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My World: Three views - first person viewpoint series

These are wonderful compositions, Michael. I especially like the first one with light reflecting from the diagonal lines at the ceiling and from the running bond pattern on the floor.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Here is a short series taken in a subway (the pedestrian variant) which has apparently art installations from time to time.
Currently there is a video installation.


Best regards,
Michael



The title below means Art?



Michael,

I like adding people to fine architectural scenes, not necessarily in the same image, but at least to show the denizens that might he found in that vicinity. Here, the architecture goes beyond the brilliant but static nature of Munich Underground Metro stations to show immense social thinking in terms of enriching in new ways the experience of folk passing through. It's so valuable that the designers thought of human values in making their plans for the train station and not merely "what's necessary"!.

This one is my favorite, as it's functional, lean and so artistic and pleasant on the eye.

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Tom - Thank you. There is a little more in the second picture as I will explain/describe below.



Asher - Thanks.

Although I announced my holiday from this forum, I wanted to answer here in this thread and in consequence show that your impression of the seen, especially in the second picture is too idyllic when you start noting the details.
After all - Everything in the frame must contribute to the picture.

This was an experiment after all...

To outline the intention:
I entered this place - I haven't been there for ages, so no prior impression played a role here.

The first picture summarizes my first impression - the unusual lamps, the emptiness, the reflections.

The second picture is the complex one. I summarize the seen and add my view of it.
So - what do we see here?
First a large space with a ceiling devoid of the elements responsible for the diagonal pattern as mentioned by Tom. There is only naked concrete plus metallic rails and two lamps.
We see a large glass front.
Behind on the right we see a still image of a video installation.
On the left side of it on the floor we see the second disturbance after the ceiling mentioned above. It looks like a blanket, but when you look closer, there is a person underneath - a homeless person.
In the background on the left you can see that the escalator is not useable as it is obstructed by plants (these are actually in large flower pots). This means that the original destination of this technical building - make it possible that a maximum of people can pass underneath a street with a lot of traffic - is no longer the focus here, a sense of reattribution, but when you look there is also abandonment.

To make it short - There is a pedestrian subway which no longer serves its original purpose though it can be used as such with a video installation (what - art?) that has become home to a homeless person.
This is what I saw and I wanted to express the very moment when I took this picture.

In the center you see the reflection of a couple that enters this place, which brings us to the third picture.

In the third picture you see the silhouette of the couple who chose this place for a moment together - two melting into one.

Many words - I clearly failed my objective in having pictures here that can be read easily, but I hope that these are a little easier to understand now.


Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The title below means Art?



Michael,

I like adding people to fine architectural scenes, not necessarily in the same image, but at least to show the denizens that might he found in that vicinity. Here, the architecture goes beyond the brilliant but static nature of Munich Underground Metro stations to show immense social thinking in terms of enriching in new ways the experience of folk passing through. It's so valuable that the designers thought of human values in making their plans for the train station and not merely "what's necessary"!.

This one is my favorite, as it's functional, lean and so artistic and pleasant on the eye.


Michael,

I have been primed by your extensive work on Metro Stations being pretty direct to interpret. There's overwhelming clarity, unity of design and function. This from your spectacularly lean choices for shooting position and framing to give an immediate experience of each location as a work of art.

Your pictures of graffiti and wall art, however, require thought and insight, as there's immediate and consequential thought to get one to appreciate the full range of meaning of each work.

So yesterday, in a way, you have brought the need for our more total responsibility to examine the entire picture, as "art" AND "social landscape", brought together in a striking, but entirely surprising way, for anyone who might have assumed, by past experience, your artistic intent in this new revealing work.

So having seen dominant motifs of architecture and public service for a functioning transport system serving people every day, I brushed off "the green on the stairs" as people going up a moving escalator! The material laid out on the outer side of the glass, was then the backpacks of the two people inside, (who, of course, were not allowed to bring them into the exhibit. Everything to me seemed consistent.

I've seen ignoring folk sleeping in the doors with a group of scientists on our way to supper. None of about 5 trained observers, besides myself, noticed the folk in the doorways.

I am happy to be exposed as not fully using my own senses in looking at your art. It's a gift for you to show us up and get us to take in more of what's around us and fight the brains built-in facility for marking so much as "non-relevent". Still, I am also grateful when we're introduced to works that have deeper meaning so we can harvest better the richer meanings and fully engage, especially in this case where there's social consequence to understanding or not.

However, the order of letting us know about reality, before or after the fact, as here, is not as important as, one way or another we're lead to the heart of the matters presented. Except for simple beauty, (roses, a mother nursing her child, sunsets, children playing, intriguing form and the like), art does not speak for itself. It requires some curator or else we tend to consume it for immediate enjoyment or long term decoration. Art however not only reflects the thoughts and needs of the viewer according to what they bring to the work, but also can have such a rich a layered form that a guide and education can allow one to actually appreciate some of the emotions and intellectual energy that forced the work into existence in the first place.

At least, for myself, I have been brought down a peg or two and have benefited. I hope it will last and leave me a tad more humble in my certainty of folk's intents.

Thanks for sharing,

Asher
 
Good work Michael... if I have one objection is with the second (which I like most of all)... shouldn't it be colourless? ...don't you find colour presence in it as distractive/useless information?
 
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