jaydoncocks540

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Final Portfolio

    During 2021, Covid-19 has done nothing but rampage throughout the entire planet. I’ve seen many people die all over the news network. This disease truly scares me so much but what I am most glad about during this pandemic is that my family is always there with me. Since I can’t go outside the house, I’ve decided to take photographs about the daily struggles me and my family are going through during the Covid-19 pandemic. I took photographs because I found them to be the way to display that I chose to live in. I wanted to show everyone how I’ve lived my entire life inside the house with my family. I took my photographs all around the house to show my challenges in adversity. I took all of my photographs inside the house me and my family live in. Some of the photographs were taken at different times during the day. I’ve only done this because I wanted to show the audience that I always stay locked inside my house all day during the pandemic. My house was the only place I could take my photographs since I can’t go outside because of the pandemic. I actually enjoy photographing my family so I can represent how me, my brother, and my mother take care of ourselves around the house while Covid-19 is still at large.

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Mini Research Paper: Sally Mann

Sally Mann: At Twelve

Untitled from the "At Twelve" Series, Jenny and Leslie, 8 Months Pregnant, (1983-1985)

Untitled from the "At Twelve" Series, Lisa and the Dog, (1983-1985) Sally Mann: Deep South

Sally Mann: Deep South

Untitled (Scarred Tree), Deep South, 1998

Deep South, Untitled (Valentine Windsor), 1998

Sally Mann: At Twelve and Deep South

    Sally Mann is known for her elegiac images born of intimacy and abandon. Recurrent themes of family, home, her life-long love affair with Lexington, Virginia, and the haunted swelter of the American South all boil to the surfaces of her black-and-white photographs. Many other themes aren’t so much addressed, however, in Mann’s images as they are dug up by the root in her own first person experience. Some would call this approach simply personal, but for Mann, the river runs much deeper. Sally Mann had acquired an 8 × 10 inch view camera in 1973 and perfected her technique with the cumbersome equipment over many years. Until then, she decided to take separate bodies of photographs of many aspects of life that many subgroups of people would look forward to. Two of those bodies of her work are “At Twelve” and “Deep South.”

    Among one of the two bodies of Sally Mann’s work, two of her 37 images of At Twelve tap the complex and unseen interior complexities of 12-year-old girls just at reaching their long way to womanhood. For example, “That book, which showed pictures of young girls on the cusp of adolescence, resulted in modest attention and took about a decade to sell out its small press run” (Mann, Sally Mann’s Exposure). Those two chosen photographs are Jenny and Leslie, 8 Months Pregnant (1983-1985) and Lisa and the Dog (1983-1985). These two are 8 x 10 inch and 10 x 8 inch photographs from the series At Twelve from 1983 to 1985. In Jenny and Leslie, 8 Months Pregnant (1983-1985), the photograph shows a young 12 year old with an older woman by her side who appears to be extremely pregnant. I believe this photograph shows a great depiction of femininity and unwanted pregnancy. In Lisa and the Dog (1983-1985), the photograph probably shows that a 12 year old girl can’t stand to be around a somewhat male couple but the young girl is lucky enough to have an affectionate dog by her side. I believe this photograph depicts an amazing description of being uncomfortable as a 12 year old. Sally Mann’s portraits of these 12 year old girls present a comparably inviting meditation on the moment between purity and sophistication. This series is truly based on the many aspects of life in a 12 year old girl.

    In 1998, Sally Mann also decided to do landscape photography in the Southern United States. This study has allowed her to focus on taking at least two photographs that capture historic architecture and nature throughout Southern history. For example, “Mann's photographs take us back in time to a world that transcends the specific present and creates in the viewer a nostalgic longing--or perhaps a dread--for a mythical past. The land is perhaps nowhere more important than in the South” (Schuweiler). Those two photographs are Untitled (Scarred Tree) 1998 and Untitled (Valentine Windsor) 1998. These two are 40 x 50 inch photographs from the series Deep South from 1996 to 1998. In Untitled (Scarred Tree) 1998, the photograph shows a tree with a huge scar that’s right next to a fence that actually blocks many things away from the river. I believe this photograph figuratively depicts this tree as some sort of silent witness to a violent history. Sally Mann might have focused directly on the dark scratch across its trunk, which could be a traumatic injury that has healed but remains visible. There are also lines of woodpecker holes that have peppered it like a spray of gunshots. In Untitled (Valentine Windsor) 1998, the photograph shows the ruins of an old mansion in the southern U.S. with cracked brick columns. I believe this photograph amazingly depicts these mansion ruins as the largest antebellum Greek Revival house. The mansion was located on a plantation that covered 2,600 acres. It was built in Mississippi between 1859 and 1861 but it was destroyed by a blazing fire in 1890. The unknown fire actually started when a certain guest dropped a cigarette in the mansion on the afternoon of February 3, 1890. The crack that runs through the right column is probably known as the ruined negative. This series is based on Sally Mann metaphorically transposing histories of the Southern part of America into photographs using the wet-plate collodion process.

