Telling a Different Kind of Story
"THE CAMERA IS ESSENTIALLY A LICENSE TO
EXPLORE."
A designer and photographer, Uelsmann has created many works of art that both inspire and awe. He has an interesting style, a strong belief in his purpose in design, and a lot of renown in the creative industry.
For someone like myself who is a designer and photographer, what he is able to do with photographs is something special. He basically did photoshop before photoshop was created, all of which was done in a dark room. Most of his photographs are black and white, but I think that that just adds to the drama of his work. I find his connection between objects and the things that he puts together to be really fascinating. I love nature, but also can appreciate the beauty in man-made structures, so his pictures of trees turning into houses, men having robotic attributes, and mixing human and nature are really fun to observe.
I think that what I find most interesting about him is his process. To some people now it might seem old fashioned to still do work in
the dark room, but I think that that just adds to his passion and mission in design. In the shorter video that I provide below, he expresses how he loves being able to take visuals and alter them because for him it creates an even better story.
To learn more about this amazing designer and photographer click on "Telling a Different Kind of Story" to go to his website or visit the links to videos below:
Shorter video
click her for Longer video, it is worth it!!
I find his work quite disturbing, especially when paired with the video and the creepy quotes and music. Overall I find it quite impressive how he is able to create such surreal imagery without computer technology. This guy definitely has the whole tortured artist thing going for him.. not my style but I can appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to go ahead and agree with Cooper, "disturbing" was the term that came to my head while looking at the pictures and video. The video especially with the added feel the music gives. It's pretty interesting how he has figured out how to produce work like this, but I want to know what happened to him to make him do stuff like this….
ReplyDeleteTo address the previous two comments: I don't find the work disturbing so much as I find it haunting--a much less negative connotation in my opinion. Though personally some purely instrumental music may have been better (unless the words were part of what he's going for).
ReplyDeleteTo address the artwork: This is absolutely impressive. The majority of people can't even photoshop this well and he does this in a darkroom? Stunning. Absolutely stunning. In my opinion, the process is just as important as, if not more so, the art itself this shows that concept very well.
I really enjoy the concepts he has contrived. While they are dark, and brooding in composition--they bear a sweet transition into the surreal nature of thought. Jerry seems to be an interesting cat and his works help to reinforce his unabashed personality. Art should be as emotionally invoking as it can be, whether disturbing, bliss, or melancholy. Its nice to have this blog because I don't know if I would have stumbled across this artist in my searches.
ReplyDeleteI'm on the same page as Cynthia, I think "disturbing" is too offensive or negative -- I agree that it is haunting. I think the video distorted it all a bit unintentionally. I am drawn to his work because it makes me contemplate what is going on, it isn't just "oh, look at that -- how neat." I especially enjoy his work because of his process -- this looks like it was all done with digital software, but it wasn't! Bloody awesome, and extremely talented.
ReplyDeleteI'm also in the not "disturbing" camp. Haunting works for me, of course it's okay to feel however you want about these pieces. The fact the they have elicited such positive and negative feedback is a testament to their effectiveness as art. I love these pieces, they take the photograph, a snapshot of reality and transform it into the creation of the surreal.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Thomas, his work seems to get mixed feedback which really does display the strength of these pieces. I also think the fact that they were done in a dark room is impressive. Working with photoshop has so many different features to make a piece what the artist wants it to be. It would be interesting to see "photoshop" techniques done in a dark room!
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ReplyDeleteBefore I read your blog post, I looked at Uelsmann's work on his website and noticed that a lot of his work dated before Photoshop had been created. His images are so fantastic and I would have never realized he did not use Photoshop to create the images unless I had looked at the dates. In high school photography, I experimented with combining images but I have no idea how his work could be so clean and precise. Uelsmann's mixed images flow so well together that it looks like they could be real situations. I can tell there is a lot of symbolism behind his images. For example there must be reasons why he combines different things together.
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