Photography 197 2015

Photography 197

Senior Projects 2015

Photography 197 Senior Projects Spring 2015

San JosĂŠ State University Department of Art & Art History Front Cover: Jarhod Alcantara Geronimo Inside Cover: Jennifer Marroquin Back Cover: Hirania Madai Gonzalez

Š 2015 James Cathey. All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-1-329-09443-7

Contents Instructor’s Note Alicia Aldama Danielle Arduino Liz Cabrera Amanda Cisneros Ryan DiBase Yuncheng Dong Jarhod Geronimo Hirania Gonzalez Brittany Hover Jennifer Marroquin Whitney McCray Leonel Medrano Newsha Naderzad Viet Xuan Nghiem Tuan Kim Nguyen Caitlyn Rush Daniel Salcedo Elizabeth Tae Diana Tippelhofer Zhang, Jialun

Instructor’s Note James Cathey This compendium holds the selected works of San JosÊ State University Photography students, who are preparing to venture beyond Photography 197, Senior Projects in Photography, a capstone course. The book is a result of a semester that also tasked these students with focusing their interests in either commercial or fine art, as well as channeling those skills and energy into crafting a website, artist statement, artist biography, and curriculum vitae. In addition to creating a representational package of their skills and talents, students engaged in critical discussions in order to further investigate their own work, motives, and resources; these dialogues included the works of contemporary artists and social concerns. Going beyond the technical skills that they have acquired during this program, students are encouraged to look beyond their vision, beyond the lens, and into the eyes of others.

Although the students were familiar with each other, I began this course surrounded by strangers, though we were kindred spirits in our love of photography and art. Throughout the semester, I asked them the questions that would accompany them on their journey into the public and professional sphere. It was a collaborative and introspective process that coupled with the rich history of photography to reveal the possibilities open to their futures. All 20 of the students presented here in this book represent a path leading to diverse horizons, intersecting in unexpected moments, making for a unique journey.

The editorial design of this book reflects the fierce and independent nature of this particular group, preserving each font, visual organization, and selected image used. In what is my first experience as an instructor here at SJSU, it is with great certainty that this encounter with such a talented group of photographers will result in a lasting legacy. I ask you, dear reader, to join them on the road ahead.

Alicia Aldama

I worked on two series this semester. My first was my BFA show titled “You Can’t See Me,” and the second was titled “No Concept, Just Fun.” My BFA show was comprised of 14 self-portraits. I included my addiction, and many stereotypical roles society sees me as. Society seems to think I must be a certain type of person because of how I look, and I must conform to whatever this ideal is. The viewer was able to realize that I knew how they saw me as a person, and I wasn’t afraid to be what they wanted. However, in the end only one of these images was truly me. I have included most of the images here, but for the full series please go to my website.

My other series “No Concept, Just Fun” was just that. After working on my BFA show, I wanted to decompress and do something that reminded me that photography can also be fun. I used a black velvet backdrop, some glow sticks, glowing balloons, my tripod, and help from my husband and daughter. I set the timer and had some fun. There was no specific color glow stick used, no specific technique, no specific anything. Just plain fun. I plan to continue working on more of this type of imagery in the future.

Enjoy my images and to view more please visit my website www.aldamazing.com.

No Concept

Just Fun

Danielle Arduino

Mapping California I was born in 1991. While I was growing up, we still had phones attached to cords, analog clocks, film cameras, big and heavy books, and maps. Since the start of the new millennium, our society has drifted into the digital age where everything listed above has gone digital. Today we have cell phones, which anyone can do anything they can imagine on one of those. At our fingertips, we have access to the worldwide web, our family members across the globe, digital cameras are built into the device; and through the millions of apps, we can now navigate ourselves through our world without having to pull out that giant, prone to tearing, paper map.

When I was twelve, my father and I went on our first road-trip together. He asked me to pull out the map to figure out what highway we needed to take next. First off. it took over the entire front of the car; secondly,I had no idea how to read it. So he pulled over and figured it all out himself. Then when we got back on the road, he told me to fold up the map, I didn’t know how to do that either.

As of lately I have begun to miss how simple life was when it wasn’t as high-paced as it is today. So I decided to open up those old maps and found a way to incorporate the old and the new together in one beautiful image.

People, including myself, use Google Maps to route themselves to their destinations. I feel that the art of mapping has been on its falling out, and I wanted to give it a reason not to completely fade off of our radar.

Victoria Beach, Laguna Beach, California The tower that was built into the rock above was built in 1926. It was inspired by the chateaus and castles Americans were seeing in France during WWI. The tower was simply built for easy access to the beach below the property. Inside it holds a spiral staircase and the builder used ocean stones for the foundation.

