Ben Pietrusinski - 3 Photographer paragraphs

1 Andreas Gefeller

            It seems as though Gefeller photographs either the Earth’s surface, some form of ceiling / sky or wall from far away. His photographs create almost an optical illusion. The viewer is able to recognize bits and pieces of the photograph but needs time to piece recognizable objects together in order to understand what he photographed. A lot of his images are stitched together and arranged in order to make one larger image. The viewer is able to identify this because some of his works have geometric and jagged edges on the perimeter. Whether he is looking down on a piece of property, a parking lot, an outdoor pool, Gefeller’s perspective makes it feel as though the viewer is going to plummet towards the Earth at any moment.

            I was really attracted to the way he stitched images together to create pattern. Specifically, I liked his pieces Ohne titel (Strand) which translates to “Untitled (Beach)” and Ohne Titel (Ministerium) / “Untitled (Office).” In Office, Gefeller photographed 3 sets of 2 doors and repeated them over and over again. With this effect, it looks as though he created an eleven-story building or hotel. In Beach, he moved rectangular-selected sections of the aerial view of the beach around like a puzzle to distort the beauty.

2 Gilberte Brassaï

            Brissaï photographed different types of graffiti in Paris, France. In the book that I rented, he classified the graffiti as “The Wall as Proposition,” “The Language of the Wall,” “The Birth of Mankind,” “Masks and Faces,” “Animals,” “Love,” “Magic,” “Primitive Images,” and “Death.” He photographed the graffiti relatively close to the wall in order to capture the art, but also all of the textures, scratches and marks around the graffiti. His photographs are vertical and in black and white. However, the graffiti that he photographed is not the type of spray-painted graffiti that we know of and romanticize today. This graffiti is mainly comprised of etchings and deep scratches into different types of surfaces. There is a certain simplicity to each etching and art form. They each have character and reveal something about the person who created them.

            I think that a lot of the graffiti is very creepy, depressing, and unattractive to look at, but I think that’s what Brassaï wanted to document. One category, “magic,” contains graffiti of what appears to be a lynching, the sun rising, a soldier, witches, a cat, and other strange depictions of humans. Brassaï curated his images into nine groups in order to reveal a different set of characteristics and personalities to the association groupings. For example, “love” depicts topless women, female genitalia, scratchy hearts and hearts with daggers in them. Perhaps Brassaï was capturing how citizens of Paris felt during that specific era.

3 Larry Sultan

            Larry Sultan has a sense of humor and narrative in his photography. He photographed billboards that did not truly have a message or company name on them. He found that this was ironic because the company’s name, logo, product / service and message should all be identifiable almost immediately on a billboard. These photographs are colorful, vintage and humorous.

            He did some underwater photography of people learning to swim. He found humor in this because the people were learning to swim, and he was able to capture the sensuality and physicality of their bodies underwater. While most of the photos look silly and goofy, it seems as though he creates an alternate universe by capturing the lower halves of bodies.

            In Pictures From Home, Sultan photographs his parents because he wants them to live forever. Instead of taking professional and stereotypical portraits of them, Sultan photographs them candidly. In one photo, his mom is giving his father some side-eye. In another, his father is practicing his golf swing in the house. He truly captures the everyday life of an old-married couple – bickering, bantering, joking, but still very loving.

            In The Valley, Sultan photographed different sets where adult films and pornographies were being filmed in everyday Valley homes. He found humor and irony in the setting being just like an every-day house, except that pornos were being filmed in them. Sultan wrote “I’ve been on sets where you see a porn actress standing in a room naked and you start looking around and you see details – a mezuzah and a Book of Knowledge on the bookshelf. She does something to that room and that room does something to her.”