PHOT 714: Digital Techniques and Processing

 The evolution of my site and this blog is ever growing. As I deal with multiple things within and outside the artworld, it is important to note that from August 31st, 2021 to now…September 26th, 2021, I was completely logged out of my site and any entry point into it was done from someone else during that time. You would think that when you flat out say close the internal folders once they would get the point…do it again and it is just lazy hacking. I say that for many reasons, but most of all because sometimes you need to just step away and let nature take it’s course. Perhaps this blog is a merger of reality and artwork. Let’s make it as real as it can get. When art and life combine you get something special and unique that is 100% copyrighted on a private US citizen’s personal webpage. Fun the questions that come up on what could have been modified and what wasn’t while I was away. I guess I’ll start this by saying my website was hacked into. 2-point authentication bypassed and things internally removed and other things read left to be hidden. I look at my page on many browsers. Some things here. Some things there. Proof that this has been an on-going issue of digital attacks and theft. The real world is a funny thing. That is especially true when you try to change it. How does one live comfortably knowing phone calls can be transcribed, private desktops touched and unpublished works and copyrighted works taken and used? An interesting question for an artist to figure out. Paranoia comes from irrational patterns of thought with no basis of explanation. My thoughts come from past experiences and real world applications. As I go through school allow me to swim back to shore when drifted by the currents out to sea. Always a very known question of what was put on here and when and why from the time reported, but also prior. I reside in Savannah, GA. Any access to this website elsewhere is the culprit. Maybe bounce an IP address there to maybe convince someone that it didn’t happen, but proof is in the data already. My story on the matter is just beginning or ending. There is no difference. One should be careful about their IP address. May show up in one city by really we both know where it is and what it bounces through to get back to you and me. Parents are always watchful of their children.

This quarter I am delving into digital processing and the techniques behind it. What goes into the process of an image and the meaning and intention behind a selection? As I delve deeper into my work, I am at the point of comfort to talk about big world concepts and even small world applications. Is an image just an image or is it more from the artist? That comes from the selection, the process and the final application of the image. To critique art is always going to be about the user(viewer) experience. It is a combination of what the viewer brings to the table to discussion with what the artist is trying to say. In the past things have been misconstrued, but that is totally acceptable because that is the nature of art. Art is meant to ponder and leave questions over it. Sometimes you get the artist intention, sometimes you disagree with it. Sometimes you look at it and say it is mediocre at best and move on. Art exists for a reason. A wise man said once, “I drew a blue duck because I’ve never seen one before". As I put my ducks in a row, I invite conversations and critiques. This is a learning process for U and I.

So…where do I go this quarter? Let’s start with the first assignment of “new work”. The first week was a get to know you situation and discuss your artwork and your curated collection. I’m rooted in “Starving Artist” but always multiple projects going on at once. As they ripple through one another, they eventually overlap without affecting the outcome of either. To get feedback on “Starving Artist” was important to polish and connect the dots to something more universal. Always include yourself, but make it universal when it comes to contemporary art. You are always just a small piece to something bigger to talk about.

And that is where my mind goes. Big talks here. Small talks there. I try to find normalcy as I contemplate areas of discussion points. If I were to go back to my time as a child, there was mimicry there. A fascination to what was presented to me. My early works copies of Disney drawings and my living room. I still have my first sketch book. I have most of my childhood and undergrad conceptual properties and have evolved them and will continue to evolve them. In my unpublished post so rudely interrupted, I stated as a matter of fact to hold onto those childhood thoughts and IPs. Never know where they can go and what they could produce. You can change the world with the right backing or if by chance you won the lottery. Art is pure as a child. It is pure as a teenager. I find it is pure as an adult as well. So many meanings and things left said and things pointed to. As I expand “Starving Artist” that does not mean I abandoned “Curated Jellyfish” and the unpublished “Chasing Jabberwocks”. Simply protective and seeing nature run its course. Wise words from a younger me, when reacting to things…don’t do it from an emotional standpoint. That is when the most mistakes are made. I can definitively bookend my life from a certain standpoint and go from there. Not the first time I’ve done that as I’ve taken down social media profiles and by default own 100% all the data behind it, but I pose questions about the phoenix to you to ponder on things. The phoenix has been a very important concept for me to ponder. I used to ask if a phoenix mourned its past lives as it created new ones. I would like to flip my questioning now from anything already published and ask the question, When a phoenix dies and is reborn, how much of its past life tries to interject into its new one?

