"Run and Gun" Inspired by Barry McGee
I am Eduardo Rivera Jr., a junior-year student studying illustration at NJCU. My work spans across different mediums, but I specialize in urban ink/watercolor sketching. The tools I use are practical, portable and affordable to show younger artists that they should never underestimate the power of simplicity and resourcefulness. Comics, children's books, photography, and crafting mainly inspire my art as my artistic language has grown more story-driven than strictly visual. Notable role models from these categories are Jean de Brunhoff, Gabrielle Vincent, early works of Sebastiao Salgado, Joe Kubert and Rumiko Takahashi.
My self portrait combines the spontaneous lifestyle and outfit of graffiti writers but translated into photo journalists. Living on your own terms is what pulsates the blood in the arm of a graffiti writer. Hauling a bag full of spray cans, nibs, stencils, and backup clothes, the graffiti writer is always on the move and alert; patiently waiting for the right moment to take what's his. The life of a photo journalist is no different. Despite my bag carrying lenses, cameras and voice recorders, I weave through crowds unnoticed as I hone in on my targets. A couple of shutter clicks later, I disappear leaving my mark only for those who know where to look. McGee reminds me of my rebellious adventures exploring Hudson County and how it later developed into a love for urban sketching.
Feel free to view examples of my fine art work at: https://www.instagram.com/eshiera.sk/
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Susan Sontag, On Photography
"Since there were then no professional photographers, there could not be amateurs either, and taking photographs had no clear social use; it was a gratuitous, that is, an artistic activity, though with few pretensions to being an art."
Taking the photograph was the achievement, but learning how to use it as a tool was the innovation. How can I use a photograph to convey information? The photographer was born out of these questions and deciphered a language in which to communicate these thoughts. In a way, we were always photographers, we just needed the invention of the camera to start recording these ideas.
"To collect photographs is to collect the world"
Cameras seem like a completely alien device upon definition. Being able to "record" what your eye sees into a physical object was something extremely revolutionary akin to the likes of the phonogram or alternating current in electricity. What has become so accessible, and downright dismissible at times, used to be a weighty contraption that needed an enforced checklist to operate. Regardless, the pictures taken from those times provide proof of our world from a time when we weren't here to experience it. Whether or not they become doctored over time, evidence of the past is crucial to understanding where we came from and where we'll be going.
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