David Hockney

The David Hockney video that we watched in class was very interesting, in terms of both him being an odd guy, and photography. Being an artist that also paints and draws, he stated that photography is a fraction of a second and that this is one of the weaknesses of drawing and painting as a medium. When he is creating his photos, he makes the same decision he would as if he were drawing in terms of line and form. However, he doesn’t want to manipulate his photos too much because he doesn’t want to take away from the ordinary event that he is depicting. He likes to experiment with being both far away and close up to his subjects and thinks a lot about his compositions before beginning to shoot. Hockney always has his camera following the action that is taking place. He wants the viewers to have a relationship with his photos so he stylizes them in specific ways that create almost a conscious interaction. This can be seen in the video where they show his coffee collage. It almost seems as if the viewer is who is receiving the cup of coffee. David makes it clear that you can never have too many rolls of film with you because you never know how many a project will take. He doesn’t crop a lot of his photos because he doesn’t want the collage to look too tricky and also sometimes a mistake can benefit the piece as a hole, like his film getting developed incorrectly. This video was beneficial because it takes you through the mind of a photographer who is also making photo collages and shows you how someone else goes about doing it.