Thursday 7 March 2013
travel into the past
Last May, Taylor Jones was sitting with his family in Ontario when his mother pulled out an old photo album. Among the hundreds of shots was one of Jones's younger brother at his third birthday party. "He was sitting in front of his Winnie-the-Pooh birthday cake," Jones recalls. "It was weird – because my brother was there, in the exact spot he was sitting in in the photograph."
Jones grabbed his camera and took a shot of the old photograph lined up to match its original location. He posted it and six others on a blog. Within days, the blog, which he later named Dear Photograph, had gone viral. Today, eight months on, Dear Photograph has had 10m hits, and been named one of Time magazine's 10 best sites. It now gets 20,000 hits a day.
The success has enabled Jones to leave his job in Ontario with RIM, makers of BlackBerrys, where he worked as a social media specialist. He recently spent time in LA, finishing a book inspired by Dear Photograph that will feature stories to go with some shots. He has also met film and TV executives to discuss projects based on the site such as a screenplay a friend wrote about using photographs to travel into the past.
'I fell in love with a woman. I'm not ready to let go, but she is' - McKenzie Dillingham. Photograph: Dear Photograph
Like the resurgence of Super 8 and the rebirth of the Polaroid instant camera, the success of Dear Photograph has its roots in our nostalgia for pre-digital technology: there is a crudeness to holding a picture in one hand and photographing it with the other, yet the final image has a potency that cannot be bestowed by Photoshop.
The site receives around 20 entries a day but only one is uploaded. "The photo is usually chosen depending on [what's] going on around the world," says Jones. During the holiday season, he adds, they might "post holiday photos, but it sometimes depends just on how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling great, I'm going to post a fun photo."
'Why did we watch TV so close' - Simon. Photograph: Dear Photograph
Scrolling through the 200 or so images currently on the site, it quickly becomes clear how much resonance the accompanying texts provide. The big themes are longing and regret. Time and again, a photograph will radiate a sadness about what has been lost: children missing their parents, parents missing their childhood.
"It's hard to see the magic through grownup glasses," runs one entry, with a shot of children in Halloween costumes. Another shows two children standing in a field of long grass, the present-day shot revealing that it has been shorn. "How I long for the days of make-believe adventures in the forest," reads the caption. "Now it's just a lawn that needs mowing." The power comes from what's been lost in the space between the old photo and the new. A proud mother holds her baby son in front of a white clapboard house. "It's nice to know that we loved each other once upon a time," reads the text.
The basic concept behind Dear Photograph is not, Jones acknowledges, all that original: sleeveface.com, (2) Irina Werning's Back to the Futureseries, and Ze Frank's Young Me, Now Me have explored similar territory, often revealing the passage of time by replicating old photographs using the subjects as they are today. But Jones's innovation was to allow the space to seem to talk to the photograph.
There is an irony, Jones admits, in a 22-year-old creating a site so themed around nostalgia for a vanished past. "It is a little crazy," he says, "but seeing all these photographs, and reading the stories, has given me a perspective on life. My parents are still around and I have grown a lot closer to them." Jones has resisted taking advertising, which could have made him a substantial sum; the book deal with HarperCollins has allowed him to remain financially stable. "The website is for the photographs," he says. "I don't want anything that takes the focus away from them."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jan/04/dear-photograph-pictures-travel-time
Wednesday 6 March 2013
My UK Impression
Elegant old ladies
Different from the elderly people in my country, most of the old ladies in the UK look elegant and fashionable. They dress up nattily and walk very slowly to have afternoon teas, or even to a small supermarket next to their houses.
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Homeless people and their dogs
I can see some homeless people on the streets in this country. Some of them are accompanied by their dogs, some of them play instruments. I realized that these people would rather suffer from the cold in winter and they would give their coats or quilts to their dogs.
Saturday night
I remember once I was off work late on a Saturday night of January . On my way home I saw several young ladies came out of a pink limousine. They were in either mini skirts or deep V evening dresses. I was frozen in the snow however they all looked as if they were on the beach of Hawaii.
Sunshine
In my opinion the worst thing of living in the UK is to suffer from the bad weather. It rains and blows most time of the year. However when the sun comes out, people rush at once to a park and take off their clothes laying over a lawn,though the outdoor temperature is low.
Read on bus/train
I found that British people like reading on the bus or train or other transport. I'm not sure either British are studious or just because the newspapers are free on the bus. I can't read while I am moving because I would get carsick.
These scenes have left me a deep impression and I think it's hardly to see in my country. I want to present these ''UK impression'' from my angle and create paper cut illustrations of them.
Images from:
My Pinterst
This is the link to my Pinterest where I put interesting and inspiring images.
http://pinterest.com/velaqq/
http://pinterest.com/velaqq/
Wednesday 20 February 2013
Tuesday 19 February 2013
My paper cut design of Alice In Wonderland
This is my new paper cut piece of my current project. I designed this fairy tale style illustration and cut it out with a cutter. Inspired by the Chinese folk patterns, I came up with this asian style trees, rabbit and floral patterns. In addition, I tried to make the bottom part symmetrical to express the traditional artistry of Asian folk art.
Sunday 2 December 2012
Lino cutting experience
what would I change?
The topic of this assignment was change – what would I most like to change about the world if I have the ability? After a conversation with the tutor, I had my final thoughts – I wanted to change human’s cruel behaviors of killing wild animals. I decided to design three posters with the fox as the theme. In which form should the fox be presented, a bloody corpse, a figure aimed at by a gun, or a lively posture? I chose the last one, because I wanted to let the audience love them, show mercy to them and oppose the brutal and bloody killings by portraying their nature and beauty.
Final ideas
First of all, I drafted a few foxes on a sketchbook with a pencil in simple and smooth lines to highlight the beautiful gesture of foxes. Then I added some flowers as a background and determined the final draft after repeated modifications. After that, I copied those sketches on the lino with tracing papers and deepened them with a pencil.
Making process
After that, I copied those sketches on the lino with tracing papers and deepened them with a pencil. Then I started carving along the mark carefully with a pencil. After the caving was finished, I brought them to the printing room for printing. As there was only one machine in the printing room and there were a number of people queuing, each of whom wanted the lino to be produced in different thickness, so the machine was constantly adjusted and I could not accurately fix it at the appropriate pressure strength. Consequently, the result of the first test was not good – the color was uneven, the paint was either too much or too little, accompanied with other minor problems.
Making Process 2
There were not many people in the printing room when I did my second test, so I could adjust the paint and the printing machine little by little. I tried two colors – dark red and orange – on paper of different materials. This time I tried a lot of printing and most of which produced good results. Looking at the results of my own effort, I feel so happy.
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