George Hirose

He does images of houses, all at night/very moody lighting. It's typically outdoor scenes, but there are a few that are indoor, like in a shed of sorts. There are no signs of people in any of the images aside from cars. I absolutely love the lighting in his images. They're all really bright and seem to be a result of a strong flood light, or just a long exposure. Either way, the colors in his images are incredible and are of great interest to me. The houses seem to be glowing from the inside and out. He has a way of capturing a very creepy moment from something that we see all the time. This house series started when he visited Provincetown, and how these houses were connected to its deep history. There is a huge sense of quietness in his photographs, and are so eerie due to the time of day in which he is taking these pictures. The houses have a real personality, and being able to capture this is very interesting.

Lisa Bove

Renee Cox

"One of the most controversial African-American artists working today, Renee Cox has used her own body, both nude and clothe, to celebrate black womanhood and criticize a society she often views as racist and sexist."

She was born on October 16, 1960, in Colgate, Jamaica, into an upper middle-class family, who later settled in Scarsdale, New York. Cox's first ambition was to become a filmmaker. "I was always interested in the visual," she said in one interview. "But I had a baby boomer reaction and was into the immediate gratification of photography as opposed to film, which is a more laborious project."

I love Renee Cox work. I think that her work is edgy and rude. She isn't afraid to confront and issue and doesn't shy around what she means. Formally her work is beautiful as well. Her compositions are always interesting, even with the figures in the center, the negative space around them becomes intriguing. I think my favorite series is the Yo Mamma series. These images show mothers as powerful women, and not as the purposeless nurturing mothers we see in so many renaissance paintings. Her images are nothing like those of Mary Cassat, she is bringing the image some justice. I like the Flipping the Script series for this same reason. I lover her take on classical images and how she updates them, adds race and gender issues.

http://www.reneecox.net/index.html

Jesse Hlebo

Brooklyn, New York
"strives to live in a world that is concurrently formal, anti-formal, unique, homogenous, and abrasively loud and silent"

He takes photographs of everyday events. I really enjoy his portrait series. They're not flashing. I feel as if they're very real and down to earth. The lighting in his portraits are very unique, and in very dramatic. There is a good amount of contrast in them, and some of the images have lighting coming through blinds and other objects so the light is hitting the subject unevenly. I really like that technique and the results. The people in the images have very serious expressions, which I like. The perspectives are somewhat awkward in some of him images, which is interesting. His series "not you" are all people in positions that they are not usually in, which make it relatively uncomfortable. His landscapes at the beach are very peaceful, and placed one next to the other seem to blend together.

http://www.jessehlebo.com/

Lisa Bove

Melanie Pullen

Melanie Pullen was born in New York City on September 10, 1975. She is a modern photographer and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Pullen's work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows at Beverly Hills, White Wall Gallery, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles and Ace Gallery, Seoul Korea, Milan Italy and MiCamera. Her work has also been included in various museum exhibitions and has been broadly published.

Pullen began her early career by taking photos for several catalogues, album covers, magazines and so on.  She worked closely with Beck in 2004 for his album Guero and The Information.  In addition to Beck she shot many other musicians including Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Rock Kills Kid and The Black Keys.

 Pullen is most noted for her series, High Fashion Crime Scene which consists of over one-hundred photographs based based on NYPD and LAPD crime scene files.  Her work on High Fashion Crime Scenes (1995-2005) consisted of hundreds of models and crew members.  Her photo shoots are highly staged and primarily represented movie sets.

Pullen's photographs are some of the largest images in the world. Her images range in size any where from four feet in length to ten feet in length. Some of her photographs are face-mounted prints and others large-format positives that are backlit in massive light-boxes.

Michael Mann

Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir

Rebekka Guoleifsdottir is a self taught photographer who began her career by posting her images on Flikr. She began as an art student in Iceland, focusing much of her working on drawing, but soon found that her heart was really in photography. She received such positive feedback and developed quite a fan base through Flikr, that she decided to take her photography to another level. Many of her images are of the beautiful scenic views of Iceland, where she lives. She was named "The Web's Top Photographer" by the Wall Street Journal in 2006. Rebekka says this of her Flikr success, "I owe a lot of my success to the site, but it has also forced me to become 'professional' about my work very quickly. When I started posting pictures I was really just messing around, having fun taking shots of myself or whatever came to mind. As the popularity of the site grew and I learned more of my craft, it became more about creating art through photography."

Rebekka takes all of her own photographs, including her self portraits and primarily works digitally. I find many of her images to be surreal, very dreamlike. Many of them are obviously irrational, but her technical work is so immaculate that the images become somewhat believable. Rebekka's photographs have a gorgeous, soft feel through her use of color and subject. I really enjoy her self portraits because she shoots them in a compositionally and conceptually interesting way.

http://www.rebekkagudleifs.com/

Posted by: Kim Steinhilber

J. Bennett Fitts

http://www.jbennettfitts.com/jbfitts.html


J. Bennett Fitt's pool series caught my attention first. He took some photographs of motel pools. I really enjoy the abandoned motel pools, they have a strong sense of emptiness. Some of the others are actual working motels but he chooses motels with a worn down feeling, motels that people wouldn't normally check into, which still goes along with the empty feeling. I also like his use of color in his photos. They have that washed out color, with a lot of blue tints. I think the coloring adds to the feeling of these photos. His other series include industrial buildings, and golf courses. I don't enjoy these images as much as the pool series. They aren't as interesting and he doesnt do anything special with the coloring to give some interest to them. There isn't actual information on this photographer but there is a list of many accomplishments.

Ashley Finkney

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born in 1949. She attended San Francisco Art Institute where she studied painting. She became interested in photography when she started taking pictures in the Philippines, where her father was stationed during the Vietnam war. In 1970, she applied for a job at Rolling Stone. The editor was impressed by her portfolio that she offered Annie the job of staff photographer. Within 2 years, she was promoted to chief photographer, which she held for 10 years. In 1983, she began working for Vanity Fair.

I like her work because her images are so dramatic. Everything from the lighting to the set-up is dramatic. She creates these unreal scenes but they feel real.




Posted by Stephanie Aldrich

Chris Donahue Journal 4

The way I try to find photographers is by taking my favorite musicians albums and finding out who shot the photography for the album. The album I used this time is Joan of Arc's Live in Chicago: 1999 and the photographer is Andy Mueller. The whole lay out is beautiful. A whole set was constructed and put onto a stage. It looks as though they are putting on a play on stage and it's all based off an obscure foreign film. The way they used construction paper, strings, and whatever else they needed to construct this in depth set is amazing to me. I am very interested in trying something like this.

After further examining Andy's website I discovered a lot of other very interesting photographs. The way he sets up his shots and his use of color is very interesting to me. He also photographs a lot of skateboarders which is always something I'm very interested in. I love finding new photographers and all these Chicago based bands have been helping me discover new and interesting photographers that many people may not know of.

http://www.andymueller.com/