Donner Lake, Truckee, California

Donner Lake is the site of which “The Donner Party” story originated.

A group of eight different families traveled together from Independence, Missouri in hopes of reaching Fort Sutter, California. When the Donner family reached present-day Reno, their wagon’s axle broke, which set them back a while. They didn’t begin to leave the Sierra Nevada mountains until snow began to fall. As family members died off, they feasted on their flesh for their own survival. All of five of the women survived the journey into Fort Sutter, California.

Colorado Street Bridge (Suicide Bridge) Pasadena, California

From a distance, this bridge has a very romantic and old charm to it. But this beautiful structure has seen over 100 people commit suicide from it, plummeting to their deaths, 150 feet below.

Ghosts have been sighted. One is a man with wire-framed glasses and another is a woman with a long, flowing robe, who can be seen standing on top of the parapets vanishing as she throws herself off.

Natural Bridges, Santa Cruz, California

Natural Bridges State Beach is named for the naturally occurring mudstone bridges that were carved by the Pacific Ocean into cliffs that jutted out into the sea. The arches formed over a million years ago. Of the three original arches only the middle one remains. The outermost arch fell during the early 20th century and the inner arch collapsed during a storm in 1980. The middle arch is in danger of collapsing as well due to erosion by wind and waves.

Farm between san jose and morgan hill, California

San Jose is known for being the heart of the Silicon Valley, where life can’t seem to move fast enough. San Jose is the tech center of the country. Just 30 minutes south, you find yourself rolling into rural California. In Morgan Hill, you are halfway between the tech industry and the garlic capitol of the world, Gilroy. Morgan Hill is a little and quiet farming community with a lot of potential.

Walton Lighthouse (Seabright lighthouse), santa cruz, california Many years ago the beach boasted its own castle and is sometimes referred to by locals as “castle beach.”

Unfortunately, the castle is long gone.

There is a cave at the beach’s northern end that is only accessible during low-tide. When the cave is open, you can go through it and find yourself on the banks of the San Lorenzo River. If you are brave enough to cross the river, you will find yourself at the Boardwalk.

My Quilt

by Liz Cabrera My grandmother was a highly skilled seamstress. When I was a child, I remember she would often make clothes for my siblings and I. When I was about ten years-old, she made this quilt for me, and for the last thirteen years it has been the most important possession of mine. Unfortunately, I can no longer use the quilt as often as I’d like. The fabric is getting old, and it is beginning to rip and fray. In an attempt to preserve all of the intricate, and beautiful designs, I decided to recreate them, using the tri-color gum bichromate process.

My grandmother passed away in 2009, and even though she is no longer here, I will always have the warmth of my quilt to remind me of how nurturing and caring she was.

I dedicate this series to my grandmother, Flora Ophelia Stafford.

The full series can be seen on my website: www.lizthephotographer.com

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

13” x 13” Tri-Color Gum Bichromate Print

Untroubled Amanda Cisneros

To be untroubled is to be unaffected.

Unaffected by anxiety, by unwanted stressors, by the consumption of your own thoughts.

It is to be free of clutter, in your mind, body and soul.

It is turning your phone off, sitting with your toes in the sand, and staring out into blue distance.

It is forgetting about burdening thoughts and for just a moment in time, letting your mind escape from your body, and letting it take you on the most unimaginable, indescribable, blissful journey.

Divinity Bixby Bridge, CA

[simplicity] n. the quality or condition of being easy to understand, being plain or natural.

Simplicity Pfeiffer Beach, CA

[Tranquility] n. the quality or state of being tranquil; free from disturbance.

Tranquility Pfeiffer Beach, CA

[InďŹ nity] n.

1. the state or quality of being inďŹ nite; limitless or endless in space, extent, or size.

2. impossible to measure.

InямБnity Bixby Bridge, CA

[serenity] n. the state of being calm, peaceful and untroubled.

Serenity Pfeiffer Beach, CA

Bodyscap

es

e s a i B i D n a y R By

“Bodyscapes are abstracted views of the human form. I find many aspects of bodies quite mesmerizing and I want to show parts to the viewer that may or may not be identifiable. I tried to incorporate several color schemes to match with mood and crafted many to resemble a distant, fantasy-like landscape.

When I witness the similar sights shown in a more intimate, personal setting, these gems speak to me in a beautifully artistic way.�

Yc Dong

I like things that are controversial, conflict, and have high contrast. Sometime they are colors, and sometimes they are contents or outfits. Inspired by fashion photographer Steven Meisel and Mario Testino, my works tend to show people wild, high contrast, colorful and unique photographs. Since I was little, I have already known how to frame a landscape and still life with my fingers. I enjoy bringing up people’s unique personalities and characteristics through photos. Because I am different, I can see the most beautiful side of the people in front of my camera.

