Fine Art - Report Example

Steven Meisel, the Good Life and Sally Mann, Candy Cigarettes Name College Course Date; When the candy cigarette photo is viewed for the first time, it seems to center on a truth that the candy cigarette relates to the little girl. This may represent lack of a role model, since she appears to have the thoughts of seclusion with no cares concerning life around her. Taking other aspect of the picture into account changes this reality a bit. The picture portrays the actuality of maturity as well as developing during the path of life. This can be observed in many parts of the picture. An example is the girl looking down the road (Dana, 2007). She looks like she is gazing into the future. Her hands on her hip make her appear older in addition to being more mature. Additionally, it appears like the person in the backdrop is on a platform. This implies another step in life plus something to anticipate. They are also downward the path when compared to the girls. This shows that they are beyond along the maturity path. In addition to this, the girl holding the candy cigarette in her hand faces away from the path and the future. This portrays the actuality of the stubbornness that goes alongside maturity (Dana, 2007). Another fact is that with no proper guardian or a mentor, a child can go down an incorrect path. This picture gives description to this reality in a very efficient manner but rather completely. In many of Meisel’s photograph fashion is the main focus. He has constructed the fashionable feminine body like larger than life like appearance. In his stylized pictures, the calculated body, faultless and comprehensive, is dramatized as frozen technologies. This is not the result of anything else but the very personification of digital image management processes. Meisel’s normally positions the fashioned female bodies in a field sandwiched between living and dead, between conscious and unresponsive, between representation and dummy, genuine and virtual at the same time. In his photographic body fantasies, the body is at once taken action upon and changed into a computer- maneuvered female appearance bearing only an unclear similarity to its owner or may easily be two times into an weird likeness to its same (Linda and Jean, 2005). In the photograph of candy cigarettes, Sally Mann has used her 8 × 10 view camera to take in fine detail, images of her children as they imitate and act out societal and domestic roles in the rural abundant landscape of their Virginia home. If one were familiar with Sally Mann’s art pieces, one would find a common trait. Sally Mann uses 19th century camera’s for her photographs. The 19th century cameras require the photographer to drape a blanket over his or her head, producing an image in black and white. The images look like photographs taken during the era of the Civil War. To create an image almost identical to those of the time during the Civil War, Mann uses specialized lenses, which creates blemishes on the image. For her media, Mann has developed the method she continues to use currently, involving a very old large-format view camera as well as the arduous procedure of wet-plate. Her approach creates spots, lines, and scars, together with piercing focal point in some areas and vanishing of the image in others. These alterations add an intensely emotional quality to her images (Linda and Jean, 2005). Steven Meisel, recognized for his brand stylistic flexibility, uses image manipulation to a strange after-image of perfection. Steven often invades the household space of the family, frequently an emotionally passionate arena. In this picture we see everyone in the family having a smile bright enough to oppose decades of Coca-Cola drinking (Sarah, Anna and Raúl, 2007). Since her first appearance Sally Mann has followed the path of confidence. Her work is notable by a definite technique, which is altogether traditional as well as inventive. This can be seen by the use of the outsized format camera together with a careful use of processes of the nineteenth-century. Mann is also fashionable for her expertise in optics and associated exposure times. Some of these times last several minutes. Mann’s work is apprehensive with the investigation of ideas that are both individual and universal. She banks so much on childhood, memory and mortality. Her artistry is well documented. It is effective in many ways. First of all, she portrays the viewer in with the graphic, almost repulsive photo of a girl who comes out to be smoking a cigarette. Once the observer is attracted, she reels him/her in with the other images. These pictures are not absolute but it does not take a great deal reasoning to interpret their meaning. That gives us another reason it is efficient. It does not need too much thought to deduce the connotation of the photo, but it does need some (Sarah, Anna and Raúl, 2007). When we look at this photograph, we are straight away engaged to the image of a youthful girl in a white dress with a cigarette in her hand. An evaluation of her posture and the way she holds the cigarette makes out a sense of maturity along with adulthood. With her right hand folded over her chest gives the observer the notion that she is a hesitant and an aloof young female. But her left hand contradicts this. It holds the cigarette, depicting her as haughty and authoritative. Even though her body language is predictable as that of a woman, it is obvious that she is a young girl. Her right hand has a black watch on her right wrist. This may account for the misrepresentation between her form and her age. Her identity seems to be an issue that is affected by time. When we look at her small body along with innocent eyes, we get to know of how young she is. Its appears that she isn’t proud of the young age credit to her messy hair and arrogant posture which reveal her hurry to grow up , be autonomous, and be free to fit her own description of a grown-up woman. Even though it is plain that she is not the eldest among her siblings, her complicated body bearing and complex mentality gives a different view (Terry, 2005). Steven Meisel’s fashion photography banks of image manipulation. This kind of photography, by description, defies ease. From both a chronological and a modern standpoint fashion photography represents the contrast between the normal, as represented by development and technological progression, and the irrational. It has recognized this even within its own pictures. Image manipulation, furthermore, appears to need a new structure for the consideration of images since manipulated photographs show no attachment to the world making the price system recognized by analog photography to be without value (Terry, 2005). A look at the photo suggests transformation. It implies that everything, including the body, is transformable as well as negotiable. It depicts that each act on the body engages judgments and debates of a communal and moral nature. The convention of associating freedom with choice culminates in a situation where there is no liberty from selection. In sally Mann’s candy cigarettes photo, the young girl is portrayed holding a candy cigarette. This makes individualism apparent since we do not see too many children holding a cigarette between two fingers.  The most significant feature of it however is the thought that even most destructive habits in the society like smoking affect the youth generation after generation. Thus the artist shares with us an individual vision, close as well as cherished, contemplation on life and death (Linda and Jean, 2005). Sally Mann’s photographs are unique and can easily be identified since she uses children in illustration. Another aspect of identity is the use of out dated black and white images. This is opposed to Steven Meisel’s images which have a fashion touch and to some levels are manipulated (Terry, 2005). Steven Meisel’s fashion photography of the good life offers promises as well as lies. It illustrates objects and experiences, solidifies the observer’s desire for them, and then makes the cost of their ownership vague, all the even as it remains bound to the basic necessities of commerce. It has an attention-seeking nature and as it strives for attention with other types of shows it must become more and more spectacular itself, an essential that has outcome in its ever more contravening nature. The good life Fashion photograph frequently change reality to indicate the distraction or self-improvement obtainable by the thing they want to promote, deciding on for fiction over fact in addition to impossibility over believability (Linda and Jean, 2005). References Dana A. H., (2007) Makeover television: realities remodeled Reading contemporary television; I.B.Tauris. Linda C., Jean S., (2005) Gender equity in South African education 1994-2004: perspectives from research, government and unions: conference proceedings; HSRC Press. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth., Andrea K., Mark T. (2002) Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 110 The modern ; Third Millennium Information Ltd. Sarah M., Anna W., Raúl M. (2007) Stylist: the interpreters of fashion; Style.com in association with Rizzoli Southeastern College Art Conference, (2007) Southeastern College Art Conference review, Volume 14, Issue; Southeastern College Art Conference. Terry B, (2005) Criticizing photographs: an introduction to understanding images; McGraw-Hill. Read More