Art 350s Jake
Peck
Clint Sleeper
Spring 2015
David LaChapelle
Being a
photographer since the 80s and getting his start with Andy Warhol, David
LaChapelle has had a variety of experience. From shooting high profile
celebrities to commercial work to fine-art photography, David has his very
unique and one of a kind esthetics when it comes to photographing, which I
love. His high contrast photos with saturated colors have a story that seem to
always be wild and off the page. Having David LaChapelle as an inspiration of
mine has helped push me to make my photos as well push my other artwork. I’m
fascinated with is approach to his work as I try to examine my own approach
more closely when starting my work. I find it difficult to admire another
artist so much and still have my own voice without trying to duplicate their
work. Through this semester I have found more of my own voice in direction to
my work. It is a lot more difficult when working in the same craft as David
because I constantly envision how he might take a photograph to make it
interesting and exciting and I then find myself directing towards those goals,
which turns into a recreation of his style. With this semester in Art 350s I
found myself not being able to connect to David LaChapelle and his photography
and work more outside my realm and his. With this it lends different elements
to my work that I am traditionally not use to working with. The challenge was
more rewarding and insightful because I was exploring through action that
helped me discover more of my own aesthetics and how I want to work with art.
My ideas
through this semester took on an element that I didn’t know I had, being pushed
in a direction I probably would not go myself if creating work on my own. Also
viewing other individuals work through this semester gave me more insight and inspiration
to see their concept, way of working and method to further develop my own and
problem solve areas I need more work on.
Heidegger was an interesting
project because I am not a philosopher and by no means do I understand
philosophy to its fullest but interacting with his work and creating a
project based on his particular philosophy was interesting and definitely
challenging. First to dissect his words and content and then to digest his
meaning and push forward into a project that would speak to his philosophy, was
definitely no small task and one of the most challenging in my college career.
This was mainly due to discerning philosophy and it’s meaning and direct
relation to the work to be produced in class but also very rewarding and
meaningful to the work I produced.
In relation
to Heidegger, I don’t find my work before this semester having much relevance
but now after being exposed to his philosophy I don’t think I can go backwards.
I appreciated being able find meaning with my work and create something that
has meaning too, as appose to something cool to look at. It spoke to Heidegger’s
philosophy and became so rewarding in the completion. My prior work does not
have such meaning or backing and is just satisfying that they look cool but now
I feel a loss with the work because I’ve started now to create work with
meaning and work that speaks to philosophy!
In future
work of mine I would like to try and focus on more arduino and relate that to
my projects. I really am fascinated with this aspect of such a small element
creating and controlling such a large variable in my piece I hope I can craft
into more pieces. I am still digesting the world of Heidegger and placing into
my own work while still really appreciating the work of David LaChapelle and
deciphering how I might be able to place the two together in my future work.
With David, I feel there might not be ways to grow in depth and meaning. He
speaks of his work as high fashion and tells the stories behind his photos and
the dialogue they intend to speak, which I see but maybe the context is just so
different I am struggling on ways give his own work more meaning when there
might not be or I am trying to recontextualize his own body of work. Or maybe I
am not understanding his meaning and need to sit with his work in order to look
into his way of story telling and find his meaning he is trying to portray.
David has a
series I was not fascinated with called, ‘Land Scape’ which before I never paid
too much attention to because it didn’t seem to fit with his portfolio of work.
But now after having the experience of this class and dissecting Heidegger I am
able to bring more appreciation to this series of faux power plants made up of recycled,
but often discarded, material.
After this
semester I feel I am more aware and able to speak to the context in this
series, which I wasn’t before because I did not have the experience needed in
order to cover such material. This work is so far from David’s original body of
work that I wonder what he might have gone through in order to develop this
series, possibly the discovery of Heidegger as well. With this I think I am
able to recontexualize my own work, give it meaning while still striving
forward with my inspirations of being interesting and off the page, much like
David. I definitely am way too interested in arduino to not want to incorporate
this element into more of my work. I’ve been giving it more thought on how I
might continue with my photography and adding in elements of arduino or electrical
elements, maybe even robotics but I’m still thinking of ways and hopefully to
not come off cliché. I would some how like to mold the two worlds together of
stagnant photography and digital media realm and for my future works this will
be my goal. This semester allowed me to open my thinking process and teach me
other avenues to obtain my goals in an artist and meaningful way that I find
myself again interested in creating art.
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