category 9: historical

Historical artifacts. Important to western civilization I guess.

category 8: museums/galleries

There is a blurring of museum and gallery here. It’s difficult to distinguish the difference between these two ideas in many cases. The Museum of Modern Art could be called a gallery for example. I suppose galleries often have a more comercial angle and museums have this historical and grand, sort of official status about them.

These images I would call museums/galleries:

category 7: grid/patterned portraits

Grids and patterns of portraits of people often signify a sort of systematizing or comparing of physical features, types, or identities – but they also can be decorative… Is this when these images cross-over into art? Or is it too tied to the domestic and personal exhibiting of family members and friends? I chose to separate these images from the “art” section.

category 6: “art”

This category is a bit confusing because there could have been a lot of cross over from other categories such as the ‘museums’, ‘grid portraits’, and ‘historical’ categories. And really, this should be no surprise to people, anything can be considered art. It just depends on the context. Anything can be put in a gallery or framed and called “ART.”

But here is what I selected to put into the category of “art” out of the 100 images we were given to work with:

You will see the potential for cross-over into other themes… I think this cross-over will allow some nice segway/blurring of boundaries opportunities…

I’m thinking of a narrative now… It’s more fun I think..

category 5: aboriginal costumes

“Smith studio” is the only information I have for these images. I don’t know what specific context is represented by these images, and that kind of bothers me. When and where were these photos taken? Is there some role playing going on? Are these first nation people?

category 4: political figures

Yes, mostly Stephen Harper – but look! Arnold made it in there!

VOTE FOR OBAMA! Today’s that magical day for democracy in the USA. I bet almost every blog in the world is commenting on the American election today. Just thought I might as well join in…

category 3: aerial highway patterns

category 2: posing photographers

100 images presentation ideas

I’ve really been struggling with how to work with these 100 images Vid gave us. The basic categorizing and reading of the images seems to have taken up quite a bit of time. I haven’t really developed any concrete plan of how to re-present the images. Of course the idea of building a narrative with the images has come to mind. It could be the story of a Canadian who is a big museum enthusiast, enjoys figure skating, collects aerial photos of highway patterns, photos of grid portraits, photos of photos, thinks posing photographers are funny, follows Stephen Harper’s political career, is interested in art, old family snapshots, snapshots of leisure time, collections of wood, historically significant artifacts, and other things captured in the 100 images. I’d have to weave a story together through all the images. This idea seems almost too easy. It’s like a writing exercise from a grade 10 English or creative writing class.

I don’t know.

My other idea is way more like a social science study. I’d invite a group of 4 or 5 people (probably just my friends – biased sample, I know) to look through the 100 images and then point out what commonalities they noticed and what significance these images might have. I would ask, “why do you think these images were selected?” and “if you had to give a name or title to this collection of images, what would it be?” – these are questions I am clearly grappling with myself. This study/interview survey thing would be done on video. I could be an ironic campy social scientist and tell the participants fortunes after they have provided their interpretation. Maybe that would be fun.

I still don’t know.

category 1: figure skaters

This one is easy:

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

f)

g)

h)

My comment: amusing costumes and poses.