Emulation

For the emulation project, I was kicking around the ideas of a few different people. I was jumping between Eggleston, Walker Evans and Friedlander. I've already done a post on Friedlander, but I'm going to put up different photos and go into what I dig about them. 

Eggleston (Top Four Photographs): I love the composition of Eggleston's work. He often has so much going on and so many little things that there isn't necessarily a subject to the photo, but more objects that contribute to the tone. The shot under the bed is awesome to me because just from the shoes and the sheets you already have formed an idea of what that person looks like and you have an idea on how they conduct themselves. The yellow curtain one is in Graceland (that's right, Elvis), compositionally, it's mm mm good. The one of the two guys in front of the car is really intriguing to me. Of course you have to ask, is this saying something about race and race relations? I mean is it though? Can it just be photo of a black guy and a white guy? The fact that the white guy is in a black suit and the black guy in a white shirt and the car is white and the white guy is standing in front all contribute to what the message of this photo is even though it could just be a snapshot.

Friedlander is the coolest creeper of all time. You never see him really smiling in his self portraits and in his photographs of other people, he usually is this ominous shadowy presence, as if the dreaded photographer beast has swooped down upon an unsuspecting victim. Whether this was intentional or not at first, it definitely is reinforced in the one of the woman leaving and looking at him. This is a later photograph but I feel a pretty fitting and funny evolution of him as the shadow man. The woman is pretty shocked and seems to be running away and he's totally beyond crouched over and Gollumed out. I dig the fact that he has himself whited out and then JFK right near his head, totally awesome. Then the one with his great big mug hogging up the shot is pretty compositionally interesting. Usually he has himself in his photos and puts in lots of divisions. Here he uses himself as the divided of photos. It looks like two totally different areas on each side of his head. Something about it is really funny, but then again I have a strange sense of humor (The Terminal is my favorite comedy (just kidding (but how funny would it be if that actually was my favorite comedy?)))

Walker Evans just can nail a solid image into your head. I feel like some of his action shots are just done at the perfect planetary alignment. I love the intact and in transit Damaged sign. Bad vibes abound. The shots of the photo place are the original meta in photography. Who knows how cool that building looked then? Maybe Walker Evans was bound for greatness just by knowing that all the stuff around from that era would look damn cool to our futuristic eyes.