Week 4: Angela Strassheim

Sadly, I was not able to go to the Angela Strassheim lecture. After looking at her photographs I really wish I had the chance to see her talk.

After looking at her website, her series Left Behind is definitely my favorite. What caught my eyes first were the colors. All of the photographs look like middle America or a small place. I am originally from West Virginia and small towns always have this way of being a time suck. The way people dress and act is not up to date with how people live in the city. Sometimes everyone seems a bit off too and I can see a similar vibe/theme in this work.

There is something so attractive about this photograph even though it is one of a dead one. I am also drawn to the color of pale pink, I find it so aesthetically pleasing and it is used a lot in design work. I like how Strassheim is able to depict death in such a beautiful way. It does not even look like one is looking at a photograph of a dead woman. 

This is another favorite from the same series. The colors in this photo are slightly muted and the facial expression on the girls face is odd. I think the facial feature of the girl completes the photograph because I do not think anyone would be able to pin-point what she is thinking. Additionally, I love the touch of the fake flowers and old lamp with beads. Like I said before about West Virginia, this is a great example of decor that does not necessarily come from a specific time-period but because of that the photo is slightly off. 

After looking at Angela Strassheim's series Hearts I noticed the bio part of her website that she went back to school to learn how to take forensic photographs. I thought that was really interesting and I would like to know why she did that because afterwards she went back to grad school. These heart photos look like they do have a lot more artistic direction than a regular forensic photograph. Although they are gross to look at the dark background and lack of blood make them look more like muscles from other parts of the body. 

While downloading the photos above from the website I noticed that the first one is titled "shotintheheart.jpg" and the following is called "Teenage Drug Overdose". This changes the whole series for me because the photos now seem much more intimate. Hopefully Strassheim went over this in her talk because I think this seems like such an interesting and sad project. If there is a story behind each photograph I would love to know why they were taken. I feel that after learning the names of the photos Strassheim probably took these during her time studying how to take forensic photos. It is interesting that once you gain a small piece of information about a photo it changes your first initial idea of the project. The photos now look more grotesque to me and are not as pleasing as before.