Theo Gosselin did a project which I thought was really interesting and was a perfect representation of documentary photography. His photography book that he published really inspired me to do a similar idea. He took photos of his road trip around America with his friends and just took really cool, some simplistic photographs that really looked effective. The colours and lighting really fit the mood for his topic, the sunsets looke beautiful and the photographs were very natural and fun.
As a response I want to do something very similar, this will be quite extreme but I do want to capture some images of people jumping in the sea naked from behind. When I see them it makes me smile because I can see the enjoyment they have from doing it from their body actions. I want to make a day out of this project, so I am going to get about 4 friends to come on a drive with me to different parts of Jersey and take photographs of the spontaneous things that we do. I am interested in getting shots from in the sea and then if it is a nice day, sunset pictures because the lighting will be perfect. Another photographer that does a similar idea is Mike Brodie, also known by his graffiti tag the “Polaroid Kid”, is an American photographer from Pensacola, Florida. A friend gave him a camera and he subsequently spent three years photographing people he encountered, largely train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters and hobos. His photography captures similar images to Theo and takes his images as documentary photography, I really like his images and love the lighting/theme running through his photos.
This photograph by Meyeroritz shows a roughly a dozen people walking across the street in different directions. This photograph was taken in New York city on a seemingly busy day. From the basis the the subjects in the image are wearing long coats and jackets, I would assume that this photo was taken in autumn/winter time, and the bright exposure would indicate the time of day is close to mid-afternoon. None of the individuals are aware that they are being photographed and therefore this is a candid photograph.
The subjects walking in many different directions is visually chaotic and overwhelming. This chaotic displays subtly hints at the theme of surrealism, because the impression the viewer is presented with is that the events framed in the image are very dramatic and out of the ordinary. The presence of many dominant subjects, helps to give the foreground of the image considerable dominance in contrast to the background. This sense of dominance in the foreground, in addition to the distorted angle of the frame, gives the image a very unusual, obscure appearance. The composition of the subjects adds to this sense of unusualness, with Meyerowitz only photographing from mid-body of the subjects. The obvious peculiarities of this photograph implies that Meyerotiz is making a comment about the complexity, and eccentricity of modern urban life.
The contrasting facial expressions of different subjects makes the image very humorous. Some individuals look lost, some focused, some happy, and some pessimistic. Through these variations in facial expression, Meyerotiz is capturing a moment which implies on focus on the theme of individualism in society. Through the lack of similarity in the mood of the different subjects, it is very likely that Meyerotiz is hinting on the idea how individuals in society are inherently self-reliant, and that aspects of human togetherness, such a community does not reflect the basic human instinct to fend for oneself. The fact that none of the individuals pay attention to the camera, further explores this idea as the individuals a represented as to be only self-interested and self-absorbed, focusing on themselves, and not the camera, nor anyone else.
The idea of mystery is explored in this image in many different ways. Firstly through the role of the subject facing away from the camera in a brown jacket. He appears to be very amused in the image, laughing at something in his attention away from the camera. The viewer is drawn in to imagine what he is laughing act, which as a result creates a certain level of suspense. Secondary through the appearance of dark shadow in the left and right-hand corners of the image, and tis compliments the attention of the subject with the brown jacket, because it implies a large object causing the shadow is the reasons for the man’s amusmant. Lastly, the woman in sunglasses stands out a very unusual in the frame. There is a very sinister sense to her appearance and she provides a tense edge to the photograph.
For my first idea I am planning to focus on my grandfather who died when I was eight years old, I’m thinking of photographing all the objects that remind me of him and that are personal to me. I’m also going to look into his past and look at old photographs from when he was much younger. I came up with this idea during my research stage, I previously studied Phillip Toledano who dedicated a project to his sister who died when he was six. I found his photography inspiring and have decided to take influence from his ideas as I think they allow the photographer to express and connect on a personal level. Furthermore I think his images are very striking and captivate the viewer, they are simple yet manage to translate the emotion he must of felt.
My second idea is to be developed around philosophical concepts of family. Many philosophers such as Aristotle have complex and detailed theories when it comes to the idea of family. I think it’s important to research into philosophy when concerning photographic ideas as they normally are two subjects which can be combined. Many photographers take a philosophical or ethical approach to their work. Some ideas I am thinking of developing further are Jean-Paul Sartre, Aristotle, Sigmund Freud and Kierkegaard. A title for this project I am thinking of calling ‘Illustrating thought’. I think this is an appropriate title because I am turning the works of philosophers into images which convey the same meaning; therefore I am illustrating thought. Through reading about their versions or ideas of families I can create photographs which reflect new concepts of the word that you would not normally consider.
