by Rowan Johnson
SOU Class of 2025, Creative Writing

Tarrah Krajnak, A Forestpath (after V. Burgin’s Photopath), Printed at a 1:1 Scale of the Forest Floor, Post-Dolan Fire, Landels Hill Big Creek Reserve, Big Sur, CA, March, 2022, 27 silver gelatin prints. Courtesy of the artist and Zander Galerie, Cologne

Melanie Flood, Beetlejuice (Self-Portrait), 1995/2024, archival pigment print in artist frame. Courtesy of the artist

Hailed as a technological leap in 1824, the invention of photography was not always treated kindly by the art world. Many artists looked down at photography as simply a copy rather than a reflection, lacking the artistic skill and appreciation that created beauty. They also feared the new development. If colored photography advanced enough, what use would painters have in the world? Today we see a coexistence of rich color photography and traditional paintings, but paintings are still featured more frequently than photography collections. The Melanie Flood Projects, a gallery based out of Portland, Oregon, bridges this gap by hosting an array of photography-based exhibitions and other avant-garde works. Melanie Flood, an artist, curator, and gallerist, is tied deeply to the art world. Her own work can be found in the Schneider Museum of Art’s current exhibition PACING. Learn more about Flood and her work with Melanie Flood Projects with the link below, and see her work in person by visiting our Main Gallery before August 10th.

https://www.melaniefloodprojects.com/about

Dru Donovan, Untitled, Parent, 2023, inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist

 

Photographers use an array of techniques in order to capture motion in a single frame. These techniques can be broken into two categories: implied movement and blurred movement. The first relies on visual perception and pattern recognition in order to work. Even though a photo of a child on a swing is visually still, the information that they are on a swing tells us that they were moving when the photo was taken. This movement is captured in the way the child’s hair is blowing, the directional pull of their clothing, and tension on the swing itself. Blurred movement takes this concept and takes it a step further by giving movement a visual blur. Photographs of cars, athletes, or animals more often use blur lines to emphasize speed, but it can also be used wherever implied movement is used. Artist Dru Donovan uses implied movement in her photography, choreographing familiar motions to focus on the relationship between care and force. In her series Untitled, Parent, adult figures are seen holding children. The posing is ambiguous between play and violence because movement is ambiguous. The lack of blur lines leaves viewers responsible for the type of movement occurring. Learn more about the techniques it takes to achieve implied or blurred movement with photography, and see Dru Donovan’s Untitled, Parent collection in our Treehaven Gallery.  

 

https://thelenslounge.com/movement-photography-techniques/