Title/question: The entire essay must focus on the title or question of the project. The title needs to involve the concept of photographing the invisible as well as considering the idea of memory.
Introduction: The introduction needs to explain the main body of what the essay is about and what it is trying to address. The beginning paragraph should contain artist movements, quotes and photographers I have taken influence from.
Ideas:
How has Laia Abril and Yury Toroptsov shown the concept of memories and attempted to photograph the invisible?
How can memories be demonstrated through the medium of photography?
How are memories reflected in Laia Abril’s and Yury Toroptsov’s interpretation of the concept?
How has Boltanski, Abril and Toroptsov represented the concept of capturing the invisible through the medium of photography?
Planning stage: How do I structure my essay? What do I want to include?
The essay needs to follow a systematic structure, addressing the question I choose in detail. I will begin with an opening quote possibly from a philosopher or an artist I have found influential. Following the introduction will be the first paragraph and so on. There will be a topic of discussion for each paragraph, I will aim for four solid paragraphs. Finally, I will conclude the essay again referring to the question and making sure I have answered it sufficiently. The essay needs to include a quote at the beginning as I earlier stipulated, it also needs to have references from specific photographers and philosophers, it needs to show that I have thoroughly researched the chosen topic and have a variation of resources.
John Locke suggests that an individual’s personal identity extends only as far as their own consciousness. There is a key connection between consciousness and memory. The self is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and evaluation. He proposes the idea that in order to be a self, one must be a thinking being and due to consciousness always being intertwined with thinking therefore one only can extend itself to consciousness. The consciousness which Locke is referring to is parallel to memory. ‘If one cannot remember some experience, then one did not have that experience.’ Therefore, Locke thinks memory is a necessary condition of personal identity. Forgetfulness is when we lose sight of our past selves, which Locke then doubts whether we are the same thinking thing.
‘Human life is embedded in time: we remember the past, we plan for the future and we live in the present. We swim in an ever-rolling stream.’
Greek philosopher Seneca’s idea, `If we do not live now, then when?’
In today’s modern world we are urged to live in the moment yet we are still constantly drawn back to the past which has influence over us still. Therefore the question remains of what we regard the value of memory to be. Not all memories are as clear as others, we have distinct memories and then we have hazy distant memories, so which memories are more powerful or instrumental? How do we categorise such abstract concepts?
‘The public wandered slowly past this human sea of individual fates and forgotten lives…’
‘What qualities do you find in the photograph, and what does the medium mean to you?’
‘In my view you can equate the photograph with a dead body, just like an item of used clothing; it has the memory of something, and it is an object where the person behind it has disappeared.’
‘…always represents the memory of a reality.’
‘Someone once said that you die twice: when you die the first time and when somebody finds a photo of you and no longer remembers who it shows.’
‘You have talked about your interest in preserving ‘the little memory’. Can you explain what you mean by that?’
‘I mean that everyone is unique, because everyone thinks differently and remembers differently. We consist of all these experiences and memories, it is this ‘little memory’ that makes us different from others.’
‘I believe in the importance of every single human being, but even the most important ones disappear quite quickly, especially their little memory. What is most important is most fragile.’
‘You’ve said you want to touch people, even to make them weep. It’s rare for an artist today to use these big words and to try to stir the emotions. What do you think is the role of art today?’
‘I want to move people and to ask them questions about evil and good, about disappearance after death and so on. But they are questions to which I have no answers.’[1]
[1] KATALOG- Journal of photography & video- SPRING 1999
Obviously I am taking inspiration from the work of Cindy Sherman and her self portraits of taking on different female personas. I am also taking inspiration from Claude Cahun and her work where she smudges the line between the separateness of males and females. I think that this is very relevant and is now growing with fashion changing and people becoming more accepting and open to a new normal. These two are my main feminist photographer inspirations as I find their work so strong and I have always learnt a great deal from them but recently I have started to take a keen interest in the work of Yoko Ono, more specifically her work titled Cut Piece which is a very powerful video. Likewise, I have taken a lot of inspiration from surrealist photographers including Christopher McKenney and his horror surrealism which I absolutely love and find it so unique, it really stands out to me as well as the work of Brian Oldham. Both surrealist photographers work is different and I love to look at all of them. This is the effect that I want to have on my spectator, I want them to see my images and for them to stand out to them. I want to make images that give impact and that make my spectator stop and rethink and evaluate the way that they look at the world and life. I have already looked into the work of these photographers and have found out a fair amount about all of them but I want to compare and contrast them towards one another so that I can see which would be the best to write a response and essay about.
Over the Christmas period I have been looking for new photographers to explore who create surrealist photos like Christopher McKenney and Brian Oldham. I came across Linda Blacker on Instagram and found her images very interesting and different. I like her work and want to incorporate new and unique ideas like hers into my own work to make for more exciting images. Blacker is a fine art photographer, born in Chelmsford, United Kingdom. Her work combines fantasy and reality creating colourful and mystical images. Blacker’s work is very much fantasy and consists of plenty of makeup, props, sets and costumes. Her work is so interesting and different, it stands out and is very strange. Most of the time I just like to look at her work and see what she is doing yet never look into her work in enough depth to start making conceptual ideas of what the meaning behind each image is. They are very visually beautiful and tell a great story of the different characters that she manages to create and portray through her models.
