Tricia VanGessel - Week 9

This image is by Alec Soth and is from his project Dog Days, Bagota. I seem to be hearing more and more about him these days, but only about the Sleeping By the Mississippi project. Dog Days was the most appealing to me because of the subject matter and the way it was expressed. It's not very different from Sleeping By the Mississippi color-wise which I found very interesting because they are two very different environments. It's a very muted, low contrast color scheme. He photographed his subjects in a very distant, voyeuristic type way; his lens seems like it may have been more of a boundary than opening up that world. I was drawn to this particular image because it is still expressive while being so muted. The only eye catching color is in the teal colored lightbulb which is directly above the only other eye catching color, the red and yellow cartoon mouse on the wall. Our eye can travel from the major highlight that is the window to the mouse to the bulb. Between the window and the mouse is this huge smudge above the bed. After I noticed that, I noticed how dirty and sad the rest of the room is. The bed is unkempt and very bland, and there are markings all over the walls; the randomly placed mouse doesn't do much for perking up the room either. Compositionally, all of the photos in this series follow a trend. His photos seem very meticulous, and there is nothing too overpowering. Overall, they are very pleasing images to look at. We can look layer by layer at each image without too much distraction.

While I was looking through this series, I read a review about the work and found out that he did this series while waiting to adopt his daughter from the Columbian city in 2002. He wanted to compile images together to show her where she came from. After reading that, the images felt more personal, like these photos were the way he felt about the city printed out. Here's the link to his site - http://alecsoth.com/photography/projects/dog-days-bogota/