Joey Gidseg is an Austin, Tx based photographer. Although a lot of her photographs are of the local flavor of Austin, in her series, Hymie and Louise, she shows an intense reality most people are scared to approach. She portrays an older couple and how they deal with the day to day of growing older and sickly. These are not only beautiful photographs, they say something about a fear we all have : Are we going to be alone when we can no longer able to fend for ourselves? Or will Hymie be there to take care of us?
Lee Friedlander is an american artist, creating somewhat simple compositions while attempting to play on the obvious, he shoots an ordinary traffic scene but cuts the dog in half. Or he takes pictures of an event but instead of the actual event he shows people taking pictures of said event. He likes to play around with what a traditional photograph can show in a humorous way, well at least humorous to me.
Susan Kae Grant is a photographer who explores dreams, memories, the unconscious, and unexplainable experiences to create her body of work Night Journey. In researching Grant, I found that she herself did scientific research when creating this work. In her artist statement, she states, “This project is the culmination of research conducted at the Southwestern Medical Center Sleep Laboratory in collaboration with sleep scientist, Dr. John Herman. Using myself as subject, I was tape recorded in the laboratory on many occasions while awakened from REM sleep. These awakenings provided vivid access to the dream-state. Audio recordings captured in the sleep laboratory served as inspiration to create the photographs for this series.” As an undergrad, I am always looking for inspiration and knowledge, which I found when researching Grant. I have always been intrigued with creating my own worlds and stories. Grant has accomplished this with scientific driven research and using her own experiences to convey her concept.
Currently, as an undergraduate student I am working with the notion of storytelling, narratives, folklore, and fairytales. For my current work I am using and working with miniatures to covey my concepts. In doing research for my work I came across the photographer Corinne May Botz. Botz has several different bodies of work but the one that grab my attention the most was The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
The artist documented miniatures of crime scenes that were created in the 1940s and 1950s by a criminologist Frances Glessner Lee. In Botz’s artist statement she states, “the models, which were based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence.” This work actually with out me realizing has inspired my current work as an undergrad. Even though Francis Glessner Lee created these miniatures for a specific reason, Botz has brought a life to the miniatures that create a setting for a story gone wrong. This is what intrigued about the work that when looking at it you start creating a story in your head to companion the photograph. This is the goal that I am searching for with my own work and hopefully I will accomplish as well as Botz has.
Laura McPhee was a guest speaker and distinguished artist at the SPE South Central Conference held at UTSA in San Antonio. McPhee spoke on Saturday October 1st at the San Antonio Central Public Library. McPhee spoke about her work River of No Return. This work depicts life and nature in the Sawtooth Valley in Idaho. She explores the region with her large format camera to capture landscapes, lives of the rural people, and the effects of wildfires. During her talk in San Antonio, McPhee started with describing her life as a child and the stories she would hear of family members. McPhee related these stories to her work and the investigation of living in a rural community by documenting a family living in this particular part of Idaho. McPhee takes a traditional art form of landscapes and turns them into so much more. This comes from the content of the imagery but also when standing in front of these large scale prints they seem to ingulf the viewer. 
Jason Engelund creates compositions that investigate light's ability to evoke sublime and contemplative experiences. Approaching photography as a method of capturing light, Engelund starts from the Greek translation of photography: phos "light" and graphé "drawing". From there he has created a style that is interdisciplinary, combining the aesthetics of painting and mechanics of photography. Juxtaposing the subjective nature of perception and the "truth" of photography, Engelund's work raises questions regarding our experience of light, while exploring photography as a contemporary art form.
While the images in the main gallery of this website may lead the viewer to think the images have effects applied or were painted, all images were made in camera using long exposures and extreme out of focus. Shots include subjects such as colored lights of airport runways at night and printed as a negative, naturally occurring reflections of light, and in camera light leaks across frames and rolls of film. ( from website)
Gianni Berengo Gardin is an Italian photographer. I love his work because of the attention to detail, and composition. I believe I am completely in love with this images because when I look at a work by Gardin, I feel like I am experiencing that landscape, or scene for the first time. While these images are simple, and not the most conceptual, I appreciate the technical quality of the work. Gardin's prints introduces me to a new aspect of an everyday situation I myself might not have seen without looking through the lens of his work. They are beautiful.
Galina Manikova was a woman I discovered in the Alternative Process textbook in the school library. I really admire her work to due the attention to the medium that she presents her work on, and how it effects the message she displays to her audience. 
