Jan Groover (April,24,1943-Jan,1,2012) Born in plainsfield Nj
Style
Jan tends to have a style which I absolutely love: beauty in the mundane. And what I mean by this is she can take beautifulpictures in the places that people pass everyday and nobody thinks about really bringing a new angle to the world around her. Also I don't know how to explain it but it seems as though she put a filter from the 1970’s on it because it looks a little yellowed out and not much contrast. I've also noticed that she tends to put a plan in the corners or edges of her photos to give a little differentiation in her photos. This gives it a little refresher because the target is something man made while it's kinda surrounded by nature giving a feeling of peace.
Philosophy
She has some super cool ideas like when she says everything is already there instead of like paintings where you have to make the medium. And so I think this is where she gets the beauty from the mundane because if the medium is already there all you have to do is take a photo of it. She also was one of the first people to use color in their photos after the common thinking around it is that it's only used by commercial photographers or beginners. And one of her most important things about her photography is why she started taking her photos, because she didn't want to paint. I find this hilarious but also super relatable because if I could just take a photo instead of doing a painting which takes a ton of hours I'd do the photo too.
Influences
Jan Groover has been heavily influenced in her roots by minimalism for normal photos. But also she was inspired by Paul Cézanne and Giorgio Morandi for her work in still lifes. I like to embody her work in most of my photos but trying to calm down the photo and have clear lines as well as not too many things. As well as by trying to take photos of commonplace objects and landscapes such as a tree or an arch. Also what I like about her most is her ability to not travel to some super crazy place in the philippines just to get a good she can get a really good one in her own backyard.
This photo I had a pretty hard time taking because I don't naturally have those types of bushes so I thought to replace it with a birch tree to get some other greenery. But what I enjoyed about this photo is how simple the whole layer and how calm the entire image feels to the viewer. To make it look a little more similar I had to tone the contrast way down and make the image all less vibrant. Another reason that I thought was pretty neat was because it focuses on the chimney and the birch branch makes a frame around the chimney. I feel like this photo came out quite nicely being that there was some pretty big obstacles.
This photo was notoriously difficult to take because I didn't have a blue table cloth and my flower that was white would not go down enough without breaking the stem. Other then that this was a pretty chill photo to take al I had to do was put on the sidestroke filter, but the brightness down and the contrast up then try and remove details. One thing that I would change if I was able to would being able to remove the wood grain on the table but that's the only table that matches the color. But I liked how it came out with the flowers in the right place and able background. Lastly if I were to do this again I might borrow a dslr to get a better focused photo.
I thought that this was the best one that came out of all of them. And the editing process wasn't too bad either because I just had to go through the regular curves, brightness, and contrast to get the desired effect. A difficulty I had with taking this was finding the right way to dump everything to make it random but also organized. Im very happy that I managed to get the fork in the right spot and add a little of my own flavor to the photography. And one thin I think I could improve on would be adding some random jumble of stuff in the background.
Sources:
1. https://www.moma.org/artists/2358#works
2.http://www.artnet.com/artists/jan-groover/
3.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Groover
1. https://www.moma.org/artists/2358#works
2.http://www.artnet.com/artists/jan-groover/
3.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Groover