Remix Challenge

Last month, Studio 360www.studio360.org issued a challenge: married photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor provided ten images for artists to remix into an original composition.  They received more than 600 entries, ranging from the poetic to the eerie to the just plain far-out. Uelsmann and Taylor selected the winners and gave MEG member Louise Noakes an honorable mention for this image. Louise shares some thoughts on the challenge below:

1. What was required for the challenge?  At the end of an interview of Maggie and Jerry by Kurt Anderson on WNYC Studio 360 they gave the listeners a challenge: use some or all of 10 photographs they posted of objects such as a crow, a butterfly, old photographs of people and several landscapes and turn them into an original work. Maggie encouraged participants to include their own images too.
2. Did you start with a vision and manipulate the elements to achieve it or did you start by playing with the elements and go where they took you? I rarely start with a preconceived idea and when I do, it usually doesn't work.  In this case, I began with one of my own landscapes and then added some of their images in a playful manner.  I actually entered a few images into the challenge and some were definitely more my work then theirs. The image that garnered the honorable mention was inspired by Maggie Taylor and that may be why it received the honorable mention -- Kurt Anderson said a lot of the work chosen by Maggie and Jerry looked like theirs.

3. You've said you admire Jerry and Maggie. Can you give a couple of specifics about their work that you find interesting? Starting back in the early 70's, I was fascinated by Jerry Uelsmann. I went to a school that was producing more street photographers; Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand were some of our idols. I did that, but had this other side to me that really liked to try new things and manipulate my images. I love the way their images come from where ever their imaginations will take them. I hate being confined to any photographic rules. Maggie goes into the digital realm of photography and I like the way she make these wonderful montages, scanning a live fish or using found object from flea markets. Having made the transition from film to digital, the possibilities are endless. I am excited to see where it will go.