Antoine d'Agata

Eugene Richards

That's a bit of a paradox, I know. 

There's really no such thing as a photograph of nothing. 

This is a framing for understanding images that might defy easy reading. These images, either through abstraction or overt banality, resist simple interpretation. They ask us to look, again, at something overlooked. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ​

This article sheds some light on the allure of what could be termed "Photos of Nothing" >>>

When most people think of a photograph they think of images, taken with a camera, of that which can be identified from this world—i.e. people, places or things. However, for most of photography's existence, there has been a parallel tradition of what is generally labeled "abstract photography," or photographs that purposefully stray from presenting things as immediately recognizable and veer towards the abstract. 

In their extreme form, these types of images can be understood—to borrow a term from abstract painting—as "non-objective," or containing nothing that can be immediately recognized. (Such paintings have also been called "pictures of nothing." To be specific, the phrase was used by a critic to describe the works of J.M.W. Turner and also served to title a series of collected lectures on the subject of abstract art by Kirk Varnedoe, a former curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

In recent years, this tradition has seemed to attract exponentially more attention from artists. Maybe it is because we have too many (representative) images available to us online or it's a reaction to the huge popularity of large-scale, very realistic figurative work, or the influence of the abstract work of certain artists, like Thomas Ruff, on subsequent generations. 

Arguably, some of the most interesting photographers working today create non-objective photographs or pictures of nothing. And it seems like there is a new way to explore/picture this subject/technique monthly. For what it's worth, a few of the tendencies could be understood as...

-An interest in light. For example, Alison Rossiter's imagery stems from her experiments with expired photographic papers and Barbara Kasten uses materials such as glass, mirrors, Plexiglas, and mesh, to make large-scale geometric sets, which play with shadow, light, and reflection.  
-An interest in visualizations of math and science. For example, Thomas Ruff's cycles are inspired by 19th century science books and are based on visualizations of “cycloids,” mathematical curves that are the product of rolling one curve along a second, fixed curve. 
-An interest in focusing very closely on a typically-recognizable object to the point that it becomes abstracted. For example, Daido Moriyama's patterned monochromes are close-ups of legs sheathed in tights.
-An interest in decay and the photograph as a sculptural material as in Ryan Foerster's abstractions, portraits of friends he made that were destroyed (and inherently re-born) by the flooding and destruction of Hurricane Sandy. 
-An interest in textures. See, for example, Frank Thiel's photographs of weathered buildings. 
-An interested in abstracting history to encourage different perspectives. Farrah Karapetian's large-scale photograms focus on details of scenes and signs of protest.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ​

​This second article has some additional information and resources.

Frank Theil

Carrie Mae Weems

Daido Moriyama

Clar McWeeney

Dino Kužnik

Imogen Cunningham

Kim Llerena

Lee Friedlander

Lewis Baltz

Robert Adams

Stephen Shore

Margaret Bourke-White

Ruth Bernhard

Sarah Phyllis Smith

William Eggleston

Daniel Everett

* Daniel Everett is an artist and professor at the university I attended, and I am a huge fan of his work. Please check out his website here *

"Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal... It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation -- latent fears that we might be going too far.”

“Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced "beautiful" images? Though unconscious personal anxieties can be a powerful force in the creation of a vital lie, economic necessity practically guarantees it. An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An ideology that makes women feel "worth less" was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not require a conspiracy; merely an atmosphere. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth.”

"The Beauty Myth"
by Naomi Wolf
>> read a few more citations here

* * *  How Does Photoshop affect Women's Personal Body Image?  * * *
via Medium

Esther Honig, reporter.
Beauty Standards Around the World
TIME + designboom

Jean Kilbourne
TEDx talk

"The bedroom is one of the few spaces in which adolescents are able to compose their lives. Often it is the only room in their environment where they are able to bring their own evolving sense of self to bear on choices of decoration and the objects that are meaningful in their lives... Teenagers' bedrooms are a rich site of information about teen values, aspirations, activities, and identities... [Adolescents] are creative, active individuals who design and construct themselves by making meaning out of the worlds they inhabit..."

>> Kit Grauer, University of British Colombia, "Teenagers and Their Bedrooms" via Visual Arts Research, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2002), pp. 86-93. 

"Salinger’s 1995 photography series “Teenagers in Their Bedrooms” sees American minors proudly manning their personal, parents-free shrines: their bedrooms. Over a period of two years, Salinger photographed 43 strangers she met in restaurants and shopping malls, primarily in upstate New York, asking them to pose in their respective private quarters. With every square inch plastered with paraphernalia—posters of heavy metal bands, punk show flyers, Thrasher magazine covers, and stacks of stuffed animals—the rooms reflect the coming of age of ’90s teens, preserving a way of life that is a far cry from the behaviors of the iPhone-wielding, Pokémon Go-chasing millennial."