“I like to be in control of the entire piece. From the costume, to the set, I style the characters and I am even very precise about the position I want the model to be in.” – Linda Blacker
Looking further into the work of Blacker I find it so exciting and full of life. Her work is always so colourful and engaging which I think that I want to use when making my own images. I do think that Blacker’s work is very eccentric and over the top but I love that about her work. I won’t be doing any shoots like hers anytime soon as I don’t think it would be relevant to my personal study but I have taken some inspiration from her creativity and individuality. I want to somehow incorporate colourful smoke bombs into my own surrealist work and want to make unusual images that stand out just as much as the work of Blacker. All of Blacker’s work is done in a studio and with a makeup artist at hand which I obviously do not have but I like the idea of using the studio to make some interesting images.
I find this image particularly interesting as Blacker has literally made the model part of the art work. It almost looks like a painting and the model blends in to that environment so well. In this image the model is unidentifiable and Blacker usually makes images like this on purpose as they aren’t the main event there is so much more going on around the model and Blacker wants the image to stand out as a whole and for her spectators not to just focus on the model. To me the model is supposed to be a cloud or could be a representation of wind, nature etc as she is blowing softly but the hot air balloons look as though they are being greatly affected by her presence. I love the colours in this image as it is so bright and happy. The colourful hot air balloons really stand out and make this image really inviting. Something about this image just makes me curious as it is so strange yet it makes me want to look at it more and find out what is actually going on in the image. It looks as though the entire thing is a painting and the model was painted and told what exact position to stand in and the exact facial expression she should make. I do like the idea of having complete control over my images and being able to position my model how I want them but I always prefer just coming to the scene and choosing what to do there and then, I tend to go with whatever looks best not just the idea and angle that I imagined in my head as it might not always work out that way or look as good as I imagine so being open to changes and different angles is the best for me.
This image also interests me, I get the impression through Blacker’s work that she likes to use paint and make her photographs look like paintings. I like that this image shows a man being the night and the moon while the woman is the sun showing the relationship between the two. The arm the woman has resting on the mans shoulder and his arms around her makes the image seem like the two are in a relationship but almost can’t actually touch each other or hold each other properly as they look strange. Both of them seem to be embracing one another with both of their eyes closed, this could be to make the image more powerful and mysterious focusing more on the whole image and the sun and the moon rather than focusing on two people painted as the sun and the moon. They are supposed to blend into the image to become a part of it and aren’t really there to stand out or to take away from the art work of the image.
Roy Lichtenstein is an American artist, born in New York City in 1923. Lichtenstein’s career hit a high in the 1960s when he became a leading figure of the new Pop Art movement. His work is inspired by comic strips and advertisements, using bright and graphic works parodied American popular culture and the art world. This work was a reaction to some work of artists including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. He wanted to stand out and to challenge the way spectators view art and so became more inspired by advertisements and comic strips making his work unique. Lichtenstein died in New York in September 1997.
Jackson Pollock was an artist who was making work at the same time as Lichtenstein. He was very famous and his work is admired by many people today including some celebrities and actors [e.g Matthias Schoenaerts]. He was an American painter and was a leading face behind the abstract expressionism movement. He is known for being one of the most radical abstract art in history of modern art. Lichtenstein wanted to stand out from this and make his own mark on the world and so felt inspired by Pollock’s work but at the same time he wanted to challenge it or even go in a different direction which was to stand out even more than the work of Pollock himself. I really like Pollock’s work although it can seem like just a huge mess, easy and with a load of paint squiggles everywhere. However, I have tried to make painting similar to his and they haven’t been so successful and it is harder than it looks to get exactly what you want your painting to look like. I do think that his work is unique and it is interesting to see all the bursts of colour and different styles that he used within his paintings.
Willem de Kooning was also an artist at the time and was seen as one of the most prominent and celebrated abstract expressionist painters after Jackson Pollock. His work contains many images of distorted womenly shapes, which reminds me of the work of Picasso. He was a very traditional painter who became famous for his paintings of women, painted in different periods of his life. Lichtenstein was inspired by him through his use of women in art and paintings, which a lot of painters used [and still do] for inspiration. I think that Lichtenstein wanted to pose women in a more human like way showing their emotional states rather than how he physically sees them contrary to the work of Kooning. I don’t really like the work of Kooning as it kind of disfigures the women and makes them come across more as things or objects rather than actual human beings. They look so distorted and messed up that they don’t look human at all, which really does remind me of the work of Picasso and how he would change the facial features and make geometrical shapes out of them to make them unidentifiable.
