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.
From my photo shoot I have chosen the best photographs and edited them above. I did this photo shoot in the evening which meant that their was very little light in some of the rooms this effected my camera settings, because of the lack of light some of the photographs turned out in a more of a yellow colour and some other photographs were grainy, although I was able to fix this when I edited them in lightroom. I am happy with this photo shoot overall because I was able to get photographs that were different from the other houses that I have visited, I think these photographs include a lot of background and detail which gives the viewer a bigger insight into the personality and the environment in which I am photographing.
Over the Christmas Holidays, I visited my family in Birmingham and decided to take photographs in the style of a story as this was the last week I was spending with my sister before she went travelling. I only see my family once a year if that, so thought it would be nice to document my time there. My nan has also fallen very ill so this was a special time to spend time with her, but unfortunately she didn’t let me take photographs of her as she looks very poorly as shes lost about 2 stone. She didn’t want me to remember her like that so I respected that. I did manage to get one photograph of her however, just to document my time with the whole family. My cousin Dylan was my main character as he is the youngest member of the family and his hair photographs well.
These are my favourite images from the shoot and the images I would put into a book if I was to use these as my finals:
Smith originally studied Fine Art, between 1991 and 1995 at Coventry University and as part of his course he undertook a research project into contemporary art which included living on an Aboriginal reserve for four months. After completing his degree at Coventry he completed a Masters degree in Photography at the Royal College of Art. During this time he examined the meaning and construction of masculinity, concentrating on the cultural and visual creation of various alpha male identities.Most of Paul Smith’s photography depicts scenes from British male culture. There’s a cartoonish, theatrical element to it enhanced by the fact that all the men in each set of themed work are the same man, created through the tricks of digital photography.
In another series of photographs, the project on which has inspired me to create my photo boo., Make My Night, Smith depicts the excesses of a boy’s night out. In one, set in a pub, a man sits at a table cluttered with empty beer glasses, in front of a dart board, with a condom pulled down over his face down to his upper lip. Next to him, another man clutching a beer laughing while on the other side another man aims a lit cigarette at the tip of the condom. Of course, all three men are the same man, presumably Smith himself. In the next image, the boys are back at someone’s house, posing for the camera. The central figure holds a cucumber out from his crotch, leaning backwards, while another man, cigarette in one hand, kneels down and theatrically puckers up kissing the cucumber. Behind them, one man stands on a couch, clutching his beer, smiling at the camera and another man grimaces at the camera, wearing a union jack plastic hat. The fact that all these men are the same man is more striking in this image, making it both funny and disorienting.
Some of this has echoes of the work of Martin Parr, the documentarian of British life shot in garish colors. the drunken excesses of night life, the exercises of army troops, the crowd dynamics of soccer games, or the action hero of the movies. But Smith’s work is consciously artistic in its manipulation of the image, and the extremely posed nature of every shot. He is showing some of the stereotypes of masculinity, examining them with a sense of fun and explicit nature.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Julian Germain created a series of photographs over a period of eight years of an elderly gentleman, Charles Snelling, living in Portsmouth. Germain met Charles Snelling in April 1992. He has been described as a simple and gentle man, who loved colour therefore surrounded himself by colour. Although Germain does not focus on photographing people who have died or have had a personal connection with, but he creates meaningful photographs which reflect the man’s life. The images express his personality and emotions, they demonstrate the simplicity and beauty of his life. I especially like the portrait made of him on the beach eating an ice cream because it just shows ordinary aspects of his life. Another photograph I think it really effective within the project is the image of Snelling about to have breakfast, I think it works well because it is a daily routine most people partake in. Scrapbooks have been included into the project in order for the reader to gain a sense and understanding of Snelling’s life before Germain began photographing him. The style of the scrapbook is very cinematic and they have authenticity that cannot be captured in the modern photographs. Germain’s photographs have a shallow depth of field which are rich and artfully composed. I think a great deal of the images produced in the project are able to be related to, most audiences can understand and feel connected to what Germain is trying to show. The book is straight and honest, there is no hidden message or underlying agenda. It is simply a portrait of an elderly man’s life. The beautiful title of the book quotes the American natural philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Germain narrates Snelling’s organised life, from his daily routines, solving cross word puzzles and listening to music.
‘Without ever trying or intending to, he showed me that the most important things in life cost nothing at all. He was my antidote to modern living.’
‘The important things in life, as Julian Germain shows, are free. One just has to be willing to embrace them.’
Matt Hawthorne is a Dallas based photographer who takes fashion, portraiture, action sports and lifestyle images. Hawthorne is trained in fine art photography using large format cameras and film. Hawthorne uses studio lighting in and out of an actual studio to shoot his action images for advertising and fashion jobs. I was inspired by Hawthorne’s work by the studio images with the powder chalk, i think that this would be really interesting to try and recreate these for my personal study, as a sort of advertising campaign. I think that by using chalk in the images it gives a raw feel to the images, and makes them look more ‘sport-like’.
Michael Clark
Sadhana Woodman practicing yoga in White Sands National Monument near Alamagordo, New Mexico.
Bill Stengel and Joe Nodeland sitting around a campfire after a long day of sea kayaking on White Cliff Island in the Queen Charlotte Sound near Telegraph Cove, Canada.
Michael Clark is an outdoor photographer, whereby he takes images of adventure sports, travel and landscape photography. Clark takes images of sports people pushing themselves to the limit and has also risked his own life to get the most amazing raw images of the sport, for example of rock climbing sport. Clark uses unique angles, dramatic lighting strong graphics in his images which capture the intense moment of the sport itself. Clark’s work has been used for editorial reasons. Clark has been taking photographs since 1996 and in 2003 started to use digital photography. Clark’s images inspired me to try and take some editorial photographs for my personal study whereby i set up the shoots.
Joachim Ladefoged has been a professional photographer since 1991, Ladefoged works for editorial clients such as The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazines. February 2008 Ladefoged published a monograph called “Mirror” and in 2009 he directed a short film “Mirror” about bodybuilders. In this series of images he went to bodybuilding competitions and photographed the different competitors, for these images it looks like he used a photo-booth type area to take these images with studio lighting, this is so that the muscles on the bodybuilders are more prominent for the images. This is also why the bodybuilders have had a spray tan before their competition, usually these competitors would of had between 1-3 coats of fake tan so that their muscles are more on show. For my photographers i want to take some images inspired by these, for my images i will not be taking my images of bodybuilders but of younger male gym-goers with a main focus on my main subject but also photographing him and his own friends in their own world. Some of these images i want to recreate as i think that tit would look good to recreate the different set out of images placed together to create a montage sort of images.
Some of the artists that i have chosen are very media based photographs in comparison to Joachim Ladefoged’s images. I think that Ladefoged’s images are more the type of images that i would like to take for my photographs as they are stronger images. For these images i will need to use studio lighting which is not in the gym, so this is what i will have to change in comparison to these images.
For one of my photographs i would like to take an image like this as i think that abs have become and important part of the male physique and especially nowadays for the younger generations as this is what they believe the perfect male to look like, and this is what young boys aspire to look like as they grow up. When going around the gym there is a difference in who is there, nowadays there are younger men going to the gym 6-7 times a week and working to get what they think is the perfect body.
For one of my ideas i want to make a montage image similar to this image, however i do not think my image will include having my subject’s tops off because in the gym you cannot do a work out without your top on.
Ladefoged has a dream of becoming a soccer player, but he couldn’t because he was ‘almost crippled by rheumatism. Rheumatism is ‘any disease marked by inflamation and pain in the joints, muscles, or fibrous tissue’. This is when Ladefoged decided to start taking photographs.
