Monthly Archives: July 2015

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Editing, Experimentation, Final presentation

Surrealism: My experimentation

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I am really interested in this movement and have decided that I want to create images based around this. For this have taken inspiration from John Baldessari and have recreated his works with the dots in front of people’s faces. I used photographs which I have already taken and just added in the dots on top of the images. I am also going to take inspiration from Christopher Mckenney and will be experimenting with his style throughout the week as well as experimentation with photo montage and dream-like images.

Family Album – My sister and I

I have also been looking at the surrealist photographer Christopher McKenney and I find a lot of his work very interesting and I enjoy looking at it, which is why I am using his work as influence for my own work and my own surrealist dreams brought to life through photography. I wondered what it would be like if two surrealist photographers joined together to create a brand new image, unique to the rest of their own images and I decided that I wanted to use my inspiration from John Baldessari and Christopher McKenney in order to create a new surrealist photograph. I have started with some experimentation and used photographs that I had taken while on the St Malo trip and on the workshop with Tom Pope. This is just so I can get a feel of what I will need to do during the week to make the perfect image. I am not using this next image as one of my final outcomes but it is just an experimentation to see how I will need to take photographs throughout the week. blogrjrjeThe meaning behind this photograph has different elements. The oranges on the floor and the giant orange represent the workshop day out we had and the small wheel on the floor represents our day in St. Malo. The reason I chose to have all of the faces covered in the same purple dot was because Sophie and I were copying this man and imitating him so I thought it would be a good idea to have the same coloured dot as we are supposed to look the same as one another.

Final presentation

St Malo Finals

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These are my finals that I have chosen to select to represent our trip to St Malo. I think these photo’s show that we had a lot of fun and did lots of activity’s around St Malo, to emphasis the happiness and the joyfulness of the day through the photo’s.I edited the photo’s by enhancing the saturation, making the photo’s more vibrant in colour.

This first photo was taken at a play ground we found in the center of St Malo where we played on the roundabout and swings.
I really like this photo because it is of the St Malo locals and they are all leaning out of their windows talking to each other.
We met some boys on the beach who had set up their own tight rope on the beach and were performing tricks. They let us have ago on the tight rope and take photo’s of them performing.

 

 

Whilst playing the game, bulldog on the beach with some American kids I took this photo of Mr McKinlay instructing everyone of what todo.
This is some of the members in my group on the Feresse wheel that we went on in our lunch break. I added an effect to this photo which made the colour slightly duller,I did this to make the photo look old to foreshadow that Feresse wheels were something that we went on when we were younger.
This photograph was taken during the ‘Flower Giving’ Sian gave a yellow rose to these old ladies who were very pleased and thankful.
This is another photograph from the ‘Flower Giving’ which was to, two young ladies that were on a lunch break. I really like this photo because you can see Sian walking away and the pleased look on her face. You can also see the lady holding the rose in her hand which matches the bunch of roses in Sian’s hand.
Competition

Personal Archive – Mother

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For a competition which was set by Tom pope and Gareth, we had to search into our own personal archive and look for pictures that went way back. As I only have my mum dad and sister in Jersey, I had limited resources but found a handful of images of my mum as a baby. The earliest one I found was from 1969 when my mum was 1 year old and the last one was when she was 32. This challenge was to relate our personal lives to the archive in Jersey which started in 1993 and has collected over 300,000 archival records from the States of Jersey.

These old photographs are usually taken at special events/ less frequent occasions which is known as vernacular photography. This is the creation of photographs, usually by amateur or unknown photographers both professional and amateur, who take everyday life and common things as subjects. These photographs are more personal and special as photography was limited back then, so these photographs were more important rather than the 100 pictures we take of the same thing. Closely related to vernacular photography is found photography, which in one sense refers to the recovery of a lost, unclaimed, or discarded vernacular photograph or snapshot.

1969 1
1969 – My mum and her grandfather at her home.
1976 1
1976 – My mum with her brother and grandma.
1990 1
1990
1994 1
1994 – Wedding day.
1999 1
1999 – Me aged 1, Mum aged 31
2000 1
2000 – Disney Land Paris.