    I find Sally Mann’s bodies of artworks very interesting because of how they show the many histories of certain aspects of life that are important to us. I’m thinking that Mann took photographs of 12 year old girls for her series At Twelve in order to show how they lived curiously in the 1980s. The lives of these young girls have been intriguing but the Southern U.S. had many difficulties until then. Many audience members would be very agitated by these photographs from At Twelve but they would be fascinated by the photographs from Deep South. Even though At Twelve shows the symbolism of the 12 year old girls towards adolescence in its photographs, the photographs from the series Deep South are actually more symbolic towards history in the American South. There are no actual similarities between these two bodies of work. Both of Sally Mann’s photographs actually show that there are many universal difficulties that many people have had from the 1980s to the 1990s. Sally Mann is most likely convincing viewers to ask themselves how stressed the 12 year old girls were in the 1980s and what is the real symbolism of the historic nature in the American South. Mann is truly us that no matter what troubles we face from the past or the present, we will get through to them in our own natural way.

Bibliography:   Mann, Sally. “Sally Mann’s Exposure.” The New York Times, 16 Apr. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/magazine/the-cost-of-sally-manns-exposure.html. Schuweiler, Suzanne. “Sally Mann’s South. - Free Online Library.” The Free Library, 1 Jan. 2013, www.thefreelibrary.com/Sally+Mann%27s+South.-a0367076936. Leslie, Patricia. “ ‘Sally Mann’ Has Left the Building, Headed To ...” Blogger, 29 Oct. 2021, washingtonspeaks.blogspot.com/2018/06/sally-mann-has-left-building-headed-to.html.

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 Cotton Reading Response: Memory Lost by Nan Goldin:

    Nan Goldin's Memory Lost recounts a life lived through a lens of drug addiction. This black and white artwork is a document of a life at once familiar and reframed. The artist gathered a group of stills from a period when the outcome of a photograph was unpredictable, editing them to portray memory as witnessed experience, and lost through real drug addiction. Memory Lost most likely represents Goldin’s life through addiction. It actually stands both as a memorial and an emotive chronicle of the heroin years of New York in the 1980’s and Goldin’s subsequent addiction to the opioid named Oxycontin after wrist surgery in 2014. It is set to a swelling emotive score but here it is punctuated by the intimate immediacy of voiceovers and fragments from answering machine recordings. Tender but never sentimental, Memory Lost is one of Nan Goldin’s greatest bodies of artwork.

    Memory Lost has really captured my attention with one of its photographs. I find this body of work very interesting because of how it used such bold use of black and white color to take this chosen portrait from Memory Lost. I love how the color represents the dark side of the illegal addiction. I am amused on how this body of work might show people the experience of drug addiction. Memory Lost might also offer an amusing opportunity to trace the arc of Goldin’s career. Memory Lost basically offers a poignant reflection on memory and the darkness of addiction.

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Documentary Project- Life Inside During the Pandemic:

This documentary project explains how life inside the house is during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Most people like to go outdoors when there’s a deadly disease in the U.S. but some of the other people like to play it safe indoors. Me and my mother are the ones who prefer to stay indoors but usually my older brother is the one who likes to go outside to hang with his friends or go to work. My mother goes to work too but she does it virtually in our house. I never go outside the house at all because of how Covid-19 is in Staten Island. Usually when we run out of food or supplies, my mother would have to go outside to buy groceries and leave me home alone. Whenever I’m home alone, I just focus on doing my homework with no eating breaks whatsoever. Me, my mother, and my brother try to get through this pandemic and make sure we are safe. To make sure we are safe from Covid-19, we take lots of natural herbs and vitamins to keep ourselves immune. We also place many air purifiers around the house to wipe out any airborne pathogens. We even try to clean every room in the house to reduce any filthy bacteria that could harm us. Whenever we try to keep ourselves healthy from Covid-19 or try to gather up lots of food and supplies, we get the best of both worlds in our lives.

