My photography knowledge is pretty much limited to the pictures I have of my friends and family where I think I look good. Limited though MY experience is, I love looking at other people’s photography – people who really know what they’re doing! – and sometimes I feel like pictures (even abstract ones) can speak to me more than paintings or sculptures done by the masters. There’s something so real, so “capturable” in a picture taken by a good photographer.
San Francisco photographer Allison Tungseth has this “real” aspect of picture-taking down. She draws off a close inspection of other people’s possessions, and documents every-day objects, turning them into art.
So what does that mean? Since Allison is a friend, I let her come to my apartment a couple months back to take pictures of my possessions. She goes around a room, snapping dozens of pictures, in a disjointed kind of panorama. Snapping everything from my high heels standing by themselves in the bottom of a book case, to my cell phone charger and cord plugged in by my kitchen counter.
She takes many photographs in each space – from 50 to 200 single frames - to create
a 360-degree panoramic view. She then combines the images to create a larger
work.
And she’s all about getting her work into shows, where she’s trying to build up the base of people who have seen (and even purchased!) her work. Through connections made with other artists in her studio and professors and students in her graduate program, she showcases her art all around town.
Visit Allison’s EkaPage at: http://www.ekaweeka.com/415/
or her website:http://tungseth.com/allison/