I believe everyone and everything has their most charming and attractive side, which not show to others often.

Jarhod Geronimo We Fell Apart My first experience at the Salton Sea will not be my last. The presence of abandonment gave a strange feeling knowing the Salton Sea used to be the getaway location for many.

We Fell Apart shows only a fraction of the houses and structures that surround the lake. This hidden oasis, just south of Joshua Tree, would be a sight for sore eyes until you see every other building or house abandoned, grimy water and the dried up fish carcass along the shore. The left behind belongings of the previous residents gave a history of the families that lived here. Neighboring the ruins still stand houses with families and kids. The mysterious feeling you get walking around the neighborhoods makes you question about the families that still live in this deserted area. This is still an ongoing project and I expect to go back several times to find more interesting ruins that lie around the massive lake.

All photographs captured using 35mm and medium format film.

Brittany Hover Big Basin

This series is about my final spring break as a college student. I decided to break away from society, social media, telephones, and all contact, except with the individuals I chose to spend my time with. We traveled to Big Basin, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, close enough to the city, but far enough away to feel connected to the environment. Our current generation is addicted to being connected to everyone through the Internet, texting, and the media, and most people do not have the will power to separate themselves for a couple days from the constant contact. I feel the need to separate.

There is a certain purity that happens to the soul when visiting a place where the air is so pure, and sound pollution doesn’t exist. These images are all 35mm color film. I am a film-based photographer and enjoy the aesthetics film, has to offer, in terms of depth, tonal range, and grain, which relates to the grit of the outdoors.

1

Jennifer Marroquin is an American born photographer who is working towards her BFA in Studio Photography at San Jose State University. A portion of her work focuses both on landscape and cityscapes that she encounters on her adventures of new frontiers. Receiving her Associates degree at Cerritos Community College, Jennifer transferred to San Jose State University to expand her creative knowledge. During her college career, Jennifer has participated in four group exhibitions as well as a solo exhibition. graduating Spring of 2015, Jennifer plans to continue her photography Career in the Bay Area; where adventure awaits.

Gaia: Goddess of the Earth Adventure: Never Stop Exploring

JennyMarsPhotography@gmail.com www.JennyMars.com

GAIA Goddess of the Earth

I found nature to be my safe haven in 2014. When I felt trapped and thought that there wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel, I went to the woods or the beaches to get away from the city and from whatever I was facing at that time. Exploring these places made me feel at home, I felt safe. Northern California is a complete new world to me and I am constantly falling in love with it. Beaches have clear blue water; there is sand that isn’t just brown, but white, purple and even black. There are trees that are tall like skyscrapers and include Redwood, Cedar, and Sequoia. The beauty of nature is everywhere, but most notably found in the rural areas of Northern California.

I have collected a piece of the land as a souvenir and place it in a small jar from each new place discovered. This souvenir is treasured as a remembrance of whom I was with and how beautiful the place was. So, when things are getting rough, the jars remind me to never forget that there is light at the end of the tunnel. All you have to do is grab your camera, get in a car, and just pick a place on a map. Breathe in the fresh air and remember how beautiful Mother Nature is. Never stop exploring.

Whitney McCray Little Ones There is a house down the street with shuttered windows and a chimney that never stops smoking. The front porch is sprinkled with dirt and leaves as a broken little rocking chair creaks in the breeze. Ivy and morning glories creep up the off-white walls of the house, snaking in between cracks and crawling through the dusty bricks. The walkway up to the house is riddled with pieces of loose cement eager to come free, and there is a half dead tree in the yard, hollowed and broken, its withered branches bare.

But just behind the house there is a garden, a garden full of fruit trees, flowers, and bushes filled to the brim with berries. And hidden among the flower stamens and behind the leaves is the tinkling of soft laughter and the whisper of contented sighs. When the wind is quiet and the sun is high, footsteps can be heard, rustling through branches and splashing in puddles. Little hands tug at dandelion fluff and push twigs into the rain dampened earth, leaving behind blankets of petals and freshly cut grass.

There is a house down the street, and that’s where the little ones live.

Leo Medrano

It was just a Dream

M

y inspirations visit me at night.They manifest themselves as dreams and visions that I incorporate into my work. The recurring images often feature organic shapes floating in desolated environments, as well as metallic fluid substances. I have tried to recreate these visions through photography by bringing my body into the scene in order to demonstrate a unity between the human form and landscape. Photography is an extension of my interest in exploring the sensation of solitude. In It was just a Dream, I convey this concept of solitude as an element that enhances the tranquility provided by the natural surroundings where my body dwells.

