Shannon Soboslay Style Paragraphs

David Hockney

Growing up in Bradford, Hockey lived in an extremely gray environment, whether it be from the soot on the buildings or the black and white film that was available to buy after the war. Seeing color in his work was always important to him because the saturation was something he craved during his childhood. Starting out in art school, he was a painter first and then took on photography. His cubism collage photos are what he calls “drawing with a camera. It’s a complex idea but the viewer is able to understand very easily what is happening in the photo. Hockey was fixated on the idea that a camera sees the world from one particular focal point instead of how we see if from many different perspectives. Humans “walk through” time but a photograph only captures a fraction of a second that you might have seen as you were physically there. In one picture you may see people’s eyes 3 different times or their hands 5 different time, but you know logically that they are from different points in time. He says “you might look at a photo for 4 seconds and that is already so much longer than the camera has”.

Henry Wessel

Henry Wessel originally studied here at Penn State in psychology and accidently stumbled upon photography, spurring his love for the medium. He used polar opposite techniques of Hockney to execute his photographs. He bought a van and traveled the country taking pictures from the vehicle to make the scene as genuine as he could. Wessel preaches about not letting your brain start to think before you photograph either. Seeing a person and wanting to photograph them is something that interests you, as soon as you ask them to photograph whatever interested you is now gone. He feels as though taking the picture before your mind tells you how to move, makes the image worlds better. Wessel strives to capture pure moments as we see them, and make the viewer feel as though they are seeing it in real life. It has a very documentary-esque feel in how real and authentic his work was. The subject sometimes never even interacts with the camera.  Wessel moved to California to escape the ugly winters of the east coast and quickly became enthralled with the sharp and crisp lighting. It’s very distinct the way Wessel uses light in his photographs especially since they’re all in grayscale to make it more recognizable.

Peter Bialobrzeski

Peter Bialobrzeski’s “Nail Houses” was to depict the homes of people living in China that refuse to give up where they live for the sake of making room for new apartments or high rises. He takes most of the pictures at night to show that even just one single light on shows that the “ruins” are still inhabited by someone. I think this shows that even though the houses look unliveable, the lights on in the window show that people still find comfort there and call it home. Taking them at night gives, gives everything a sort of artificial look to it. Every picture has a very documentary look to them as it is trying to encapsulate what life is like for the people that live there. The buildings they inhabit are no more than half standing buildings with tarps covering broken windows. With this being said it seems very intentional to have the new apartment complexes The pictures are extremely busy with lots of leading lines taking your eye all around the picture and back. The colors in the book are very dull and washed out and I think that is a representation of the widespread poverty and neglect of these towns.