creepy, sleazy, and beautiful, captured, not just conveyed

the work of anotine d'agata is creepy, sleazy, and beautiful...i like that. another thing i enjoy about d'agata's work is his use of motion blur and focus. these two things are basically specific to photography, so it's nice to see them taken advantage of. photography is the only medium, besides video, that can employ these elements, so they should be taken advantage of.

it seems that with painting or drawing, light can be captured in a way similar to photography. i don't think the same can be said for motion blur and focus. unlike light, motion blur and focus can not really be drawn or painted from observation. the blur of motion can not be seen and frozen by the eye, so it would be hard to record it onto canvas from observation, and i think its hard to recreate the exact appearance of something being out of focus because it is...well...out of focus. how can you truly capture what something looks like out of focus when you're not sure because it is in fact out of focus. even if artist do get a likeness of these motion blurs and out focus images onto their canvas, it's not the same as a photograph. the motion blurs and unfocused images often just become wild marks, strokes, or shapes made up by the artist. photography doesn't do this, it's not really created, it is captured as it actually is. this isn't to say that the photographer didn't do somethings to create this out of focus image with the motion blurs, they did create these things in real life, and they managed to capture them, and show them. in other mediums they are only conveyed... not captured.

Glenn Sloggett

there is a simplicity to slogett's work that i really appreciate. in most of his photographs there is something that is really evident as the main subject of the picture or something that really becomes overwhelming in the composition, causing it to become the focal point. i find going out into the world and creating an image that is so obviously about one thing can sometimes be difficult. this is because you have to take into account all the other shapes and objects that fall into your frame. slogget does a good job of getting a just the right distance so that no other shapes or objects in the composition become distracting or overwhelming, the simply become part of the background. slogett's choice of distance also helps to make one object the focal point of his pictures without making it troublesomely abstract. this object is usually close to the center of the frame, if not directly in the center of the frame, which definitely helps it to become the focal point and also helps out with the simplicity of the photograph.

another thing that contributes to the simplicity of slogett's photographs is the square format. the square format is very conducive to slogett's placing of the subject in the center of the frame, it becomes simple, direct, and allows the main subject to dominate the frame. another thing the square format does is it makes it very apparent that slogett has placed his subject in the center of the frame, which really helps his work function as a series.