Anyway, this particular artist, Blake Gordon with his project reality tv has achieved great results with something I have thought about trying in the past. Not exactly the same concept of course. But placing something incongruent in a landscape setting to achieve an 'altered' landscape really interests me. I have considered trying this in different ways. And this portfolio here is my first real attempt at this. With this project I decided to relocate a number of flood-damaged objects such as a tv, cash till, table etc - items that can commonly be found at home or work. I endeavoured to elevate their status and impose each item on one of the six bodies of water that earlier had fed in to the two rivers that ultimately flooded homes and businesses in Cockermouth.
Blake Gordon has achieved this sort of concept in a far superior way. I think the images are fairly self-explanatory. The vastness, beauty and diversity of landscapes he has selected and the commonality of TV and viewer in them all create an interesting antithesis. The opportunity and beauty all around us that we ignore in our overwhelming desire to watch the box!
As an aside, I am suspecting, but don't know for sure, that this portfolio is taken with a large format camera. I am surmising also that the detail that can be captured on a large-scale format camera is so much greater with detail in both the foreground and background being crystal clear. And if 'blown-up' none of the details would be lost. I can see why this would be desirable in this type of photography. The realms of a large-format camera will be someting I will be delving in to in a later post. It was a suggestion my tutor raised in a recent feedback report that has got me thinking and I need to spend some considerable time getting my head around it. I'll be back at some point on this issue.
Yet another great find, Penny (I like the shower portraits too). I have very mixed feelings about TV and this sums up all the negative ones. It lets you into other worlds, but at the expense of taking you away from the one that's around you. I like the way he's really played up this point by showing the TVs in such wonderful natural settings, and the passivity of the people watching them. And the worrying thing is, you can imagine there are lots of people who would just love to have a TV available outside and probably wouldn't see anything disturbing about these images. I mean, they even have them in tents these days! Oh dear, I feel a rant coming on......
ReplyDeleteLOL Gilly. I know, his stats are scary but not surprising at all. With tv's, gaming consoles, ipods, computers, iphones we are surrounded by them, some on at the same time. Where will it end!!
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