AD BUSTER

For this assignment I bought the October issue of Vogue and looked at the advertisements. I had originally saw the left page of this full spread Louis Vuitton ad on the back of a page I torn out and realized the ad was all about material. Leather car seats, leather hand bag, matching leather gloves and boot, and animal fur (the dog). The right page contributed as the model is wearing fake(?) snake or alligator skin and his holding another dog.  Small dogs have become an accessory for women to carry around in their large handbags, dressing it with designer clothes and jewel collars. This seems silly to me as I believe dogs should be able to play and run around free of extra baggage. This ad doesn’t address dogs as accessories to adorn with material things because they aren’t even wearing a collar. They aren’t in a carrier, they aren’t seat belted in. The woman’s boot on the left page is at the same level of the dog, the handbag is shown above the dog, suggestive that dogs are lower, not really expressing that dogs are a joy. Therefore I see this ad using dogs as material(fur) to represent the high quality materials that Louis Vuitton offers.  I included PETA in the ad buster slogan because this ad doesn’t exactly comply with their motto of, Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, and abuse in anyway.  Their motto is subjective, however this Louis Vuitton ad is using dogs for entertainment at the dogs expense because the dogs are in a car with no protection of a carrier or a seat belt, not wearing a collar in case they get lost, and the hidden message that Louis Vuitton provides high quality goods to wear.

Body Project



For the body project I wanted to address profiling and stereotyping. When we are submerged in the public sphere we naturally look, compare or profile the people who surround us. Cultural cues from television, movies, family values, or peers gives us the ‘labels’ we use to profile these people when you never know for sure the story of the person being stereotyped. To represent this idea I used found images from google images or flickr of people who I know nothing about and labeled them. I constructed these images as a Polaroid because polariods were instant photos that came out of the camera. Parallel, we instantly profile people and often disregard them and continue on with our day. The way I have labeled them is suppose to make the viewer think about the stereotype and the viewer’s reaction may be to disagree with some of the labels, but the point is that we don’t know for sure as they are found images.
            Using found images of people made me feel really uncomfortable because of the fact that I was giving them labels, labels may have not been true, and not crediting the photographer who shot the image. I feel that there needs to be media persuading the mass that profiling is suppose to feel uncomfortable as everyone is a person regardless of their lifestyle choices or nationality and heritage instead of comedy shows for example, laughing at ‘stereotypes.’

Documentary Project

For this project I decided to document the social investigation of the natural resources the Tohono O’odham people make use of.  The Hohokam Indians are said to be the Tohono O’odham’s ancestors and as a result, many of their traditions are similar. For basket weaving, the Tohono O’odham use all of the yucca plant(Image 2) including the green sprouts, the white sprouts, and the root and they use the Beargrass plant(Image 3) for the bottom of the baskets.  One of the uses of the Saguaro plant(Image 4) is to harvest its fruit to make wine for their rain dance ceremony. The mesquite tree(Image 5) is used for a number of things including houses, ceremonial buildings, as fire wood, eating the bean pods, and eating the sap from the tree as a sweet treat.  The round house(Image 6), made from mesquite and saguaro ribs is the center ceremonial building for the Tohono O’odham where they also gather for meetings. The Hohokam lived on lands where there was not year round access to water,  so they made canals that led into their gardens of beans, squash and corn. They practiced flood water farming as can be seen in Image 7.  To cook their food, the Tohono O’odham use a horno or an earthen pit with rocks along the inside(Image 9). Hornos minimized wood consumption by the rocks retaining the heat and slow cooking the food.



Image 1



Image 2 Yucca Plant

Image 3 Bear Grass

Image 4 Saghuaro harvester tool

Image 5 Mesquite Tree

Image 6 Round House

Image 7 Crop Planting

Image 8

Image 9 Horno

Project One

Perspective



Illusion of Space/Balance

Image A gives the illusion that the statue on the left is fairly close to the statues on the right. But if we look at image B, we see that the statues are farther spread apart. Choosing a perspective that lines the objects up gives the illusion of foreshortened space in the image. Image A’s subjects, the statues, are placed on the left and middle third of image leaving little elements to lead the viewers eye completely around the image, therefore it is not a strongly balanced composition. It is weighted more heavily towards one side. Image B however is balanced because there is a subject in the left and right third, noting that neither statue is directly in the middle.



A







B



C.1



Texture

Image C shows texture because the focus of the image is on the hands of the statue which have a grain texture to them. Image D shows the vertical rock grains and we also see marks by the sculptor which is texture. We also see the contrast between smooth dark shadow and the texture of the statue. Image E shows texture by portraying a close up detail image of the color lines of the stone and the texture left behind by carving the statue.

C

D

 

E