Currier Museum Photo Exhibit

The two images that I chose to compare and contrast were "Rails in the Rain" by Imre Kinszki and "Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, 1932" by Lotte Jacobi, both seen below. Both of the images show tracks in the center, leading the viewers eyes to the back of the images. The subject matter in both these images is some type of man made thing, like the rail road or a church. There is also streaks of light in the foreground of both pictures, in the reflections of light on the road and on the rail road tracks. The major differences with these two images is that "Rails in the Rain" was shot in the daytime, while the other image was taken in the night, resulting in more overall light in the daytime picture. The compositions are similar since the tracks in both pictures are slightly off center, but is also different because they are off centered on opposite sides of each image. The image of the church also has a blurry foreground from the reflections in the puddles, while the other image is focused all around.

I honestly had a hard time finding an image that didn't belong in the photo collection. In the first room of the exhibit, I wrote down that the photo "Les Nus De Drtikol, XXVII (Nude)" didn't belong because it was the only photo of a nude women in the whole room, while all the other images were of buildings and landscapes. But once I discovered that there were more rooms to the collection and saw more nude photos, I changed my mind and thought that it did belong. Maybe if it was placed next to the other nude pictures it would have fitted in the collection better. The image that I thought was one of the weakest in the collection was called "Penzance" by John Gibson. It showed a field with a bunch of sheep sanding in it. I just found it very boring and not particularity special.

There were so many images that I really liked. I kept replacing my favorite photo with a new once, as I kept moving through the exhibit. By the time I was done looking through all the photos, I had about seven different photos written down. If I had to pick one photo that was my favorite, I think I would pick "Foster's Pond Millennium, 1/1/2000, 2000" by Arno Rafael Minkkinen. This photo literally made me gasp a little bit when I first saw it. I just loved how I couldn't tell which were hands and which were feet, until I looked at it longer. The reflections of the limbs in the water was also very beautiful. I really loved how thin, still, and shallow the water is. The image would not give me the same feeling if the water was any deeper because then the feet and hands would be under the water. Another image that I also really loved was "Untitled (Nude) 1997" by Carl A. Hyatt. This is another image that I would like to have on my wall. I just love the abstraction and how my eye travels around the shapes of her body. I also really like the ends of her toes peaking out of the side of her leg and her finger tips peaking at the top of the image.

I really liked the overall visual appearance of the exhibit. I felt that the order and subject matter of the images really flowed nicely. I noticed as I traveled around the room from photo to photo that each photo had something in common with the image before it, that created a nice flow. For instance I noticed the pictures in the second room went from portraits of peoples faces, to nudes, to tree trunks. They all tied together because the first couple images were about people, then their bodies, and then the tree trunks were shot in a way that mimiced the abstract shapes of the nude pictures before. I also noticed how pictures with similar themes, like lines, would be shown right after each other. I thought that the overall theme of the exhibit was industrialization in the beginning because of all the building and machinery pictures, but then it slowly started to be about people in cities and nature. In the end I wasn't sure if there was just one theme, but it didn't matter because the images flowed perfectly together by the order they were positioned around the room. Overall I really enjoyed this photo exhibit and wished that we could have stayed longer so I would have more time to look at all the images more closely.