Photography - Thane Goetz

 Lee Friedlander is an American photographer who emerged in the 1960s. He had a distinctive approach to street photography. When looking at one of his photos we can see everyday urban life, however, we see a sense of chaotic composition. One of these cases is his use of reflective surfaces in his photographs. Some photographers might try their best to avoid clutter, reflections, and visual obstructions, but Friedlander made a difference because he purposefully used these elements. They turn into essential elements of photographs. When I look at Friedlander’s work it is to me a glimpse of a crowded and busy world. Yet his images also show detachment. When I look at this, I get a sense of being present yet obscured, I am part of what is going on but I’m not ever immersed in it. For me, it reminds me of when I was walking in New York. I am surrounded by it, the people, the buildings. It is one of the busiest places in the world, yet I can feel a sense of being alone. This is the fee...

Floris Michael Neusüss is a German photographer who was known for his work in photograms. Neusüss expanded on the legacy of the earlier photogram artists such as Man Ray, and László Moholy-Nagy. Neusüss might have started later than some of the greats, but he could take photograms to a different larger level. This larger level was his whole-body photograms. These whole-body photograms appear to me as ghostly impressions. These photograms are more than just interesting visual compositions. For me these photograms instead carry an immense emotional weight. When I look at these photograms I feel a sense of emptiness and absence. The sense that something was there once but is now long gone. The reason I feel this when looking at his whole-body photograms I am reminded of the shadows left behind in Nagasaki, and Hiroshima. This is where, after the atomic bombs detonated, the shadows were etched into the ground where the last victims were. While I don’t know what Neusüss reason for this ...

Marvin Heiferman had written this essay, “Photography changes Everything” and in it we see how photography can spark new and different ways of seeing and thinking. In the same spirit, visual inspiration is also happening all over the place. By looking at different images from politics and medicine to fine art, Heiferman shows that imagery isn’t simply recording the world, but rather it is actively reshaping the world. Just as photography redefined political messaging, and revolutionized medical diagnostics through x-rays and MRIs, visual inspiration is in the modern field in unexpected ways. In data science, color-coded infographics turn raw numbers into patterns that are easy for the public to consume; and in social media/marketing, a single well-crafted meme can shift public opinion overnight. Every single one of these are an instance of visual inspiration at work, they reshape our practices, our tools, and sometimes our collective imagination. For me, visual inspiration most o...