Field Trip - Milwaukee Art Museum Herzfeld Center

Milwaukee Art Museum
Herzfeld Center

by: Kylee Diedrich

On Wednesday, March 1st my photography class visited the Herzfeld Center at the Milwaukee Art Museum to view contemporary photography in an informal setting. The majority of the images were without frames or glass, directly from the storage files. We were able to be inches away from the museum's worthy collection. Our instructor and the Collections Manager chose images that were either historically important or cutting edge. Not often do students or the public get the chance to view work in such an intimate way.

The trip exposed us all to contemporary photographs and photographers who are working with new techniques or old techniques in a new manner.  We saw twenty-five images close up.  Some that I found most interesting were Robert Heinecken's A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate TV Newswoman, 1984 (Top Left); Marco Breuer's Untitled (C-784), 2008 (Top Right) ; and Christopher Russell's Explosion #26, 2014 (Bottom).

                                

                

Overall, the field trip to the Herzfeld Center to be a great way to expose us to the new ideas revolving around contemporary photography and the ways artists are developing the medium of photography, what it means, and what it can be in the future.  

Field Trip- Milwaukee Art Museum

Helen Levitt
by: Allison Krenz

Street photography is a craft best mastered with time. Being able to visit the Milwaukee Art Museum and see a body of work that spans an entire career, showcases this best. The installation included Levitt's black and white prints, color prints, as well as her original slides. Moving around the gallery was like wandering the streets with Levitt herself. Children are a reoccurring subject for her, as well as dogs, cars, and New York's working class. 

It's Levitt's attention to detail, but also her happenstance-esque framing that makes her images so compelling. While it is a result of having years of photos to choose from, it is still an impressive feat to have so many interesting photos come together into one exhibition. 

Death and Destruction - Magnum Photos

Magnum Project - Postcards from America: Milwaukee
Milwaukee Art Museum July 10 - October 19, 2014
By Kylee Diedrich

Magnum Photos is a consortium of photographers who showcase their individual work as well as present group exhibitions/projects.  Postcards from America is a large project spread among numerous cities, one of which was Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Milwaukee Art Museum invited eleven photographers: Bruce Golden, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Mark Power, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Jacob Aue Sobol, Alec Soth, Zoe Strauss and Donovan Wylie.  They were directed to travel around Milwaukee between August 2013 - April 2014 documenting events, people and the city ranging from the State Fair, parades, city construction, urban decay, as well as workers and people who live or travel here.  Each photographer used their interests to guide their photography, including color, composition and subject matter. 

Two photographers I explored are Martin Parr and Mark Power.  Both photographers have influence my own photography in how they look at the landscape and what they decide to photograph.  

Parr photographs his interests and his process shows through the imagery. 

"Leisure, consumption and communication are the concepts that this British photographer has been researching for several decades now on his worldwide travels. In the process, he examines national characteristics and international phenomena to find out how valid they are as symbols that will help future generations to understand our cultural peculiarities. Parr enables us to see things that have seemed familiar to us in a completely new way. In this way he creates his own image of society, which allows us to combine an analysis of the visible signs of globalisation with unusual visual experiences. In his photos, Parr juxtaposes specific images with universal ones without resolving the contradictions. Individual characteristics are accepted and eccentricities are treasured." quote from Martin Parr's website. 

Power's photographs deals more directly with death and destruction and the urban decay that is plaguing cities nation wide.  In this project, Power pointed his camera to the decaying buildings scattered throughout the city of Milwaukee, revealing a somewhat post-apocalyptic world. 

 "To support himself Power tried a number jobs (he was an English teacher, a television actor and a fish farm attendant in Hong Kong; he painted cinema murals in Bangkok; produced large numbers of identical paintings for others to sell as their own in the Australian outback (very questionable, this one!) and ended up running the camera department of a large chemist in Bankstown, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney). While travelling Power began to realise he enjoyed using a camera more than a pencil and decided to 'become a photographer' on his return to England, two years later, in 1983." from Mark Power's website."

Event Review - James Nares Lecture

In Conversation: James Nares

Saturday, January 28, 3:00pm  Lubar Auditorium, Milwaukee Art Museum
in conjunction with  Helen Levitt: In the Street | James Nares: In the City January 27 through April 16, 2017
by Kylee Diedrich

James Nares is a multimedia visual artist.  He was born in London, United Kingdom and went to school for Visual Arts.  He moved to New York City to work as an artist in 1974.  He creates thought provoking and intense works that force the viewer to be uncomfortable, hypnotized and engrossed in the viewing of his work.  His main themes reference movement, rhythms, and repetition. I think he works intuitively and spontaneously while also being precise and conscious of his process. During the talk, Nares discusses a wide scope of his work from when he started out to the most current projects, one called In the City which is showing in the Milwaukee Art Museum. He also has a project named Portraits up in the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City, NY. 

From watching his videos he seems to enjoy the balance between physics, art and rhythm. My favorite part of his talk was when he showed called Globe. The video was created in 2007 and is truly hypnotic with the music he chose. I could honestly watch this for hours and never become bored.  I found the video exhibited at the museum interesting, In the City, because he changes how people are viewed and breaks down a barrier between how people want to be seen, and how people are actually seen.  His video, Drip uses changes in sound and speed -- like all of his videos, they are hypnotic.  I feel as though I am in a trance when I view them, everything in the world goes away and I am placed in this other world.