Willem de Kooning artwork
Willem de Kooning artwork
Willem de Kooning artwork
Willem de Kooning artwork
New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City was a body of work that Roy Lichtenstein famously created. He made images mainly of women being emotional and to me his images see women as weak and small minded. I am unsure whether or not that was his intent but women are shown in more of a negative light through his work. His work is very theatrical and reminds me of the way women are portrayed in Film Noir films and the way those women are seen as being there for the man and only caring about what men think of her, including the femme fatales of those films who are seemingly set out to ruin the man who they have been hurt by.
Roy Lichtenstein artwork
Roy Lichtenstein artwork
Roy Lichtenstein artwork
Roy Lichtenstein artwork
Roy Lichtenstein artwork
This piece of artwork stands out most to me as it is very simple and obvious. Lichtenstein portrays this woman as crying over a man that she is dreaming and thinking about all the time. It makes her seem weak and desperate to fall in love with this man or to be with him. I do like this image as I think that it is very powerful as I do think that a lot of women do get upset over stupid men but then again I know that women don’t feel sad for long about that one thing or person, we often move on and become stronger. I feel that Lichtenstein does portray women in more of a negative light in that they are constantly obsessing over men and wanting to be around men and that they need men to function properly which I think is wrong. I would like to respond to his work in some way on how women are actually much stronger than what Lichtenstein portrayed them as and that we can do things for ourselves without thinking about what men are going to think or what they have told us we should be doing. I do think the way that Lichtenstein has created this artwork is very unique and I like his comic strip style as it is different and interesting. A possible meaning behind the idea of using the comic strip could be that it is fantasy and women aren’t actually like that as all comic strips are fiction and are usually made with superheroes and made for the entertainment of the spectator to escape to a different world but ultimately he most likely just used this style so that his work would stand out from everyone else’s.
I also found images of women that have taken the style of Lichtenstein and given themselves a makeover to look like the woman does. I find these images really interesting and almost like a response to his work showing possibly how unrealistic they are and how his drawings don’t really reflect the way women actually are. I like this image of the woman with yellow hair as it again just shows how inhuman this woman is and how she is an ideal that Lichtenstein created that is impossible for women to meet and be like. Much like the drawing the women have used their makeup to make themselves look like a cartoon character and shows how it isn’t a realistic representation of a woman at all and although comic strips are exaggerated they don’t really dehumanize anyone with characters mainly consisting of superheroes with the most prominent element being the exaggerations of their body features.
Davidson went to a new exhibition of the body in Greek art called the ‘Naked ambition’ in this he noticed that the male nude sculptures and nudity have become normal to us over the past 2,500 years, and it is what we expect from ancient statues. Most statues are ignored when going around a museum for example and people do not tend to focus on them as art pieces, or look at the muscular figures of the Greek sculptures. ‘Ancient statues are looked at and not seen’. When noticing the Greek statues Davidson said there is something which all seem to have, he said that the statues reveal a ‘ superb imperial torso that would not disgrace the cover of Men’s Health magazine. I think that this shows how even since 300 BC when human sculptures were formed, there was still an idea of the ‘perfect male’ and how men had to have a perfect torso to make them attractive. The ‘Greek nude’ which Davidson addresses is to do with nudity in practice, Greek homosexuality, a passion for gymnasium and athletics. One concept which Davidson also relates to seems to be the idea of body building, ‘ Nudity was a kind of costume, an idea enhanced by the fact that much time seems to have been spent oiling oneself up and scraping oneself down.’ I think that this implies the idea of bodybuilding and how men choose to make them self look as muscly as possible by using other factors such as oil to make their personal aesthetics appear greater, i.e. to make the bodybuilders more muscly on stage in a competition.
Vanity fair … a marble relief from the north frieze of the Parthenon shows the procession of the Panathenaic festival, the commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena (438-432BC). Photographs courtesy of the Trustees of the British MuseumDiscus-thrower of Myron sculpture (460-BC450)
Marble metope from the Parthenon shows the battle between Centaurs and Lapiths at the marriage-feast of Peirithoos (438-432BC)
Throughout this review in the newspaper Davidson covers the Greek male statues and why we are not concerned by their nakedness, and says that we are so use to seeing these Greek statues with no clothes on that we have come accustomed to it, and it does not surprise us as it use to in 300 BC. These masculine figures are covered from head to toe in muscles, and have amazing torsos, and Davidson questions whether this is why nowadays males are so concerned with getting the ‘perfect’ male body, which includes these masculine aesthetics.
Marble statue of a naked Aphrodite crouching at her bath, also known as Lely’s Venus. Roman copy of a Greek original (AD2).Bronze statuette showing the suicide of Ajax. Greece, 720-700BC
For the Faith, Family, Community project I have been going to events to take lots of images over Christmas. When I started looking through the images I had taken, I then thought about looking into my own personal archive of work, to see what images I have already taken in the past which show communities families and friends (as I haven’t yet taken any images focusing on religion). Although not all the images have been taken in the same style as I would like, I am still going to keep them in consideration for my Photo book.
The photos I have collected vary from last year when the Chinese students from Ba Yi High School came to visit, to photos I have taken when I went to London and images I took for other projects.
Hopefully some of these photos will be of use for my Photo book, and will give a greater set of gatherings.
