Artist 7

USA. San Francisco, California. 2000

Coming and Going. USA. San Francisco. 1998. Photogram with drawing.

USA. San Francisco, California. 2003. Dave CHAPPELLE at the Punch Line comedy club.

Jim Goldberg

While sifting thru the work of Jim Goldberg, I first resinated with the top photo (the two girls and guy in the elevator in San Francisco). I was living in San Francisco at the time he took this and it captured some memories of when I first arrived there. I stayed at a number of residence hotels while starting my career. These are cheap (one bathroom on the floor, not in your room) places to stay while pounding the streets with a resume. All types people stay at these places, an eclectic mix of characters. From unhinged dreamers who haven't  found their american dream, to young golden eyed hipsters desperately trying to lasso the midnight sun. I think Goldberg captured the latter perfectly in this photo. 

Looking thru his work further, i noticed he really can't be categorized into a district style. He does famous portraiture. He does photograms with text, as well as object collage. He likes to experiment, yet there's a strong photojournalist vein in his work. What i like, is that he seems to go to the underbelly of culture, or at least western culture. He bring us into cultural places many haven't experienced and somehow frames it away from our own pre-judged viewpoint. He brings us to a deeply human realm with fresh eyes, and for this, I think of him as an Artist. 

Artist 6

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy appealed to me for a number of reasons. Formost, He was cutting edge for his time in the realm of art, design and photography due to his experimental methods. Russian Constructivism, Moholy-Nagy’s primary leaning, was a political and artistic movement influenced by the 19th century’s industrial revolution. Among its main principals was the belief that art should use industrial machinery. Coming out of Bauhaus, which believed that design could help serve humanity in forging a new world, utopian indeed. In 1937, Moholy-Nagy was invited by Walter Paeckpe to open the New Bauhaus school in Chicago. The school operated for just one year and was shut down due to a lack of funding, but Paeckpe stuck with Moholy-Nagy, who in 1939 established the School of Design, renamed the Institute of Design in 1944, one of the world’s most important design education institutions. Moholy-Nagy passed away in Chicago in 1946. His work is original and even holds it's freshness in out contemporary times.

Personal Project 2