Assignment R01: Recreation

Wendy Watriss:


Wendy Watriss was born in San Francisco and later moved to the East Coast of the U.S. and Europe, where she spent much of her childhood. After graduating with honors from New York University, she became a newspaper reporter for political affairs in Florida and then worked for public television in New York. In 1970, she began freelancing as a photographer and writer. In 1982, she won World Press and Oskar Barnack awards for her work on Agent Orange. She co-founded FotoFest with Fred Baldwin in 1983 and began work as FotoFest senior curator and Artistic Director in 1990.

Original:

Agent Orange was a herbicide used during the Vietnam wars in the forest to defoliate the land. She was involved in showing the veterans situations to the government to help them get answers.

She frames just the feel of an unknown individual which allows people to relate to the image. The perspective seems to be from ground level looking slightly down on the figure possibly depicting a sense of sadness. The original image has a good contrast of lighting, which helps balance the entire composition.

Her goal for pictures like this one and many others were to inform the government about Vietnam veteran's situations with the after affects of Agent Orange.

I enjoy this image due to the fact that anyone is capable of relating to this because of the anonymity that it allows. While one views this image it is hard to determine the gender and or age of the individual which I think is highly effective.

Recreation:   

I wish I would have used a different source of lighting, which I think would have made this a more successful piece. I chose to use natural lighting from a nearby window.

When I was thinking about Recreating this piece I decided to take away the anonymity of the piece and give it a gender. I found the original to be of a child's foot so I chose a gender and depicted their future. During the time of the original image, women did not have nearly as many opportunities as they did in the near future and that they have now. So I chose to try to depict a working business woman with 'work' boots or heels. This was my interpretation of this child's future and resembles the furthering of independence of women throughout this time. All of these things inspired me to make this Recreation.