Urban Pieces

The project that I am currently most involved with is titled Urban Pieces. This work started as a vague impulse to capture hand-painted color as a part of the urban landscape. It became the basis for my MFA thesis project and subsequently became available as a series of limited edition prints. My ongoing work is toward compiling these and many more images and related texts - such as essays from urban planners, architects and artists (muralists and graffiti writers) - into a published book. There are many topics that sprout from this project including photographic genres, the documentary tradition, street art, cultural and personal expressiveness, legality of graffiti, the vernacular urban landscape, a sense of place, finding compelling photographic projects, etc. And I will turn to these topics in later posts. Right now, I wanted to introduce this project through the following statement abstract:

"Urban Pieces results from my personal search in the urban environment for a sense of place – that feeling that a place is special and unique with authentic human attachment and belonging. Specifically, I have sought out and photographed where hand-painted murals and graffiti masterpieces visually intersect with elements of the vernacular urban landscape. I intend for each photograph to capture an instance where I found color and cultural expressiveness that creates for me a one of a kind experience of these places that would not happen if the pedestrian elements were there alone without these touches of the human hand."

The mastered and printed images included in the series to date can be found at my website, R. A. Mitchell Photography. Under the "Project" menu, there is an Urban Pieces item.

What?

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Blue Bike, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 2006, by R. A. Mitchell

I haven't sorted out all of the details nor the entire scope of this blog yet, but I've recently been encouraged by a much admired and influential mentor to continue writing (post-completion of an MFA in photography in August 2010) about my experiences as an artist and photographer. After a few months of dormancy, I’ve decided to dust off this blogspot.com space that I’d reserved - and revise or delete the few previous posts that I’d made - and continue my musings through words and graphics on a number of topics that I am passionate for: All genres of photography; color in the manmade environment; relationships between music and color, visual experience, and just about everything; various movements of art through post-modern deconstructivism and whatever the future may hold; the satisfaction and challenges of being creative; artistic careers; and pretty much on and on without too many limits. My intent is to pursue these topics from many perspectives and along any possible tangents.

As an introduction, here is my artist's statement to give an idea of where I am coming from:

“For the images I create, I choose from a variety of subjects including landscapes, urban environments, still lifes and people. I also enjoy location-based and travel photography, venturing both close to where I live and far away. But these subjects aside, the most common denominator in my images is color exploration. When I first started to take myself seriously as a photographer, I sort of tiptoed around my impulse to make images that included lots of rich, vibrant colors. I thought it wasn’t artistic enough or maybe too childish or simple. But I would come home from shooting excursions with loads of colorful images that illustrated my true visual instincts. With time and experience, I succumbed to the wisdom that “you can’t push a river,” and I embraced my instincts. Now, without reservation, I hunt color with my cameras and incorporate it into raw imagery or manipulated results through photographic montage. I believe that color can be a reminder of many joyful things in life – childhood, play, music, love – and can itself be a source of happiness.”