Joseph Mougel: Artist Now Lecture Series

Joseph Mougel: Artist Now Lecture Series

by Lainey Koch

Joseph Mougel's work as a photographer started during his time in the Marine Corps. Today, his work ranges from performance art, to video, to photography. I was interested to learn more about the work of his since he's a familiar face in the photo department that I frequently interact with, and his lecture did not disappoint. 

I appreciated hearing about Joseph's performance art and how he incorporates photography as documentation of these processes. As a photography major it's easy to forget that you can use your photography as documentation of other forms of art you are creating. 

Luscinia Xanthoplasticus (video still)

Hearing more about the series Blanc was something that caught my attention because it's work that I always think of when discussing work with Joseph. This was work heavily inspired by his time in the Marines and his subjects were chosen based off of characteristics that Joseph knew to be things recruiters looked for. He discussed the "moment of erasing and becoming" when preparing his subjects to be photographed for this body of work. 

Blanc, 007

It was inspiring to hear one of my instructors speak so passionately about his work in a lecture setting. It's a valuable experience to learn about the perspectives of other professionals in the photography field, especially someone that we students interact with on such a regular basis. 

Death & Destruction - TIMELightBox

TIMELightBox

“TIME magazine and its website feature the work of the world's finest photographers each week and every day. The magazine has been honored by World Press Photo, the Overseas Press Club and many photo competitions, and recently earned a News and Documentary Emmy for its Iconic Photo multimedia series.”

Three Amish boys make their way back to the train during a smoke stop. 2:15pm, Culpeper, VA.

Fernando Gomes

Photographer Fernando Pereira Gomes travelled for three days by trains from New York to Seattle, in search of the “other” America. By documenting the rural towns and broken dreams of those traveling west, Gomes pieced together a portrait of the forgotten majority.

Super Bowl I, Jan. 15, 1967 Kansas City Chiefs vs. Green Bay Packers in Los Angeles

Walter Iooss Jr. for Sports Illustrated.

Beyonce’s maternity photoshoot.

Awol Erizku

Iceland, 2013 Sébastien Van Malleghem

After his friends began telling him his work was too dark and aggressive, Malleghem booked a ticket for Iceland. He had this to say about his experience.

 “I was on a small island where nothing happened and where there was nothing to photograph,” he says. “I just started photographing what I thought was beautiful. I just took photos and didn’t think about what I’d do with it. And that made me happy.”

President playing with his daughter who is in an elephant costume.

Pete Souza-The White House

Bowie's Thin White Duke persona, smoking a Gitanes cigarette,1976. 

Andrew Kent

Bowie celebrates his birthday and the end of the Isolar tour at L’ange Bleu in Paris with (from left to right) Iggy Pop, Romy Haag, Coco Schwab, and Pat Gibbons. Andrew Kent

Bowie reading in bed at L'Hotel in Paris. Andrew Kent

Kent travelled around the globe with Bowie during his Isolar tour in support of the Station to Station album in 1976. Kent’s pictures capture not only the showman in public, but the rare private moments of solitude and candidness of the young ever-morphing Bowie.

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Commerce/Economics-Hand of Man-Corey Arnold

Corey Arnold
By Rebeka Schmieder 

Corey Arnold is both a photographer and a commercial fisherman in Alaska. He studied at the Academy of Art in San Fransisco, CA. During the summer he worked as a fisherman. His first love is fishing and his second love is photography. When he was a kid his dad showed him how to fish and later on his dad introduced him to a camera. His work is a documentary expose on fisheries in Alaska and Europe. His images explore both his personal relationships with his co-workers and also the strenuous work fishermen encounter everyday. Arnold's photographs have been published in a number of magazines, including Time LENS magazine, Esquire. The New Yorker.

His ongoing series Fish Work:The Bering Sea documents his work on multitude of fishing boats, some of which he owes, and on larger vessels as well. It is important for Arnold to accurately present the story of the hard work and danger encountered by fisherman. He would shoot between work and sleep.

Untitled 

Gulf Crossing

Opilio Bed

Between String

The photographs are visually elegant, and sometimes shocking. The photo Opilio Bed is both disturbing and humorous. Arnold does a fantastic job of capturing emotions of the workers. He reveals that it is not always dangerous, sad and dreary work, there are moments of fun among the workers. His work presents all aspects of working on a fishing boat.

In another series, Arnold  focused on life outside of commercial fishing. Graveyard Point documents the residents of a small village in Alaska. The series combines landscape and portraiture.

