Beauty Shot Fridays!
From the PR Office at SAM comes a new and fun project called “Beauty Shot Fridays.” In order to promote Beauty & Bounty and Reclaimed, we are asking our Facebook Fans to send us photos in response to a weekly question that is based on themes in the exhibitions.
We will update our question on the SAM Facebook page every Monday by 3pm and submissions will be uploaded to the page every Friday by 4pm. If you’d like to send a photo submission (captions are welcome too!), please email beautyshots@seattleartmuseum.org
Our question this is week is: where do you find beauty and bounty in your day?
Last week we asked our kick-off question: what is your daily landscape? We received a great selection of photos, and I’ve picked out a few personal favorites here.
I really like this photo because of its surrealist qualities. They capture the chaos and motion of images and moments blurring together that can characterize commuting, but the photo still retains a calm quality to it. The different layers of imagery exhibit a lot of elements of downtown, particularly the noticeable combinations of urbanity and the natural world.
Submitted by Moss Bresnahan. “My morning view, looking towards Seattle from the Bainbridge ferry…”
I selected this photo because it immediately reminds me of a few of the paintings and photographs in
Beauty & Bounty
because of its voluptuous clouds and theatrical, morning light. It is also a very striking photo taken from a commonly used mode of transportation; I think this speaks to how the repetition of machinery, sometimes characterized as monotonous, can lead us to the spontaneity of nature.
Submitted by Alex Hudson. “I bought the bird from a woman on the street who sells them for a dollar. I think it adds a little levity to an otherwise bureaucratic view out my window.”
The crane’s juxtaposition with the rigidly-designed building in the background makes me think about how work and play do not always have to be mutually exclusive but can work to inspire each other. Furthermore, both the crane and building are human-made, yet one is seemingly playful and the other appears rigid and constrained. I’m curious about these kinds of contradictions and how we actually combine (supposedly) opposing things to create something new, enriched by the best components of each object.
Submitted by Erin Langner, SAM’s adult public programs coordinator. Erin’s photo represents the landscape of the SAM Education workspace.
I selected this photo because of its whimsy and fun. It also opens “daily landscape” outside of its typical connotation of purely nature-oriented scenes. The silliness and exuberance of this photo cracked me up when I first saw it and reminded me that the workplace is another form of habitat and landscape for the many employers and employees in the world.
Submitted by Garric Simonsen. “My daily commute to WSU from Spokane.”
I felt like this photo epitomized a very American-grown concept of the “open road” and “age of adventure” and “exploration as freedom.” The symmetry and striking balance of the man-made elements (the bridge and its foundations, the painted road lines, the ever-stretching road) juxtaposed with uneven terrain, endless sky, and asymmetrical hillsides’ shadows made me think of the odd cruxes we experience with nature. Do we lose something in exploration by having paths like roads? I feel like a lot of historical explorers are talked about in terms of “going where no one had gone before,” even when there were definitely people already living in these “new” territories. With the development of cars, highways, trains, etc. in mind, I wonder if now exploration and adventure in America are characterized by the individual experience more than the group they are part of. Anyway, this photo brought up a lot of questions in my mind about the concepts of exploration, adventure, and “American-ness.”
In closing I’d like to suggest that you submit your own photos to Beauty Shot Fridays. As mentioned before, email your photo (and captions) to beautyshots@seattleartmuseum.org We update our question on the SAM Facebook page every Monday by 3pm and will upload your submissions to the page every Friday by 4pm. This week’s question is: Where do you find beauty and bounty in your day?
-Madeleine Dahl, PR Intern
Top photo: Submitted by Emily Hicks, SAM’s visitor services officer. “Daily commute into downtown.”