goings on

Lately, I've been really attracted to Katy Grannan's older body of work, where she placed adds in newspapers in hopes of photographing strangers in desolate places.
Photographing her "characters" in these desolate places really allowed them to really show off- without concern of a peeping public. I really took that aspect to heart with what I am working on. Right now, the work I've been producing is very similar to that of Katy's, which I'm not so happy about but I know it will grow.
I've been photographing transvestites in deserted environments such as inside run down buildings, in open fields and in the forest. So far these transvestites of been mock ups. I put up an ad on Craigs List & a few other places asking for people interested in portraying the opposite sex. I only got five replies and three of them are inconclusive. One of the replies I received was from a presumed Realtor, when I asked her why she was interested in this project she only replied with "I want to see if I look real." Honestly, I was very disappointed with that answer.. so I began calling up friends & asking them to portray the opposite sex & that is what I have been doing... but it's still not working- it just doesn't feel important to me.
So I thought more & more.. and I want to move more & more into the direction of Katy Grannan. I just want to photograph real people, real transvestites.. ones who perform & ones who dress in secret.. my real question now is how- How can I do this in a way that fits my style, in a way that will really glorify these people. This is the direction I am going in now- more research is underway.

Kate Gilmore

I was presently surprised by this lecture! Looking into her work prior to her lecture there was nothing that really sparked my interest. However, my opinion quickly changed after getting the opportunity to see her talk individually about each peice. Gilmore's work has a great appeal just by her careful choice of colors and arrangement. During her lecture she made it very clear that she was perhaps overly aware of her want to have colors that represent a sense of time, place and emotion- her awareness of this really separates her overall style from other video artists that I've seen. Not only is she documenting her ideas but she is doing so in a clever/aesthetically pleasing way.
I could also really appreciate the way Gilmore incorperated shape into her concepts. The repetition of hearts and stars in most of her videos really drew a lot of her work together and also made a very recognizable signature for her work. I think overall repetition is working in Kate's favor. Her videos aren't extremely long but they are long enough as to where they start becoming repetitious- but they grow at the same time. At the lecture it was mentioned by one in the audience that they began to feel for her character in each video- I felt the same way. I think because of the growth (maybe even climaxes?) the audience really begins to feel sympathetic towards the characters. Particularly in "With Open Arms" where Kate portrayed a girl looking for stardom but was being pelted with tomatos. At first, it was just a girl being pelted by tomatos but toward the end she was completely covered with tomato goo & seed but she still persisted in her goal of stardom.
However, I have to say personally the videos I was most attracted to were "cakewalk" & "wallflower." After making that decision, I kind of realize I might like them mostly because they were the peices that were the easiest to figure out, or understand. Most of her videos are straight forward, but with these two and the added pain/work/concept/aesthetic put into them, they really stood out. Overall, I think Kate's work is pretty amazing- & I'm very interested to see how her Texas show will turn out.