Short Photography Stories |
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Author:
| Flicek, Michael |
ISBN: | 978-1-4909-9710-0 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2013 |
Publisher: | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $19.00 |
Book Description:
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Michael Flicek is an award winning fine art photographer whose work has been selected for publication and exhibition by leaders in the field of photography from around the world including curators of photography from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the New Mexico Art Museum.In the foreword of "Short Photography Stories" award winning photographer Chuck Kimmerle concluded:"The photo essays Michael has included in the book are wonderful examples of...
More DescriptionMichael Flicek is an award winning fine art photographer whose work has been selected for publication and exhibition by leaders in the field of photography from around the world including curators of photography from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the New Mexico Art Museum.In the foreword of "Short Photography Stories" award winning photographer Chuck Kimmerle concluded:"The photo essays Michael has included in the book are wonderful examples of documenting not only the places he has visited, but also his experiences and his emotional connections with these places. The resulting images transcend the level of mere "pretty", although they are that, and rise to provide us with the basics of a narrative which, when considered, tells us a story. The exact wording of these stories is different for each of us, and tells us something not only about Michael, or about his subjects, but about ourselves. That is fine-art."His introduction to Short Photography Stories describes a project thinking approach to thematic photography. His introduction follows:Long ago something I refer to as project thinking led to a deeper and more satisfying pursuit of photography. Project thinking involves the linking of photographs through thematic connections in subjects and/or methods versus simply photographing anything and everything that is interesting. The latter approach leads to some compelling but unconnected or unrelated individual photographs. These individual photographs may or may not eventually become a part of a thematically connected project. What I refer to as project thinking is a conscious awareness or search for thematic connections while making photographs. The thematic connections increasingly occur on multiple levels. At a high level much of my photography to this point has been linked predominantly by one of three large themes of nature studies, architecture speaks and with people. A fourth larger theme, transportation, has been emergent for several years and is introduced in this book. These large themes are not bound by a particular place or time. Photographs that fit these large themes may be set in locations across the country or around the world. Within these larger themes I've increasingly searched for smaller projects that are more cohesive and linked by themes associated with the emotions or an aura of mood and tone associated with a particular time and place. This was a natural development associated with photography becoming a major purpose for travel. On my first international travel experience that involved the crossing of an ocean I found myself in the midst of a city where I was a minority and did not speak the language. The city was surrounded by and in the middle of natural wonders. The culture and standard of living were unlike anything in my previous experience. I'm challenged to imagine a more fertile creative influence for photography than the emotions associated with such an experience of place and time. I continue to seek out travel experiences on a regular basis and it is while traveling that I search for smaller photographic projects that capture the emotions and an essence of the times and places. These smaller, more cohesive photography projects are bound together by more concise themes related to the time and place. While there are no rules, these projects tend to consist of something like eight to twenty or so photographs. I see these projects as short photography stories. To stretch the analogy with literature a bit further, these short photography stories tend to fall along a continuum from poetic to narrative ... from primarily evoking contemplation or emotion to the telling of a story. The four larger themes sometimes intermingle within a particular short photography story."