Maritza Vales

The central idea of my concentration is to have self-portraits of me but masking myself. I use the different colored lighting to give a sense of distortion to my photographs.

Juana Merino

My concentration's main focus is today's fashion. I took a lot of photos using variety of styles, clothing, shoes,makeup, accessories and anything that falls in the fashion line. Also the backgrounds I use was either it matched the model's fashion style or didn't related at all. I did this because I didn't want it to be a super cliche photo shoot. The backgrounds made it look unique and different. I chose this to be my concentration because fashion is my passion. I will be attending college to be a fashion designer. I figured since I love fashion and photography, I would be able to collaborate them together.

DeAndre Watts

For my concentration I decided to do portraits/environmental portraits. Basically I go walk around where I live and photograph what goes on in my neighborhood and also just photograph people posing. The reason I chose to do this for a concentration is because I like showing people what I see through my eyes and how I see the world. I’m not the type of photographer that just goes around taking pictures; I look for certain qualities for certain pictures for example, mysterious. I like photographing those type of picture where someone has that mysterious look about them and the environment ( the right type of environment) adds on to the picture and as well as making a connection with the person or people in the photograph.

Amanda Marco

For my concentration, I am emphasizing the texture and pattern of everyday objects by photographing close-up. These objects are both man-made and natural. I want the viewer to notice all of the unique surfaces that can be found in the man-made and natural world. I am utilizing both black and white darkroom prints and color digital prints. When it is just the texture that I am drawn to, black and white is fine. But sometimes there is a dramatic sense of color to go along with the textures. That's when I use my digital camera.

Erika Marquez

This years’ concentration will be focused on Oversized Details using interior abstraction on a particular building located in downtown Chicago. These three pictures presented are an example of what my concentration will look like.

This photograph is a doorway/bridge:



What appeals to the viewer about this photo is the shapes used to demonstrate the ideal surrealism affect.

This picture is an actual reflection of myself using the interior space to make the picture have a feeling of surrealism incorporated with the architecture details of the building itself:



In the third photograph the colors are rather different than the other two described above. The photo itself is a parking garage staircase and the colors used are a middle tone gray which also gives the surreal feeling:



The colors used in all my photographs give an illusion of the future architecture.

Andrew Vega

My photos in this series demonstrate the effects long exposures have on the presence of light and color. To create these photos I set my camera to a very small aperture and a very long shutter speed. The photos in my concentration average over 25 seconds of exposure. I don’t manipulate my photos, I believe in experimenting with the camera instead of with the computer. I feel like it requires more skill to know what you’re doing with the camera.









Andrew Vega
Curie Metropolitan HS

50% Grey at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Hi, I’m Leif, a student of the A.P. Photography Program at Gallery 37. On March 4th, we visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography, owned and operated by Chicago’s Columbia College. We viewed a collection of images from both contemporary Czech photographers, as well as images donated by the Baruch Foundation. Many of these images faced danger of destruction in the late 60’s due to the Soviets who invaded Czechoslovakia, where they attempted to “normalize” the country, destroying many works of art in the process. Art dealer Jacques Baruch and his wife managed to save many pieces which we were fortunate enough to be able to see. The photographs in the contemporary section tended to concentrate on more simple subject matter, while the images from the Baruch Foundation tended to be more surreal and in my opinion, interesting.

Of the many interesting photos we viewed, one of my favorites was “Hand with Watch,” a gelatin silver print by photographer Emila Medkova:



The image has a cracked egg in a holder nestled in a nook and a large piece of bark, as well as a hand with a watch in the palm emerging from the top of a gap. The ragged, cracked texture of the bark alone matched with the interesting cream colored tone of the print serves as an interesting photograph in and of itself, not unlike something we might expect to see in the contemporary exhibit. The hand is nestled in a break in the bark, which provides a three-sided frame to this strange hand holding a watch. The watch looks more like an eye, peering at the viewer and warping reality. The egg in the holder matches the hand in both juxtaposition and composition, effectively creating a visually interesting, and conceptually stimulating image.