The Figure And The Photograph
The Studio And The Street
For this project we have been asked to produce two series of images based around the theme of the figure and the photograph, exploring one series in a private or studio space and the other in a public space. I will be exploring the ideas around the figure, representations and identities finding ways to explore these in both a street and studio context. The first thing that springs to mind when thinking of the figure and the photograph is the word portrait, this being the simplest way to capture a figure or person however this is a broad term that can be explored in so many different ways and I’m interested in looking deeper into this myself as well as thinking of different ways to represent a figure that do not involve actual people.
What The Studio And The Street Mean To Me
I think that because of the lockdown situation we find ourselves in at the moment has changed my definition of the studio and the street somewhat, If things were normal I would have probably shot my studio project in the photography studio at uni and my project probably would have been majorly different. A studio is actually defined as ‘a room where an artist, photographer, sculptor, etc. works’ and so for me at the moment, my studio would be my house as this is where I have been creating all of my work at the moment and so my studio part of my project will be based in my house. The street section is pretty straight forward and to me just means any public space outside, my street project will be focusing on the outdoor public spaces around me.
Nadia Lee Cohen
One of my favourite self portrait artists is Nadia Lee Cohen who uses a large collection of wigs and costumes to completely transform herself. In her project ‘Hello My Name Is’ she used discarded name tags that she had collected over the years, constructing a complete character and representing their identity by creating a self portrait dressed as that character, as well as photographing objects that may have been found on their possesion, which gives us a further sense of their personality and traits. This is my absolute favourite of all of her projects as she is completely unrecognisable in these images and has created a strong in-depth character who’s identity and personality is perfectly described within her portrait and personal objects, you almost feel as if you know the character and can construct your own version of their life story, the way they act and sound, which is a sign of well thought out character and effective photography. Nadia also works on halloween projects, again creating characters often with a somewhat surrealist feel to them, such as the bottom right image where she has used digitial manipulation to make her appear invisible. Mostly she uses makeup, prosthetics, wigs and costumes to create her characters and always manages to completely transform herself into someone else. I really aspire to create work like this in the future as I really enjoy character creation as well as working with a surrealist twist, however I need to build up a wig and costume collection to work with first as well as work with makeup artists to completely transform myself.
Cindy Sherman
Another Photographer working with self portraits and character creation is Cindy Sherman who, Like Nadia, uses makeup, wigs and costumes to comletely transform herself into a new person. Cindy works on creating a defined character, often using a single found object or item of clothing as inspiration for a character, creating a look to match. Again just by using these simple tools Cindy is able to really push her characters personality onto the viewer, as well as leaving room for the viewer to construct their own narrative about the persons life and mannerisms which comes from their own personal experience and the people that they may know or have encountered in their lives. I really like this aspect of collaboration between the artist and the viewer in creating a real three-dimensional character simply using costume, makeup and props.
My Own Character Creation Experiments
Working with creating a character is something I have attempted before in a previous project. I had created a detailed character based on the femme fatale trope in 1950s/60’s film noir, My character was Margaret Rose Johnson a wealthy murdering femme fatale housewife from the 1940’s with a dark history. I worked on finding and making objects that represented her traits and personality, displaying these to look like police files and evidence photo that help to portray her narrative and current situation as well as her past. Although this is a different take on character creation compared to the works of Cindy and Nadia I beleive it is still a good example of different ways in which you can represent a character or person using objects in place of portraits which i think could be useful to think about when thinking of how to represent the figure in this project.
Alternative Selfies
Last year I also worked on a book called ‘Photography As Such Has No Identity’ which explored the idea of identity and selfie cutlure in the digital age and also the identity of photography itself by producing a series of self portraits using different photographic processes. I began with using typical photographic processes to produce these selfies, starting with the smartphone, the digital camera and polaroids and then I began to experiment a bit more with using a flatbed scanner and film manipulation. I had to think outside of the box on how to represent myself when using more alternative forms of photography such as chemigrams, cyanotypes and photograms and I began to think deeply about what actually makes a persons unique identity, again I experimented with using personal objects but I also experimented with the use of finger prints as well as working on producing a recognisable portrait without using a camera. This will also be useful to this project as my research and work for this book has really taught me to think about alternative ways to represent an identity in non-typical ways and also to explore what identity is, helping me to represent the figure.
Recreating Famous Paintings
One idea that Alan mentioned in mondays meeting that peaked my interest was the idea of recreating famous paintings, This is a trend that has been all over social media for years and I’ve always enjoyed these types of works. These artists often recreate the paintings with a bit of a comedic twist which I really enjoy as it almost satirises these famous artworks and also shows how times have changed from when the art was originally produced. I thought it might be fun to have a go at working on this idea myself with some of my favourite artworks.
The Son Of Man – René Magritte
One artist I really enjoy is painter René Magritte who works mainly with surrealist themes and ideas, One of my favourite of oh his pieces is ‘The Son Of Man’ (pictured on the right right) which features a man in a bowler hat and suit with an apple covering his identity. I thought that this would be a fun painting to try and recreate and decided I wanted to do so with a bit of a modern day twist, I thought I would use a face mask in place of the apple in order to represent the times we are now living in and also commenting on the way in which the mask slightly obscures the identity of the person (much like the apple did in the original artwork). I used one of my partners suits to dress up like the man in the painting and took some self portraits to be used in my image, I also photographed a face mask on a bright green background in order to make it easier to cut the background out in photoshop. I brought all these images into photoshop and I also used the original background from the painting in order to make it easily recognisable as a remake of Magritte’s painting. I used a filter to acheive a textured effect so that the added images blended with the background. I’m really happy with how this came out, i think it works quite effectively as a re-imagining with a slightly comedic twist.
René Magritte ‘Not To Be Reproduced’
Another of my favourite René Magritte paintings is ‘Not To Be Reproduced’ which features a man looking in the mirror to see the back of himself. This is another of his very surrealist pieces and ive always really loved the impossibility of this image and the way this piece approaches the idea of the reproduction being something that tells us the truth in a really interesting way. In order to re-create this image I took some images of the back of my partners head and a large mirror on the wall, I then brought these into photoshop to create the effect of looking at the back of your head in the mirror. I created one peice with a similar colour scheme and layout to the original however I also created one with a bit of a modern psychedelic twist using a patterned background to create this surrealist illusion of staring into the void. Overall I think my photoshop skills could use a bit of work but i’m fairly happy with the outcome of these images, especially the one with the patterned background as this adds a new modern twist to the image.
Andy Warhol ‘The Marilyn Diptych‘
Another of my favourite artist is Andy Warhol, I love his unique pop art style with bright colours and the way he repurposes ordinary objects and images. I thought his work would be slightly easier to recreate as he they are not big elaborate sets, instead he uses regular everyday inspiration. One of his most famous pieces is The Marilyn Diptych images in which he re-colours an image of Marilyn Monroe in bright pop art colours. I wanted to have a go at recreating this image, I began playing around with makeup to try and match the bright blue eyeshadow and red lips and also had a go at trying to recreate her iconic hairstyle as best as I could (although this was difficult as I do not own any styling products, so I did the best I could) and then captured a self portrait of the finished look. I then brought this into photoshop and used the colour replacement tool to recolour the image in a similar style as well as adding a texturising filter to make this appear more like a painting. I think the final image works well as a recreated version of the original artwork however I havent really managed to bring my own twist to the artwork so I think this is something I could think about in order to improve this image.
Jeff Wall
One artist introduced to us during Alans presentation was photographer Jeff Wall who creates large scale staged images that tell a story, often displaying these as transparencies in front of illuminating light boxes, which I think really adds to the cinematic nature of his images as it looks like they’re appearing on a screen. In this piece of work ‘A view from an apartment’ Jeff depicts two women inside their apartment however the title pulls our focus to the view of Vancouver through the window. Jeff really blends the mundane everyday with the cinematic by depicting a very ordinary situation of two women in an apartment, one reading and the other doing chores however this whole scene has actually been staged with each object carefully placed to divert your focus around the image in the way that Wall intends for you to see it. I think his work is really interesting as unlike other artists I have been looking at who capture the aftermath of an event, Jeff wall captures that event midway through, and I also really enjoy his sue of colours and placing creating an aesthetically pleasing cinematic image.
