Edward Burtynski's "Manufactured Landscapes"

Knowing that the DeadPan style of photography eliminates features of the work that can portray emotion or can be interpreted by the viewer, I was curious to see how this could be done successfully through video. I think Edward Burtynski was wise to choose a factory as his setting for his film, considering the monotony of the backdrop through its vast length and repetitious motions, sounds, and colors. Despite the occasional eye contact within the first few minutes and the camera panned the length of the factory, there was little emotion to be felt; however, as a viewer, I was intrigued by these monotonous and unending scenes because it kept me wondering if there was something more to come, thereby forcing me to analyze every single detail that I could. The vastness and sameness of the setting was reinforced not only by the size of the facility, but also by the workers and how they seemed to blend in. While each worker was on their own individually performing a task, the quantity of workers made them appear as a colony of ants that was visually appealing to observe as a whole.

In analyzing the title, I quite enjoyed the connection between it and the workers in the facility. The comparison between the mural painting of a field of sunflowers and the workers in their yellow uniforms made for a lovely juxtaposition – a natural and organic landscape brimming with yellow flowers contrasting with a manmade industrial landscape filled with yellow uniforms.

Q&A on DeadPan Photography

1. Does the DeadPan’s detached, distant, analytical, banal approach somehow distill our cultural mood?

            I find that the DeadPan Style does indeed distill at least one aspect of our cultural mood in a way that it highlights how our society has a sort of detachment from the world around it. Specifically, one example of this would be how when we attend an event, be that a concert, a wedding, an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, etc., it has become a societal norm to view our experience through a device, such as cellphones or cameras. The result of this is a personal detachment from the experience – we add a barrier or filter between ourselves and the subject that is seeking our attention. I believe that now more than ever, the DeadPan style of photography is an adequate representation of the disjointed approach we have with the world around us and how we choose to experience it, that being detached and superficial.

2. Does it represent the way people feel disconnected from one another, even if technology makes them more interconnected than ever? 

            I believe that this style of photography does represent the way people feel disconnected from one another, despite the façade of interconnectedness that technology today possesses. While many of us participate in some form of social media and post pictures of ourselves, the places we go, and the foods we like to eat, there is a superficial and impersonal quality to each one. Instead of communicating these experiences one on one with those that we care about or even invite others to partake in these experiences with us, we simply launch these pictures we have absent mindedly taken into the digital world and simply hope that people look at and like them. Even though we have access to endless pictures of friends and family and people that we don’t even know, we can simply pass over them and ignore a photograph of what could quite possibly have been a meaningful moment to the individual that took the photo.

3. And is DeadPan photography a refuge or reflection of emotion when we are overwhelmed with terrorism, war, and ecological and natural disaster? 

            This question seems very conflicting to me when considering that DeadPan photography is stripped of all emotional content or anything that can be interpreted by the viewer. As a result of this, I feel that this style of photography, when applied to tragedies as listed in the above question, is more so of a refuge of emotion in reaction to these occurrences because it allows people to quickly capture a moment in time and invest all of their emotions at once into that one photograph. At the same time, depending on who has taken the photograph and who is observing it, especially if they can identify with the subject being portrayed, this could also be a reflection of emotion.

4. Does its uniformity of the style reflect our mass-produced, chain-store world?

            Depending on the subject portrayed in the photograph, I believe that there is a parallel between the uniformity of this style and the mass production of objects in our world, where an individual product loses its individuality and personality when shadowed by the thousands of duplicates created alongside it. The first example I think of is Andy Warhol’s interpretation of the Race Riots, where by taking a single photo this massive political and racial undertones and replicating it over and over, the meaning within the photograph is diminished and we become desensitized to the subject. The uniformity of the DeadPan style achieves the same affect where we begin to focus on the sameness and the quantity of the duplication as a whole versus individual details and meaning that are drowned by its reproduction.

5. Has our ability to document just about anything made us do just that?

            I believe that there is potential to highlight our mass production-based world, but because of our ability to spread information everywhere and anywhere has proven itself to be more of an advantage than a way of down playing a situation than cheapening it. I do not believe that our ability to document anything necessarily reflects he uniformity of the DeadPan style, but if that information were to be concentrated in one location and depending on the information being brought to attention, then there is naturally the potential to desensitize people to it, due to the fact that they may be seeing it everywhere.

