The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm. This relates to the unit that we are studying, trying to creat videos or pictures that push boundaires. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from post modernism. This type of photography is what I am really interested as it focuses on manipulating a model by physically making them look unsatisfactory for society, and I love to be creative. These images have really inspired me to try and make someone look different so that I would get public reaction from walking down the high street.
Tom Pope was talking to us about the idea of surrealism in photography which basically means that when he takes a photograph the picture has a much deeper meaning than possibly portrayed which is hard to show through one photograph. Photoshop allows you to manipulate photographs to make the image more surreal and force the meaning to come through. Ultimately, photographers aren’t just taking a picture because it looks nice, mainly they are produced to show some sort of deep meaning that needs to be addressed. The questions you need to ask yourself when looking at pictures is why was it taken? What is the contextual reasoning behind this?
After the french trip, I used premiere pro to edit my videos to collaborate them together in a sequence to form a video. I did this by importing separate videos . This enabled me to fade in and out of the videos so that it looked smoother, my videos weren’t the best quality but I feel like the contextual side still made my final a good standard. Next time, I would like to improve by experimenting with the flowers more by tricking the public that i’m going to give them one and just holding it in front of them with the camera close to them to see how they deal with the situation. Also, I want to add the other video that has some people rejecting me so that I have positive and negative reactions in my video to show a contrast.
Also, I want to improve the video by possibly adding music to it to make it more interesting as the video as a whole isn’t at a high quality. However, I do like the idea of involving people in my videos and this was a very good way to interact with them, therefore, I am pleased with this video but improvements can always be made.
When we went to meet Tom Pope for the first time, we visited the Societe Jersiaise to watch and listen to a couple of presentations given by Tom and Gareth who also works at the archive. Tom presented his videos to us and explained the reasoning’s behind them and how he got where he is today which started from the RCA college in London. He wanted to inspire us as young amateur photographers to try and make us produce something that we weren’t use to. He took us outside and paired us up to shoot some videos to start to get a feel of what it is he does.
He gave us an orange between our pair and the idea was for one of us to throw the orange up in the air and let the other partner taking photographs as the orange is landing on the camera. This idea related to Tom Pope’s work when he threw apples at the camera were the trigger release was to try and make the apple take the picture instead of him, this was guess work but came out as interesting photographs, especially with the public reaction. He threw 60 apples and ended up with only 6 images, but I like how the guy in the background is just watching him, it completes the picture.
Orange throwing
This activity was very strange to me at first but as the time went on, it was actually really enjoyable and made me realize that I should have more fun with my photography. Tom Pope was very laid back and really did inspire me and as the day went on and he tried more activities with us I got more intrigued. We also went n groups and had to all think of an action to do and capture, for example I chose spin and we had to photography ourselves spinning, and capture a technically bad photograph but a contextually good photograph.
On this day we went to Societe Jersiaise were we were introduced to Gareth Syvret who took us through some images in the Jersey Archisle, through this we looked at how portraits of childhood had changed from the 1840’s to 2010’s that had been placed into the Archisle. I think that it was interesting overtime how the portraits changed overtime and how photographers change their styles of how they take their images. The purpose of having an Archisle is to save photographs and make history and to keep history so that in years time we can look back at the images. You can also gain a lot of knowledge from looking at the Archisle, which Gareth said ‘having knowledge is power’. The Archisle is important as it is there for everyone to look and and is used as a source for people to use as research, and to inspire them in their own work to make further images, which could possible go into the Archisle.
Other historical and contemporary photographs who have worked in Jersey with the Archisle are Michelle Sank, Yury Toroptsoe.
Foot, Francis
Foot, Francis
Foot, Francis
Foot, Francis
Foot, Francis
de Faye, Francis George
de Faye, Francis George
On this day we also met Tom Pope and we went out to take some performance photographs with him. For these images we went out into an open space and someone would throw an image and you would have to catch it and try to take a photograph at the same time as trying to catch the orange. This was an interesting exercise to introduce us into the idea of performance photography as you are performing and act to take the photograph. The idea was that you had to try and get the orange as close to the camera lens as possible. Before we took these images we changed our camera settings so that the camera was on manual focus and we focused the camera on the orange close up, so then when the orange was in the air and you were trying to catch it, the orange would be in focus.
This theory follows the concern of how women are often represented in many artist and photographic works. Women such as; Cindy Sherman explored this further. This act suggests that women have more than just their physical appearance. To me feminism is the act of an equal life, respect and opportunity for both men and women. It shows how women are often labelled with derogatory terms and are ignored as intellectual individuals. In the past I have done quite a few pieces in photography based on how women are faced with all these negative connotations and objectifications which are unfair and we don’t deserve. Throughout history women have struggled to gain equal rights to men, starting simply with the right to vote. Women weren’t seen as intelligent enough or able to vote as they weren’t educated. In 1918 women in Britain finally got the right to vote only if they were over the age of 30, with women of the age of 21+ had to wait until 1928 to be able to vote. Feminism is more than this though.