Dave Lachapelle
‘Self Portrait As A house’ is a really interesting piece by photographer Dave Lachapelle in which he attempts to depict himself by staging a set of scenes involving figures doing different things in seperate rooms of a model house. Dave says that for this piece he was thinking of how the brain is seperated into different sections and invisioned this as seperate rooms in a house, representing different emotions and issues by staging a different scene in each room. This is a bit of a different way of thinking about a staged narrative as there are multiple narratives happening all of which add up to tell the story of one persons mind. I absolutely love this piece and I think its very clever, I really like the use of the model house, although im still unsure how this image was actually created, it works really well and is a really interesting piece of work with strong interesting narratives.
Gregory Crewson
Another artist working with staged narrative works is American photographer Gregory Crewson who again constructs large scenes, sometimes focusing on the seemingly mundane but also working on more conceptual narratives that makes the viewer ask questions. This piece (untitled 1998-2002) is one of his larger more conceptual pieces faeturing a completely flooded house with a woman floating, it is difficult to tell wether the woman is alive as she lays in a motionless position with a blank expression on her face, it makes the audience begin to question wether she is just floating in a daydream like state or if she is infact no longer living. The strangeness of this piece and the shock of seeing a seemingly mundane suburban home flooded with water makes the viewer wonder what could have possibly happened to cause this, and why in such a distressful event everything still seems so calm and still. Obviously this sort of shoot would require a large budget and wont be the sort of thing i would be able to work with i think its a really good example of adding something a little weird and conceptual to the mundane and creating a really interesting narrative.
Making My Staged Narrative Images
I wanted to have a go at staging my own narrative within an image using simple items I had around the house. The day that I made these it was quite dull so I had to focus my work around the windows in my house to ensure I had the best lighting available. I wanted to focus on depicting a scene without the presence of a person but alludes to the presence of a person and makes the viewer question what happened prior to the image being captured, and also question the identity of the person involved in the event. For this first image I wanted to depict the narrative of a woman rushing to get ready, I tried laying out my makeup in a way that looks like it was used in a rush and discarded. I defintely dont think this is my best work however I think it does portray the narrative that I intended fairly well and manages to provoke the audience to question the events that took place before the image was taken and also makes them question the identity of the person who was involved in these events.
I also had another go at trying to portray a narrative that alludes to the presence of a person or people without actually showing a figure within them. This time I focused on shoes and coats, staging them so that they appear to have been strewn across the floor, as if the two people who were wearing them removed them in a rush. It almost eludes to a typical scene of passion, like in films where clothes will be left across the floor leading to the bedroom, however this image features only clothes and shoes, making the viewer question what happened to cause these people to throw off their coats and shoes and leave them lying in such a state. Again I don’t think this is my best work by any means but I think it does the job on making the viewer question the events that transpired before the image was taken.
The last piece of work I produced for this weekly task had a bit more of a clear and familiar narrative. I tried to represent the narrative of a person accidentally cutting their finger whilst chopping potatoes, a narrative that is recognisable and familiar and I feel that the picture does well to display this story. Being that this is a really familiar narrative and happens to most people i think the narrative is very clear and most viewers should be able to come to the right conclusions as to what happened before this image was captured. Again I think that this image does well to allude to a human prescence and narrative without actually featuring an people within it which is an idea that I think I would lile to focus on for this project on the figure and the photograph. This weekly task was an interesting one and it really got me thinking about the different ways in which you can represent a simple narrative within an image.
Martin Parr
In his 1982 book ‘Bad weather’ Martin Parr explores the social landscape and national character of the UK during the varieties of challenging weather such as heavy rain or snow showers. The resulting images capture people going about their daily lives in a voyeuristic style, depicting how the people of britain navigate their environments during difficult weather. I like this voyeuristic style of street photography as you often manage to truly capture the subjects personality if they havent seen the camera and do not become concious of it, changing their behavior for the camera. I think its important to consider the difference in the style and reality of the images when taking images in this voyueristic style compared to capturing a subjects who is aware of the camera in advance.
Mark Hobbs
Mark Hobbs is a south Manchester based photographer who being bored of the lockdown decided to set up a backdrop outside of his house and asked random passers by to pose for a photo, as well as to go home and email him their lockdown story which is displayed alongside their portrait. The images show how daily life continues albeit in a slightly different way (sometimes with gloves and masks) and the resiliance of the human race with most of the subjects smiling and looking happy despite what is happening at the time of the image. These images were taken with the subjects permission giving them time to pose and present themselves in the way they wish to be seen and so we get a less true and more staged depiction of daily life.
My Portraits Of Strangers
I was a little bit nervous about doing this project, I’ve been struggling a little bit with my anxiety recently so the thought of approaching strangers and asking to take their picture seemed completely beyond me, so instead I decided to go with the voyeuristic approach to taking photos of strangers. I took my olympus OM20 out loaded with a roll of black and white film and went to the city centre and started snapping away on the busy streets, trying to isolate people within the images and avoiding larger crowds so I could focus on one or two subjects per image. A product of my anxiety, these images of people were mostly taken as I was walking behind them which allowed me to avoid having to approach or speak to anyone, This wasn’t really an intentional thing but I think it actually makes these street portraits really interesting as we dont see any of these peoples faces, they remain strangers to both me and the audience and we have to look for clues in their clothing and body shapes in order to figure out who they are.
According to the Tate’s definition, Flâneur is a French term meaning ‘stroller’ or ‘loafer’ used by nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life. In Photography the Flaneur describes a n artist who focuses on routes and mapping, capturing images along the way, their work becomes more about the journey itself with the images being a documentation of this route. The route itself will not be an ordinary route, the definition of the word Flaneur is ‘Stroller’ or ‘loafer’ and often the artist will fnd unique and interesting ways to explore the world in different ways, such as finding where a map stops and going to see what is at that place or using a dice to decide which way to turn, all while capturing images along the way.
Mark Power
For his project ’26 Different Endings’ Mark Power travelled to and photographed areas that fekk off the edge of the maps. in 2003 using his A-Z map of london he visited the areas on the edges of london at which the maps stopped, photographing them and displaying them in his book ’26 different endings’. The resulting images serve to document these areas which for one reason or another have not been included in the A-Z map, although these are not really images of very scenic or beautiful landcapes they are still intersting to look at and give the viewer a chance to explore these environments that have been discluded from the map.
Sophie Calle
French Artist Sophue Calle’s book ‘Venetian Suite‘ consists of black and white photographs, texts and maps that document a journey the artist made to Venice in order to follow a man, referred to only as Henri B., whom she had previously briefly met in Paris. This work records Calle’s attempts to track her subject over the course of his thirteen-day stay in Venice. She investigates and stalks him, enlisting the help of friends and acquaintances she makes in the city. This work counts as Flaneur as she was more focused on the following of the subject rather than looking just for nice places to photograph, the images serve to document this strange journey. It’s a little bit of taboo project as the artist actually stalks another person but the resutling work is very interesting to look at.
Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh undertakes lots of long perfomance based projects, like his ‘One Year Performance 1981-1982’ in which he spent the entire year on the streets without entering a single building. This is more performance art than it is photography although he did exhibit a series of photograohs that were captured during this year. Again this is another example of an artist throwing themselves out of their comfort zones with the actual images not being the focus of the project, but the journey. I think It’s crazy what Tehching does, throwing himself into these different situations for such long periods of time but the resulting images are fascinating.
My Experimentation With Flâneur
I decided to make some tools so that I could go for a walk in my area and randomise the turns I make and the images I take. Firstly I made a dice out of card with the options forward, left and right so that whenever I come to a turning I can roll the dice to determine which way I go, allowing the decision to be completely random and down to chance and meaning that I will explore new places and take routes that I otherwise wouldn’t have taken. I also decided to use colours as triggers for capturing an image, depending on the area that I am in I will look for these colours on either cars or peoples tops and jackets. When I see one of these colours I will stop and take an image according to the instructions that match the colour. These will decide if i take an image of the nearest building, plant or person, or if i will simply pint the camera infront of me, behind me, left or right and just capture what is there. This will completely randomise my images and cause me to look at my surroundings differently and capture images of things that I would not usually pay any attention to.
