Jan Groover
Personal Background
Jan Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey. She lived from April 24, 1943 - January 1, 2012. She was an American Photographer, and in 1965, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute. In 1970, she received a Master of Arts from Ohio State University. She spent years painting, but in the early 1970s she switched to photography.
Style
Groover has a style of photography which combines Renaissance and postmodern. Her style of photography does many things, like question perspective and within the reflective surfaces, transforms light into an object itself. She used 20th century camera technology mainly to get better horizontal photographs of different objects. She usually makes the choice to shoot colored pictures. Her photographs reference things like the history of photography and painting. Her street scenes are more modern, but some of her earlier photography works are things like diptychs and triptychs, which are different photographic forms that were popular in Renaissance and medieval art.
Philosophy
Groover has a pretty big dedication to formal composition. With the shadows, reflections, and gorgeous colors in her pictures, she was trying to make us wonder things like if the objects were filaments of our imagination. She was also trying to get color photographs to be recognized as art, because in the 1970s, photography pioneers were still trying to make color photographs popular. Mostly, people in the 1970s thought that color photography was only in commercial photography, but Groover was trying to get color photography to be recognized by art. In the kitchen still lifes that Groover photographed, she subtly associated them with the life of a housewife and the feminist debate. Even though her delicate and planned details brought out her painterly side, her commitment to photography is still relevant in the photographs.
Influences
There were a few artists that Groover was influenced by. The first was Fra Angelico and other 14th and 15th century European painters. The second and third were Cézanne and Morandi, whose different techniques Groover transformed into something that’s more contemporary. Lastly was Eadweard Muybridge, who was a British stop-action imagery photographer. While working as a photography professor of photography at State University, New York, she also influenced many artists of different ages.
Compare and Contrast
This picture was pretty easy to take. I had all of the utensils except for one, but other than that, it was pretty easy to take. I first started by using a big bowl as the base, then I put the different utensils on top of the bowl. After setting the utensils on the bowl, I had to position myself to get the perfect shot. I feel like I could try to get a better angle to get an image that looks more like Groovers' photograph, but overall I think I did a pretty good job of recreating the photo with the materials I had.
This picture was pretty difficult to take. To start off, I had to find all the utensils that were used in Groover's photograph. After finding all of them, I had to position them in the correct way and get the right lighting and reflection on the utensils. Getting the right angle was a bit difficult, but in the end, I think I took a good photo. Overall, I feel like I could improve on placing the utensils a bit closer to each other, but other than that, I really like this photo that I took.
I like this image a lot. It was pretty difficult to take, seeing that I had to find a leaf and get the utensils into the positions that they're supposed to be in. I think I did a pretty good job of getting the picture to look like Groovers' but there were a few things that I feel like I could do better, like getting a better angle and turning the fork a bit. Overall, I really like this picture because it doesn't have a lot of elements and the utensils and leaf go really well together.
Artist Statement
I really enjoyed taking these photos. I wanted to keep one theme throughout all the photos I took, and because a lot of Groovers' photos had utensils in them, I chose to replicate them. All of the images represent things in the kitchen. The first one shows utensils in a bowl that are cleaned, the second shows lots of utensils together, and the third shows utensils in a bowl but also has paper and a leaf in the image. Groover took these pictures to show the life of a housewife, and these images show what they had to do in the kitchen.
Sources/Images
1. https://www.moma.org/artists/2358
2. https://appliedtechniques.wordpress.com/jan-groover/
3. https://artpil.com/news/jan-groover-at-gak/#:~:text=Groover's%20images%20reflect%20her%20preference,transforms%20into%20something%20entirely%20contemporary.
4. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Groover
2. https://appliedtechniques.wordpress.com/jan-groover/
3. https://artpil.com/news/jan-groover-at-gak/#:~:text=Groover's%20images%20reflect%20her%20preference,transforms%20into%20something%20entirely%20contemporary.
4. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Groover