Newsha Naderzad My primary goal as an artist is to show people aspects of the world that they’ve never seen before. I want to expose the true nature of the beauty that is often obscured by our dayto-day lives, whether it is the grooves on the lid of your coffee cup, or the details of the polish your nails that have started to chip off after wear. As an artist, I would say that my work is heavily focused on these little details.

VietNghiem

I want to create work that says what I cannot. I think that in lacking a confident speaking voice I have begun crafting for myself another language – a vernacular that gestures at (and sometimes aggressively points out) ideas and phrases I am nervous about attaching to my physical and spatial being, couched in the imagery of the ordinary and in the patterns of the familiar and comfortable.

My work is, by and large, informed by contemporary explorations of home, family, and nostalgia. In the forlorn, off-frame glances of Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency and in the lonely, nocturnal typology of Todd Hido’s houses I find a sort of comfort – the love a patient documentarian can present to their subject and to the world about their subject. I was raised in a tight-knit extended family, one that never saw a holiday or vacation go by without visits from aunts and uncles and cousins and, of course, the ever-present camera. Never more than a beige or black or grey point-and-shoot, the diligent machine recorded snapshot after snapshot after portrait after group pose. Perhaps it was what endeared me to the act of recording – the crystallizing of a moment with friends and family in homage to a sense of love and to a sense of a place called home.

In a larger sense, I imagine that photography – for me, the act of carrying the camera – is a form of problem solving. Internally or externally, fine art or commercial, personal or public, the resolve a person has in bringing the viewfinder up to their eye is to disentangle ideas; the intent of the photographer is to bring the medium’s strengths – clarity, veracity, immediacy – to the subject at hand. As a photographer, this has manifested in the form of emotional representation – a significant portion of my work has been dedicated to the explanation of my inability to express my needs or wants or thoughts, touching on the voicelessness of depression and the appreciation I feel for the relationships I have despite struggling with depression.

The problem-solving nature of photography has also resulted in the interest I have in the re-creation of scenes of the outside world in the studio.

Represented in sketches and process images, the vignettes of Creation Myth and Fabrication stand in for the physical disentanglement of imagined lives and childhood memories brought to life through props and backgrounds and the simultaneously unwavering and selective eye of the camera.

I want to make a point of creating work that involves my own personal experiences and emotions. It is my belief that allowing our subjective selves to inform our creative output is the key to creating lasting and powerful art.

I want my art to contain who I am without reserve. I want art to take me to pieces.

Cycles from the series Creation Myth 2015

Take Me To The River

There is a memory I cannot place; sometimes it takes me a moment to remember that it is not a memory at all. I am in the forest with my family, barefoot and at a creek. The water is cold and the sun is low, the light not yet warm enough to warm the moss beneath us. My father is sprawled out upon the bank, one arm stretched out towards me. In the distance, I hear my mother call.

The first trips my parents took with me in tow were to the Redwood Forests. We have yet to return, but through the photos on walls and on refridgerator doors and in albums, I have found myself again and again returned to that place, that surrogate time of ours.

from the series Creation Myth 2015

In The Morning, Through The Window Shade

Creation Myth began as a project titled A Life Not Actually Lived. I had resolved to created a series that tricked the viewer: they were to believe, and they were to be shocked. Over time, A Life changed perspective from the viewer to the artist - what did these scenes mean to me? Rather than shock, what serenity could be found? Where were these spaces in relation to me?

from the series Creation Myth 2014

An End To Spring

from the series Creation Myth 2014

Sacramento, 2007

It is the summer before my senior year. I spend my weekdays, nine in the morning to six in the evening, on a hot artificial field. The rumble of cleats and the crashing of pads follows me into my home and into my dreams and make my teeth chatter.

It is the summer my grandfather will die. I spend Saturday and Sunday and Monday morning with my family in Natomas. Again and again, I awake to find myself in the guest room of my grandparent’s house. I hear the mutters: “Each week could be his last” “We’ll be back up again, don’t you worry.”

It is the winter before 2015. I sit on the edge of the bed of the guest room and, inexplicably, nothing has changed. As though he has just returned from a walk around the pond, my grandfather’s coat is still draped across the chair in the corner. My hand lays across the same pillowcase. I marvel, and imagine who it might be that is opening the bedroom door.

from the series Fabrication 2015

Tuan Nguyen

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Motion of Light

C

olor is the element that artists use to create their work on a canvas, and colors can explain a thousand words. For me, colors help us create happiness in our lives. With the digital camera, I create works of art that relate richly to color.