Results
I decided to take an old compact film camera with me to shoot this task as it was a drizzly week and I didnt want to risk getting any of my other cameras wet, unfortunately after taking 4 pictures my camera decided to automatically rewind itself and I was unable to reload it as the film leader had gone inside the roll. So I ended up just shooting some snapshot images on my phone, It was definitely interesting to take pictures in this way where I wasn’t really thinking about the composition of the image so much and was more focused on following my flaneur instructions, there were a few images that came out quite well actually but the majority weren’t great, however I didn’t really spend as much time out as I should have so next time if I were to do it for longer I would probably have better results to choose from.
Street view and stock images are quickly becoming accessible and useful tools for photographers, from using stock images to create new collages or pieces of work to using google street view to walk the streets of places that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to visit or to scout locations. I think a lot of its charm comes from both its pure accessiblility and scope with 98% of the world captured using google satelites and over 10 million miles of street view to trawl through, but also from the reality of the images as they are being captured with no photographer interference, Google street view uses mounted cameras on top of cars automatically and continually taking images meaning that when looking at people caught on street view they often do not notice the image being taken or notice it last minute and are caught off guard, maeaning that we get a more realistic representation of the world when compared to holiday snaps.
Michael Wolf
In 2010 Photographer Michael Wolf released a book called ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ which featured 72 pages of images taken from google street view of odd moments or mistakes. Michael spent hundreds of hours scouring the streets around the world searching for the bizarre and when he found something that caught his eye he would set up his camera infront of the computer and take a photo of it, causing this screen pixelation in the image that I think really adds to the overall aesthetic, reminding the viewer where the image came from and its digital nature by adding that surveilance look. I think this is a really interesting way to use this tool, the nature of google street views image capture is quite inconspicious much like CCTV and therefore is able to catch people unaware of the cameras presence, therefore capturing true human nature and showing us a new side to documentary photography.
Mishka Henner
Mishka Henner’s project ‘feedlots’ Features a series of extra large prints made up from hundreds of high-res screenshots froom google earth depicting some of the large animal feedlots across americal. Mishka states that when he first came across these feedlots he had no idea what he was looking at, the large scale satelite images looked almost microbiral covered in tiny black and white dots he states that ‘These images reflect a blueprint and a horror that lie at the heart of the way we live.’. I think these images are amazing, the sheer scale and the difference in colours of the land make it look like such an alien landscape and I definitely understand his description of them looking ‘Microbiral’. These images really do well to depict the pure scale and devistation of the animal farming industry, seeing these lands from above in a scale in which we would never usually see it does make it appear kind of alien and unrecognisable to us which I think adds to the message behind this piece in the way that this is such a large issue that isnt often recognised or seen by people.
Doug Rickard
A New American Picture is a 2010 book by Doug Rickard which features images taken from google street view from all over America. Doug spent over 4 years using google earth to virtually explore the streets of America searching for forgotten, economically devastated, and largely abandoned places, composing scenes of urban and rural decay before capturing these by mounting a camera in front of his computer screen and capturing the images, redefining the idea of American street photography. His images often picture people who are aware of the camera however their faces are blurred masking their identities and giving them anonymity, which is a feature of google street view which can be quite interesting to explore. His images do appear like common street photography images when looking at their composition however the slight pixelation and blurred faces give remind us of the surveilance nature of the images and their origins and I think it’s really interesting how he crosses these boundaries.
My Street View Work
I took a bit of inspiration from Mishka Henner by looking at areil views of farmlands over america. I began with America because I find it’s a really interesting country to look at on Google Earth as there are a lot of different terrains and colours and also a high percentage of agricultural and farmlands, as I began to explore I started to notice these large patches of square and circle shapes of different colours which just looked so alien but beautiful to me. I became really fascinated with all these shapes and colours that reminded me of vector art or abstract shape paintings and I just started searching over america capturing sets of these colourful shapes.
USA Shape Images
I had a lot of fun experimenting with Google Earth in this way, I would like to maybe develop this idea a bit further and work more using the satelite imagery on Google Earth as well as actually delving into the street view feature a bit more.
Initial Reading From Key Texts
Image and Identity – Wells, L. (ed.) (2002) The photography reader. London: London Routledge, 2003. – In this text Liz Wells discusses many diferent interesting ideas and explanations around representation, She states ‘representation simultaneously depicts and symbolises’, and i think this is a statement that is important to think about when working with the figure and the photograph, in order to properly represent a person and their identity and narrative you must think about not only depicting their appearance through portraiture but also using items and makeup to symbolise aspects of their character. Wells also discusses representation within domestic photography, she states that domestic or personal photographs ‘relate to individual experience and may operate, like dreams, to condense or displace, in effect offering a stand in for a risk experience’. This idea of photographs condensing and storing memory like dreams might be quite an interesting idea to explore within my work, I think this statement is especially true today with the popularity of the smartphone which offers it’s user the chance to capture every single moment of their daily lives and re-live them over and over again. I’ve always been quite interested in the discussion around memory and photographs, in this text Wells writes that ‘Personal memory and photography are inextricably intertwined, it may be difficult to distinguish between that which is remembered directly and that which is remembered due to the continuing existence of a photograph which acts as an aide-memoir’, I think this is especially true when you look think of childhood memories, Many of what I beleived to be raw childhood memories stored in my brain, stem from photographs that appear in family photo albums, which leads me to question how much of those memoires are real and how much have been constructed by brain using this photo as a reference. I think this could be a really interesting idea to explore and could be something to think about when working on this project, Another interesting idea to take from this is the advantages of this ‘aide-memoir’ and how photographs can help you recover those lost memories, again this could eb an interesting idea to work with. However in this text Liz also discusses the ways in which the camera can lie ‘The photograph masks family relations which obtain behind the image’ – she refers to family photo albums and how they are fileld with celebrations of births, weddings and parties but do not give space to death, divorce and the everyday banal, only showing the best parts and highlights. A statement that echoes throughout social media today where peoples feeds are filled with these life highlights, only showing the exciting and happiness, the idea of a photo album filled with the mundane and downsides of life could again be another interesting concept to work with.
The Photographic Narrative – Cotton, C. (2014) The photograph as contemporary art. 03rd edn. London, United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson. – In this tect Charlotte Cotton discusses storytelling in contemporary art photography, looking at the techniques artists use to portray a strong narrative within a single image. She talks about photos which make obvious references to fables, fairytales and modern myths that are already prart of our collective consciousness but ‘Whose meaning is reliant on our investing the image within our own trains of narrative and psychological thought’, for the CP unit i chose to write about this very idea of the way in which viewers bring their own interpretations to artworks, especially when that artwork is depicting something non- fictional such as a political issue or something within our collective conciousness such as a famous fairy tale, viewers will make their interpretation of this art piece based on their own knowledge of the subject. This is an idea that I would really like to work on, as of yet I haven’t figured out an interesting way to depict this visually but it may be something to think about in relation to the figure.
Cotton also discusses the single image narrative or ‘Tableau-vivant photography’, echoing ideas I discussed in my essay about these images functioning like figurative artworks as we ‘rely on the same cultural ability to recognise a combination of characters and props as a pregnant moment in a story’, unlike traditional narrative photography which is played out as a sequence of images, tableau photography loads its narrative into one frame meaning that the artist has to use tricks to guide the viewer through the timeline of the narrative. Charlotte discusses ‘Insomnia’ (1994) by Jeff Wall (pictured right) who uses angles and objects to direct the viewer through the picture with the layout of the interior acting as clues to the events that could have lead up to this moment. Using lighting, certain angled objects and scenery you help to push the viewer to visually interpret the image in the specific way that you have set out in order for them to follow the narrative in the correct timeline and come to the relevant conclusions. This information could be really helpful to this project, I’m unsure as of yet if I will be using this Tableau style to represent the figure however it is important to understand some ways to guide the viewer through an image in order to understand the narrative behind it, although as discussed previously, viewers use their own knowledge and experience when interpreting artworks and so not everyones narrative will be the same as the intended.