In order to bring together some ideas and thoughts about the theme family, we decided to make a spider diagram. Here are some of the ideas we thought about when thinking of ‘Family’.
The Guernsey Photography Festival and Raven Russia Ltd are proud to present a major photography competition designed to promote the work of Channel Island and university students. The winners will be given the opportunity to gain valuable exposure by exhibiting at the next Guernsey Photography Festival in September 2016 (exact dates tbc).
COMPETITION CATEGORIES
Students 14-16 years old – Y 10 & 11 (Channel Islands only) Prize £250
Students 16+ years old – Y 12 & 13 (Channel Islands only) Prize £250
Students in Higher Education (worldwide) Prize £1000
The winners will also receive a selection of prizes courtesy of7dayshop.com
Submit 6 images and a 250 word statement
Get more information and read competition rules here
Nicholas Nixon, born in 1947, is known for the ease and intimacy of his black and white large format photography. Nixon has photographed porch life in the rural south, schools in and around Boston, cityscapes, sick and dying people, the intimacy of couples, and the ongoing annual portrait of his wife. I am hoping to do a similar project over the Christmas holidays when I go and visit my family in England. I love black and white photographs especially as portraits when they have a lot of detail. I have a young cousin called Dylan who has beautiful curly hair and I can’t wait to photograph him as he has an amazing personality which will hopefully capture in the photographs. I will also visit my Nan who is falling very ill, so it will be nice to capture some photographs of her so that I have them in case anything happens to her. The contrast between young and old will be interesting to compare in the photographs especially with the expressions that they pull. The lighting in his photographs is really complimenting the people in the picture and black and white images make the over all image more flawless.
I want to explore accidental and purposeful gatherings within my work, and how buildings and places create the right environments for these different gatherings.
First I want to think about what kind of places people accidentally gather in in Jersey. Places where lots of people go at the same time, but not intentionally. For example at a bus station lots of people go there to get buses, but not everyone is there to catch the exact same bus. Compared to a concert, where people all buy tickets to go see the same thing at the exact same time.
Accidental Gatherings.
Bus Station
Beaches
Liberation Square
Royal Square
Millenium Park
Millbrook Park
Elephant Park
Restaurants
Cafes
Town
Fort Regent
Les Quennevais Sports Centre
Dual Carriageway
Supermarkets
Its quite a difficult time of the year for looking at Purposeful gatherings, because most of the Purposeful gatherings have already happened during Summer. E.g. Jersey live, Jersey Pride, Groove de Lecq etc.
Purposeful Gatherings
School/Work
Assemblies
Lunch Times (within school)
Ticketed events (Concerts/festivals/comedy shows)
Organised classes/activities/clubs
Organised events (weddings/parties etc)
Churches/religious places
Organised Family gatherings
Places that can be considered both Accidental and Purposeful gatherings
Planes/Ferries
Cinema
Viewing Rugby/Football club
It is slightly difficult to define exactly what is a purposeful gathering and an accidental gathering.
Even within accidental gatherings there will be smaller purposeful gatherings. For example when a small group of friends arrange to meet in a park, but there are other people there who they didn’t organise to meet with.
Also within Purposeful gatherings there can be accidental gatherings. E.g. When people buy tickets to a specific event, they know that other people will be there seeing the same thing at the same time, but they don’t know exactly who the people there are going to be, and so may bump into people they know (because this is Jersey and Jersey is small and you will always bump into people you know).
The actual term ‘documentary’ was originally used by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the early 19th century but as a reference within visual culture it was British film maker, John Grierson who famously in 1926 in a review of a film by Robert Flaherty about Polynesian youth, described the film as having ‘documentary value.’
Collection of historical documentary photographs which collaborate within societal issues and regimes.May 16, 1957. Chicago, IL. Vivienne Meier
The birth of documentary as a popular form is clearly linked historically to the development of print technology and the proliferation of large-scale mass press in the 1920s and 30s of popular illustrated photo magazines and publications such as Life Magazine in the USA, Picture Post in Britain, Vu in France, Illustrierte in Germany, Drum in South Africa and many others.
‘VU’ French Magazine, published 1937‘Life Magazine, published 1964
These magazines which were based on the extensive use of photographs to tell stories to the needs of a newly literate urban population constitutes the start of the modern movement of photojournalism.
‘Life’ Magazine, published July 14, 1972A collage made of ‘Drum’ Magazine, South Africa published 1960’s.
This new breed of photographers were the ones ‘out there’ bringing photographs home – a reporter of everyday life who supplied the pictures for this growing market.
