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.
During the St Malo trip my small group completed a number of activities that we photographed and filmed. These photo’s are very happy photo’s that include a lot of energy and are a good representative of our activities from the day.
Here is a contact sheet contacting the photo’s I took from the day. The majority of these photo’s are from the afternoon session which we spent on the beach. On the beach we met two boy’s who had set up a tightrope, I asked if i could take some photo’s of what they were doing and them performing some tricks. I also had a go on the rope myself- which fits in with the theme of ‘Chance, change & Challenge’. We also played a big game of bulldog on the beach with some American people we met, whilst playing this game I also took photo’s throughout the game.
The rest of the photo’s are from around the street’s of St Malo and photo’s captured during our experiments.
When talking to Tom Pope he mentioned the word ‘Psychogeography’, as he used it in one of his shoots. He used it as a way of travelling around the Tate Modern. He made a paper aeroplane and flew it through the gallery, and where ever the paper aeroplane landed would be what piece of art he would look at. As well as experimenting with psychogeography, he was also doing this experiment to see what people’s reactions would be- as he was going against the social norms of how to travel round an art exhibition.
This is the map of the paper aeroplanes route from Tom Pope’s work ‘Flight Fancy’
Psychogeography was created in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasises playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International.
One way of achieving psychogeorgraphy is using the wrong map to navigate your way around an area. I think the idea behind this method of geography, is to lead yourselves to places you may have never of been before, which may be someplace wonderful. It also gives the person an element of freedom and leaving the route to chance. I really like this idea of travelling around an area.