Another artists work that Cotton discusses is Phillip-Lorca diCorcia’s ‘Hollywood’ series (pictured on the right 2nd down), in which he he wandered santa monica boulevard and asked the men he met to pose for him. The title of each photograph tells you the mans name, his age, where he was born and how much he was paid to pose, inviting a story telling process within the viwers mind. This is a classic example of how the title of an image can help a viewer to form a narrative around the subject, capturing a portrait of a person will always lead to the viewer trying to construct this persons character and story however with the added information in the title it gives the viewer more information to work with, that may help them formulate a more accurate narrative. I think its really important when working with the figure or portraits and narrative, it’s important to consider what information you are providing to your viewer through the use of makeup, costume, props, scenery e.t.c and this use of information in the title is a really good idea to consider when thinking of how to provide the audience with more information.
Charlotte also discusses Frances Kearney’s series ‘Five People Thinking The Same Thing’ (pictured right, 3rd down) which is a series of 5 images showing 5 different people undertaking simple everyday activities facing away from the camera so that their face is not visible. The title eludes that each of the people shown is cinnected by a single thought however as their faces are not shown it is left up to the viewers imagination to draw out potential explanations themselves, once again leaving the narrative up to personal experince from the viewer. As the person is not the focus of the images it is left up to the interior space and objects to connect with the character and to give the viewer clues as to who they might be. This is a really interesting concept and one I may consider working with, instead of focusing on the figure itself for this project I could instead make the figure itself just a small part of the image and instead rely on setting and objects to tell the story of the person in the image.
Another piece of work that Cotton discusses is Desiree Dolron’s ‘Cerca Paseo De Marti’ (pictured right, bottom), this image depicts a classroom in Cuba in which empty chairs face the impassioned political statements chalked on the blackboard and the portrait of a young Fidel Castro. Charlotte states that ‘the photo encourages us to mentally fill the visual absence of people through traces of their actions and thoughts’. This is a room which in the time before the image was taken events were happening and people filled the room, this is obvious from the classroom setting and writing on the chalkboard, the hints of human presence invite us to begin to question what happened in this room before it was empty, our brains use the objects and furnishings in the image as clues to paint a mental picture of the narrative that took place before the image was taken. I really like this idea of looking for human traces left behind, objects laid out freshly used in a scene that invites the viewer to construct their own past tenss narrative for the scene, I think this is especially relevant now with the lockdowns and the usually bustling streets, cafe’s and restaraunts completely devoid of life. This is an idea I may work with for this oriject as rather than focusing on the figure I will instead be focusing on the lack of the figure and the traces that humans leave behind.
The Portrait and Identity Bate, D. (2016) Photography: The key concepts, Second edition. London, United Kingdom: Berg Publishers – In this text David Bate discusses identity within portrait photography. Portraits are more than just a picture, David states that ‘Portraits fix our identity in what is essentially an art of description’, Images in the public sphere such as passport photos are used to identify us, the portrait aims to say ‘ this is how you look’. Portraits within the painting world were already popular purchases among the privelleged, but with the invention of photography the capturing of a portrait became a much quicker process and quickly rose to popularity. In the early stages most portraits were taken in a studio as good lighting and developing chemicals and tools needed to be on hand, these studios were often filled with costumes, accesories and props which offered the sitter a chance to transform themselves, as Bate puts it ‘The studio Context Provided the oppurtunity for people to see themselves in a picture as they wished to appear’. This is a statement that is still true today, although not as much in the case of candid shots, with photography we only see what is being placed in front of the camera, the subject can complete change their identity, expressing this through choice of costume, props and pose without givivng away who they really are, this could be an interesting theme to explore. The photographic revolution of the 19th century changed our social relationship with the image, David words this perfectly in his text – ‘It became no longer a privellege to be pictured but, as John Togg’s book title puts it, it became ‘the burden of representation’. Portrait photos were no longer just for the wealthy or privelleged, the portrait was now becoming a means of identification of the population, even those who did not want to be identified, such as criminals. Today our portaits are used to verify our identity, we even have facial recognition software which guard access to our private date, our identities have become marked by visual differences in images, this idea of our visual image governeing our identity may be another interesting idea to think about when working on this project. Images have become a utalitarian gathering of information, quantifying, qualifying and evaluating the population in recording systems, David talks about the theories and ideas of Francis Galton who took took this idea of identification even further, he theorised that if you took portraits of severeal criminals charged with the same crime (such as murder), and put all of these portraits together that composite picture would show the key facial features and common traits of a murdered. It is an interesting concept, although extremely infactual, it could make an interesting idea or concept to think about when representing identity. David also discusses the elements of a portrait, breaking them down into 4 parts; the face (personal appearence), the pose (manner and attitude), the clothing (social class, sex, fashion and cultural values) and the location (social scene of the person). Each of these component is important to a successful portrait image although difefrent sub-genres may vary their emphasis on each component and each element effects another in the overall potential for meaning, For example, the passport image has a plain background in order to emphasize and bring scrutiny to the facial features and appearance, without focusing on the location or even the clothing of the person it removes potential social connotations. I think its really important to understand the different components of what make up a successful portrait and to understand how each of these can work together and they ways each can be utilised to put across a particualar narrative about the figure in the image. Bate also talks about the idea of recognition within photographic portraits, discussing ideas put forward by Frued on the human compulsion to repeat and the pleasure we derive from in repitition which he describes as being driven by this sense of recognition of something familiar. He states that our brains derive pleasure and enjoyment from this act of recognition and applies this to portrait photography in the way that we feel hapiness when looking at images of loved ones and celebrities that we recognise, working with this idea of recognition and the pleasure derived from familiarity could be another interesting concept to consider. Another interesting concept that David discusses is the idea of projection within portrait photography, where ‘The viewer casts off uncomfortable feelings which arise within themselves and relocates them within another person or thing’. I beleive that with most forms of art there is a certain level of audience projection, when trying to interpret an artwork the audience will bring their own knowledge and experiences to it, often projecting their own meanings and emotions onto a piece that may not have been originally intended. I think this is also true in portrait photography, upon seeing an image of someone the audience tries to paint a picture of who that person is (their mannerisms, traits, life story e.t.c) and again will bring their own knowldedge and experience to this, if the subject haooens to share some visual characteristics with someoene that they know or features of a common cinema character trope, the audience may begin to associate these real life concious experinces and apply them to this imagined personalit of the subject of the image. Exploring this idea of familiarity and projection within portrait photography may be another interesting angle to consider for this project.
Further Artist Research
Shizuka Yokomizo
Shizuka Yokomizo ‘Dear Stranger’ 1998-2000 – For this project Shizuka Yokomizo posted letters to houses in her neighbourhood in London asking the strangers inside to stand in their windows to be photographed. She made sure to capture these images at night so that the subjects could not see her through the window, only their own reflection ensuring that the subject and the artist remained strangers to eachother, exploring the relationship between artist and stranger and the strange meeting place of the two. I think that this idea of one stranger giving another stranger a small yet quite intimate glimpse into their life by allowing themselves to be captured existing in their homes is a really interesting but also quite a strange one. It is also an idea that is very relevant now with the isolation people are feeling within lockdown being trapped inside their homes so this could be interesting to consider when thinking about capturing the figure in a public space in 2021 without breaking covid restrictions.
Richard Long
Richard Long ‘A Line Made By Walking’ 1967 – Richard Long made this piece during a journey of hitchiking from St Martins to Bristol he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape. This piece looks at the relationship between humans and nature and the way in which humans impact and leave their mark on their surroundings, which is an idea I have been thinking about working with on this project. It also is an image without the presence of any humans or figures however the image eludes to the presence of human beings, the image shows markings left behind by a human leaving the viewer to imagine what happened before the image was taken and also to image the person or people that left these marks behind. I really like this idea of working with the traces that humans leave behind, using objects set up in a scene in such a way that it pushes the viewer to create their own narrative around the events that transpired before the image was taken, and to also picture a human in their minds even though no person is seen in the image itself, this is something that I think I would like to work with on this project.