Examples of Vernacular Photography:

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Research

Surrealism

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Surrealism was a culture movement starting in the 1920’s its best know for it’s writing and artworks.The leader of surrealism was Andre Breton. The aim of surrealism was to  “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality.”  The artists created painting of everyday objects but turned them into strange creatures which allowed them to express there selfs. Surrealism was created out of Dada which was from the first world war which originally started in Paris and in the 1920’s became a global movement and affected literature, film and music. I like the idea of using photography to try and manipulate and push the boundaries of reality. I think that surrealism links in with Tom Pope’s work although he doesn’t use magical creatures he has a few photographs were he is ‘standing’ in mid air which is physically impossible and therefore also blurs the line between reality and dream.

surrealism

Mr T instruction

Tom Pope; Call for participants

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Read Tom Pope’s new blogspot about his planned epic film:
Pushing the Boat Out

The film will see Tom, with the help of the Jersey community, push a 13.7ft boat across the island and out to the Atlantic ocean.

Here is what Tom has to say:

‘On July the 16th, starting from Gorey harbour i will set off with the boat heading West to St Ouen’s Bay. The underlying principle of the film is centred on how it’s an impossible task for me to complete alone. As a photographer and performer it will not be viable to record the process of pushing the boat across Jersey while actually doing it. I will require assistance from the public if i want to succeed in moving the boat and recording the performance. The resulting video footage will be used to create a 20-25minute film.’

Read and find out more here;

http://www.archisle.org.je/category/tom-pope-blog/

Photo by: Albert Smith 1924-34. Societe Jersiaise

 

Editing, Experimentation, Record / Photoshoot

Tom Pope Workshop Outcomes:

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Above are some photographs of my surroundings on the day of the first Tom Pope workshop. Our task was to get into groups, and each member would have to write down a task that everyone must perform for a minute.

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The images above are the outcomes of a very intriguing experimentation with Tom. We had to throw the oranges in the air to another partner, and take a still-image whilst they were coming towards us. I left it in color when editing because i wanted the orange color to stand out. I had to use a very zoomed out camera lens, so that i could capture the fast moving object. This relates to Tom Pope’s work because he’s always trying to find new ways and perspectives to capture images. This also relates rather well to the theme of

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For this outcome, we were told to stand on one leg whilst taking pictures. I really like how the lighting coming from the direct sunlight creates a shadows and contrasts the people’s bodies.

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I edited this picture to add a violet tone. This picture was taken whilst performing. We each had to come up with an activity to do for a while, from each member in our group. We were told to hold our camera upside upside down for this one, which gave me these outcome. they turned out to be perfectly aligned, and i didn’t have to rotate them to make the horizon straight. The purple tone and orange highlights make this image look very mysterious and unrealistic, which i like.

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Here Tom Pope was demonstrating a third activity to us. The aim was to try and take as many selfies as possibles, but on the other persons camera.

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Above, is another one of my outcomes from this day. The camera was being held upside down and at an angle. I spontaneously took this, whilst moving around. I also managed to capture someone else during their performance in background.

Research

Neo-Dada: The new Dada

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Neo-Dada is a visual art movement that has similar methods to earlier Dada artwork. It has revived some forms/objects of Dada and has put more emphasis on the importance of the work of art produced rather than focusing on the concept creating the work. Dadaism was rediscovered by a group of art students. It is seen as the foundation of pop art. Neo-Dada uses modern materials, popular imagery and absurdest contrast.
Neo-Dadaism was made popular by the American art critic Barbara Rose in the 1960s.

A man called Marcel Duchamp was part of the Dada movement in 1913 and came up with an idea entitled ‘Readymade’. This came from the concept where you can take any object, remove it from its normal context and put it in a new on. You can change your point of view on it completely. For example you can take any old chair, put it behind some glass in an art exhibition and people will look at it as if it is art and something really amazing.
A lot of people were offended by Duchamp because they thought that he wasn’t taking art seriously and was trying to make a mockery out of it when in fact he was just part of the Dada movement, in which it isn’t supposed to make sense anyway.

