My Concept for the most important project

Watching the documentary by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler was like looking into a different and past world, showing concrete structures, building sites and industry that was clearly visible and flourishing around the 1920s in Manhattan. For my concept I decided I would like to look at contrast. Contrast was a strong aspect of the documentary as it showed the gradual change of the city going from one extreme to another. The contrast between the very sunny, fresh morning, which is the start of the documentary, and the end, the shiny, glamorous city at night is what interests me. The night almost seems to be a relief after seeing all these massive concrete structures and studying the very industrial looking environment during the day and the progression of the motion picture. The cover of the darkness seems to only let a few aspects of the city shine through, the lights, the most valuable attributes of the city you could say.

I chose the mask as my object from the course outline. My main focus will be to contrast the mechanical nature of Paul Strands photography works with nature and it's organic aesthetics, staying open to any kind of representations of nature, realistic or not. The mechanical nature is my starting point symbolised in the potrait I sourced earlier and the organic nature will be reflected by my drawings and manipulations of Strands image that i will layer over the top.

The idea of contrast came to mind when looking at the black and white aesthetic of early photography. The photograph or potrait that i chose was printed with traditional darkroom techniques and chemicals. The contrast between mechanic and organic reflects the contrast of the darkroom print. Contrast can also be discribed as a limited range of tones.

black white

mechanical nature organic nature

I will conduct some research on organic aesthetics and representations and will use these and the potrait as the starting point of my explorative series. The drawing will later be translated into Rhinoceros.