13.11.15

Pit Stop in Southern Gothic LA 2015

When I think of "southern" I think of black and white. 
Antique. Old. Broken. Not to mention blacks and whites, referring to people- which is what southern literature seems to be allllll about. Wooh-hoo. But to be very honest, I don't like black and white so much... it doesn't hold my attention... it doesn't catch my spirit like vivid, bright colors do. Color me a child, but when I see something that shocks me from the inside out, it's usually bright and colorful. Which is ironic- maybe that's my way of compensating for my lack of vivid color and excitement that I've got going on. Anyway, don't get me wrong, I can be captured by black and white photography, but it's always in a different way. It's more of a touching, more significant experience than maybe a colored photograph. Which is maybe the point? I know that color photography is kind of new to the game, but black and white photography is definitely still used regularly and I think it's used to capture something big, like a message, or a meaning. So what I'm saying is that color photography is more fun for the eye, more light and exciting, while black and white photography serves a very important purpose, to teach, maybe. I'd like to reference this to my Paw-Paw's photography. He was briiillliant, I swear. He was an American Air Force photographer who shot in all black and white (duh. it was a long time ago), but his pictures served meaning and told a story, and showed insight of what it meant to be in the Air Force. My pictures are crumby compared to that, they're more selfish-only taken for me, not intended to explain much.Back to tying this to southern literature - I think it's funny that black and white was the main topic of southern literature, and that there was so much hatred toward black people, yet in order to take a picture you needed that contrast- both black and white. In fact, typing this sentence right now my colors are black and white. The ying-yang sign is black and white. It's the ultimate contrast, yet without black or white we wouldn't be able to see anything. It's repetitive and annoying for me to hear about the fight against blacks and white. Down to the core we. need. both. Editing the following pictures, I was biased with the colored pictures, which could be in part due to the fact that I saw it in color-

WHAT UP SONG REFERENCE: Jamey Johnson - In Color

So you choose! What is more appealing to you, color or black and white?





This is where I imagined all of Byrd's
slaves being cooped up in..
how gothic is that for me to say







I  really like where I live. It's incredible- one minute you're in the middle of a city surrounded by 20+ stores and congested streets, and the next you're on a little paved over road accompanied by stretched out fields and cows.










In the colored photos you can see more detail-
like the dots of color in the blue sky, whereas they aren't
visible in the other



I think this is a clue that black and white things can
hide something. Kind of like when people say topics, situations,
or answers are "not black and white."







                       

FUN FACT: I FOUND THE DIVIDING LINE THAT WILLIAM BYRD DREW!
*jokes* :D








 

THIS, this is the souther-esque picture. You've got the old-time-y looking fence that is rusting in the corners, a trailer in the background under a mossy tree in a Louisiana sunset, hello.


 

I didn't set this up, this is a stranger's yard, so 

my question is, has LA/Southern people really moved on from the 

typically southern stereotype? Answer is no. 

In many aspects we're all the same. Some of us even have cows in our back yard...








 

OH LOOKIE HERE, a cow in someone's backyard! Haha!


He/She was very interested in what I was doing. She was a great model.








This picture is overwhelming, but if you'd notice the single flower/weed that's pink and tall.



You don't notice it as well here. Like I said earlier, I think southern gothic is more
black and white worthy because it looks at the bigger picture- it's trees and weeds, whereas
the colored photo is so somewhat throwing out every little detail. So, southern gothic and modernism
is to black and white as colored is to post-modernism 







 

To take this picture I had to search for a minute for a good, living flower. Among this one living flower there are several dead ones.  

This may be a stretch, but it reminds me of Flannery O'Connor and how she's a current writer, writing southern gothic pieces, and so it's kind of like her resurrecting the writing style







The black and white one is more southern gothic because
it's showing you a bigger picture- "go this way."








My classmate Jon wrote about him thinking that southern gothic images
are more like sunsets more than anything, and I can definitely see that.
Lighting is everything, it sets the tone. So here, I've edited it into a silhouette
and it mostly reminds me of an inkblot test  , which makes me think of Poe.
The inkblot test was created in 1920, so it came about
longggg after Poe, but both men really put an emphasis on the psyche.