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Blas Gonzalez - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Blas Gonzalez

 
The above video is OCA student Blas’ response to Assignment 4 of the Art of Photography Course.
The assignment asks you to choose a suitable subject to show Shape, Form, Texture and Colour through Light.

“The subject I’ve chosen to develop this series of pictures is a marine shell called “Venus Comb Murex”. My source of inspiration was a picture by Andreas Feininger, which presents a tiny marine shell in an unusual way, exploring a new perspective of it.
 
Because I’m very interested in the relation between photography and other arts, and music in particular, I try to use music as way to transmit and emphasize the way I feel a particular picture.
 
And in this case it is entirely inspired by a piece of music by Claude Debussy, The sunken Cathedral. I imagined this creature as a complex and intricate structure, sunk in the sea bed, like a living cathedral, with all the majesty and grandeur. In the same way that a cathedral is a human masterpiece, this small marine shell is a masterpiece of Nature.” 
Visit Blas’ blog here to see more.

Posted by author: Joanne

15 thoughts on “Blas Gonzalez

  • A really creative response to this assignment Blas. The music fits it so well and adds further emphasis to the grandeur of the shell’s structure in all its manifestations. It also made me think of Gaudi and his cathedral.
    I really enjoyed watching this video. Thanks for showing it to us

  • Thank you so much Catherine and Allan for your comments.
    Catherine: It’s interesting your comment about Gaudi architecture, because he took inspiration for many structures in Nature motifs. A close up view to Nature can reveal interesting forms and elements, as Andreas Feininger did in some of his pictures.
    Allan: you’ll be welcome to my blog. Thank you

  • Excellent work Blas. Your blog in general is really very good in my opinion. It inspires me to try harder with my own work (I’m working on the Light assignment too – and also reading Light, Science, Magic – which I think is a fabulous book), plus I’ve picked up a couple of tips from your research too!
    🙂
    Best Wishes
    Chris

    • Thank you Chris. I try to do my best in my blog, taking notes of all details and ideas that come to my mind during the learning process. It’s a time consuming task, specially because of the language, but that helps me to order my thoughts.
      Your blog is very well structured and you’re doing a great job. You’ve chosen a nice template.
      Good luck with you’re assignment. Let me have a look when is finished.
      Kind regards
      Blas

  • Funny, this reminded me of a gouache I made in my teens of the same type of shell… I was surprised not to have encountered more representation of these as they are so amazing; I had to draw and paint the one I had the chance to get my hands on at the time. I had never seen anything like it before and was fascinated.
    Not sure how I could share the picture I have of mine online though…

  • An inspired gem of a film – a seamless marriage of image and music, making something new and enthralling. Bravo!

  • Hi.
    I’m not a photographer. I therefore have no idea what processes you went through to create your work. Whilst I found it engaged my interest at first, I found I had to push myself to remain attentive, and I think this was because of the repetitive nature of the images and the music which when combined had a very mesmeric effect on me. Was this deliberate?
    I assume that you tailored the length of the video to fit with the length of the piece of music?
    Perhaps because we are conditioned to a fast-moving world of rapidly changing images, this seemed too long. But I can think of circumstances where it would be very helpful, for example for patients undergoing a procedure where they need to be relaxed and have something to capture their attention.

    • Thank you so much for your wise comments Alison.
      Certainly the length of the video was conditioned by the length of the music, although I tried to fit the pictures with the particular rhythm of the music. Debussy’s music creates an unique atmosphere that I’ve tried to recreate with my video footage.
      As you say we live in fast-changing world, so most people can considerate 6 minutes of this kind of music nerve-wracking or time wasting experience and they finally will stop the video before the end, but some other could find relaxing contemplate how a tiny shell contains all the grandeur that we, human beings, have reserved to the most notorious work of our vanity: the cathedrals.

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