Sean Scully

Sean Scully is a painter and a photographer. Born in 1945, he grew up in Ireland and England. Now he lives and works in New York City, Barcelona, and Munich. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Scully)

A painter
While beginning as a figurative painter, Scully has been painting in an abstract style for over 30 years using thickly applied stripes and blocks of colour that ‘that allude to architectural elements such as portals, windows and walls’ (http://www.jamilehweber.com/conte/exhibition_scully.html).

I grew to love his distinctive work in 2005/6 when his Body of Light series was exhibited at the NGV in Canberra (http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Scully/Default.cfm).

In his essay on the NGA website, Kennedy says that ‘the abstract, coloured shapes in Scully’s paintings’:
· engage in relationships of harmony and disharmony
· are wonderful colour poems that take us beyond the limits of everyday.

On the same website, Kennedy reports Scully as saying, ‘I try to take advantage of an urban language, a language architecturally grounded yet impregnated with emotion. I want it to be [a] common, normal urban language able to transform my painting into a sensation, into a feeling’ (Kennedy, (http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Scully/Default.cfm?MnuID=4&Essay=1)

A photographer
It was at this exhibition that I discovered that Scully was also a photographer and I bought the book ‘The Color of Time’.

The Color of Time, both an exhibition and a book, was a retrospective of Scully’s photographic work spanning ‘twenty-five years, beginning in 1978 with his photographs of ten anonymous doors in Sienna, Italy’ (http://www.jamilehweber.com/conte/exhibition_scully.html). These earliest photographs depicting massive dark doorwayswere originally taken as ‘an aide-mémoire, Scully surprised himself by creating a remarkably consistent series of ten works that strongly reference abstract, even monochrome, painting’ (Lucie-Smith in White, 2004).

‘Scully's nomadic wanderings in search of the façades and surfaces, the colours and shapes that speak to him of human hands and the passage of time have taken him to the Dominican Republic, England, Ireland, the Scottish Isles, Germany, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, and the United States.’ (http://www.jamilehweber.com/conte/exhibition_scully.html)

About this work Scully says: ‘What I’m trying to do with the photographs is to capture a state of being associated with a particular visual moment…My photographs of façades are an attempt to bring the subject matter into the realm of painting via photography.’ (Interview with Lucie-Smith in White, 2004)

Essays by Arthur Danto and Mia Fineman, written at the time of the ‘Color of Time’ exhibition explore the complex relationship between abstraction, figuration, nature, and the built environment that is so prevalent in Scully's art. Danto argues that Scully finds his inspiration in ‘the world of the everyday and the commonplace, where experience begins and against which it must be checked...in shacks and hovels, rather than palazzos and cathedrals...’

And this inspires me to create an aesthetic experience by focusing on the everyday:
· doors and windows
· geometry
· detail
· texture
· line
· colour
· boundary and meeting point.

Scully encourages me to consider the abstractness composition and to look for the beauty in the constructed world and the intersection between the constructed, lived and the natural world.

References
Galerie Jamileh Weber, http://www.jamilehweber.com/conte/exhibition_scully.html Accessed 4/7/10
Sean Scully, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Scully Accessed 4/7/10
White, Garret (Ed) 2004 The Color of Time: The Photographs of Sean Scully, with essays by Mia Fineman, Arthur C. Danto and an interview with Sean Scully by Edward Lucie-Smith, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl.
Sean Scully: Body of Light, http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Scully/Default.cfm%20Accessed%2047/4/10%20and%2018/4/10.
Kennedy, Brian P The Art of Sean Scully: A human spirituality

More about Eugene Atget

Characteristics of Atget’s photography James Borcoman makes a number of interesting observations about Atget’s work including ideas about montage and shape.

Montage

‘Atget also made the startling discovery that the world creates its own montage of objects through a kind of "layering" just waiting for the photographer's lens. Such photographs as Avenue des Gobelins, 1925, pose questions about reality by shifting contexts and creating ambiguities through the layering of window reflections.’

Shape
‘Atget's prints are often known for their deep shadows and washed-out highlights, large enough in size to create broad abstract shapes. Although it has been assumed that these were the product of careless printing techniques, it is remarkable how such shapes operate as strong formal elements within his pictures.’

And finally...’ Just the right portion of asymmetry was always introduced by Atget, a concept which a recent study of his work interprets as the possible influence of the asymmetrical symmetry of Rococo composition.’

References
I forgot to note in my last blog that the references that I have used in my research on Atget are:

Borcoman, J. "Masters of Photography: Eugene Atget." http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_articles3.htmlAccessed 7/4/10

Golden, R. (2001). C20th Photography. London, Carlton books.

Rosenblum, N. (1997). A World History of Photography. New York London Paris, Abbeville Press.

"Eugene Atget." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Atget. Accessed 7/4/10

Self portrait

A nice challenge!

Week 3

The Mary Street project is taking shape. I’ve been taking hundreds of photos...early in the morning as the darkness turns into daylight and then at the end of the day as the sun is low in the sky. Following my earlier ideas I’ve been taking streetscapes, walls and detail. So far I have been taking all my photos with a hand held camera...this presents some problems in low light of course and even thought I have some shots that are OK I think I’ll use a tripod on my next excursion with low light.
I’m really enjoying thinking about the photographers who have gained a reputation for their photos of cities and my interest in Atget and Cazneaux is helping to shape my approach to taking photos in Mary Street.

Eugene Atget (1857-1927)

His life
Eugene Atget was born in Lisbourne in France in 1857 close to 100 years before I was born and he died in Paris in 1927, the year before my father was born. He was orphaned young and after finishing school he was employed as a sailor and cabin boy, then later an actor, an artist and eventually a photographer.

Bernice Abbott. Portrait of Eugene Atget c.1927 (Gelatin silver print)

Perceptions of his work
He is described by Golden (2001) as documentary photographer and during his life his ‘deceptively simple...documentary pictures...were considered little more than functional illustrations’.

However, well known photographers such as Man Ray and Breton, and artists such as Picasso and Matisse saw ‘something new in these robust and direct photographs’. After his death another photographer, Berernice Abbott, devoted 40 years promoting his work.

The photographer
Atget shot on 18 x 24 cm glass plates using a bellows camera with a simple lens and because of the limitations of this technology he preferred to ‘photograph in the early morning when there were few passers-by’. This gave ‘a certain empty and surreal charm to his cityscapes’.

He took more than 10,000 photos of Paris and to earn a living he sold his photographs to museums, architects, decorators, and publishers, as well as artists.
‘Atget created many series...’ including
· Streets and shops
· Street traders
· Vehicles

I was attracted to taking a closer look at these photos in particular to try and understand what had made him such a successful photographer and artist and what could I learn that would help me to create a portfolio of photos that would provide a rich picture of Mary Street.

Taking a lead from Atget I would adopt both a documentary and an artistic approach to photographing Mary Street:
· emphasising the everyday
· with and without pedestrians
· highlighting the shops at the Nicholson St end
· focusing on vehicles and workers
· depicting cityscape and streetscape
· paying attention to the line that takes the viewer’s eye from the foreground into the distance
· paying attention to the structure of the image, light and dark, contrast and shape.