Richard Wentworth
Richard Wentworth ‘Making Do And Getting By’ 2015 – Richard’s book is filled with images of what he referes to as ‘street sculptures’ which are infact just a series of images of objects originaly intended for one purpose being used as a temporary solution to a problem. I think that although these images look almost like regular observations of the world what it really shows is human creativity as well as care and craftmanship. Again this is another work that does not feature any humans in it, only objects, however there is still this human presence to the photos, pushing the viewer to imagine the person behind this creativity and improvisation, these images tell a story. I think this is another interesting way to elude to the figure without including the figure itself within your images which is something I would like to work with for this project.
Daniel Blaufuks
Daniel Blaufuks Attempting Exhaustion – Between 2009 and 2016 Daniel photographed a table and a window in his kitchen in Lisbon, capturing over 100 images of the same subject but each being completely unique. He was interested by the way in which things repeated themselves without truly repeating themselves, he was able to see the similarities in the way the light reacted with objects throughout the changing seasons and the familiar objects making reappearances. I think that these images really serve as a glimpse into the artists life and memory as we are shown the objects used throughout the years that may mark particular occasions in their life, although we do not know what these ocassions necessarily are. This is again another project that does not use the human figure but eludes to the presence of humans in a very intimate way showing simple table set-ups occuring through the artists everyday life and leaving the audience to construct the narrative of the artists life throughout these images.
John Coplans
One of the first ideas that popped into my head when thinking about the figure and the photograph was to think about and focus on the human body, One artist doing this is photographer John Coplans. He created a large body of work centred around the idea of self portraits, isolating and focusing on certain body parts and the folds, curves and shapes that the human body can wait. John often uses quite a tight crop and close focus so often the part of the body being shown isn’t instantly recognisable and becomes more of an abstract shape almost dehumanizing the body. I think this is a really interesting idea to work with, the body is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the figure and it could be interesting to show this in a more abstract way presenting the body itself as pieces of art.
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Woodman was a young American photographer who produced more than 800 images mostly featuring herslef and her body before sadly passing commiting suicide aged only 22. Francesca suffered with mental health issues and seems to portray this a lot within her work creating these beautiful but eerie black and white images. Like this untitled image featuring a woman sitting naked on a chair but with only her bottom half showing and a silhouette of her body laying before her in the dust. I’ve always really liked this image, I feel that it really represents the disconnect you can sometimes feel from yourself and your body when suffering from mental health issues, while also also alluding towards the anonymity that can also be felt by not including the face within this image. By not including the face the figure in the scene almost becomes unrecognisable and anonymous to the audience, I think both this anonymity and depiction of mental health issues is something that I could possibly explore within this project.
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander produced a book in 1970 titled ‘Self Portraits’ which was filled with black and white images that explored the artists own prescence within them. Lee finds interesting and non-typical ways to shoot self portraits, from capturing his reflection in shop windows or car mirrors to capturing his own shadow on another persons back, often meaning that the focus in not solely on him but on his surroundings as becomes just another figure ominously present within the images. He takes the ide of self portrait and gives it a slightly surrealist twist which I think is really interesting and makes for a more interesting take that seems to give us more information about the artist than a typical self portrait would as we see his surroundings and sometimes, or so it feels, into his mind. This is a concept that might be suitable to work with for this project, with all the covid restrictions a self portrait might be the way to go as I am readily available to work with, and it could be interesting to try to explore my own presence within the images I take in this way.
Yves Klein
This famous image captured by French photographer Yves Klein is another one that peaked my interest, for this image Yves stitched together two images in order to create a surrealist image of a man leaping from a great height looking as if he is going to fall flat onto the street. I think that this is is a really interesting example of early photo manipulation and to me almost represents the feats and also limitations of the human body, as it shows the strength in his body to leap but also the impending doom of injury is thrust upon the audience, as humans we know that our bodies would be damaged from a fall like this. I think it could be quite interesting to work with this concept of the weakness and strength of the human body by creating precarious situations within images using photo manipulation and multiple image stitching.
Christian Marclay
Visual artist Christian Marclay created a series of short videos created from thousands of images he had captured of discarded chewing gum, straws and cigarettes on the streets. He soent lots of time gathering these images and then edited them into a fast changing but smooth sequence/montage creating short animation style videos that explore this theme of ‘litter’. One of the strongest ideas I’ve had for this project is to look for traces left behind by humans (the figure) and to capture these in order to allude to an event and the presence of the figure without actually showing a person/figure. I think the idea of working with litter could work for this project as this is often something left behind by humans, and the types of litter left behind can give you a little bit of information as to the personality or traits of the person who left it behind causing the audience to begin to formulate a mental image of the person or person’s responsible.
Jon Rafman
In 2011 Jon Rafman Published a book named ‘The Nine Eyes Of Google Street View’ which featured a series of isolated images taken from google street view of interesting people or events that caught the artists eye. It’s really interesting how the artist takes these images that have been captured by software rather than a person thats purpose is purely to serve as a documentation, collecting them and displaying them with a common theme and turning them into a piece of art. I also think the anonymity aspect of this is really interesting as the people featured in the images have their faces blurred, both the artist and the audience have no idea who they are, this also goes both ways as the people featured in the image will have no idea that they have become involved in an art piece, and probably may not have even know their picture had been taken. I’ve always been quite interested in working with these non-human forms or AI photography, I think theres something quite interesting in the outcome of an image when the person (or in this case software) have no artistic purpose and are not trying to capture an aesthetic image, I feel that images produced in this way often manage to catch interesting events in a way that perhaps a photographer may not have thought of. Working with street view and finding interesting people within it with a connecting theme could be a good idea to work with for this project as it’s both interesting and covid friendly.
Claude Cahun
During my first module I had a go at working with collage and I really enjoyed it, I am considering working with collage within this project as I feel it is a good medium to explore identity and the figure. One collage artist I really like is Claude Cahun who often works a lot with gender and sexual identity. These images were taken from her book ‘Aveux non avenus’ which consisted of collages, poems and philosophical thoughts and ideas that served almost as an autobiography. Her collages have a really surreal feel to them with isolacted limbs and body parts plastered all over the page along with text and random objects that all work together to explore ideas around gender and identity. Her use of mixing both male and female body parts within her collages gives it a very androgynous feel very much representing the artist herself and makes the audience consider and think about gender identities. I think this is a really good example of how to successfully reoresent gender identity within collage and I really like her surrealist use of body parts, as I am looking to represent my own identity through collage I must also consider my own gender identity so it was helpful to see how another artist would tackle this.
Alma Haser
Alma Haser is a London based photographer who is also working with interesting collage techniques that involves the figure. She is dyslexic and often represents this within her work like in her puzzle style pice in which the pieces are slightly mixed up representing the way in which her brain may get things a little mixed up sometimes. In her series cosmic surgery she folded images into origami style patterns placing them on top of the original portrait image to create this surrealist portrait image creating a new aspect of the subjects identity. I love her physical collage style, she very much thinks outside of the box making these practical effects that are very unique and eyecatching but also work with the overall narrative of the piece. I think a lot of these collage styles would work really well for representing different parts of my own identity so I may think about experimenting with this use of puzzle pieces as well as origami.
Victor Ruano
Victor Ruano is another artist creating really interesting works with collage that include the figure and seem to discuss ideas of identity and human nature. He often shows flowers bursting out of women or sometimes even men which to me alludes to the idea of inner femininity or perhaps the human nature itself. In another collage a young childs face is removed revealing a galaxy underneath which to me could perhaps represent the inner wonder that a child has. I reall like victors style and i think these are both good examples of collages that discuss both outer and inner identity which is something I’d quite like to look into for this project.
Ideas Brainstorm From Reading And Research
I really enjoyed experimenting with collage in the last unit and wanted to continue to delve further into this of this project, although I am still unsure on the actual theme or message I want to go with within the theme of the figure.
