Recreation Numero Uno

Karl Struss

Born. November 30, 1886.

Died. December 15 1981. (Age 95)

Occupation. Photographer and Cinematographer.  (1920s-1950s)

Karl Struss was believed to be one of the pioneers of 3-d film. Struss was part of the Pictorialist which took place in the later years of the 19^th century. Karl was also believed to be more of a pictorial photographer rather than a fashion photographer.  The challenge for Struss was always to express a mood, to tell a story through his camera to find in nature what expressed the emotions of man. Pictorialists were known for photographing landscapes, figure studies, and portraits.

“I never got bored, never wanted to photograph something different after I’d done it.” (Karl Struss)

Low Tide. Karl Struss.. 1912.

This picture depicts the East River Crossing. Struss used this picture as a metaphor for the conquest of nature by human intelligence.

Personally I like the image. I like the way that it’s not a close-up shot but it reveals a sense of emotion and feeling that a shot so far away is hard to do. I like that the people on the bridge is more background noise and a distant blurred object than the focus of the picture.  The structure is the main focus of the picture as with many pictures taken by the Pictorialists in the later 19^th century. I took this picture as more of a representation of life and how our structures and what we buy and our material possessions is what really represents us whether we like it or not and our personal being is more of a background blur.  

Recreation Image:

Recreating this image at first was daunting due to the fact that there was so much going on in the picture to begin with. I first started with the lighting. The picture Struss took has darker lighting with an almost gloomy feel to the picture. I wanted to portray that same part of the image in my recreation. Along with recreating the lighting of the image I also attempted to recreate the blurriness of the image.

The image Struss took was taken in 1912 so I attempted to photograph a more updated version of the bridge by picturing the new art museum going up on Grand River. I added my own touch by focusing in on the foreground of the picture while blurring the background. I wanted to portray the gloomy aspect of the image blurred and dark as Struss represented it. 

The only thing I attempted to accomplish but could not through my recreation was the background colors. I was hoping for a more lightness in the background as in the original piece rather than the recreated look portraying a darker background than intended.