As a portrait photographer, I combine two different ideas in this project. I use models to play tennis with LED lights installed into their rackets. The movements and the expressions of the tennis players create amazing stripes of light. With different colors of light painting patterns in front of the camera, you can see extremely interesting shapes. Combined together, you can see the amazing results.

Caitlyn Rush Timbre

Timbre is my attempt to create a bridge between two art mediums: photography and music. There is signiďŹ cance to the practice, the math, and the discipline that goes into becoming a good musician and the same could be said about a good photographer. Everyone wants to be a rock star, but only a few people are serious enough to take music lessons. Simply owning an instrument will not make a person a great musician and owning a camera does not make someone a good photographer. An artist has to want to be successful, he has to have something personal to say and he has to have an undeniable desire to share that message. He has to practice and do it often. An artist has to understand the basic fundamentals of their medium so well that he doesn’t even think about them. Then, and only then does he get to achieve the success that all musicians and photographers strive for.

Daniel Salcedo Shifting Horizons This body of work is entitled Shifting Horizons, and it is a series of composite images I have thought up and created.

I’ve recently been curious about the decisions photographers and artist’s make when deciding what to and not to include in their final image. Most often, the intent of the artists is to remove his or her own hand from the final product as efficiently as possible. Here I’ve chosen to take a step back and include some of the equipment and processes it takes to create the types of images we see in online and in magazines.

The photographer is always creating a reality for the viewer to step into; I’ve just decided to take that a step further by changing the studio environment to resemble a scene in which you might find the subject. By changing backdrops, I am able to put the subject between realities and create a scene that looks almost like it could exist while maintaining a strong element of surrealism. My hope for the viewer is that they interpret my images as they will, but leave with a more curiosity about the realities they are presented with in the images they see from day to day.

Elizabeth Tae

A.O. (After Obsolescence)

A

n old CRT finds itself discarded, a little beat up but otherwise still functioning. No longer tied to the liv ing room stand, it uses its quite literal newfound mobility to see the world. It ventures out into natural landscapes, seeking to discover what it has never known before. T here is much to learn about the world outside of domestic life, all of it awe-inspiring. It finds that there is a significantly more

gratifying life out there that even a humble piece of tech like itself can enjoy. It’s the TV’s turn to tune into the programming of the world.

The developed world discards technology at a rate which correlates to the rapidly changing, constantly updating products being released to market, never pausing quite long enough for any one innovation to be fully appreciated. With the largest co r p o r a t io n s , f u ele d b y p r o f it ,

rendering perfectly functioning dev ices irrelevant and outdated within a year or two, it’s no wonder that there is a terrifying abundance of electronic waste with nowhere to go. Abandoned, displaced, torn apart, marauded. This is an effort to uphold life after obsolescence.

elizabethtae.com

The World of Lysdexia

By Diana Tippelhofer

When I was a child, I was tested and diagnosed with a learning disability called “Dyslexia”. I was segregated from the other students and I visited with a tutor every week to help catch up to the same level as my other classmates. I struggled but I eventually caught up with the other students. I remember my tutor telling me that I was smart and I shouldn’t let people make me think otherwise. I leaned to hide my learning disability because I was ashamed of it. Most people didn’t even realize I had it.

Later into my school years, I still struggled with school. I had difficulty completing my tests on time and I had to read all instructions very carefully. It seemed to take me much longer to complete my homework assignments. I also struggled with knowing my right from left. Many times I thought about giving up but something kept pushing me forward. I think it was the wise words of my tutor and family telling me that I was smart and I just needed to believe in myself. I had many setbacks and some people didn’t think I could do it but I decided not to give up on myself. I am now into my senior year at San Jose State and I’m glad that I listened to those wise words.

My series is focused on bringing out the changeling aspects of living with Dyslexia. It goes through some of the various things that can be affected in life. My goal is to show the world how these can affect someone living with Dyslexia and also show others that there is hope at the end of the road.

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”

-Albert Einstein

Jean Zhang Different Fashions This project is about different types of fashion. Fashion could divide into many focuses, such as clothing, makeup, gender, product, environment, and etc. I was born in China and moved to the U.S. later on, so I am influenced by both Chinese and American culture. My works will contain some Asian fashion elements. Such as the way models dress up and pose. I feel the most important thing of my works is beauty.

When my client, model, or even friends see my images, I want them to think “this is such a beautiful image. In this series of work, I contained clothing, makeup, male model, environment, and product introducing elements.

Thank You

ISBN 978-1-329-09443-7

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