Collage Artists And Their Techniques
Alma Haser – Alma often works with paper folding techniques to create strange surrealist illusions. She has also created some very surrealist portraits by printing an image onto puzzle pieces and re-arranging them so that the portrait is still fairly recognisable but scrambled. I think this could be an interesting process to work with in order to create some surreal and scrambled self portraits.
Dilcia Giron – Dilcia is a collage artits using paper and printed images to create some very surreal environments. She often mixed both the figure and landscape creating dream-like scenarios, as well as cutting up images of people into odd shapes, swapping body parts with architecture or objects to make them appear starnge and alien. I really like this surrealist and dream-like style and the way in which she creates these scenarios that that would never realistically exist.
Damien Blottiere – Damien is another artist creating very surreal portraits by slicing patterns out of portraits and then layering multiple portraits underneath. The resulting images are a strange mish-mash that still ends up being recognisable as a portrait however seems to blur the identity of the subject, turning them into an alien-like ensemble of multiple personalities.
Annegret Soltau – Annegret also works with printed images and creating these strange portraits made up from multiple images (sometimes of different people) however rather than using layering she instead stitches her images together using thick black thread. The results are frankeinstein style images that transform the old images into a surgical looking artwork. I think this could be an interesting technique to work with in order to mess around with the figure or body making it look bizzare and surreal.
Alex Eckman Lawn – Alex is another artist working with paper, printed images and layering. He creates both surrealist portraits and environments by cutting out shapes and making multiple layers of colourful images and patterns, making it appear that inner layers are being revealed, like you are being led down a tunnel to a new world. I think there is a lot to be done with this layering technique and I’d like to try it myself.
Melinda Gibson – Melinda also works with printed images, creating these surrealist enviroments in which the scene and background itself is ordinary enough however each of the figures in the image has been cut out and replaced with plants and flowers, creating a silhouette filled with flora and fauna. I love that the resulting images create another fictional world within reality that gives the figures anonymity.
Lucas Simoes – Lucas also works with layering, sometimes printing images with different colour gradients, cutting strange shaoes out of them and layering them on top of eachother. This results in very colourful and surreal portraits that again are still recognisable as portraits however the layering has muddled up or covered some of the facial features meaning that we cant tell who the person actually is.
Julie Cockburn – Julie works with both landscapes and portraits giving them a strange surrealist twist by painting, reassembling and embroidering. In this image she has created a dream-like environment by taking an ordinary image of a landscape and embroidering colourful circles on top of it, mixing reality with the nonsensical in a really interesting way.
Micah Danges – Micah is another artist working with layering but in a more simplistic way. He takes printed images of landscapes including a body of water, cutting the body of water out and layering it on top of brightly coloured paper to create these dream-like colourful environments.
Yorch Miranda – Yorch works with collage in a completly different way. He prints out images of people, placing them in surreal situations within his own apartment, making them appear like tiny people trying to navigate the human world. I think this a really interesting take on the photomontage concept and i really like the fictional and often comical situations that he creates.
Lucas Simoes Experiments
I really liked Lucas Simoes style of layering images in different colours creating a very surreal and textured final image. I wanted to have a go at working with his layering method myself using an old self portrait I had taken. I printed this portrait in black and white as well as multiple different colours onto plain paper. I then drew out a stencil of wiggly shapes to make sure that when cutting each coloured image the patterns would match up, and used a craft knife to cut these shapes out. I layered each image on top of eachother with the black and white one on top, with sections missing that reveal the tunnel-like layers beneath. It was really fun working with this process, these arent the neatest images but i think the process works well and I am considering using it for this project.
My Project
I knew I defintely wanted to work with collage for this project and I was really inspired by the works of Lucas Simeos, Alex Eckman-Long and Julie Cockburn, however I was struggling to come up with an idea that would link these surrealist style collages with the figure and the studio. I knew I was a little limited due to Covid restrictions and would need to be shooting at home and shooting either myself or objects and places within my home so I was trying to think of an interesting way to combine these things with collage. I settled on a theme of isolation and depicting what lockdown 3.0 has been like for me, with a little bit of a surrealist twist. I wanted to try and represent the emotions and feelings that come during lockdown, using the surrealist collage styles to represent these non-visual things such as daydreaming or feeling trapped, blending reality with the surreal. I purchased a pack of coloured card (red, yellow, blue and green) as I thought these colours looked very well together and are also quite psychedellic looking colours which will hopefully work well with my surrealist collage style.
Taking Images
I spent a couple of days taking images of myself doing things that I have been passing the time with during lockdown, like reading, listening to records or looking out of the window as well as some regular self portraits in order to use collage to represent how I feel and think about myself during lockdown. I’m not 100% happy with my images as they are, mainly due to the setting as my house isnt very aesthetically pleasing and it was difficult to move things out of the way and take the images that I had in my head however I think I did well with what I had. I wanted to keep these main images black and white to represent the mundane reality of lockdown, juxtaposed against colourful card and images that represent the intensity and sometimes surrealist nature of these feelings.
Photoshop Mock-Ups Of Collage Ideas
For this project idea I took inspiration from the colourful circles of Julie Cockburns work for half of the images and inspiration from the layering techniques of Lucas Simoes and Alex Eckman Lawn for the others.
I decided to use one of the regular self portraits with these layered circles revealing other portraits from different angles and in different colours undernath. During lockdown I have spent a lot of time with myself often otherthinking and psycho-analysing myself and i wanted to represent this by creating a muddled portrait of multiple faces.
I took an image of myself on my bed looking as if I am daydreaming (which I can often be found doing on a daily basis), and layered this on top of a stock illustartion of space in order to represent how these outlandish day dreams can sometimes be blurred with reality. Im not 100% on the use of the space image but I have a few back up images prepared of the ocean and jungle to play around with.
I captured another image of myself reading a book which I often do to pass the time, and layered this over an image of the jungle in order to represent how reading a book can transport you to a completely different place and how sometimes these daydreams and reality can become blurred. Again I have printed of some spare images of environments to play around with to see which looks better.
I also took an image of myself listening to records, again this is something I do often and layered this over an image of the de la soul album 3 feet high and rising (as this is one of my favourites) in order to represent myself becoming completely immersed in the music.
I wanted to use another one of the regular self portraits to represent the way in which you can be stuck in the layers of your mind and how you sometimes try to break down your whole self when spending time alone. I plan to cut away a section of the face, layering downward to reveal a skull with layers of coloured card cut into thin squiggly lines, almost like a thick jungle of vines that you have to break through to get to the centre of your being.
I’m repeating the same process with layering down and including layers of coloured card covering the insides. this is another interpretation of the same idea as the previous image, exploring the way in which during lockdown I have been forced to asess myself and almost like get to know myself more, getting to the core of who I am
I also wanted to try and depict how during lockdown you feel trapped inside, not able to go out and explore. The lockdown rules act like a barricade keeping you inside. Im using an image of myself sitting looking out of the window, with the coloured card wiggly lines acting almost like bars on a prison cell, keeping me trapped inside but with the bright colours being a more surrealist way of showing this.
With this image I am again working with this same idea of feeling trapped inside, but this time from the inside looking out. Again I am using the coloured card wiggly layers to visualise this feeling of isolation and being stuck inside, acting as a barricade keeping me inside.
Making My Collages
In order to create these circle style layered images I printed off the main black and white image as well as the images I would be layering in red, green, yellow and blue. I also printed off a stencil using the digital mockups I made so that i knew which circle was was for which colour layer. I layered this stencil on top of my images and cut out each corresponding circle for each layer, removing them one by one so that when all papers were layered on top of eachother the circle holes would reveal the coloured cricels below. Once they were all cut I layered them up on top of eachother, sticking them together before scanning them in and slightly retouching them in photoshop just to keep the colours vibrant. Cutting out so many circles was hard words and I’m not the neatest with my craft knife so these aren’t as neat as I’d like.
In Order to create my coloured card squiggly line images I printed off all of the black and white images i would be using as well as a stock image of a skeleton and an image I had drawn on photoshop that looks like insides. I also printed out some stencils for each colour of card on each image so that I knew exactly how to cut my lines so that they would look good layered on top of eachother. Once I had cut all of my images and all of my layers of coloured card I layered them up on top of eachother and stuck them together to create my final images. I then scanned these in and slightly edited them in photoshop just to boost the colours and make the images vibrant. Again this was a lot of cutting out with the craft knife and I’m not the neatest so theyre a little messier than I would like but I think they’re interesting.
