Saturday, April 12, 2008

Alison Jackson: Contemporary Pop Art



about the video: British artist Alison Jackson talks about her provocative explorations of celebrity culture. By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, she's questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson's work contains some graphic images.

about the artist: Why can't you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. And she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see.

Recognizing the deep-seated need of the world public to see the Queen mum seated at the toilet, Elton John getting a colonic, and Keith Richards ironing his knickers, Alison Jackson set out to create the images that we really want paparazzi to capture. Armed with cheap photographic equipment, celebrity look-alikes, and a canny sense of what we think people are doing when we're not looking, she creates images that are equal parts belly laughs and pure scandal.

Jackson's newest book, Alison Jackson: Confidential features over 300 of her images in outrageous succession. She is also the auteur behind the popular BBC series "Double Take," which focuses on the (fake) outrageous behavior of dozens of popular British political, entertainment, and sports figures. Her biggest frustration is the penchant of her doppelgangers' real life subjects to take on behavior more outrageous than her photographs.

"She fearlessly tugs away at the curtain that separates what we assume we know and what we really know about our icons and movers-and-shakers, and the result is stunning" --Sharon Steel, The Phoenix

(information courtesy of TED)

Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes



Edward Burtynsky speaks about his photography.

To describe Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's work in a single adjective, you have to speak French: jolie-laide. His images of scarred landscapes -- from mountains of tires to rivers of bright orange waste from a nickel mine -- are eerily pretty yet ugly at the same time. Burtynsky's large-format color photographs explore the impact of humanity's expanding footprint and the substantial ways in which we're reshaping the surface of the planet. His images powerfully alter the way we think about the world and our place in it.

With his blessing and encouragement, WorldChanging.com and others use his work to inspire ongoing global conversations about sustainable living. Burtynsky's photographs are included in the collections of many major museums, including Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A large-format book, 2003's Manufactured Landscapes, collected his work, and in 2007, a documentary based on his photography, also called Manufactured Landscapes, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival before going on to screen at Sundance and elsewhere. It was released on DVD in March 2007.

When Burtynsky accepted his 2005 TED Prize, he made three wishes. One of his wishes: to build a website that will help kids think about going green. Thanks to WGBH and the TED community, the new site, Meet the Greens, debuted at TED2007. His second wish: to begin work on an Imax film -- and this work is now ongoing. And his third wish, wider in scope, was simply to encourage "a massive and productive worldwide conversation about sustainable living." Thanks to his help and the input of the TED community, the site WorldChanging.com got an infusion of energy that has helped it to grow into a leading voice in the sustainability community.

"One possible rap against his portfolio -- it prettifies the terrible. Burtynsky calls his images 'a second look at the scale of what we call progress,' and hopes that [they] acquaint viewers with the ramifications of our lifestyle."
-- Washington Post

(biographical information courtesy of TED.com)

David Rockwell Builds at Ground Zero

Sunday, April 6, 2008

First Post!

this will be the website for all of the introduction to art coursework. woo hoo!