John Fobes

  For my final blog, I chose to discuss John Fobes. I explored lumen prints and produce by placing slices of fruits and vegetables on my paper and then exposing them. This created different patterns and new abstractions from the fruits. Fobes did very similar work. He was born in Pittsburgh, PA, and is well known for his nature-focused lumen prints.

The first piece by Fobes I am choosing to discuss is these 3 pears. One thing I really like about this piece is the readability of the fruit. When I was doing my final project, I noticed that some of my fruits lost readability in the exposure, which made my trial-and-error process slightly more difficult. Because of this, I am really impressed with the way Fobes’ images came out, making me wonder if he used actual fruits or produced images of them in a different way. Another thing I really like about this piece is the bright colors of the fruit. I wondered if mine would react with the paper to produce different colors, but I didn't find that much change.

 

The other piece by Fobes I am choosing to talk about is this one, which looks to me like a bell pepper. I like how well these two pieces fit together, and it makes me think that he must have used the same photo paper and light source for both. This is because some of mine came out quite different just based on the piece of paper I used, the duration under the light, and more. I really like how in both of these pieces there's a sort of aura emanating from the fruits and vegetables, giving them a glowish look. I think this really pulls in the viewer and increases the organic-ness of the piece.

Overall, I really think Fobes was successful with his produce lumen prints. I know firsthand how hard it is to get the perfect print, especially with fruits, and without knowing how they will appear after being exposed. Nonetheless, I think Forbes’ work is really good.