots of information, his landscapes would sometimes contain only one object in focus. He plays with the light and shadow so well that instead of making a black and white photography appear old (which is usually the case), he makes the lanscape appear very futuristic, minimalistic. He tends to seek simplicity in his pictures, and this simplicity renders the unique beauty of his pieces. He would sometimes revisit some places and have an exposure for up to 10 hours to take the perfect shot. In my opinion, this is the summit of passion. The patience and willingess to wait to have the perfect picture.I think that is a perfectionist and he really know how to have to exact balance between black and white.

Madonna, 1979-19780 Madonna, 1979-1980 Signs, Exibart Street self portrait Lee Friedlander is mainly famous for his street and reflections photography. Most of his series, was about capturing a daily task in someone life (mostly himself) by photographing reflections of himself wherever he could see himself, which in my opinion I found very ingenious; sometimes we do not realized that we are triggered by instances of seeing ourselves in any sort of reflections.     He captured those shots with so much background, that the viewer can make a story out of the picture. I also appreciate how the crude and realist way he depicts himself in those pictures; it does seem a little bit creepy at first but the from another perspective it is the perfect description of a regular Caucasian man's life. What really threw me back and made me appreciate his work more are the Madonna's nude portraits he did for a magazine. The way he photographed her, and even for the era he did that shoot, r...

La Cadeau, 1921 Untitled Rayograph, 1959      Man Ray has always been a very ambiguous artist. He was born in 1890 in Philadelphia. Early 1900s, a lot of changes were happening in the States; Theodore Roosevelt came the 26th president after an assassination; while prosperity and peace treaties were happening, industrialization was also happening in some progressive cities. Man Ray was born in a Russian Jewish family but he was never deprived from any artistic surroundings and he was supported to follow his passion since his early years.     He was mainly inspired by Dadaism and Cubism, his works was always experimental but also somehow intentional. He got very close to Marcel Duchamp, the pioneer of Dadaism, the famous artist who exposed a lavatory and called it The Fountain. I would call Man Ray, a generalist artist, because he juggled with every sort of art to finally to a focus on photography.     During his early years in Paris, he accidentall...

       Marvin Heiferman is a well-known writer and curator in the art world; he specially writes about photography and how taking pictures to immortalize moments became so important in our daily lives. Nowadays, most mobile phones are equipped with a camera feature. Heiferman emphasizes on the fact that taking a picture now a necessity and a common practice in our lives.      Heiferman's main interest is about capturing the perfect picture to make an impact on the viewers and he stresses on the fact that pictures can also socially arise awareness and deep emotions within the viewers. Like he said "photography changes what we want, what we see and who are are".     Personally for me, photography is about capturing ephemeral moments in our lifetime but also beautiful landscape ans scenery that we might not get to see again in the future. I agree with Heiferman on the fact that nowaday it's all about the aesthetics. People take random ...