Alec Soth's Flicker Party Assignments

In fall 2010 Alec Soth started to give assignments to his followers on Flicker. He told people to get out in to the world and interact. Soth is trying to guide the participants to find their own process. He says finding your own process is just as important as the subject matter.

Assignment #1: Treasure Hunt

The photographers had to find 10 different subjects that were given to them at the beginning of the quest. The subjects were: pilots, amateur paintings, unusually tall people, museum guards, sleeping children, neighborhood bars, supermarket cashiers, sheep, sedans and suitcases. 

 

I thought this picture by Simon Bates was extraordinary! What are the odds that he found this. And that only because he was told to find sheep. Actually I don't think it's a sheep, it looks more like a ram. I like the way the photographer included the tall grass, giving it a clearer location. It wouldn't have been the same effect if he cropped it tight around the body. I think another part of why I like it so much is because it reminds me of my dad's dinosaur dig. Simon Bates found a real treasure.

Assignment #2

Requirements were to find and photograph a stranger, ask them to show you something and then based on what they show make another series. The idea was to tell a short story. This assignment was inspired by Soth's "From Here To There".

This picture that I'm having trouble uploading was shot by Benjamin Borley. He was the winner of this assignment and shot the spastic lady with the beautiful blue eyes. I picked him, because he did a great job at telling a story and I picked this image because I like the way her personality comes through. The gesture of her hand, the expression on her face, the beautiful light and all that blue. The fact that she is standing on a bridge and that Borley included the railing in to the picture helps to build the setting for the of the story.

Assignment #3

Here the photographer had to go beyond their comfort zone. The idea was to photograph a non-photographer and then letting them photograph you. The two pictures are then put side by side. Alec Soth was asking himself "why are amateur photographers so damn good?"

Breno Rotatori was the photographer that Alec Soth claimed not even trying to make a good picture. After looking at all his entrees I thought that Soth picked the worst ones. My favorite combo is where the picture on the left displays a family portrait and the picture on the right a grandma taking a picture. Then my eye jumps back to the family where I have to search for Rotatori. I find him at the bottom of a V shape formed by two columns of the building, then I recognize that the picture of his grandma also has a V shape formed by the surrounding family members. I also see that him and his grandma had lots of fun playing camera-tag. This process does give the images a new dimension, sort of like in a film where it flips from one persons p.o.v. to another.

Assignment #4


Alec Soth told everybody to plan an encounter. The assignment was to meet someone on Craig's List and find the highest place in town to go for a 8mile walk. Then they had to document the encounter and combine the images with text. He said that the writing has to be visually compatible with the photographs. Soth also mentioned that less is more in this assignment.

Pavel K. Hailo, the winner of this assignment did a great job narrating his experience in his "Hide and Seek". I love that he used a notebook and his own handwriting, it is as if I stumbled upon someones journal. It's like I can hear the tone or the rhythm of his voice. The image I picked was of the drunk 14 - 15 year old lying in the snow. I can relate to what he said about being to shy to get any closer, I wish he did. I have photographs of those moments as well. At the bottom of the page he added that he left her there in the snow, that comment rite there is a perfect example of documentation of the encounter. By telling me what happened after he took the shot. The only thing he didn't do was to meet a stranger from Craig's List, but that doesn't bother me since he did photograph strangers after all.

Pieter Hugo and Permanent Error

"The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year." states Pieter Hugo's website.

In this image there are elements of our world disappearing into the gray of nothingness. Like a faint memory of of the past history. At this angle at which Pieter Hugo photographed the keyboard it appears to be the view rite in front of my feet. As if this is a view in to the future.

 For the past year Pieter Hugo has been photographing the people and the landscape of an electrical dump in Ghana.

This landscape is far from romantic. Where we know cows constantly eating fresh, green grass, there is none here, here they just vegetate on the gray ashes of trash. And instead of a blue sky all we see is smog. But jet there are people walking around, going about their business. The only color: a blue dress instead of the blue sky.

The electrical waste was shipped there to help reduce the digital divide and create jobs. But the fact is that the only value to the parts is the metal, which can only be extracted though burning the plastic off.

 All this waste and burning is of course contaminating the ground, air and water making it poisoness. In this image Hugo included several people reminding me somewhat of a flee market. One can see some electronics being burnt, perhaps a microwave. There are slight inclusions of color manly red and green.

This image is a great Juxtaposition in subject and color. This man probably didn't travel to Italy on a vacation and purchased a bag as a souvenir. Us westerners take many things for granted.

Pieter tends to but his main focus rite in the middle, this reads to me that all he is doing is stating the reality and not trying to make a personal statement.

A. Siber on Stephen Shore

By browsing through Stephen Shore's work I noticed that most of his images are landscapes. Usually places looking quite familiar, but this photograph just struck out to me as being really refreshing. The billboards I am used to seeing are constantly in my way of the beauty of the nature. Where as this one adds to the landscape in a harmonious and even humorous way.
The billboard is perfectly centered in the image, while the clouds seem to radiate from it. Even the fence starts to read as if it is being pulled to the vanishing point in the center. The colors of the two blue skys are almost unreal how they match. I have one last question that persists: Did Shore block out the letters of the commercial in Photo Shop? If so did he choose the colors to do it with? I wish I had seen it in real life.

Like I mentioned above, Shore appears to do more landscapes, but among them there are also some portraits, witch I prefer. The people here seem relaxed in their own home. I love the way he included some of the surrounding furniture giving it a bigger scenery. Wen I shoot, I tend to isolate my figures from their surroundings by cropping them tightly. This is giving me a new way to look. Instead of the static straight on shot he angled the camera and made it more dynamic, which adds to the mood of the subject. He also used a limited range of colors that is very affective for giving an image a unified look. Most of the colors are warm except for the pillow of the main subject. By this contrast of color it adds to direct the viewers attention. It's also funny how with help of the color and shape, my eye keeps comparing the woman's butt to the chair.

Personally, I have to admit, I am not impressed with most of his landscapes. This one here is my least favorite. It looks like the view of a person that is about to cross the road. Or as if all his focus is directed to a point where something or someone might have stood at some point in time, but is not there anymore. That point to me would fall rite in front of the small car. There is so much empty street and dull colors. The most interesting part of the image to me is the blue shape of the sky and the jagged edge of it against the roof tops. But that alone does not win me over. The most respect here goes to the architect of the building on the left.