Reflections of South Congress

While exploring South Congress, I felt especially attracted to the reflections I saw in the glass windows of shops, cars, and skyscrapers. Rather than noticing the buildings themselves, I become captivated by the play of light, shadow, and the sense of depth which the reflections embodied, along with the repetition of shapes created by the windows themselves. As I began to take photographs, I also became aware of the barriers created by different reflections overlapping at once and the way their corresponding lines and shapes blend together.

In relation to Gestalt, my collection of photographs utilizes the principles of continuity, repetition, and containment. The lines and curves found in the architecture of windows and building fronts lead the viewer through the different layers of reflections creating a continuous, unified whole of both small details and larger scenes. In addition, the consistent appearance of squares and lines in the architecture of buildings adds an element of unifying repetition within the photographs and provides containment for the reflections. Focusing on these reflections of South Congress in this way enabled me to explore the area and its details with a new perspective which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

A Gestalt principle that I took into account through the duration of this project was the concept of direction. I wanted my photographs to lead the eyes in a certain direction. One idea I tried to keep in mind was the abstractness when it came to my images. Many may think of photographs with directions as ones of winding roads or the line of a hay field disappearing into the distance. I attempted to capture leading lines in a more unconventional way.
The images collected in this gallery also capture what South Congress is to me. I come from the hills and endless fields and forests of Vermont. Street performers, graffiti, and all the subjects that make up South Congress are quite foreign to me. So, for my project, I also wanted to capture the images that capture me.

When people think of South Congress, they think of the street down from the Congress building that has lots of fancy stores and tons of people. The tons of people part is somewhat true but really, congress is a place that has so many little elements to it that when combined, makes South Congress…. South Congress. For my assignment, I just took pictures of things that interested my and then looked over them later to determine the Gestalt elements. What I found was that almost all of my pictures had at least one element of containment, proximity,repetition or continuity in them.

When I first went to South Congress between Oltorf and Cesar Chavez, there was an overwhelming amount of objects, subjects and landscapes that I could photograph. What mostly caught me eye though were all the unique and individual buildings. Every restaurant, clothing shop, hotel and the works used different materials to construct their building. Some used industrial materials like concrete and others used natural materials like wood. With the Gestalt principles in mind, I decided to take close up shots of the individual materials that make each building different from the next.

The way we form images is literally quite mind blowing. Our minds use Gestalt principles like grouping, repetition, containment and so forth to form the whole, or in other words images we can understand. With the complexity of our world, it would be hard to understand and differentiate an object or building as different from another object or building next door without he self-organizing tendencies in our brains. Within my photos I focused on similarity, symmetry, repetition and grouping. I purposefully took close up images of different materials throughout South Congress because I wanted the viewer to be able to mentally feel the texture and be able to see the buildings down to their core.

Overall I really liked how my collection of photos turned out. Although the collection is small, and I would have liked to discover more unique buildings, I like how my photos show repetition and similarity and in turn allow the viewer to feel and see texture and design. We group things that are similar, and that forms the whole. All in all I had a good time discovering and breaking down how we form images.

Up-close and Personal

We spend a majority of our lives traveling from one place to another, always consumed by technology, and trying to plan for the future that rarely do we stop and see what is around us.  Upon closer inspection, the world is nothing but an accumulation of replicated shapes and colors; therefore frame of mind is key. Continuity, repetition, and proximity are conveyed in my collection of photographs. The use of even the most minimalistic canted angles provide the images with more depth and give a different perspective to the everyday sights of South Congress. It brings light to the objects hiding in plain sight.

All shots and description by Robyn Marie Pereira.

Blending the man-made with nature:

In relation to gestalt, I found that the majority of my shots involved the values of continuity and proximity that gave them more visual interest as well as depth; this lead me to look farther within the boundaries on South Congress. I began to notice how in every area I covered there involved some form of life juxtaposed against the man made world.  Whether it be a plant, a human, or a device in which we are given motion, there is that presence among the once perceived “cold” world of architecture and construction.  There is a balance among everything found on that prominent street as there is everywhere in the world, we just have to look for it.  By doing so, I have found I see the things around me come alive in a way that I would have never have thought of before.

The images I have collected are a product of my experience going out onto South Congress and having a natural curiosity for things that were not necessarily seen from the street. Upon going and exploring (taking images as I went) I found myself asking the question, “Why are these things hidden?” The more I went out, the more I veered from the street and searched for things that were hidden from the public. A lot of the objects in these photos are not aesthetically pleasing at all and that fact lead me to believe these little places I found were hidden because of that.

In connection to Gestalt I really focused on my physical proximity to South Congress; I never went further than 30 feet. I wanted to emphasize really how close these places are from the actual street. I also focused on the physical containment of the objects and how closed off they were from the public. All the images I took are not visible from the street because they were either located behind the building or enclosed in a fence-like structure. The locational grouping of these photos also connects to Gestalt. They’re all located along South Congress within ½ mile of each other. This radius while standing on the street is much different then the images I took. I found this significant to the why I took these photos; I wanted the viewer to understand that the things we try to cover up, hide, and distort are really not that far from the beauty we try to protect.