{"id":3843,"date":"2012-11-16T15:43:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T23:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2012-11-16T15:43:54","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T23:43:54","slug":"andre-hermann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/16\/andre-hermann-3843\/","title":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Hermann’s iPhoneography"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on November 16, 2012 in The Alamedan<\/a>. Michele Ellson, editor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Andr\u00e9 Hermann at his reception at Blue Dot Caf\u00e9 & Coffee Bar on November 10. Photo: Michael Singman-Aste<\/p><\/div>\n

When photographer Andr\u00e9 Hermann knows he\u2019s going to be shooting, he favors the high-end Canon EOS 5D Mark II. That firepower is called for in his commissioned work, or when he was completing his MFA thesis at the Academy of Art, for which he photographed a little boy with the genetic connective tissue disease Epidermolysis bullosa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 5D is not the kind of camera you stroll around with. But like most of us, Hermann, of Alameda, always has his camera phone with him. \u201cI literally walk with my phone in my hand, ready to go,\u201d says Hermann. \u201cI’m just watching. I see someone coming down the street, or I’m anticipating something about to happen. I prepare myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting photos, all shot on the streets of San Francisco and New York over the last two years, are on display at Blue Dot Cafe & Coffee Bar.<\/p>\n

He shoots with an iPhone 4 using the Camera+ application, and adds additional effects using PicGrunger, also on his phone. Only then does he upload the images to Photoshop, and then simply to enlarge them and perhaps sharpen them slightly.<\/p>\n

Hermann believes that the photographic process is not complete until the image is printed \u2014 uploading them to Facebook doesn\u2019t count \u2014 and he prints them large, countering the notion that a smartphone is incapable of producing serious, high-quality work. To him, this \u201cvalidates mobile phone photography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I carry an iPhone with me everywhere I go, this is life as I see it every day,\u201d Hermann says. When an old woman passes him, pushing her possessions in a cart, he sees \u201ca modern day Sisyphus,\u201d and a shot of a blanketed man passing before a larger-than-life Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement recounts the mythological turn, \u201cAs the fisher king crossed the oracle, his soul was scrutinized.\u201d His titles give deeper insight into what this artist sees while being intentionally Twitter-friendly, crafted in 140 characters or less.<\/p>\n

Henri Cartier-Bresson, \u201cthe father of modern photojournalism,\u201d was known for capturing the decisive moment in his photos. Hermann demonstrates this knack as well, snapping the picture at the ideal moment as workers in \u201ca focused, yet simple scene of chaos\u201d navigate a construction site with the impossible geometry of an M. C. Escher print. And one of Hermann’s other small, muted black-and-white prints immediately calls to mind Cartier-Bresson\u2019s own 1932 photo of a man attempting to leap a puddle.<\/p>\n

\"\"

\u201cA focused, yet simple scene of chaos\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Because life doesn\u2019t look the same from one day to the next, Hermann never knows who or what he’ll be shooting. But his work is consistently provocative and powerful, blurring the line between \u201cstreet\u201d and documentary photography, with the spontaneity and irony of the former, and the emotional punch of the latter.<\/p>\n

Blue Dot Cafe & Coffee Bar is located at 1910 Encinal Avenue. Andr\u00e9 Hermann\u2019s iPhoneography remains on display through December 7. More of his work can be seen at http:\/\/www.andrehermannphoto.com\/<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Singman-Aste
\nPostdiluvian Photo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on November 16, 2012 in The Alamedan. Michele Ellson, editor. When photographer Andr\u00e9 Hermann knows he\u2019s going to be shooting, he favors the high-end Canon EOS 5D Mark II. That firepower is called for in his commissioned work, or when he was completing his MFA thesis at the Academy of Art, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[73,552,380,486],"class_list":["post-3843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists","tag-alameda","tag-andre-hermann","tag-blue-dot-cafe","tag-the-alamedan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-ZZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3843"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3862,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}