The Graveyard Hotel

Kvichak Exploratory Committee

Bobby after the Shooting

Ben and King

Arnold documents the unique individuals of this dying community. Despite the appearance of a ghost town, scenic documentary shots and portrait of the residents bring life and character to Graveyard Point.

Arnold's work inspires my documentary work because he manages to do both photography and fishing in equal measure. It's refreshing to see that he did not give up one dream to live out the other. I would like to think that it would be possible for me to do this with my own work.

Event Review - Joseph Mougel - Artist Now! Talk

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Joseph Mougel

February 15 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

By Rebeka Schmieder

Joseph Mougel is a videographer, photographer, sculptor and performative artist. All of these techniques have been methodically used in his projects. His work explores specific places and experiencing the place in its entirety. 

Mougel generously introduced us to his early work and the artists who have influenced him. All  artists are all influenced by other people, events, politics, etc. In most artist talks I have attended, the speaker failed to include influences which helped them create their work. Inspiration is part of the creative process for artists and research is important. Students need to be aware of other artists who tackle a subject, concept, or esthetic that relates to their own developing work.

Mougel's experience as a marine influenced his early work. Rabbit to Bee questions how he came to this place and his travels influencing the man he is today. He photographs himself doing different actions. While photos themselves have an empty feeling, I see them being a small moment in Mougel's life that he is capturing. Although these scenes are choreographed, Mougel still wants the viewer to perceive the images as discrete moments, he wants the viewer to literally stare at them and witness the scene. 

Cowboy

Mougel continues to use his history as a marine in his series Blanc. This series revisits the time in a person's life when they transform into a new recruit for the military. The idea of unification of individuals is the process when someone joined the armed services. What I found beautiful was, as Mougel states, "Even though these figures are fully covered in paint and camouflaged into the background, you couldn't fully erase the identity of the person behind the paint." This notion contradicts what the government's desire to transform individuals into a unified being. No one person can be blended into being the same as another.

002

In my own work, I have started to realize that my interest in landscapes and documentary work is purely based on the discovery and documentation, but there is this underlying theme. I need to show the identity that a body of people give a place. Whether this is a town or a vast landscape, I want to  identify the uniqueness of a land has and how it came to be. The human footprint is what I am interested in. In his work, Mougel explores/discovers, how a place came to be. He settles on a place and studies the landscape in depth rather than photographing it and moving on. This is why he documents his process with different media. Perhaps his influence can help me shape and strengthen my work through examination of one landscape at a time. 

Death/Destruction - Journalism/Fine Art - Mark Neville

Mark Neville
by Rebeka Schmieder
Mark Neville is a photojournalist located in London. His work is exclusive and changing the dynamics of documentary photography. He explores the social functions of photography by shifting the focus of the elite art audience to the lower class audience. Neville has found comfort with making work for the communities he documents. He creates these beautiful photographs and makes a coffee table photo book to disperse amongst the communities. He is more interested in empowering the subject rather than the director or photographer. 

Neville's work is concentrated on working class communities. His series The Port Glasgow Project  shows the life of a once thriving shipbuilding city and now is an industrial and economic decline. After he documented Glasgow, he put them into a book to disperse throughout the city. In an interview, he stated that this book had mixed reviews amongst the public. 

"The most extreme reaction I had was, all the protestant residence in one particular street got together and had a meeting and took their copies of the book and dumped them in the back of  a catholic pub and set fire to them"  

-Mark Neville 

Betty ( Port Glasgow Town Hall Xmas Party), Mark Neville, 2005

Sports Personality of the Year Award, Mark Neville, 2005

When Neville gives out his books to ten thousand people rather than selling the book in a store, the reactions are more genuine and dramatic. The reason for the outburst from the protestant residence was because they thought the book had too many catholic pubs pictures and not enough protestant pubs. It's reactions like this that make documentary photojournalism work so fragile and complicated. But it can also make the work photojournalist do special because you get reactions that are heartfelt as well. 

He most recently published his book Fancy Pictures which is a collective from all of his past works put into one book for publication. This made him reflect on his work in a new light because of a public production of it all. 

Neville is an inspirational photojournalist who produces masterful photos. I think what is refreshing about his work is that he doesn't do it for the sales. He also is not for the fame of his name. I think as photojournalist we have to have this mentality because this style of photography can impact many people. Taking away our personal feelings and biases and creating work for the viewers is more important. 

http://www.markneville.com