discourse • the photographic universe

from 'the photographic universe' conference at parsons the new school for design march 2-3, 2011. "it is impor­tant to reflect on this current moment–with the rapidly increasing permeation of photography throughout contemporary life–on what is the importance of photography as a specific medium or discipline from the perspective of a practitioner, user, pedagogue, technologist, historian, among others. furthermore, how can we evaluate contemporary culture within the expanding photographic field while speculating the future of images?" more here.

penelope umbrico

penelope umbrico's image collection of universal remotes. see more here.

[all penelope umbrico. from the series img collection #6: universal remotes (for sale on the internet).]

penelope umbrico

penelope umbrico's 'office / still lives (as photocopies)' project. as she explains: "images taken from an office supply catalog advertising office cubicles. i scanned the catalog images with special attention to the arrangement of objects and photographs on the desks in the cubicles. i then applied the 'photocopy' filter in photoshop to create a fake photocopy document of the fake office environment. the effort to humanize the otherwise dry, cold, emptiness of the represented workspace is played out in the fictional family photographs and plastic plants. the mute computer props punctuate my gridded arrangement, ominously refusing to communicate anything." see more here.

[all penelope umbrico. office / still lives (as photocopies). 2007.]

penelope umbrico

penelope umbrico's found images of broken LCD tvs for sale on ebay. see more here.

[all penelope umbrico. from the series broken sets (ebay).]

penelope umbrico

some interesting projects made from found photos by penelope umbrico. the top is a detail from suns from the internet where penelope unearthed 541,795 pictures searching for the word 'sunset' on flickr, exploring the ubiquitous portrayal of this natural form in digital space. the bottom is from her project honeymoon suites which playfully deconstructs the notion of romance in marketing materials. here she takes very small fragments from horizons depicted on various honeymoon resort brochures collected at a wedding convention. see more of penelope's work here. and a big thanks to asha for passing along this link.

[all penelope umbrico. top to bottom: detail from the project suns from the internet. 2006-7. from the project honeymoon suites 2002-5.]