Subodh Gupta Images

'Line of Control' (1964)


'Spill' (2007) Made with stainless steel utensils

Minam Apang

Works by Minam Apang:

(click to enlarge)

Botanical Illustration

Botanical illustration is more scientific than artistic. It must illustrate a plant in great detail and precision. Accuracy is an important theme when it comes to botanical illustration rather than aesthetics. However, the result is visually pleasing at the same time as being scientifically valuable and precise. The history of this art is a development of a relationship between art and science.

Irving Penn

>American portrait and fashion photographer.
>'Signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism' (Grundberg. A.)
> Merry A. Foresta, co-organiser of a 1990 retrospective of his work at the National Portrait Gallery and what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum, wrote that his pictures exhibited "the control of an art director fused with the process of an artist."

> Penn printed his own pictures using Platinum rather than Silver. This produced 'velvety tones' and is very permanent. However, it is very time consumuing, requiring precise control and impecable preparation.

>Penn acknowledged decay by photographing street debris such as chewing gum, cigarette butts, and later, animal skulls.

> John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art's director of photography wrote, "The grace, wit, and inventiveness of his pattern making, the lively and surprising elegance of his line, and his sensitivity to the character, the idiosyncratic humours, of light make Penn's pictures, even the slighter ones, a pleasure for our eyes."

In this quote I feel that when Szarkowski states that 'even the slighter ones, [are] a pleasure for our eyes' I think that this relates to my perception of Alchemy (the transformation of ugliness to beauty or ordinary to extraordinary) as Penn manages to turn simple images, and sometimes ugly item such as the cigarette butts, into wonderful, meaningful photographs.

Alchemy

> A form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practised in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold and with finding a universal solvent and an elixir of life.

> Any magical power of process of transmuting a common substance, usually of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value.