Exercise 2: Before and After

Taking the phoenix metaphor into equation, we were tasked with referring back to our personal archives to find things to revisit. (also compromised as files are lost every day) to me thinking about what do we do with memories? Especially in regards to the memories of a visual artist. Each image a visual reference to a time and place but also concepts and recollections. To revisit work is to have a conversation with your past self and see things in a different light. What was captured RAW is never what an artist completely sees. Although never truly finished with any piece, it does put a time stamp on what you were going through as you were processing what you were remembering at a later date and time.

I start with an image from my 5 year anniversary of UST(Ugly Simple Truths). One of the only subjects off limits to discuss and for me to carry was the conversation of Rape and how that could be translated. What I portrayed was accurate according to my story then. It means something completely different now within the context of what happened outside of 2018-2019. In a way prophetic, but here I am still trying to tell myself “It was all a Dream”. Maybe it was a dream it happened. Maybe it was the American Dream I am talking about. Rape occurred and is occurring. Perhaps I put things on my website (fully well knowing it has been compromised) is that I am trying to retain my safe spaces and sense of self. I look on the left and I see the natural image. Reference to private family FB groups, but also a warning of where things were going and what I expected anyways. I find pride that I engaged in a reddit thread to consider me delusional. I even made it humorous in my responding of truth. Know me. Know you. Rarely the two meet. I find that even now I try to bring humor into the things I experience. I’m literally looking for anything to smile or change the subject. I could break this image down into the direction of the white king sleeping from Through the Looking Glass, or I could be flat out talking about how that invisible touch and real touch has affected me. From left to right I look at one of the few totally self-portraits done and understand exactly what it means then and what it means now. Compounded interest when only given 1 week in my new home in Atlanta 2.0 before shit hit the fan and I adapted. To what? TBD. #stillrational

I look at the time I did have in my own apartment in Atlanta 2.0. It took almost a year before I had my own space again. As I looked for jobs in Florida after Alfred Angelo, I found it to be a 6 month process of not being hired. Even the job taken was not an official hire, but contract work and under the protection of the company I contracted out from. Food stamps to survive occurred. The debate on going to Italy occurred as every penny meant something and literally my paternal grandmother made sure I went on that trip well after her death. I considered the optics of going on a trip when not having a job and while others went on their trips. “The lesser always have to make a choice”. that is a phrase that echoes in me now more than even then. I sit here typing absolutely sick of what has occurred and with no safe space. I continue. I strive everyday. Heaven is perseverance. You do not have to read a single thing I write to know that when you take all the thoughts in my head and narrow it down to the most simplistic form…that is the answer. The struggles are real for you and me. They are universal.

Finally I have a space of my own again. Originally was tried to be sold on something I didn’t agree to. Fireplace and balcony important. Fought against that and maybe got more than I should, but the place was mine. Storage issues there, but when you go from living in someone else’s home and then threatened to then having a 4 bedroom home to yourself where you paint your last painting and find your “Soul” and going from there to there to here. So much to talk about and so much not to say. I absolutely value the people of my life and they have been there for me and I’d be there for them in a heartbeat.

Long story short without going into who I need to thank, I had a home after about 9-10 months post Alfred Angelo. That mirror image of me is probably important in my life. I like the flaws seen in angles but was representational of past, present and future.

This image part of the only shoots I got to have before one sick day changed everything. To some I got fired that day, but surprise!…that never happened. To look at this image after the fact is to look at the things that bring attention to me. 2xist essential. To cover the eyes is to always be a manner in which to project yourself onto the image. As I said before and after. I am always guarded. Knights everywhere. Maybe more. Maybe less. You should know there is more.

Here is an image where I actually prefer the natural camera settings to the modifications. A science is had in image collection. Something Ansel adams spent his life proving with the technology of the time. Has the science changed when things went digital? My original background is painting. It started from mimicry of my mother and became something different as my parents fought in the background. I’d put headphones on and listen to music and create things. Mimicry of course still from real life, but an escapism nevertheless. Music is important to me. It is important to my work. It blocks things out but also used as a tool to say something when you cannot speak.

Digital photography integrated the painter side of things into the equation. I absolutely appreciate the traditional standards and found in the 1 photography class I took in my undergrad where things were and where things are going. Fascinated by photography history and even the most iconic images were or could have been staged. I guess I never gave up my brush and there is a difference between RAW and final. Even now as I look at this lost Disney princess, I remember what could have been and I remember Manderella sitting in Cinderella’s carriage wearing an artist’s evolution of a Banksy image and saying, “I’ll never get to experience this again.” This image to me shows what could have been. What was and how I fundamentally controlled the first live-action application of Elsa within the publishing world. Disney Fairy Tale Weddings by Alfred Angelo from 2014-2017 will always be something that is a group effort, but always mine.

