landscape & earthwork

Landscape

My photo is a boy standing under a streetlight in a suburban setting. The photo was taken at night during a bike ride, making it lower quality than usual. The value of the photo is fairly dark and distorted, which I attempted to fix through editing. The point of view is straight on. 

For my art historical context, I paralleled this painting of Napoleon on his horse; the contrast struck me as funny- modern vs. historical, bike vs. horse, boy vs. man. 

Whereas my Earthwork photos were about connecting to nature and the earth, my landscape is very suburban and modern and constructed. They are almost completely opposite.

My landscape, in it's own way, is celebrating the earth. I am celebrating our everyday ability to do mundane things, such a go on a bike ride at midnight. I think this was definitely my weakest project (due to the fact that I forgot about it until the night before), but I kind of like the way it turned out.

I think in a way I agree with the hypothesis that a landscape puts the photographer at the center of the universe. In a landscape, the photographer often desires the viewer to see the landscape as they see it, from their point of view. In the Earthworks project, I felt more of desire to see the land from the perspective of the land. We were in cooporation with  the Earth to create our final project.

I definitely think it would be a problem to see ourselves as the center of the universe all of the time. However, I also think it's important for our view and our perspective to be heard and seen, respectively. I think there is a place for everyone's point of view.

I think our presentation could have gone a lot smoother. We added some things last minute, and I think it showed. However, I really enjoyed making the video and taking the photos.