After making all of my collages I ended up changing my mind on the image of me reading, I felt that this was the least strongest image out of all of them and so I decided to make a new circle collage to replace it. I decided to make another piece focusing on the body so that there was a kind of symmetry between the circle collages and squiggly line collages, with one focusing on the face, one on the body and two on my surroundings. I just think that this makes all of the images and the project as a whole more balanced.
Final Images
Presenting Images
I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with different sequences and spacing, I felt like this project is almost in two halves because I have used two different collage styles for my images and I wanted to find a way to make the whole thing connect more and for the narrative to be more clear. I settled on turning this project into a zine, creating a front cover that explains the idea behind these collages and using text pages in between images to give each collage more context. I ended up putting the collages into pairs as I had created them in such a way that they all matched in pairs and the whole project is quite symmetrical. I decided to call my zine ‘Lockdown 3.0’ and to kind of follow a survival guide format in a bit of a satirical way using my collages as demonstrations of each step. I chose a stencil prison style font for my text pages as I felt like this helped to put across the theme of lockdown and isolation.
Making My Zine
I wanted to have a go at making a little paper knock-up of my zine just so that I could see what it would look like physically even if it wasn’t the best quality printing. Last year I had taken part in an online zine workshop and still had some notes from this so i started to play around with some of the different folding techniques to see which one would fit. I Found that most of the designs did nothave enough pages to fit all of my images in as I wanted them but I was able to find an interesting folding design that fitted all of my pages perfectly and also works really well with the project, allowing it to be viewed as both a little book and a poster. I designed the zines layout on photoshop and printed it off and got makeing, it’s not the neatest in the world but I think the actual design itself works really well with the style and narrative of this project.
I defintely had a lot of fun messing around with these collages and colours although it was defintely painful on the hands spending so much time holding a craft knife! I’m not too sure how I feel about these pieces, they took a lot of planning, printing and cutting so it took up quite a large chunk of my time for this module leaving me with no time to try and explore this further or even something different but this may be a technique I revisit and try to develop in the future. I like the technique and the style of images produced using the circle layering technique however if given more time I would explore this using different images for the layering as I’m not sure on how well some of the layered images blend together, as well as investing in a tool to help me cut neater circles. With the coloured card ones I feel like these also look a little sloppy so investing in better tools may be the answer to neater cutting, I also feel there is a bit of a disconnect between the card and the image itself and I would like to work on maybe using different shapes or a completely different technique in order to make these blend more. I really like the colours used and I think the images are interesting to look at and also do well to represent the theme I was working with but I definetely think that with more time and thinking I could improve these. I’m really happy with the zine I made, i think the actual design of it is quite clever and works well for this project and it’s aso really good to see bow this would look physically rather than just on a screen, I think again if I had more time and funds I could have looked into getting it printed professionally choosing different paper and materials for each part but overall I think it looks pretty good!
The Streets Of Manchester
I had a random idea inspired by the flaneur project to photograph the floor, usually when out taking photos I sepnd most of the time looking up and around and not a lot of time looking at the floor, so in true flaneur fashion I decided to break this habit and spend the day walking around looking at the floor. I went for a walk through the city centre and everytime I stepped on a new or different kind of flooring I took a photo of my shoes standing on the floor, I then croped these all in photoshop so that my feet were relatively in the same part of the frame for each image and created a Gif in photoshop of the reults.
This was a fun little project to work on, It’s something that just randomly popped into my head while I was out shooting my flaneur work so it was all shot on my iPhone so theyre not the best quality images in the world but I think they work for gif purposes. It was really interesting to see just how many different types of flooring there are around the city and this was only a small percentage of them. I think it works in terms of the figure and the photography because all of these floors would have been laid by different people and companies each with their own inidvidual styles and instructions so each floor is completely different, we are also able to see the effects of these floors being walked on and used, we can see which are older or used more frequently as they appear worn away with cracks and covered in gum and litter and this leads us to think about all of the people who have walked on this floor before I have. Although the images themselves arent very aesthetically pleasing and im unsure they would work in a portfolio however I think the full gif is accetptable as a piece of work.
I’ve always been interested in google street view, when I was younger and first discovered this tool I spent hours just exploring the world from the comfort of my living room. I think this could be a useful tool to explore for this street project, I’ve been struggling a little bit with my anxiety and getting out of the house recently so this could be a way for me to work with the theme of the figure and the street without having to leave the house.
Jacqui Kenny
I looked at a few different artists working with using Google street view in the street view weekly project as well as my initial artist research, but I also wanted to mention British artist Jacqui Kenny. Like me, Jacqui suffers with anxiety and agoraphobia making it impossible to leave her house sometimes, so instad she uses Google Street view to travel the world. She often drops herself in areas with bright sunlight and aesthetic colour pallettes and begins searching the streets looking for small towns free of cars and clutter, creating these serene images full of negative space with an isolated feel to them. Again i think she’s another artist using Google street view as a tool to change the definition of street photography although her images are much more clear and crisp, you could almost be fooled into thinking that these images were taken by the photographer herself at the location, this is probably beacuse unlike other artists I have looked at she screen-captures her images directly rather than photographing them on the screen.
Working On Street View Ideas
In the Street View weekly task I experimented with taking screenshots of arial views over USA farmlands on Google Earth, I really enjoyed this and the results and wanted to experiment with this idea further. I had the idea to create some sort of abstract colour terrain map of the US by screenshotting interesting arial images from each of the states of America, I began to do this however I realised how long it was going to take me and I still didn’t full know how I wanted to execute the idea itself so I decided to drop the idea in favour of another but I may revisit this idea in the future.
When scoureing all of the states I started to notice the difference in the shaping and organising of their residential areas and how strange some of them could be but also how strange the more organised blocks look from above, it’s very satisfying. I thought about comparing the housing styles of states but a state is a very large area, so instead I thought I’d focus on cities. I’ve always been quite astonished and fascinated by the prevalence of the wealth gap in america and how these gaps can vary from city to city and so I began to look into the richest and poorest cities in America. Searching for this brought up an article discussing the USA cities with the biggest income inequality gaps, it showed the top 10 cities with the largest differences in household income from area to area, Reading down the figures was shocking, some of the differences were so large it’s unreal how so much wealth and so much poverty can exist within the same community. I thought this was really interesting and had the idea to find the richest and poorest neighbourhoods within these top 5 cities and to screen capture images of these residential areas in order to compare their aesthetic differences. I was able to find lots of information on average incomes and house prices for areas within each of these cities from many websites such as https://www.bloomberg.com/europe and was able to compile a list and start searching these areas.
It was really interesting to look at cities from above and to see the ways in which streets and buildings are laid out, some being completely square and symmetrical and others being a bit more wiggly and random, it was also interesting to see the differences from above in these richer and poorer areas. I feel like this was more of a study than a piece of art in a way as I was really just looking for any visual differences, and to be honest I was quite surprised at some of the results. In some of the cities the difference was more apparent, like in new orleans where in the richer area things look clean and well built however in the poorer area there was still clear signs of damage from hurricane Katrina that still hasn’t been repaired which is clear evidence of the socio-economic divide between these two areas, or in san juan where images of the expensive beach resorts of Condado are juxtaposed against the makeshift shanty town of La Perla. In some cities there wasn’t as much of a clear difference from above like in atlanta with very similar streets and lots of greenery being present in both parts of the city, or in new york where the only real difference is a little lack of greenery in the bronx when compared with tribeca which is not neccesarily a consequence of low income. One thing that was universally apparent however was that the poorer areas seemed to be more densly populated with buildings and that the richer areas tended to feature larger apartment buildings often featuring hotels too and often more greenery. It was reall interesting to study this and I definitely didn’t get what I expected from it, however I think it’s an interesting subject that I may expand on and delve further into in the future, and street view is a great tool for allowing me to see these cities in a way that I wouldn’t usually see them.