I don’t really like this movement as I think it is just completely random and, to me, it doesn’t really hold any meaning. The one thing I would take from this is that some people go crazy over art work that a famous painter has created but it isn’t always the most amazing pieces. I think that often people get carried away and stop thinking for themselves and just go along with what art critics or the rest of the world is saying. This is where I think spectators become passive and just go along with it for the sake of it and are led to believe something is great when in reality it really isn’t that spectacular.

Planning, Research

Russian Constructivism: The Social Art

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This movement came around in 1913-1930. This is where layering photographs comes along. This act was often used in Communist society back in Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolshevik party won lead by Lenin. This movement was created in favour of art as a practice for social purposes.
A famous Russian film maker called Dziga Vertov. He was a Soviet pioneer documentary film director and cinema theorist. His ideas influenced the style of documentary movie making, he was a radical filmmaker active in the 1960s. He created a film called The Man with a Movie Camera because he became so interested in the idea of filming and what it could bring to the world. In this film he carries around his heavy camera and films various different things, when put together the film almost looks random and out of place but it is embracing the film world.

Russian avant-garde
This was a large and highly influential wave of modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Here many images were put together, much like photo montage, in a new and unique way. Some of which was used as propaganda for the benefits of leaders like Lenin and Stalin. 43bf53_c10da35ecf990592153b675d52b550ea

I find this movement very interesting as the photo montage’s are quite unique and use many geometric shapes to make up the image. There also always seems to be a smiling person, looking up at the leader or trying to persuade its spectators to follow what the posters want.

Analysis, Research

Surrealism: A New Form of Reality

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Surrealism is a different form of reality and is heavily influenced by dreams. This is the world that we create in our heads, often when sleeping things that we have no control over and often don’t make any sense but by the end of it we still gain something, whether that being we gain a moral or more of an understanding of something but sometimes we take nothing from them. Surrealism is the unconscious mind and a different world almost. This movement was created in Paris 1924.

I like the idea of surrealism because I am able to explore my dreams and express them in a creative format as well as creating something so out of the ordinary that not a lot of people would often think about. Everyone’s dreams are unique to them, we will never ever have the exact same dream as another person. I like the idea of being able to express this and show people what my dreams are like or even some crazy ideas of what a dream might look like. I think I am going to explore this as one of my ideas as it does really interest me and I love to find out about dreams that people have had as well as sharing my own.
There are many surrealist photographer including Man Ray, Maurice Tabard, Hans Bellmer, Dora Maar, Eric Johansson, Christopher McKenney and Stephen Criscolo etc. One of these photographers that I particularly like is Christopher McKenney as I find a lot of his work very interesting and the way it has been shot and edited looks very professional. ChristopherMcKenney ChristopherMcKenney2I really like these two images because of the way you can see parts of the person’s body behind the sheet but you never see their full body or who they are. It is almost as it that person isn’t really there, just like in some dreams when one minute your stood next to a specific person and a second later they have disappeared. This to me is very dream-like and I really enjoy looking at this. I think it would have been tricky to edit this image as they would have had to take a photograph firstly of the background of the image and then got the subject to sit on the chair so he took take the second image and in editing use the eraser tool to get rid of the rest of the body which the photographer didn’t want to see in his image.

http://www.christophermckenney.com/100surrealisticphotosivemade

On Mckenney’s website he has a set of 100 surrealism photographs which I find very interesting to scroll through. He tents to go for the same pattern with someone not completely being in the frame, a part of them is always rubbed out as if in a dream world. I really like this work and find that you can be very creative with this style and are able to explore new things.

There is also a hugely iconic surrealist photographer, John Baldessari, born in 1931 and is still alive today. In the 70s Baldessari decided to BURN all of his work and stated ‘I will not make anymore boring art’. After which he created a new form of the digital photography world and put dots in front of all the people’s faces that he photographed. This, to me, is a way of making the person unidentifiable so that no one knows who he is photographing and why he has photographed them in that specific way. I like this as it is interesting and I find that sometimes in dreams you can never really make out what a certain person looks like or who they are and this is a great way of visualizing that and bringing your dreams to life.