Here is where I depart from what is expected. Portraiture is what I am known for. That is what is expected. Step outside of that and get to know me and you would understand that I am very much a naturalist. I find beauty in nature. I find something that I cannot even explain in nature. To me there is always something bigger at play and not to ever discount beliefs in any way, there is perhaps pre-destination and things unspoken that mean everything if you just take the time to look around you. When it comes to pre-destination I believe there are choices to be made. We can go here or we can go there. “Flip the script” so to speak. Take people out of the situation and I resort to what is nature trying to tell us? From left to right, I still kinda prefer the unprocessed but find beauty on the right to what I was trying to bring out. Look at the little things and realize the largest known organism on this earth is a fungi.

This image. Again a situation where I think the RAW image captured exactly what I wanted. What you see at different angles is up for debate. I know what is present and I know the actions taken. Never found this marker again and maybe someone else would. Low tide of the day and came across a tombstone in the Savannah River. Maybe it is supposed to be there. Maybe it is not. That shell also found and specific to other stories and ventures. Placed there for respect. Find a voice. Tell a story. Would this person’s life ever be known if I didn’t take this picture? Between the two are subtle details. A painter at work. A grave remembered nevertheless. I’m curious where I will go for the next project which is supposed to be an artistic interpretation of a sense of space. Where do you think I will go? Everything remembered. We move on but never forget.

A Sense of Space

My sense of space.

I’ll keep it short which I do not often do.

3 minutes to midnight and honestly I accept that. I’ll take the deduction in order to be true in my words.

I have not shot a single image since my Walrus shoot which goes back to the Ides of March in 2021. Even then a shoot outside of school but important to me as I progress towards conclusions. A collaboration was met and a partnership was had. Both between two people and between charities reinforcing the fact that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I was gifted a chance to complete something that would have never been able to be done by my means and for that I am thankful. Even that photoshoot’s location essential to my story and the execution when facing oneself in the mirror. I took the time afterwards to learn the meaning of contemporary art and I took the time off from there for myself for personal reasons. I needed to breathe as I suffocate. Am I still breathing?

I have key words I use depending on the week. “Literally” “Nevertheless” “Audacity”. My mind a quandary of questions had internal and external. Life happens that way when you reboot yourself. Where I’ve been is not where I am going, but I have zero doubt the past finds a way to intervene. It invades as much as I evade the issue. Elusive is the conclusion or the beginning of things.

So why leave my name trademark off my student work? A question to think about but the riddle is pretty clear to solve.

My sense of place is varied at best. To consider exploring it is to consider that it is gifted by others. My time here is not permanent nor is my stamp on things. Only an exploration had in truth and clues towards what is internally placed in me. Perhaps in here a chance to view that. Cryptic in my crypt. Protective of what I share and aware of what I don’t. Has something here already been taken?

My sense of place is fragile but I am aware of it. As I collect my eggshells, I admit that I am Humpty Dumpty and at times Mr. Potato Head. Things change based on the experience and what happens in real life and the played out scenarios in my head are two completely different things. At times a Divine Comedy…one of real consequence of actions and reactions. Sometimes even that a literal comedy as fate allows it to be so.  I find humor is important to hold on when faced with things outside comprehension.

My anxiety abound. Smoking still something to work on all these years later. Quit. Start. A cycle of things. Cigarettes “literally” a frienemy. Circular in many other areas. I look at my life and is there a Sherlock Holmes to figure things out? Do I need saving? Am I worth saving? Surely those around me are.

My sense of place is gifted to me. I could be homeless. I could be dead. I could have remorse over lost love or I could wish to seek justice to those that wronged me. I choose to live as I search for my identity again. Somewhere hidden in me is absolutely who I was supposed to be. I’m very aware of what has happened in my life, but even then…is my footprint permanent or do we just sit to wait for it to evaporate? Have I become a Nihilist based on past experience? The survey goes one way or the other. Jury still out. My beliefs strong and strained at the same time

I’m there though. I am still here. Even when I can’t or don’t speak, I exist. That remains true. That will remain true even if put to a ventilator with a DNR. I’m conflicted by digital technology. Abused by others and used to make a photograph a painting in others. Every keystroke a symphony building upon itself. Even now I can’t access my photos and I wonder why knowing what I know. Accessed with a reboot. Perhaps the reboot was the answer all along.

I’m grateful as things weigh heavy on my mind. I can’t be everywhere. I’m haunted. I’ll haunt. Memories fade but I exist. Perhaps that is my sense of space. Here. There. Nowhere. At 39 in less than a monh I would have thought my life to be different. In the end, I still left a footprint to be remembered. #endbeginningallthesame #riddleseverywhere