Early Documentary Photography
Curtis was criticized for altering his photography so that it represented the Native American people as the “noble savages” that they were stereotyped as at the time. By retouching photographs in order to remove traces of western civilization, he’s been accused of painting Native Americans as a “vanishing race” and drawing attention away from their true plight. This was the start of regarding documentary photography as a false representation of society, sparking the new era of ethics in photography, and setting guidelines of what makes an immoral and moral photograph.
By the time of the Civil War, the daguerreotype and other modernized equipment had entered the realm of middle-class consumer culture and established a popular follow up, often to the dismay of photographers promised and dedicated to uphold photography as an art form. Documentary photography developed during this period and was often consigned by art critics to become the new era of journalism, an association that persists to the present.
This consignment implied that documentary photographers were mere recorders, skilled technicians to be sure, but passive observers of the social scene but not wanted as the depiction of an artist. Documentary photographers accepted this characterization in order to burnish the perceived realism of their imagery.
In 1906, etiologist and photographer Edward S. Curtis set out across the United States to draw, photograph and otherwise document the lives of Native Americans that hadn’t yet been contacted by Western society.
Photographers like Edward S. Curtis have valued the art of documenting society as a way of reflecting the cultures of the early American lifestyles. Since then, the bounding of events which happened throughout history have been recorded through the lenses of moral choice, a question which over time has been issued in modern documentary photography.
Modern Documentary Photography
Two urban photographers, Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, took up the effort to explore the “wilderness” of the inner city and thereby establish documentary photography as a tool of social reform. Lewis Hine used his photographs as instruments in changing the Child Labor laws in the United States. This opened up a new generation of demoting world change in order for democracy to demure and relax the laws cared for by young, mostly migrant children.
A Variety of Jobs: Young boys working for Hickok Lumber Co. Burlington, Vermont.Worker on Empire State building, ‘Signaling the Hookman’ (1931)
Photographers now revive the impacts crisis have towards communities in order for the public to react in a debating and democratic way. Documentary photography is now a looking glass tool into the eyes of people fighting against these events in order for governments and large parties to make and ensure political change on that place, in order to cut back on any future deconstruct. For instance, Indian documentary photographer Abir Abdullah captured some of the victims following the floods in Bangladesh in early 2004.
A women in Bangladesh struggling to cope with the drastic changes she must deal with prior to the devastating flooding. Abdullah would of wanted world leaders to reconcile aid into Bangladesh to promote more devastation.
For my first shoot i think that i will photograph my aunt. She has recently given birth to a baby boy and i think that it will be interesting to photograph how her life has changed since she has had him. For these images i will photograph the everyday mundane life that they lead, but i will also try to capture special moments between the husband and wife. For these photographs technically i am photographing from an insiders perspective as it is part of my family, but i see this as an outsiders perspective into their family life. In the previous AS task i photographed my aunt and her husband while she was pregnant to capture life before the baby. Although these images were set up and they were not of everyday life, they were stylized images. I placed these images together to make a sort of story board of what happened this night. I think that these images show a very idealistic life that does not show what happens behind closed doors. I think that it will be interesting to photograph my auntie because i do not know what happens behind closed doors either and i think documenting their life will help me get closer to my family.
In these set of images i will try to go once a week to photograph them in their home and outside of their home. I will also try to take images of my auntie in her work place, as she is the manager of Macmillan Jersey and it would be good to photograph her in her work place. For these images i will also try to recreate these photographs but with her new little boy in them.
Looking more into the idea of family, in groups, we were able to come up with some different ideas as to how we’re going to explore the documentary world of family photography. At first it was challenging to get your head round and really think about what family is actually all about but we managed to get quite a few good ideas down. This has helped me to come up with some new ideas for family photography as I think there is more to it than just following around family members for the day.
Experimentation planning
Over the weekend I am going to make some images of my family as it is my niece’ first birthday. On Sunday we are getting our family and my brother-in-laws family along with some friends too. We are also celebrating my mum’s, brother-in-law’s, my brother-in-laws brother and mothers birthday all on Sunday as each of their birthdays are within days of each other. I think that here I will be able to make some interesting photographs as well as being able to document my niece’ very first birthday. I want to mainly go for action shots within my photographs to make them as real as they possibly can be but I also want to collaborate with some of my family members and get them to look straight into the camera in some of the images with no expression on their faces, a neutral look.
Another idea I had would be to look at old family photographs and remake them or show the change over time and how we no longer look how we once used to. I want to do this as well as make some personal images of items that I have grown up with and love, memories. I think this will be really interesting to do and a fun experiment. I will be doing this throughout the course of the week.