Often when people hear the word feminist they think of anti-men and man haters when in fact this is completely wrong and untrue. A feminist can be a woman or a man, it is the equality of the sexes that we stand for and the equality of life too. Women are often faced with negative looks or derogatory names. I think that feminism has really come to light in the past few years as many more celebrities are becoming aware of this a spreading the word. Influential celebrities include; Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Katy Perry, Hillary Clinton, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and many more.
Cindy Sherman is a famous feminist photographer who came up with a series of film stills in 1977. These took her years to create and she is the subject of each of her photographs. These film stills reflect on the cliched stereotypes women were faced with back in 1977 and that they are still very much faced with today.
My own work on the role women are often faced with in society. This is work which I have already done during my photography course during the AS year.
Struggling for Perfection – Shannon O’Donnell
This image represents the pressure put on women in our modern society of being perfect and slim. The measuring tape around the subjects face and neck portrays a indexical sign of how a lot of women feel about themselves and the strain it is on their own mental health to be this ideal woman, to be something that all men want or all people desire to have. I find as a woman there is an immense amount of pressure put on us in society to look a certain way and to be a certain body type/shape.
I also did another shoot later in my AS year and decided to expand on the idea of the measuring tape and how women feel in our modern society.
Fake it ‘Til You Make it – Shannon O’Donnell
This shoot was an array of different types of photographs focusing on the way young women see themselves and how they try to change themselves in modern society. These photographs show the spectator how often young girls will look at themselves in the mirror and only see imperfections and that they need to change and be skinnier. It shows the spectator how most young girls will wear makeup to try and cover up, hiding any imperfections that they think they have. Along with some of the photographs showing how young women should love themselves and not care about what society thinks they should look like, this is in the photos of my model posing outside and being happy with who she is.
For shooting with this model I decided to do quite a few different set ups and props. I did this so I could get a nice range of photographs. In this shoot I wanted people to really focus on how women feel they should look like due to the harsh comments of our modern society. These shoots symbolize what are expected of women still in our society and how there is still this stigma in the air that women should be doing the work at home and are there to look pretty while the men go out to work and bring the money into the home. It shows feminism in a negative light to me because this old way of thinking is so cliché and wrong. I think women should be able to go down whatever career path they choose and should be paid the same amount as men.
This photo represents how a lot of young women are seen as ‘catty’. It shows two ‘friends’ are laughing but will actually stab each other in the back to get what they want. In this photo I give a visual representation of the metaphor ‘stabbing someone in the back’.
Tom Pope’s work has been majorly influenced by this theory. Physco-geography is a physiological concept which applies to Geograophy. It’s very spontanous and different. The people who did group that created this were called “Situationist International” and they wanted to go against the rules of society which are placed upon them. They were very radical and wanted to create some awareness. Their ideas pushed the envelope, as they changed daily things into much more interesting creations.
Flight of Fancy (paper airplane template)
‘ Derive’ is a French word meaning an unplanned journey through somewhere.
This is all about being random, and letting your environment guide you. For example, you can use this technique of Derive to guide you through somewhere.
Tom Pope’s work has been influenced by other Artists work, some of these include Vito Acconi, Erwin Wurm and Nikki S Lee. These artists influenced Tom’s work as a performance photographer. When Tom is out on a shoot he gets inspired by the situation he is in, this is what he calls psycho-geography. This concept involves when out on a shoot, or just in everyday life, something, as simple as a balloon may inspire Tom and give him an idea for a video/photo.
Erwin WurmErwin Wurm
I think that some people are confused by Tom’s work as it challenges the social norms of society and how people are suppose to act around others, and Tom captures this in his videos as the audiences reaction is usually in the videos. Some would say that Tom Pope’s work is not photography and it is media based, but Tom uses a film camera and the camera takes 24 frames a second, so it can be considered a photograph, it just challenges the expectations of a usual photograph. Tom explains this as ‘subverting social situations’.
Some other concepts which have influenced Tom is Feminism, Cubism, Dadaism and Neo-dadaism.
These photographs are now my still finals for this section of work. Most of the images are screenshots from my video finals and some are just original stills.
I particularly like these images from the peak a box video as i feel they are quite odd photographs. You can see a shocked reaction of the woman that has walked past and molly has popped out. The blur of her hand shows that there was a quick movement,probably caused by shock from the movement of molly in the box.
Peak a Box
Emily-go-round
I particularly like these images as they are all original stills so are good quality, due to the acting of the participants you can really see the expression in their faces.
