Final Post: Book Critique

One of the student photo books that was really compelling to me was Jermaine Jackson’s  book on skim boarding. I thought that it had some really beautiful images that had lots of life and energy. The one aspect of the book that made it even more cohesive was that Jermaine broke it down into parts. The book not only showed amazing images, but also told a story. It went from the beginning, which was “The Journey”, and ended at “The Price,” which was pics of people paying the price for trying to mingle with mother nature. Beautiful work Jermaine!

My Book Cover

This is the cover to my final art book. I chose to title my book, “The Many Faces of Jason…..Bates,” because the majority of subject matter that I work with is faces. I extremely enjoyed working on this project and I will surely continue to add and enhance my book over the years.

My Panorama…..”Suburban Sunsets”

This is my panorama shot titled”Suburban Sunsets.” This location is right outside my house in Pacific Beach and every time I drive by it I smile. For some reason I have this huge obsession for shoes hanging from telephone lines. Somehow the day I went outside to take this photograph there was an amazing sunset on the horizon, so I decided to wait another 45 minutes for the sun to set. When I went back outside this was what I saw, True Perfection. This panoramic is comprised of about fifteen sequential photographs that I threw into photoshop and created on large panoramic shot. My favorite aspect of this shot is that it’s a beautiful combination of man and nature. Usually when you think of photographs of sunsets you think of simply the sky and beautiful colors. I think that the wires and shoes hanging from them actually added to the overall composition of this photo and made it truly unique.

Ordover Gallery: “Baja California”

Last Saturday I also visited the Ordover Gallery that is on the 4th floor of the Natural History Museum. This exhibit was titled “Baja California,” which displayed a number of works by the National Geographic photographer, Ralph Lee Hopkins. There was also photographs exhibited from other American and Mexican photographers such as Octavio Aburto and Patricio Robles Gil. 

Of all the photographs that were exhibited I would have to say that Ralph Lee Hopkins were the most compelling to me. He has an uncanny ability of capturing the true beauty of nature and wild-life and his photographic techniques are flawless. In every photograph the lighting, composition, and subject content is a cohesive blend of elegance and grace. I left the Ordover Gallery truly inspired and yearning to hop into a van and travel down the peninsula of Baja California.

MOPA Gallery-”Beloved Daughters” by Fazel Sheikh

I went to the Museum of Photographic arts last Saturday night. It was a great time to go because they were having the winter night’s festival at the park and the museums were free for viewing that night. In the main room of MOPA there was a showcasing of photographs by Fazal Sheikh. The show was titled “Beloved Daughters,” and was a combination of two projects that Sheikh has been working on, in which one focused on older women of Northern India and the other focused on children and young women who are the unfortunate products of a suppressive nation and culture. 

One thing I really loved about this exhibition was the juxtaposition between the old and the young. These were beautiful and compelling photographs that literally left you on the verge of tears. Many of these photos were close-up portraits of young girls and older women, who portrayed such somber expressions that it made me question my belief in God. Fazal Sheikh is an amazing photographer who really captures a raw human emotion of neglect and discontentment.

Urban DECAY…..

This is another piece that I am going to put in my art portfolio book. This is a mixed media piece that I did with pictures from magazines, acrylic and spray paint, stencils, and a thick coat of modge podge. This piece is called “Urban DECAY.” If you look closely at the magazine cutouts you will see decaying buildings, a liquor store, a gun shop, a funeral parlor, and police barricades. I feel that these are all the major contributions to the decaying of urban neighborhoods.

One of my older paintings…..

This is a painting that I did back in 2005. I call it “Escaping Adolescence”

My Artist Book….. Here are two of my paintings that will be in my art book.

For my book project I decided to do a portfolio of some of my past and recent artwork. For this book I am going to break it up into three sections, which are drawings, paintings, and photography. I have been drawing and painting for about five years now and I am influenced by many of the urban arts, such as graffiti, street art, and the entire hip-hop culture. When I first started to draw I was inspired by such artists as Justin Bua, Doze Green, Dave Kinsey, Barry Mcgee, Phil Frost, and Jose Parla. In the beginning my art was more or less an emulation of these artists, but recently I have been trying to focus on and develop my own style. One of my signature forms has become abstract faces that have arrows for bodies, which is strongly inspired by the graffiti arts. These arrows basically are representations of movement, whether it is up, down, left, right, crossroads, progression, regression, elevation, evolution, or a mixture of a few. I hope to continue to develop my own style and technique and eventually have my pieces gracing the hallways of prominent art galleries.

Collier Schorr

I would definitely have to say that I have extremely mixed feelings about the photography of Collier Schorr. On one hand I feel that she is an extremely talented photographer, but on the other hand I just really don’t connect with the subject matter of her photographs. To be honest at first I was a little disturbed by the fact that a grown woman was taking photographs of young boys wrestling and talking about how beautiful they were. But, after she continued to speak I began to understand where her artistic vision was coming from. One thing Collier said was that she was in a sense, “photographing the boy that she always wished she was.” After that I realized that it was not a sexual thing, but merely her true inner-self coming alive  through her artwork.

Here are my five Photographs for the Post Card assignment…. hope you like.