Author Archives: Stephen Ng

Visit to Greg Broome’s Studio 9/17

Greg Broome's delicious plate of food. It looks like cheese from here.

Greg Broome’s delicious plate of food. It looks like cheese from here.

As interesting as seeing how photographs for advertisements were made in addition to photographing moldy food, I was really interested more in how Greg Broome survives as an artist. In my lifetime, I’ve always heard that being an artist meant not earning money, not having a sustainable lifestyle, and always living on the edge. Greg Broome voiced almost similar situations; the key difference is that he seems successful at what he is doing. He mentions how there would be days or even weeks where he would be “technically unemployed”, meaning his agency was unable to find a project for him.

What does he do in his spare time? We saw a little bit of what he does during his moldy food project, but how does he come up with these ideas? It’s almost even appalling to imagine how he maintains his lifestyle during the “drought” of unemployment. Greg goes on to talk about the total opposite side of this lifestyle; the projects where he has to finish it only in a few days. It’s like living a schizophrenic lifestyle. One day you might be working on a private project that you’ve really wanted to do, the next day you’re staring down a huge project given by a rather large company with limited time and resources to do.

It can be quite disheartening to live such an erratic lifestyle, but I’ve seen and known people who persevere through such times. Can you imagine how it would be like to live such a lifestyle?

International Center of Photography – Untitled (Predator Drone) by Trevor Paglen

“Untitled (Predator Drone)” by Trevor Paglen

Art/Exhibition Review

By: Stephen Ng


To be perfectly honest, if this photograph wasn’t in a museum setting, I would have simply disregarded it entirely. Unbeknownst to the common person, “Untitled (Predator Drone)”, by Trevor Paglen, costs anywhere from $10000 to $15000 [1]. This is an immense amount of money for something that just looks like a gradient of colors. From a very light brown transitioning to a very light blue, I assumed this to be a photograph of a sky. It’s quite hard to tell exactly what time of day this image captures; I’d guess it’d be sometime during the early hours. There is no sun present, just the endless sky and the seemingly endless ground below.

What this predator drone captures is actually quite astounding; it’s the actual embodiment of peace. There’s nothing happening in the picture: no wars, no conflicts, no life, nothing. It’s quite disheartening to think that only predator drones, or rather any unmanned vehicles, can see this scene. Humans must always place themselves in some kind of machinery or technology to get anywhere near this setting, let alone see it with the naked eye. Quite rarely do we ever think about what machines see or what they capture.

It’s quite an ethereal photograph, isn’t it? When I look at it, my mind just clears. The emptiness of the picture starts to fill my mind, to the point of making time slow down.

How about you?

 

[1] – http://artsy.net/artwork/trevor-paglen-untitled-predator-drone