Event #3: Getty Center

Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography is an exhibit currently showing at the Getty. It features seven artists' works as they experiment with light exposure and chemical processing in photography. It is a strong contrast from today's digital photography where the photographer can make the photo turn out, essentially, however they want it to. In this exhibit, the artists use an array of techniques to showcase this particular medium in a different light. For example, using expired photo paper or bathing the paper in chemical solutions. I found it to be a refreshing change of pace from the photography I typically see in this day and age - most of which looks too perfect to be real, staged, and edited. There was an understated beauty in its imperfections and soft colors and lines. Overall, it was a beautiful example of utilizing techniques not to to further enhancement or control but to lose control and accept whatever may come from it.

Lisa Oppenheim's "Lunagram", a series of photograms where she took the negatives of a lunar series in 1851 and contrasted it with the same lunar phase in 2010. 

Event #2: Fowler Museum

Earlier this week, I went to the "Making Strange" exhibit at the Fowler Museum. It was made up of two separate projects - Gagawaka and Postmortem - by one artist, Vivan Sundaram. Personally, I really enjoyed Gagawaka, which was a collection of "strange" haute couture made out of unconventional items, repurposed to make beautiful pieces. It really opened my eyes to the fact that many items we categorize as "trash" can actually make something avante garde. Furthermore, many of the couture pieces were made out of medical-based items, like feminine hygiene products, sanitary masks, foil pill wrappings, and x-ray films. I feel more inclined to look at functional items and see something I would have never seen before. Especially, in the area of medicine, where so much emphasis is placed on tools being sterile and efficient as possible, to completely repurpose them as a part of a bigger design was a great take on their functionality, and in doing so created a new function for them.

An outfit made out of foil pill wrappings and a dress made out of x-ray films.