Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)
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Marcel Duchamp’s iconic masterpiece Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) played a crucial role in modernism. People could not get enough of this "abstraction”. This painting is More than a study of the body's movement through space, the work is an early figurative exercise in painting motion akin to Eadweard Muybridge's sequences of photographs. Duchamp archives this by painting a lot of repetitive shapes and overlapping. All placed in a specificity direction to give the appearance of a motion walking downstairs. This had not been attempted before. Artists did not paint motion but rather static moments. Duchamp Boldly broke tradition not only in style (the repetitive and overlapping abstraction) but also with his subject matter. His subject was a nude, ( rather mechanical-looking) descending the stairs rather than the common elegant reclining or lying down pose. as convention dictated.
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Examples of Harold "Doc" Edgerton's Stroboscopic photography |
Duchamp depicts motion by successive superimposed images, similar to stroboscopic motion photography. Duchamp recognized this influence
Stroboscopic photography is a type of photography that depicts the changing features of subjects in motion This technique was enabled and popularized by one of the "fathers" of high-speed photography, Harold "Doc" Edgerton. What happened was a series of strobe flashed while a subject in motion was recorded by a camera set on a slow shutter speed enabling all the motion increments to be recorded. The motions look similar to a series of repetitive figures and overlapping. 
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a new MODERN take on multi imagery
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Flora Borsi is an award winning, fine art photographer from Budapest, Hungary. Having taught herself photo-editing at the age of 11, Borsi uses masterful photo manipulation to create surreal images that are thematically focused on identity, relationships, emotions and dreams. Her immaculate technique and subtle conceptual ideas create beautiful evocations of universal emotions, from lust and desire to despair and loss.
Borsi at once captures the complex strength and fragility of the human psyche. She expertly visualizes dark fantasies and atmospheric dreams, utilizing the uncanny and clever metaphor, while unlocking what it means to think, feel, dream and express in the urban world. Her work often features the female body and she plays with hiding and revealing the eyes or face to leave only the feminine form, exploring questions of female representation and the relationship between body and self. Siamese series borsi has just released images of her latest body of work, ‘siamese’. These self-portraits imagine busy as an anatomically askew twin, cloned and connected to her other half in strange and mysterious ways. the two figures intersect at various meeting points — the face, neck, shoulder, and chest — to form bizarre and brain-bending configurations. ‘siamese’ continues the artist’s experimentation and photographic manipulation of the human form, specifically in exploring the notion of female representation, and the relationship between body and self. - www.designboom.com There isn’t a single person reading this that has ever felt like they’re in some way or another in conflict with themselves; but photographer Flora Borsi has tried to capture that feeling in photos. “In this series, I’m trying to show my fight with myself, the other part of me. The one who is always remain silent, wants to escape, and everyone has this part in themselves.” says Flora in an email exchange with the Phoblographer. “It’s a struggle between the ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ part in me.” Indeed, the struggle surely does come through. |
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How is Flora's work the same and different from the strobe effect photography?
Assignment: create your own MULTIPLICITY design either in a STROBOSCOPIC style or like flora's siamese series.
step one: Choose at least three images that look SIMILAR to one another : hint try TRIPTYCHS
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Step two: Similar to the skull project use your TRANSPARENCIES, eraser, and BAND AID tool to OVERLAP and arrange these pictures in an appeals and telling way. : focus on a feature, maybe the eyes.
Step three: Recolor and render it! Compose the whole image! whats in the background? is there a story?
assignmentstudents are to create an image using three or more stagnic images to create either a motion or a morphing. Take three things to create some new and different. students can overlap and play with oppacities to have a see through effect like the early static photography or can "connect" the images to create a Siamese" effect.
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Tutorial |
Rubric |
