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Gauze!

I just had an epiphany!

Better late than never! Not long ago I was in the Aperture Summer Open, the theme of which you may remember was ”photography itself”.Do you remember the logo? Check it out at this link…

http://www.aperture.org/exhibition/aperture-summer-open/

Today I remembered this work, “Image Object Friday 7 June 2013 4:33PM, 2013.” , featured in the ‘What is a Photograph’ exhibition at ICP, by the contemporary photographer Artie Vierkant. It reminded me of the Summer Open logo. I wondered whether Vierkant’s image had influenced Aperture.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/01/31/arts/31PHOTOGRAPHY2/PHOTOGRAPHY2-articleLarge.jpg

Artie Vierkant’s work is all about using new technology, so that covers photography itself, that is version that is looking forward, but, contemporary photography often harks back to the processes used at the beginning, the invention of photography, which is also photography itself!

Then it hit me…

Both the Summer Open’s logo and Vierkant’s Image object could both have been inspired by ‘Three Sheets of Gauze, Crossed Obliquely  1852-1857’ (ca) by William Henry Fox Talbot, the British photography pioneer! What do you think?

http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/image/9595594629578506911041743586/

Either way it got me thinking about William Henry Fox Talbot and how at the beginning of my official studying of photography (an ‘O’ level at school) I  went to Lacock Abbey and photographed the same window that Fox Talbot had done all those years before.

Next week I am starting on a 3 year part-time Master of Fine Arts and so I’m thinking about where I started with photography, the journey I am about to embark on and wondering where I will end up. For now, let’s start back at the beginning with my photograph of that window and see what develops!

TanyaAhmed_LacockAbbey

 

Oh That View!

It is not something I usually do.

I usually prefer the local and the intimate.

But, it had to be done.

I bounced over the Squibb Park Bridge.

And joined the throngs of tourists.

Claimed my spot.

Set up my tripod.

Only half over the barrier.

Not as foolhardy as others; risking a camera/tripod dip in the East River.

Ready to take the twilight picture.

The same one everyone else was waiting and lined up for.

That quintessential view of the New York City skyline.

 

There is nothing of my day to day life in this photograph.

It is just a spectacle that attracts me.

A glorious one that I pass by, in a car, not on foot.

Many times I wanted to stop and look at the view.

So this day I did.

Photographing it for posterity.

 

Far left is the Statue of Liberty.

Far right, hiding behind the Brooklyn Bridge, are the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.

I work at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, but you can’t see where I live.

 

ManhattanTanyaAhmed

 

 

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Hmmm, the blues, not the music or the mood, the colour palette. I wasn’t a big fan in my school days navy and pale blue uniform yuk, but over the last couple of weeks my attention is increasingly being attracted to blue images.

The first one was a cyanotype in the photography exhibition, A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, at MoMa, “Allover (Genesis, Travis Tritt, and others)” by Christian Marclay (American and Swiss, born 1955). At approximately 51 x 97 inches, it was very large, but the light sensitive paper was criss crossed with the small components and magnetic tape from pulled apart audio cassette tapes.

Two defunct technologies in one. Although of course the more laborious and old fashioned the photographic medium, the more in vogue it seems to be currently. The same cannot be said of tapes though, I haven’t seen anyone sporting a walkman on the train lately, not even ironically!

You can see the image here: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=156674

The second image I saw last week was also at MoMA but in the education wing. As a part of the program Create Ability, for individuals with learning and developmental disabilities and their families, Picture This! : Photography saw the participants collaborate on a cyanotype. The photograph I took of the piece on the wall in MoMA is below:

Picture-This-Photography_MoMA

 

The third image, keeping to the theme of studio photography, is the one of mine from my archives that I will post today. It is not a cyanotype in any fashion. But, it has stuck in my mind for many years and the colours I saw at MoMA reminded me of it and made me dig it out to share with you.

The objects are not layered on paper as with the cyanotype but there is a feeling of overlay as I made several photographs of the objects with colour transparency (slide) film which I then sandwiched together after processing.

When I look at this picture I can smell the scent enveloping the objects and feel the smooth and rough plastic. These objects were kept in a jumble in a small drawer-string leather bag, so it is apt that it is not just a straight forward documentary shot.

You may not understand even what this image is about, as it is somewhat abstract but that makes it more magical to me in the way it so completely holds my memory.

TeddysCurlers_TanyaAhmed copy

I don’t often title my photographs but this has one. The title is “Teddy’s Curlers’

 

 

 

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Can you see any reason why security said I was not allowed to take a photograph here? Me neither and oh well too late!

TanyaAhmedMetropolitan

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This week’s photograph is from 57th street between Fifth and Madison. I was sitting with a friend in the open-to-the-public interior courtyard of a Trump building.

As with many things in New York City, once you stop moving you start noticing. Accompanied by the chirps of birds flying between the indoor, covered trees, sparrows, as it turned out, I looked towards one of the entrances.

Looking east towards Madison Avenue I noticed a visual confusion. The walls and ceiling so shiny that the street view was inverted and reflected inside the courtyard space.

I’m still transfixed!

57stMadison-courtyard-TrumpTanyaAhmed

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Erdil’s Tailoring, 87th between Lex and 3rd.

I just happened to be walking down 87th Street, it was blazing hot in a glaring sun kind of way but as I walked past this bleached-by-the-sun-wall something pulled me beyond the shapes, textures and colours of the building. Something drew me to look in. There he was, sitting at a table, a small lamp illuminating the material he was working with. Such a tiny light  and a man quiet and totally absorbed in his stitching. This scene shone right out of the shop, brighter somehow than the daylight.

TanyaAhmedErdilsTailoring

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I saw this whilst exploring the building during Interior Lives, the exhibition at the National Arts Club in Gramercy. It’s in the ladies loo! You never know where the light is going to catch your eye!

TanyaAhmedTraskLadies

 

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ˈfōtō ˈfôrtˌnīt frīdē AND on View!

Last Monday was the opening night for ‘Interior Lives’, a juried exhibition of photographs held at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South, right here in the city. The building, listed and beautiful was filled to bursting with photographers and invitees, it was a great night. For those of you who couldn’t make it but would still like to, the exhibition runs until the end of the month (May 31st) and for those who would like to see my images I add them here, unframed.

TanyaAhmed_Mark_Stockwell TanyaAhmed_Amy

The two photographs present teen bedrooms in South East England taken 25 years apart.The photographs show not only a difference in the anthropological aspects of the environments the teens have established as their own but also Tanya’s photography tools. Mark (1988) was photographed on 120 black and White film and Amy (2013) in digital color. How much of the way these rooms look is down to teenage personality and how much to timely cultural influences? Do you prefer one over the other? Although the photographs seem to be of the same subject matter, I really feel that they are wildly different in all aspects, is it me or do you think so too?

 

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Amazing loft space, but do those chairs strike anyone else as not belonging in the daylight? I feel like they have escaped from a disco!

TanyaAhmed_Brick_Wood_Chairs