Well this past Wednesday I had my first meetup for my latest class this semester. I'm taking Photography 2 at neighborhood community college and can already tell this class will be a challenge. I have more creative freedom to take pictures and that is a first for me in regards to not have a clear concise rules for what I can shoot. It's in my hands to the point I have to explain WHY I shot something a certain way. So I'm a tad bit nervous about that. We also found out that we will be making Pinhole cameras so I went to Total Wine & More and went into their cigar section and found an empty box that I thought would serve my purpose. I was only charged $1.64 (that's with tax) for my box. I had to let some of my classmates know, who were also with me last semester for Photography 1. So I am looking forward to constructing my very own Pinhole camera.
So this past weekend was a tad bit busy for me. Yet I can't say THANK YOU enough for the snow making its exit. I'm not a fan of it so by all means it can stay far, far away from here. By here I mean actually ME. Well on Saturday I decided that afternoon to check out an exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum the professor of my Photography 2 class recommended. The big thing was that the exhibit was due to close on January 21st, so I decided to go that Saturday. The name of the exhibit was called Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics.
The following is from the Saint Louis Art Museum:
Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics is a photographic exploration of cutting-edge industrial and scientific research spaces. In over 35 works created within the past decade, the celebrated German artist Thomas Struth ambitiously takes technology and engineering as his overarching subject. With vivid color and monumental scale, he investigates the fascinating complexities of sites where knowledge, ambition, and imagination are advanced.
The featured works are drawn from the artist's visits to Europe, America, Asia, and the Middle East. Struth takes viewers into spaces normally kept from public view, such as aeronautical centers, robotics laboratories, and nuclear fusion facilities, examining humanity's attempts to understand and harness forces of nature, often at great cost of resources.
Nature & Politics intersperses Struth's technological subjects with other recent work, including images of the fantasy environments of Disneyland and the politically contested landscape of Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This poses intriguing questions about the relationship between nature and humanity in our increasingly fabricated world, as well as drawing attention to the financial and political ambition that underscores the massive technological endeavors of our present day.
Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics is co-organized by the Museum Folkwang, Essen; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in collaboration with the Saint Louis Art Museum. The St. Louis presentation is supported by a grant from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Financial assistance has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. The project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition is curated for St. Louis by Eric Lutz, associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs.
I had never heard about this particular photographer but walking through his exhibit seeing the massive to small photographs in the wall really pulled me. He had his exhibit setup purposely without info cards on the walls to identify the pictures. Yet you were given a wonderful layout brochure that gave the info on each picture in side. I tried to guess each picture before reading the description inside the brochure. Some I guess pretty close to while others I was way off base. There was even a small video in which he describes the camera he uses (a large format film camera) and his thought process from choosing a subject to photograph to the finished product.
By the time I was done with the exhibit I was really blown away and impressed by the vision he had shown. I took the survey at the end via one of the computer terminals. I gave the exhibit high marks and asked them to please have more photography exhibits in the future. After the exhibit I walked around the museum for a short while to check out the Contemporary and Japanese exhibits.
Afterwards I went out to Art Hill and just took a seat and enjoyed the scenery. I was on the phone with one of my girlfriends and I just absorbed myself in the conversation while enjoying the slight breeze that was dancing across my face. The ice was finally thawing off of the pond and I saw other people enjoying the day as well. I saw someone down the hill enjoying themselves with a book sitting in a collapsible chair.....why didn't I think of that idea...ugh.
Eventually I left and ran some other errands and then made my way home for the evening.
My Sunday was a tad bit more busy with some butter orders that I knocked out that afternoon. Followed by running some more errands. Yet I will say this weather has been absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately last night I woke up around 1 AM and couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to prep 2 body butter packages that were going out of town.
So needless to say I'm just a tad bit tired today because of a great weekend. Overall it was worth it.