Top 3 Choices for Presentation 1

1. John Pfal
2. Michiko Kon

3. Zeke Berman

Andreas Gursky

In observing Andreas Gursky’s DeadPan Style photographs, I find it interesting how this appears to be an exact representation of his initial resilience to becoming a photographer himself as his father and grandfather both were. The contrast between DeadPan style and his father’s style of commercial photography is so glaring because the latter seeks to be purely representational and illustrate a clear narrative, whereas the former focuses of the functions of basic photography and gives a feeling of emotional detachment and formality. This idea of detachment can be seen in Gursky’s photograph of individuals relaxing around a pool by the sea, versus actually relaxing by the sea and enjoying the landscape. I feel there is a great amount of irony to this, but an accurate depiction of society’s tendency to ignore its surroundings and build unnecessary facilities to “enhance” they enjoyment of nature. By attempting to create these enhancements, we instead obscure and detach ourselves from what was intended to draw us there in the first place.

Another feature I feel that is important to Gursky’s work is the attention to detail within seemingly simple photos. The monumental size of the photographs invited the viewer to observe the scene as a whole, but in examining the photo in closer detail, the composition suddenly explodes with activity and it completely alters its perception, as can be illustrated by his work Charles de Gaulle Airport. While this composition appears as if any amateur photographer could have taken it, this photo is intentional, in my opinion, through both its composition and the immense detail in every section of the photo, which is enhanced by its large scale. This large scale photography plays on the duality of both calling attention to details and the subject as a whole.

Jeff Wall

One of the aspects of Jeff Wall’s work that I enjoy is how he confronts the concept of truth/reality and documentation in photography. The manner in which he tackles the topic of racism and combines it with this questioning of reality is very interesting, specifically in his work Mimic, in which we see a white man walking with his significant other and making the racist gesture of narrowing his eyes to mock the Asian man walking near them. This photograph is more complex than it first appears because the individuals are staged in that environment to be acting out a scene that occurs naturally in everyday life. More simply put, while events like this really do happen, the truth in the photo is questioned because the audience is incapable of knowing for certain if this racist act is naturally occurring, as it appears to be in the photo.

One comment that Wall makes in his video that I deeply agree with is that journalists are interested in conveying an event to the viewer, while an artist is interested in conveying a representation of that event. This is a concept that I have witnessed in paintings by master contemporary painters, and its wonderful to me to see this additionally in photography, especially when so many people rely on assume photography to be an exact representation of reality, and only taking photos for their face value without putting any thought into their meaning. This idea of looking beyond face value of what is depicted in a photo I feel is represented in Wall’s Restoration, 1993, in which he has photographed a 360-degree room, but has captured exactly one half of the space, 180 degrees. By capturing only one half of the space, it includes the excluded, which is reinforced by the woman standing off to the side staring into the excluded space, allowing the viewer to acknowledge that there is more truth to this photo that cannot be seen, but must be acknowledged.

Dick Blau

To hear where Dick Blau found his inspiration and how it transformed his work was very interesting to me, specifically how he discovered Polka music and the culture that surrounds it and allowed that to play into his work. Of the work he showed us concerning his videos, I most enjoyed Up the Block and Tintinnabula, primarily because of the feelings they inspired in me as an observer. Concerning Up the Block, due to the fact that my faith is so important to me, I felt an immediate connection with this work. I felt that the way Blau followed the church members around allowed me to experience the same situation he was in, as if I were walking along listening to the group evangelizing around their town. The camera movements were so natural, which made it easy to see how Blau was experiencing the series of events that transpired as he witnessed them, allowing himself to take part in and attempt to capture the emotions expressed during these events through his camera work. The overall sensation for me was one of joy and celebration, heightened by the cheering, dancing, and enthusiastic praying.

In contrast to the contentment I felt in watching Blau’s first video, I felt somewhat disturbed by Tintinnabula, but this was not upsetting to me because this feeling was accompanied by wonder and intrigue. I think he expertly elaborated the feelings that are associated with fairy tales before they are manipulated and sugar coated for younger audiences. This I think was done through the quick-changing camera angles, the lighting and sort of fuzziness that surrounded each scene, as if everything occurring were a dream. This dreamlike quality made the masks and high pitch sounds feel even more surreal and frightening, but still intriguing. This work was extremely successful to me and I greatly appreciated the apparent amount of time and thought that was put into each scene and Blau decided how the video would best flow and connect together with the music and sound effects.