Photography began as an art of tracking historical of events and has evolved to an art form that distorts and changes what seems to be reality. Through digital photography and editing, pictures can now change our perception of reality. One method of manipulating images is through the method of erasure. Erasure art is the process of removing or omitting one or more aspects of an image. When removing something from the original image, the modification is intended to create a new and rich concept. This redefines the image and method of learning to create a seamless new image.
There are multiple editing applications that allow you to manipulate digital images seamlessly. Photoshop is designed for Mac and offers the easiest methods for digital manipulation. When doing erasure art, there are two main techniques you can use with the tools offered in photoshop. The first is using the clone stamp to replicate similar areas within the original image. This method is essentially copying and replacing areas of the image to create an unnoticeably modified environment. The second approach is to "lasso" the area you want to erase while including some of the surrounding environment and selecting "content aware" under the fill option. The program will recognize the surrounding area and use that infomartion to replicate the portion you want to disappear. I used both methods when I created two of my own erasure images.
The first image depicts my cousin going down a slide at the park. The image on the right is the removal of the slide from image one. When making the decision to remove the slide, I wanted to make commentary on how children grow up today with a constant exposure to technology. I often notice children asking their parents if they can play games on the I-pad or their parents I-phone when they are at a restaurant with their family eating dinner. I wonder if this generation of children will still have fun playing without the needed amount of outside interaction with their environment. Could one day parks with fun slides no longer be built because there ceases to be a demand? How will the term play be redefined to suit its new set of needs?
The second image I chose to distort is similar to the first because it involves our evolution as a species, yet differs because it addresses adults responsibility to mange our so called advancements. The original image shows my sister hiking in Colorado last summer. In the second image, I removed her body. This was intentionally done to comment on what the world will be like when human kind is extinct. Humans are constantly producing items for others to consume. This over consumption leaves little room for the natural landscapes to flourish. Our belongings will lay in these locations and some will never breakdown and decay. The nuclear waste buried in the Earths soil will always harm the Earth. The world can live without us, but we can't live without it. How many things can you hypothetically erase from your life that provide no benefit to your existence but simply occupy space? The larger the number, the more difficult it is to come to terms with your abuse to the planet Earth.
It is import to recognize the dramatic changes in the modified image. The removal of an aspect from the image should defy our natural and logical understanding of science. Both of my images defy the law of gravity. The second image also defy our understanding of light. Erasure art allows for conceptually strong work to be done at a much faster rate than with the use of traditional media. Mary Stieglitz Witte states that "the immediacy of digital production is a factor which appeals to many artists". Erasure art allows people to quickly make an impact on the art world, while not needing the technical abilities aquired with traditional media.
This project is great for students to do because it allows them to make a statement and encourages them to make art, even when they may lack the ability to manipulate traditional media. I highly recommend using this assignment in an introduction art class at the high school level. Students will quickly realize that they have a visual outlet to speak about things important to them.
SOURCE: "Photography/Digital Imaging: Parallel and Paradoxical Histories" by Mary Stieglitz Witte. 1994.
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