Mark Ruwedel – Records . This showcased abandoned houses in the west coast. I respected this work because I could tell their was a lot going threw mark’s head besides just capturing abandonment. He was showing various stages of decay and abandonment, some houses looked as if they had just been abandoned, and others looked like they’ve been un lived in for years with overgrown grass and weeds outside. It seemed to me that the more abandoned and decayed a house was, the darker it was or later in the day it was. I also liked the fact that the backgrounds were very blown out and white. I find this happens in my black and white pictures as well and while trying to push ideas of times changing and decaying I always found that the UN detailed white skies gives it a certain mood that couldn’t be captured with detailed well exposed sky.
Mitch Epstein-Trees. Mitch showed trees in urban, city areas and captures the relationship between city and human life. The main focus and subject in his work is a tree. A tree will be the most dominant subject; around the tree he will include peoples involvement whether it be an apartment building, a bench with people sitting on it. What I liked most about his work is how he took this idea and very sneakily snuck human life into a perfect composition of a tree. In many of his pictures a huge tree would be in front of a house and you could only maybe see a window or a door perfectly placed in the crevice of a branch. I love placing certain contrasting subjects woven within others and Mitch was very good at this. You know your good at this tactic if at first glance you don’t see a window or a door but just a tree, however the tree is so beautifully composed that it makes the person closely look at it and discover these hidden jewels. Some other of his pictures which showed the relationship between people and trees were more straight forward, like the huge tree with all the peoples names carved into it.
When I first walked into Catherine Oppies gallery of high school football players I didn’t see art right away, I saw more of a commercial style I’ve seen time and again. However after further examining the portraits of the football players it brought me back to my high school years and these images really projected the wide spectrum of egos, emotions, and attitudes, of a high school football player. I could tell by looking at the portraits who was the star player, who had a lot of confidence and who didn’t. the photographer did a good job to capture the mind set and attitudes of the players. The pictures had these attributes which commercial photography often lacked. The portraits of two or three players projected the unity that you share in high school sports with a certain group of kids.
