greetings from ballymena

A

artmeena

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hi everybody.

artmeena is a photograhy project started by two friends old enough to know better. we shoot urban landscapes in and around the small, crappy, unartistic, farming town of ballymena in northern ireland.

influenced by ari verluis & ellie uyttenbroek, richard billingham, chuck close, and ed ruscha, art meena is an attempt at removing subjectivity from the actual act of photography itself.

the basic premis of meena is to photograph objectively all examples found of a given subject matter, and then impose a meaning on the completely unaltered photographs by selection and definition alone.

meena shoots objectively by shooting each example only once, having the camera set as mush as possible on auto (iso and f-stop can be manually adjusted for lighting conditions), and shooting each example "straight on" with no thought to artistry whatsoever. no post production, photoshopping or cropping of images is allowed.

i know it sounds like a lot of b******t, but we believe in it and believe in our work. we would love to have some dialogue with like (or unlike) minded photographers and any comments are more than welcome.

below are several images from our graffiti series.

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peace

artmeena
 
Interesting work. I bet you could create a great portfolio of work with that kind of thing.

Welcome!
 
Hello from Carrickfergus ;)
 
artmeena said:
and shooting each example "straight on" with no thought to artistry whatsoever. no post production, photoshopping or cropping of images is allowed
Click to expand...

Going out of your way to take good photos :thinking:?
 
mole2k said:
Going out of your way to take good photos :thinking:?
Click to expand...

depends on how you define good. the intention behind what we're doing is to photograph what is there, and to not impose ourselves as photographers onto the reality of what we're photographing. every photograph taken by us is considered "good", but just not in the way you meant, which, if you don't mind me second guessing you here, is "good" in an aesthetic way.

as already mentioned, richard billingham, ed roscha's twentysix gasoline stations, chuck close's work with outsized polaroids and the exactitudes work by ari versluis and ellie uyttenbroek have all played a part in shaping the ideas behind this project, and that should give you a good idea of where we have gotten our inspiration from.

the main thing is that unlike "normal" photography where you carefully choose what images to shoot, then choose what images to use, then edit those images to conform to how you want the image to be perceived, we just go out and photograph what is there, full stop. if it is beautiful, great, but ugly is also good, and i have to say that i have a soft spot for the bland and mediocre too. to use an overused term, it's all good!
 
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hi there
i thought ballymena was a nice place (well thirty years ago) i suppose the flamingo and wee keg have gone (ooooh happy days)
mickytwoknives
 
well, with a name like mickeytwoknives, you'd fit right in:D

funny this is mickey, when we started it was our hatred of the place that we live (long story why, but uplifting and hopefully with a happy ending) that drove us to photograph it in the 1st place. but we've been at it 6 months now and i have to say that it's made me re-evaluate how i fell about ballymena- it's still a dump ***!

all the old pubs have closed over the years, you know, the ones with character, but the flamingo is still there, albeit as a fitness studio. we actually have a series of shots of all the pubs in ballymena and when i get round to posting them if i remember i'll give you a shout.
 
Ballymena, Hey?!

Hello from Sunny Bangor. I have a few similar pics on my site (in me sig) but here they are anyways. I do a bit of cropping mind you.

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love it! we have photographed perhaps 80% to 90% of the graffiti in ballymena over the last six months and we have well over 2000 images of graffiti alone. we're in the process of putting ALL of these up on flickr and no doubt i'll post here when we have.

then thing i love about the graffiti in ballymena (and maybe bangor as well) is that it is all of such low quality- there ain't no banksys kicking about bt43 i'll tell you that much. i think that that absence of good quality graffiti speaks volumes for the type of place ballymena is....if you have any artistic qualities at all you get out when yer 18 to university or art college, leaving only idiots with grudges to write on the walls. i really like the mispelt ones....

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just wanted to say thanks to everybody that took time out to say hello, much appreciated. :)
 
we're just in the process of setting up our flickr site now, as i've said we've well over 2000 images so it might take a wee while- i promise when it is up and running i'll be screaming about it on this forum, so you won't miss it.

in the meantime is yer craving for really poor quality graffiti cannot be abated, we have a kinda "best of" page on facebook, with some of our more (accidentally) aesthetic images. my brain isn't working too well at the minute (i've just paid a plumber a grand which has left me shellshocked!:shake:) and for the life of me i can't find out a http for our page but if you just search under the name art meena you'll find us.

we also have a basic prototype of our flickr page with oddles of images on it on myspace and the address for it is

http://www.myspace.com/artmeena

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thanks for the interest, darran!:D
 
Hello :)

Difficult considering your subject matter but can you be a little selective in the images you post please. The forum has a swear filter but it doesn't work on pictures!
 
in retaliation for the strict no cursing policy in this forum, i feel it is my duty to subvert the dominant paradigm and post the most expletive filled photograph i could find from the artmeena collection, so here goes....

2gwdwgh.jpg


ah ha ha haha, haha, haha, haha, ha ha HA!:razz:

FEEL MY VENGEFUL WRATH!
 
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