Artist Research Week 4: Texture and Negative Space

Week 4 Texture and Negative Space Artist Research

Artist 1
Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Movie Theater, Akron Civic, Ohio, 1980

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lightening Field, 2009

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Diana, Princess of Whales, 1999

(Book Research From - Small World, Dioramas in Contemporary Art, by Ralph Rugoff)

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese Photographer, born in 1948. Sugimoto started photography in High School photographing film footage of Audrey Hepburn as it played in a movie theater.  Sugimoto started work with Diorama's in 1976, a series in which he photographed displays in the natural history museum. Hiroshi Sugimoto recalls his first visit to the diorama halls at New York's American Museum of national History. "When I saw them I felt as if I'd taken drugs.... perhaps the whole world around me might be completely dead". His decision to explore these uncanny spaces through photography is appropriate since the camera and museum diorama are, in a sense, equivalent devices. Both are boxlike spaces isolated by glass. Using black and white negatives, Sugimoto worked to capture the illusionism of natural history and wax museum dioramas. In his self described effort to "bring the dead back to life". In 1999 Hiroshi received The International Center of Photography's Infinity Award and won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2001. In 2002 Sugumoto Mounted his first major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom as part of  the annual Edinburgh International Festival.

The Top Image (Theater). Firstly, I really love how Hiroshi took images in theaters like this, I think it's really creative :). I like the use of negative space being created by the white blank screen, black negative space at the top of the image, and the negative space between the seats. And I love all the texture from the building surrounding the screen. Especially at the top. I think it's a really pretty theater :)

The Middle Image (Lightening Field). I really love this image, I've never seen lightening look like this, I think it's really amazing Hiroshi got images of it. This image has good use of negative space with the black around the lightening and I love the patterning and texture of the lightening. 

The Bottom Image (Princess Diana). This image has black negative space around the wax figure of Princess Diana and texture on the figure as well with the hair and clothing. 

Artist 2

Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh, Albert Einstein, 1948

Yousuf Karsh, Audrey Hepburn, 1956

Yousuf Karsh, Grace Kelly, 1956

(Book Research From - Karsh: Beyond The Camera, by Davis Travis)

Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian Portrait Photographer, Born in 1908.  His portraits have a style unique in the history of photography. Karsh started photography working in his uncles studio, where he was bought his first Kodak Brownie Camera which bought out his innate visual talent. Later one of his landscape images made with a simple camera won a cash prize when one of Yousuf's friends secretly entered it into a photography competition. Yousufs Uncle Nakash also recognized Yousufs talent and made arrangements in 1928 with a portrait photographer in Boston for six months of training. There Karsh began to be conscious of how to see and use reflectors to shape light available to him in the studio. In the Nakash Studio Karsh saw many celebrities and characters transformed into portraits. He himself in the future went on to photograph many of the great and celebrated personalities, including Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King, Queen Elizabeth, Albert Einstein, and many more. In May 1933 Karsh opened his first studio in Ottawa. In 1999, he was named one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.  Among the other famous people listed, Karsh had photographed more than half. He once said "My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble".

I love all three of these images. They all show texture with the hair and clothing. Albert Einsteins image also shows texture in the face and beard, and Grace Kelly's in the jewelry as well. And they all show negative space surrounding the subjects in the image's with the back walls.