DAY 4

Life before death 

Photographer Walter Schels was terrified of death, so much so he refused to see his mother after she passed away. Upon entering his 70s, Schels finally decided to overcome his fear through a bold, bizarre project – photographing individuals before and directly after their death.

The black and white portraits serve as a confrontation with the the unknown, the proximity of the lens to subject unflinching and slightly macabre. Images are paired with accounts of the deceased right before their passing with each person dealing with the inevitable in their own way. Schels and his partner, Beat Lakotta, began approaching potential individuals at hospices in Berlin and Hamburg, surprisingly few people said no. The pair were on constant alert, at times running out in the middle of the night to shoot before the undertaker would come. Though emotionally draining, Schels recognized that the series became an important epitaph to individuals before they actually died. With family and friends unable to cope with the looming truth, terminally ill patients often feel completely isolated.

‘It’s so good you’re doing this’, Schels quoted a dying man to The Guardian, ‘No one else is listening to me, no one wants to hear or know what it’s really like.’

Schels is no longer terrified of death and now sees avoidance of the issue as a serious problem in contemporary society, people unable to be truly present for loved ones when they need them most. Life Before Death is an attempt to confront our worst fears and perhaps, to see those nearing the end in a more human light. When facing death, we all stop pretending.

‘Everything that’s not real is stripped away,’ he told The Guardian, ‘You’re the most real you’ll ever be, more than you’ve ever been before’.

Name: Wolfgang Kotzahn
Age: 57
Born: 19th January 1947
Died: 4th February 2004, at Leuchtfeuer Hospice, Hamburg

There are colorful tulips brightening up the night table. The nurse has prepared a tray with champagne glasses and a cake. It’s Wolfgang Kotzahn’s birthday today. “I’ll be 57 today. I never thought of myself growing old, but nor did I ever think I’d die when I was still so young. But death strikes at any age.”

Six months ago the reclusive accountant had been stunned by the diagnosis: bronchial carcinoma, inoperable. ‘It came as a real shock. I had never contemplated death at all, only life’, says Herr Kotzahn. ‘I’m surprised that I have come to terms with it fairly easily. Now I’m lying here waiting to die. But each day that I have I savor, experiencing life to the full. I never paid any attention to clouds before. Now I see everything from a totally different perspective: every cloud outside my window, every flower in the vase. Suddenly, everything matters’.

Photograph Citations

Walter Schels. 2004. Life Before Death, Hamburg.

Gallery of  Life before death pictures:  (http://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath)

Day 3

Pictorialism  

Before 1888, photography was something that couldn't be done by everyone. Being a photographer meant more than being able to take a picture you had to know about chemistry, optics, light, the mechanics of cameras and how these factors combine to properly render a picture.  photography was seen as pristine and crisp, generally done in studios or with snapshot cameras. Early pictorialist artists such as Doris Ulmann (1882-1934) brought photography into the real world by using rural people in their homes as subjects.  Nature was also commonly photographed by artists such as John G. Bullock (1871-1933), who liked to capture reflections in water and tree limb shadows. The emphasis in pictorialist images wasn’t the subject though, but rather the mood or emotional impact shown by the photographs. As camera technology advanced the skills needed to create a picture disappeared and anyone was able to take a picture. Since anyone was able to create pictures the idea of them being art stopped being an idea and pictures were seen as a record of time. However some people still thought taken pictures could be art.

In the early  1900 a movement began to try to emulate a painting through photography. To do this photographer would smear vaseline on their lens, scratch they’re pictures to emulate scratchboard art, or colour their pictures to make certain things stand out. Many of the early works of pictorialism were based off of . Alfred Stieglitz a photographer and modern art promoter was quoted saying this about pictorialism:  "Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture."  

Photo Citation

Haviland, Paul Burty. Miss Doris Keane. 1912. Camera Work, Philadelphia. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

DAY 2

Jelly Gummies

Jelly Gummies is an art blog filled with Sketches and experiments by Scottish artist, Sam Lyon. It is a blog full of wobbly, jelly-like, bouncing, gummy gif’s. These Jelly Gummies are a lot of things at the same time, they’re cute, weird, shiny, and you’ll want to touch them but at the same time, want to put them under a glass to prevent it from trying to poison you, while at the same time wanting to take them home and use them as a pillow. These jiggling, fleshy gifs are able to channel Flubber, sea cucumbers and floppy, rubber, sausages (which can be bought at any store that doesn’t usually sell meat products), all at the same time. From a technical standpoint, there’s a reason only one of these blogs exists, the Jelly Gummies all have a very over- pronounced face-crease, stomach bulge which are so goo like it would probably take someone hours to create and perfect. However it appears that Sam Lyon has created a winning and hilarious formula for creating them, he has said that he first picks a picture of a dog or a person’s face and runs them through programs (Sculptris and blender) to see what works and what doesn’t. But when did Lyon first create them and why? In an interview with the website, Giphy, Lyon said that he had begun creating them at the end of 2012 and had learned how to through trial and error. As to why, he says he does it for fun.

Citation 
Sam Lyon. Squeeze My Nugget. 2014. N/A. Http://jellygummies.tumblr.com. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. <http://jellygummies.tumblr.com/post/130056827848/squeeze-my-nugget>.   

Giphy interview (http://giphy.com/posts/artist-interview-sam-lyon-aka-jelly-gummies)

DAY 1

My Miserable life

For those who think FML isn’t depressing enough and those who enjoy hearing depressing stories from other, anonymous people, to make you feel better. My Miserable Life: a compendium of suffering is a website for people to tell they’re miserable stories about their miserable life. The website is split-up into different sections depending on what age you are or what your living condition might be. Angst-Ridden Teens is for people my age (13-19), terrible twenties is for those who may have just finished high school and are now finding out how fun and bright the real world is. Forgettable Forties is for those people that have overcome their angst and terribleness, and are now wishing to forget (other categories exists but I can’t view them at this time as the website is blocked on school computers).  Here’s example of a story which can be found on the website:

"My mother died when I was 8 from giving birth to my brother. I could be living in beautiful Florence, Italy, but I was immediately put up for adoption in the "good old" USA. I was raised by these fosters who constantly gave their blood-daughter everything free, and me nothing. When I was in 2nd grade, a pencil was thrown into my eye, and now I have an eye "disease" that disqualifies me from the military and has left me with bad vision and color blindness. My girlfriend was killed by a drunk driver when I was 16. I've never been to a university because of the bad grades I had in school from depression when she died. Nobody ever lets you live that down. I have an Italian last name, so Spanish people hire me and harass me because I'm white. Low blood sugar makes me feel like my veins are constantly on fire. I've dropped all my "friends" in this state because they're lying and think their "act" works on me, only when I get tired of playing them back. I went from $15 an hour at age nineteen down to $7.50 at age 23 and up to $9 an hour at age 26. Oh, and I live in a one-bedroom apartment with do-it-yourself furniture."