Balboa Park

Expedition 1 of 2
Where: Balboa Park
Context: Museum of Photographic Art (MOPA)
3 Concurent exhibitions - Photograph As A Whitness, Ansel Adams, Jo Whale
                                                     Photograph As A Whitness -

This part of the exhibition displayed documentary style photos by different photographers. Highway Camp Encinitas, California by Don Bartletti left me walking away with the greatest impression. Knowing Encinitas as a picture perfect place gave contrast to a less than perfect situation. This added context to the photo, shedding light that horrible things happen everywhere.

 Ansel Adams -
 "A Life's Work" by Ansel Adams displayed photo works ranging from the Yosemite valley to the Japanese internment camps as well as other well known photos. I like the deep contrast created in the photographs, making the blacks seem like they void more light than they should. To achieve these deep blacks a type of process using silver, common to black and white photography is used. His photographs seem to enlighten the viewer to the beauty of nature from an outsiders perspective, almost in a documentary fashion.

Jo Whale -
"Theatre Of Insects" Whale takes insects out of nature and puts them up against a themed, man made background. This process makes your mind wander because the two do not go together. Through this process the viewers thoughts are changed of how things are viewed in the world. This can be associated to how Richard Avedon took the beekeeper photo.

Overall, the three concurrent exhibitions provided great differences between different styles of photography.