Help me help you :)

Why is art so expensive?

This is an interesting question I ask myself as I find myself on both sides of the argument. On the one hand I am an artist selling my work and I need to cover my costs as well as make a profit that puts food on the table amongst other things. On the other, I am not shy to buy art that I like. The limit here is that it needs to fit into my budget, which again depends on my own profits I make from selling artwork.

So how do I take a photograph and sell it for as little as possible in order to make it available to everyone who is interested in having it against their walls? 

Lets break it down:

- Buying the film

- Developing the film

- Scanning the film

- Printing the scan

- Framing the print

This obviously excludes the use of my film cameras and their maintenance costs as well as other things such as fuel to get to and from the places who offer the services I require. 

An option here is to print on non-archival paper which is a lot cheaper and sell unframed prints.

The point of this post is though that I really want my art to be accessible to the people who enjoy it. Being someone who buys art as well, I understand the financial limits as well as the costs involved in making it. 

This is why I decided to do a little survey to find out how much potential buyers are willing to pay for my work.

Please fill in the form here.

New Series

As promised, here an explanation to my new series:

"How did your face look, before your parents were born?" Zen-Koan

A mask can look inward and outward, it looks at the person wearing it and changes his or her expression but at the same time it also impacts the audience creating fantasies in their head of what is behind it. It stands between the I and the world.

In this series I am creating masks that are made from people, from faces just to become something they are not and never have been.

Oscar Wilde mentioned something really interesting, he said "give a person a mask and they will tell the truth". Imagine a masquerade of truths.

These are just pieces of information, but I will update this post once the series is complete.

Tribal Forest Daemon

Today I photographed mountains covered partly with snow as you can see here.

I started admiring trees that look like skeletons against a white pale backdrop consisting of fog and clouds hiding nature. After playing around with the images I realised that within them natural creatures or faces can be discovered as they might also be in fact hiding away. I decided to enhanced them. 

The result as you can see below is no photograph anymore but rather something else, a forest creature. 

by Karolina Rupp

Today's shoot

A new time has come. A time of fine art photography that is expressive. Finding a style of shooting is really difficult as you want to avoid copying others but still find inspiration in work you find relevant. I guess that's the curse of a student. This year though I feel like I'm coming a little closer to my creative expression executed in the way of 'me'. How else would I define that inner pattern that is overlaid onto every image?

This image below is from today's shoot. It doesn't have a title yet. It deals with not wanting to realise that one is boxed in, but also the feeling of a possibility of escape.

By Karolina Rupp Photography

The Three Corners of Reality

By Karolina Rupp Photography

There are three layers to our mind, the good, the bad and the grey areas in between that influence our understanding of things and our reality. We can't escape them, they are part of us inherently.

This photograph, taken on 120 film with a medium format camera, explores exactly that concept of being caught within our own realities and that everything is subjective essentially. We are fixed in that position, and still are trying to think outside of the box and explore even more profound topics just to realise over and over again that the moment a new thought is explored it becomes a cliché. We never stop discovering things but once found, place them neatly into one of the three corners of reality. It is the restlessness of blindly searching for answers to everyday questions that freezes us in time until the hunt is over, for now, and the collection of thoughts and ideas within the mind has been expanded once again. This process continues throughout life and only ends with death, this library we carefully construct through everyday living, that helps us to survive and cope with the reality we are living (in). To draw the concept closer to the photograph, it is necessary to explain the visual elements within this image. 

Firstly, a woman is portrayed a little blurry in the just off-center of the composition with the sleeves of her jersey rolled up, ready to run and explore. Behind her head three different types of walls meet, which represent the three corners of reality by having different shades of grey as one of their properties. These walls hold her within the composition and thus shows her being stuck and caught in her own reality. On the left a door can be recognised which demonstrates the human need to escape and think differently every now and then, but also to show that it is not used (it is closed) for a reason. On the right towards the back of the composition of this photograph random objects can be seen. These show that not everything is explored within our thoughts but at the same time if you would move closer you would know what these objects are, which reinforces the concept of the cliché as mentioned above.The setting was chosen as it is a familiar structure, our reality we live in. The fear of knowing what is out there and the subjective interpretation of the latter is shown through the closed eyes of the woman. Also having to fight your way through this reality, but doing so with closed eyes (eyes are closed towards ideas and things of others because they can only be subjectively perceived and thus become one own's thoughts and ideas) plays a role within this composition. In addition, the woman is a little unsure of her position within this/ her reality which is another reason her eyes are shut as she is essentially hiding away. Through that feature, the viewer of this photograph has the ability to judge and see but the subject decides to not perceive being observed in order to protect herself, like many do within this reality.