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Place

The first photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 1:57 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 50. 

The second photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 1:59 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 350. 

The third photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 2:00 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 1100. 

The fourth photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 8:01 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 2100.   

The fifth photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 8:03 pm. It was also taken with the flash on. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 400.

The sixth photograph was taken on September 10, 2021 at 8:07 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 2200.

The seventh photograph was taken on September 11, 2021 at 9:54 pm. It was also taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 1000.

The eighth photograph was taken on September 20, 2021 at 7:10 pm. It was taken in HDR imaging with no flash. Its aperture was 2.2 and the ISO was 400.

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The name of the exhibition I will be reviewing is “An American Project.” It is being featured in The Whitney Museum of Art. The artist that is featured in this exhibition that I have chosen is named Dawoud Bey. The approximate number of items that are in this exhibition is 11. The dimensions of these artworks are both 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm) and 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm). The installation that these artworks came from represents Harlem, U.S.A. in 1975. Dawoud Bey has worked to expand upon what photography can and should be. Insisting that it is an ethical practice requiring collaboration with his subjects, he creates saddening meditations on visibility, power, and race. Bey records communities and histories that have been largely provided with insufficient representation or even unseen, and his work lends renewed urgency to an enduring conversation about what it means to represent America with a camera. Bey decided to begin photographing in Harlem in 1975, at the age of 22. Even though he was raised in Queens, he was extremely connected to his entire neighborhood. For example, his parents had met each other there and members of his family still made it their home. Drawn to the neighborhood as both a symbol of and a wellspring for Black American culture, Bey wanted to depict its residents as complex individuals in images free of stereotypes. Each of these artworks that I have chosen come from the series Harlem, U.S.A.

The photographs that I have chosen are “Deas McNeil, the Barber” and “Three Women at a Parade.” In “Deas McNeil, the Barber”, I see a man by his station in some random barbershop. I believe this photograph symbolizes the life of an African American male named Deas Mcneil who works alone in a barbershop in Harlem. In “Three Women at a Parade”, I see three African American women leaning on a police line barrier during an event in the background. I believe this photograph symbolizes the events of the women’s rights movement in the 1970s. These two photographs and all the other artworks represent the symbolism of the American communities and race. The color in most of those artworks are in black, white, and color. ​​The white color represents pure light and the black color is the absence of light. Dawoud Bey might have used black and white to work through challenges posed by his subject and composition. Eliminating color allows many artists like Dawoud Bey to concentrate on the way light and shadow fall across the surface of a figure, object or scene before committing to a full-colour canvas. Dawoud Bey used vivid colors to signal people that there are changes taking place now. This exhibition shows that Bey views his photography as an act of political responsibility, emphasizing the necessary and continuing work of artists and institutions to break down obstacles to obtain, assemble communities, and open dialogues.

Many photographs from other artists have a known ability called “staying power.” Dawoud Bey had kept his staying power on all of his photographs from the 1970s to the present. He has been taking photographs for 4 long decades during his career. He is deeply committed to photography, drawing on the medium's specific tools, processes, and materials to expand the formal, exquisite, and conceptual goals of each of his artworks. The overarching message of this chosen exhibition is that it portrays Blackness as an integral part of the American experience. Blackness is the state of belonging to any human group having dark-colored skin and it is essential to make all of America complete.

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This photograph from the 1970s that I found from the Barbara Brackman “quilting thread” on secondary sources really spoke to me about the quote that I have pulled from the introduction to Deborah Willis' Picturing Us. The quote from Picturing Us is “This photograph offers insight into my early interest in understanding African American material culture.” The comprehension of this quote might be that any photograph that represents African American pride of quilting can help many people gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of the material culture. This online photograph depicts about the economics of quilting based upon African American material culture. The connection between this 1970s photograph and my understanding of Willis' words from the reading is that quilting is what made the African American people themselves. The connection between identity vs. race and my personal understanding of what the photograph is about is that quilting is what defines the African American people of their material culture.

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The self portrait that I have chosen was from the “Sources of Self-Regard” article. The photographer’s name of the chosen self portrait is Kennedi Carter who took this photograph in Durham, North Carolina. The self portrait taken by Kennedi Carter might be talking about the inner beauty of black women. The self portrait that I just took on my own is my reaction to the self portrait that I have chosen. The connection between these two photographs is that it shows how fully cutting your entire hair would leave many people like me in shock. The connection also displays of a new development into many women during quarantine.