“The Destroyed Room” by Jeff Wall is a photograph that is an act of construction rather than an act of observation.  He modeled the picture of Delacroix’s “The Death of Sardanapalus”.  Instead of using the photograph to capture a moment in time, Wall captures what seems like many moments in time.  The nature of photography does not allow him to produce moving pictures, but with this construction the viewer has a sense of action.  This destroyed room was not meant to be seen as a normal room, like the viewer is watching a sitcom and looking into a house in which one wall is taken out and the action is unravelling in front of his eyes though.  It is supposed to be a known construction, as Wall shows as through the door on the left side.  By doing this he is showing the power of the photographer to create a dialectic, just like a painter.  The dialectic he creates is the stillness of normal photography versus the movement that is created by allowing the viewer to see into the process of the picture, as if he was there creating this set with Wall.  Wall pushes the boundaries of photography with this, and it can also be seen as somewhat of a “call to arms” to other photographers to push the limits even further; to not just see photography as the capturing of a moment, but the creation of art.

“First tears over another man” is part of a series of photographs by Elinor Carucci titled “Crisis”. At first glance the photo seems ambiguous about what the intentions of the people in the photograph are. The male is obviously the husband or boyfriend in the relationship, and the female has obviously been hurt by another man, hence the title. But the way I took it originally was that the man was taking advantage of the women’s loss, and trying to act like he is comforting in order to win her over. The major clues that argue this theory are the look on the women’s face and the remote in the man’s hand. The women does not seem scared or like she just wants a quick fix to her problem, but instead looks comfortable and like she is at home in this man’s arms. He holds a remote loosely, like he may drop it, and his hand is reaching for the power button. This shows that he is ready to devote all of his attention to comforting her, rather than doing what the stereotypical man would do in this situation: relax and watch television. After researching this photo, I discovered that the women in the picture was Elinor Carucci herself. The “Crisis” series was taken during a difficult time in her relationship with her husband. She believes the camera helped her reevaluate the situations they were going through, and the fact that he let her take these pictures during the worst of times let her reconnect with him. She used photography to see those times clearly, to see the beauty in all the aspects of life, and she used photography to calm her self down. Creating was something that felt constant through her chaotic life. Unlike most of her pictures which have less specific names than this, she thought it was necessary to let the viewer into the situation and know what’s going on. As she was taking the “Crisis” series, she was also dealing with severe back pain along with her emotional pain, and took a seperate series of photographs documenting the physical pain that she entitled “Pain”. According to her, both the physical and emotional pain came to a halt around the same time, and she uses the photographs as not only memories of what has happened, but as reminders of how suddenly something can happen in her (or your) life, and how big of an impact that sudden something can have on your life.

Nick Potter

Josef Muller Brockmann

Armin Hofmann

Max Huber

The word I chose for my environmental lettering project was “wonder.”  I knew right away that I wanted to do something “mysterious-looking”  and something that would make the viewer stop and wonder, or maybe to even make the viewer think again about something they thought was true.  After I got this assignment I was walking back to my apartment, and I found these two baby dolls in front of a building.  I didn’t think much about using them for a project, but I decided to pick them up anyway since I like to find things.  The first thing that I thought about when choosing the word “wonder” was light.  I wrote some meaningful information on these dolls, which is not necessary information to know.  The point of the writing is to know it’s there, and to make you look harder.  One thing we are all comfortable with is light, because when we see things it is necessary for light to be present.  Although light is necessary for seeing things, in this case it disrupts your view of the dolls, and makes you wonder what they are.  Although the word “wonder” doesn’t seem like such an important part of the composition, that is not the case.  The letters are only slightly dark than the wall in the photograph, so the outlines are subtle.  This relates to the subtlety of the outlines of  the lines in the dark part of the background, which are part of the front door of my apartment.  Each of these subtleties are designed to interact with the reader, and make you think.

Soft cover