One of the ideas that came from my initial reading and artist research was to try to capture traces of the human in the world around me rather than taking images of people themselves. I’ve always found it quite interesting how images that just include objects or perhaps markings are able to allude to human presence and also get the audience asking questions as to what has happened before and who these people were. During my initial artist research I looked at many different artists looking at this idea of human presence, such as Christian Marclay’s ‘Ciggarettes, a short video made of images taken of cigarette butts found on the street eluding to the previous presence of humans, or Richard Wentworth’s ‘Making Do And Getting By’ which features images of objects being temporarily repurposed as a solution to a problem where the objects themselves hint towards the presence of humans but also show us the creativity of human improvisation. I also looked at Richard Long’s ‘A Line Made By Walking’ in which he photographed a muddy line in the grass made by the artist pacing backwards and forwards over the same line over an over again, creating marks in nature, his images again ellude to the presence of a human while also showing humans interaction and effect on landscape, which is another really interesting idea to explore.
Nathan Destro
Nathan Destro’s project ‘Humanature’ features a series of wide images captured at different sites arounfd the US that depict where nature and human intervention meet. With images of graffitti in caves or a tree growing through a barbed wire fence, showing the intersection between applied technology and the natural world. As humans we cant help our desire to change and leave our marks on the world around us and I’ve always been really interested in the way in which humans and nature interact with eachother and I think this project is a really good example of this in practise.
Jane Dorn
Photographer Jane Dorn’s project ‘The Presence Of Absence’ is another project exploring this idea of human presence within images. She visited some abandoned houses and buildings, capturing images of the objects and scenes left behind by previous occupants, the resulting images have an eerie human presence, the personal objects act as signs of a persons existance and life and we the audience begin to ask questions about the people that inhabited the scene previously and construct a narrative about them, all from a series of objects.
Keith Arnatt
Keith Arnatt’s 1989 series ‘Pictures From A Rubbish Tip’ features 5 large colour photographs depicting rubbish found at the artists local tip. Keith visited nearby Coleford Tip, searching through discarded bin bags and photographing the contents in natural daylight, the different coloured bags and decaying items appear with strange hues and shapes making the contents look abstract and alien. Although this project was more of a comment on mass consumption and waste I think that the rubbish itself is a trace left behind by the human and we can actually tell a lot about a person by the rubbish they leave behind. I’m not about to go rooting through peoples bins but I think photographing trash discarded on the street could be an interesting way to depict the figure.
Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka is an artist who creates large panoramic images of landscapes, his book ‘Chaos’ features large panoramic images depicting places that have been mined, swept away or marked by the scars of industrialisation, devastated by wars and altered by time. I think his work is another interesting example of depicting the traces and changes we humans leave behind on landscapes, which is something that I would like to look into for this project.
Irving Penn
Much like Keith Arnatt, Irving Penn is another photographer capturing beatuful still life images of discarded rubbish. Presented as an exhibit ‘Cigarettes’ features black and white close up still life images of cigarette butts that the artist found on the street, printed using the platinum palladium process, elevating each image to the status of a rare object. This is another interesting example of how to capture human traces via the items that humans discard on the streets, re-purposing these things that would otherwise be disregarded and highlighting them to depict todays throwaway culture as well as the affects of humans on the environment around us.
My Human Traces Project
I was really fascinated with this idea of looking for traces that humans leave behind, wether that be litter, graffiti or marks and footprints. I felt that this idea worked well considering what is happening in the world at the moment, with the streets being much emptier than usual, places that are usually crowded now completetly devoid of people as they all stay at home, I thought it might be an idea to kind of represent this unusual emptiness by looking for things that have been left behind, showing that there were people here but now there is not. From my research I had a few ideas of things to look for (like rubbish and graffiti) but unlike with other projects where I usually have a visual idea of the pictures in my head before I start, with this one I just went out searching for things that had been left behind or things that were out of place or not where they should be and photographed them, reviewing all of my images at home to make a series out of them.
Taking Images
I bought myself 4 rolls of 35mm Ilford HP5 Plus to use and my plan was just to take as many images as possible so that I had lots to choose from when editing and sequencing. I took my Olympus OM20 out over 4 different days to 4 different places around Manchester and just spent the day wandering around places I hadn’t been to before looking for these human traces, shooting a roll everyday. Once all of my rolls were used up I developed these at home and scanned them in, unfortunately my scanner is very cheap and the resulting images were very poor quality and pixelated, I have sent the rolls off to be scanned proffesionally however I am unsure if they will arrive back to me in-time so for now I am just using the poor quality images.
Choosing Images
As I said previously I used a different process for this project than I usually would, I usually tend to plan my images visually in advance and then shoot to these specifications, but with this project I just went out with a theme in mind and tried to find things to fit this theme and photograph them. I had 4 rolls of images scanned in, however one of the rolls was damadged where I had trouble loading it onto the reel so some of my images were unuseable, but still I had a large amount of images to choose from. I had my basic theme of human traces left behind but I wanted to find a more defined theme within my images, so I started to look through them all searching for a similarity or common theme, I began to notice that I had photographed a lot of single isolated items that were just random objects left in places that they shouldnt be, like a discarded matress or trolley. I spent a good couple of days just trying out different themes and ideas, but I felt like this idea was the strongest and had the largest amount of good images, there were some images that I did really like and wanted to use but didn’t fit the theme so I decided not to include them but they could be used in future projects. I tried to pick images for this theme that were of a singular item and they almost looked quite isolated and gave off feelings of loneliness, but also alluded to the presence of the human as all of these items had been left or dumped by a person and we begin to analyse the item and ask questions about how it got there and who the person was that left it there. I managed to get a series of 9 images that i thought all worked well for this project, 8 of them being in portrait orientation with a middle image in landscape to break the project up a bit, I think all of the chosen images work well together aesthetically and easily convey the common theme behind them.
Final Images
Making Portfolio
Now that I had chosen my images and edited them in photoshop I began to play around with different sequences on powerpoint, i tried to kind of pair images up by what was in them and also the darkness or lightness of them, for some reason I always want my images to be ordered kind of in pairs (could be an ocd thing) but all of images seemed to work well being ordered into pairs. I decided to have my images slightly smaller and in the centre of the page to kind of add to this feeling of isolation, with all of the white paper space around them helping to add to this feeling, and white pages inbetween each image in order to seperate them and add to this feeling of loneliness and isolation. I also decided to make a front cover for the project, giving ti the name dumped in order to make the theme stronger and clearer. I used another image for the front cover that I hand already used inside and used a free grafftiti style font for the title in order to further enforce this idea of things that humans leave behind.
Final portfolio
I feel like I really took myself out of my comfort zone doing this project, trying a completely new way of working by going out and capturing images without a mental plan of them, I think this way of working went quite well as it gave me more freedom to change my mind and see new and better things to focus on, however I had waited til I had shot all my rolls to develop them which in hindsight wasn’t the best way to do it as ended up finding it tricky to find a more defined common theme within the images. If I were to work this way again I would have a look at the images after I’d shot a couple of rolls so that I could search for this common theme and then go out and shoot further images that work with this theme. I think the images themselves are interesting and do give off an air of loneliness and I think I have edited them well making them look visually similar so that you can tell they belong to the same series. I struggled to find a linear narrative within my images and so sequencing took me a while but I think pairing my images up and sequencing them in pairs works well, and I think my use of spacing and sizing helps to enforce this feeling of isolation and abandonment. Overall I think this was a well made project considering it was my first time working in this new way and my first time shooting a project based around the street, It hasn’t been perfect but I’ve learnt lots of lessons and tips for the future and Im proud of myself for experimenting and trying something new.
High-Res Image
I decided to choose this image to submit as a high-res image as I really like the colourful card and it’s different to anything I’ve ever seen before. I think this image was the best one from my studio project and also represents the theme of my studio project well. I created my file in photoshop following the dimensions and specifications as set out in the brief, it didn’t specify what format to save the file as but I decided to save it as a Tiff as this will mean there is no image compression, providing a better quality image for printing.
Amber Gent Visuals 