>> via Artsy.
She published a book about this project called "In My Room" in 1995.
Her personal website is here.

"After enjoying a successful commercial photography career and raising a family, photographer Barbara Peacock is embarking on an incredible journey into the bedrooms of average Americans. With American Bedroom, she is taking an intimate—and anthropological—look at the most personal of spaces, asking friends, family, and strangers to open themselves up to her candid photographs.
​
Inspired by the work of documentary photographer Walker Evans, Peacock captures the small idiosyncrasies that make up the fabric of the American public. Not posed or prodded, her subjects make themselves vulnerable, allowing her to document a wide range of emotions—from childhood joy to intense loneliness."

>> via My Modern Met
Her personal website is here (proceed with caution).

"In 2010, South African-born photographer John Thackwray began a journey across the globe with his series titled My Room Project. By setting up a camera on the ceiling of each participant’s bedroom, he captures the intimate details of their most private spaces and then interviews them about their lifestyles and cultures. The photographic series, which initially began with friends in Paris, has spanned thousands of rooms in over 55 countries, from Teheran and Tokyo to New York and Nepal."
>> via My Modern Met

"The traveling photographer has snapped portraits for his My Room Project in 1,200 intimate bedroom settings around the globe, from the heart of New York City to poor neighborhoods in Nairobi."
>> via Huffington Post

The official website is here.

Her website is here.

When Nan Goldin looks at the photographs that defined her career, she recites a little prayer to herself: "Send love to each person that’s dead.”

For 30 years, her subjects have been those closest to her: Transsexuals, cross-dressers, drug users, lovers, all people she befriended when she moved to New York after her sister’s suicide, a succession of foster homes and struggles with parents she rejected as conformists. They lived in what mainstream critics would coldly call the “margins of society,” and many died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
​
“They were family, a community,” she said. “And now most people are dead.”

>> via The New York Times.

"Amanda crying on my bed, Berlin 1992"

Nam June Paik, "TV Magnet" 1965

Kon Trubkovich, "Leap Second" 2015

Mathieu St-Pierre, "Dog on a Couch" 2017

Cory Arcangel, "Super Mario Clouds" 2002

UCNV, "Turpentine" short film, 2017

Len Lye, "A Colour Box" 1935

Nukeme, "Glitch Knit" 2014
Knitting Machine Hack
​Glitch Embroidery

UCNV + Nukeme, Kaihouku's Fashion Design Showcase

The term "Glitch" comes from the German "Glitschen," which means "to slip."
 
"Glitch art starts conversations that traditional art forms can’t really access, just by the nature of how it's created. How much do we control our technology, and how much does it control us? Can technology ever transcend the imperfection inherent in its human creators? What does it mean if we can reclaim the “errors” in our computers, phones, and cameras and repurpose them as our tools? The essence of glitch art is pretty simple: humans subject themselves to technology and exert control over it to a greater or lesser extent to produce a piece of artwork that is a product of both the creator’s intention and the device’s whims. There are themes inherent in this medium, then: morbidity and destruction next to growth and regeneration, conflicts between control and unpredictability, disassembling and re-appropriating the systems that surround us, technological chaos versus human balance — or vice versa."     

"In her article Patchwork Hedrons, Lana Polansky explains glitch art's roots in Dada and punk ideologies with regards to the “repurposing and deliberate corruption of materials, impropriety, declarations of radicalism” and the “systemic dismantling” achieved through art."

​-Mallika Roy, for The Periphery, 2014

- B A S I C    I N S T R U C T I O N S  -

1.  Drag a .jpg image to your desktop.
2. Rename the file extension from ".jpg" to ".txt"
3. Double click the new .txt file, and it will open in TextEdit.
4. Minimize the TextEdit window.
5. Rename the file extension back to .jpg on your desktop.
6. Open the .jpg in Preview by double-clicking the image.
7. Reopen the minimized TextEdit window (This sequence will allow you to manipulate the code while watching your image change. This will save you a lot of time re-naming and re-opening your files).
8. Manipulate the code. Copy, paste, delate, add, etc, etc, etc. Avoid the upper 1/8 of the code, as that will corrupt the image file. 

READINGS + RESOURCES:
​
>> GLITCH STUDIES MANIFESTO​ <<
The Punctum as Glitch, via Digicult
GLITCH ART, wikipedia
"It's not a bug, it's a feature: the rise of glitch art" by the Gaurdian.
Understanding the Glitch Art Movement, by the Periphery
A Beautiful love story between two glitch art Twitter Bots
Glitch Blankets on Kickstarter
8 GLITCH ARTISTS
*​IMAGE GLITCH TOOL*
​​

These resources from the KHAN ACADEMY are really helpful. 

These videos featuring contemporary photographers, produced by MoMA, are really great.

ONE MINUTE SCULPTURES

STUDENT WORK