This photograph of mine will be exhibited at the end of the year. Watch this space for more details. 

SINcere

It is interesting to note that once you believe you have found a certain theme for your blog things run smooth. But suddenly you are not sure anymore of what to write. This happened to me. These odd thoughts and things I normally bla out on here seem to have moved to a different space. Not one I chose, to be exact, I can't find it yet. But by sitting here and typing I am recalling things I wanted to share, not the wonderful ones that just scream at you but the more subtle creatures in my head. This in itself is a thought I had, the one about the creatures. 

Today I was in a conversation that triggered a thought. The discussion was a funny one, me having to, as a result of joking around, make coffee for the other person as a way to 'pay' for my "sin" I just committed (obviously the word sin was used in a funny manner which refers to me making a joke about the person I was talking to). The important part here is that if I would not know what coffee is, would that mean that I am unable to pay for my sin because I have no reference to the demand!? I know this is very far fetched and turns the humorous event into something serious, which not as some may believe is the topic of religion, but rather human interaction. To take it further, as was added by the person demanding coffee, if you don't know how to say sorry, can you be sorry? The 'how' here does not refer to a situation such as the inability to speak or a fear of the consequence of saying something and so fourth, but to truly not knowing the concept in a form of expression. To clarify, imagine you have never heard these words before: 'I'm sorry' etc, would you be able to feel sorry because you don't have a verbal connection to it? Does the association of speech with concepts make them real? And if yes (if you could feel sorry) would it be connected to the words 'I'm sorry' or would other words be used? (Obviously language plays a role I'm not going to go into here)

The point of this little exploration into space was to take something completely out of its context and question its validity through that. At the same time it also explores connections made that might or should be analysed further, here the verbal and emotional, or at least reconsidered with regards to its authenticity. Ok fair enough, it probably is and was discussed for centuries. For me though it should be taken into the arts (again), in my case photography, and explored.

I will leave this post with another thought I picked up along the way that might fit as the inverted version of the above:

"You can be sincere. But you can be sincerely wrong."

Over-share

I'm scared, scared to write something again because it was so long ago. It's like I see this entry window where I am writing this in for the first time and it feels strange, but I can't decide who is the stranger of us two.

In the last couple of weeks I had some great and some pretty studpid ideas and thoughts and will try to give a quick run down of some of them here:

Before I start, I must say I was a little reluctant to post my ideas in such a free giving manner where everyone has access to them, and I still think it's a little silly, but I realised that today I want to inspire people and give them ideas for their own ideas.

 

Please understand that all ideas and rough drawings above are my personal work (and thus fall under my copyright) and the concepts depicted will be completed by photographing them as part of an exhibition series.  

What I'm saying is please don't steal, be inspired!!!

Target: Art

Its time to write something thoughtful again... something that possibly could contribute to my understanding of what is happening... but to what? To this world? To me? To everything? To words that I throw in here that sound bold and all-encompassing? But I guess what I forget is the "you"? You as the reader... are you the one I write this too? I would hope this is not the case as this is my creative study... but I do... it is unavoidable!

What does this have to do with photography? It's all about concepts! Concepts, concepts concepts! And yes they are arty concepts... the ones by the people who stand in an art gallery or exhibition and have all those thoughts and interpretations of the piece on the wall, which, frankly, could be portraying anything or made out of any material you can think of.. but it is relevant? Maybe yes as it presents a concept possibly targeting a social issue or thought we all share and can relate to. Or maybe no... because it is in fact just art. Art doesn't do anything except make the people who create it feel even more confused about themselves and seem to enlighten the audience about what is happening around us or to them or in them. And now what? Nothing! I don't think people actually remember the piece they saw but rather the feeling, the emotion which they discovered through the piece. So this would essentially mean that art is good as it makes us more aware of things... but is it not a form of indoctrination as well? Just targeting more vulnerable issues? Like advertising, art advertises issues, reminds us of them and pulls them into our reality. And according to some followers of positive thinking this would mean these issues would become more or increase in intensity because we are reminded of them in a  problematic negative light and are not urged to think positively of solutions. Of course, this can also be seen as naive, faulty thinking... but it would make sense if it were to be true why things haven't gotten better yet... ok this last sentence can be ignored... it is too far fetched... but maybe thus useful for a concept in art?!

To conclude, peeling a plum and actually experiencing the texture of the flesh underneath and seeing the skin lying at the side loosing importance... as this texture is just so human like, a human without skin... just mixed with more sogginess... and the colour... it reminds me of cut open purple cabbage mixed with red berries... This violence of judging the inside, I do notice a resemblance to art?! Do you?