For my first shoot i took images one morning before school of everyone in my house to show how normal life is in my house in the week. For these images i experimented using flash in some of the photos, which i think makes the images look amateurish which i think looks quite interesting. I followed my parents round to take these images, but for some of my other images i am going to try and take them when my family do not know i am taking the images.
I took this portrait image of my mum as she was showing my that something was in her eye, my mum did not know i was taking this image and so it caught her by surprise. I like this image because of the angle that it is taken as it is a very close up image.
I took this image of my mum when my mum was leaving to go to work. When i took this image i used flash, this image was a spontaneous image as i was just following my mum around the house and i took it as she was turning around. I think that the dull lighting in this image makes my subject stand out because of the motorbike jacket which has been lit up. In this image the main focus is the bike jacket which is important as this my mum needs to wear this on her bike to feel safe as she cannot take the car to work.
Through these images my main focus from taking them was to document my mums life and to show on an ordinary mundane day what happens in her life. I focused on taking images of her but also taking other landscape images of my house and of other people in my family to show what their life is like with the effect of my mum. These images are ordinary family images which show a routine of what happens in the morning in my house. I focused on taking images of my mum on her bike as this is what she takes to work, because of her anxiety she cannot take the car to work as she freaks out that she will not be able to get out of the situation.
I went through my old family albums to see how my family took images when i was younger. Some of these images are from when i was little and some are from when my little sister was born. I think that it is interesting to have both of these types of these images in as they show how through time how my family changed taking there images, but also how some of the images are similar even though they are taken around 9 years apart. Most of these images are taken in different settings and some of the images are of better quality than others. I think that the images look really interesting when the quality of them is not that good, as it makes the images look more individual and different from other how other typical photographers take family photographs. These are just some of my family images that i have that show how my family life and how my family take portrait images of one another.
This week my shoot is to ask my mum about what makes her anxious and take photographs of her when i ask her questions about this. Throughout these 4 weeks i will also follow my mum around the house and take photographs of her to try to understand her better. When i take these photographs i will either video record her or voice record her this is so i have different recordings of this conversation. I will also write down the questions that i ask and the response.
WEEK 2
For this week i will follow my dad around and take images of him to show how my mum having anxiety affects him. In this week i will try go to work with him and take some images of his life. In this week i will also take some images of my younger sister and how it affects her.
WEEK 3
In this week i will try to go out with my mum, either when she goes out with some of her friends or when she goes to visit my Nan. In these images this will also show a sense of community which my mum lives in and which she surrounds herself round. On these shoots i will take images of the surroundings as well as the people that my mum meets along the way.
Throughout these weeks i will take other spontaneous images, when occasions come up when i need to take them. I will follow around my family for the next couple of weeks and take photographs of their lives to tell a story of my mums life.
We went to go visit Tom Pope’s exhibition down at the royal spare where he showed off his pieces of work. Tom took us around and explained to us the meanings behind his images. First off we walked in and there was a video Tom playing with dice that was on a TV screen, this was on repeat so that every time you started watching the video you saw it from a different point each time. In this video Tom was trying to place 5 dice on top of one another by angling them so that they all stayed up and did not fall back down again. In the room there was other images that were placed on the walls that were in orange frames, Tom said that they were in orange frames just because he likes this colour and that this had no significant meaning to his images. These are some of the photographs that Tom took that was on the walls. In these images Tom went out into the community and took images of people in Jersey, in some of the images he told the person how to take the photograph if he was in it, but in others he left it up to the person taking the image, which to Tom meant that in the photograph was a part of Jersey community.
In the next room we went into there was a room with different masks in, theses masks were of faces of people from the archisle that Tom took out and blew up to life size sizes and placed a string around the back to make them into masks.
In this room there was also photographs on tables that had been cut up. These images had been blown up from the archisle and Tom on many of his workshops and through meeting people got them to throw a coin onto it and where the coin landed he made them a badge for the person to where, Tom did this with people that were from the Island Games also, which means that Tom’s badges are all around the world now. In another room that we went into there was photographs from Tom’s series called ‘high and low’ in these images Tom took images out of the archive of people doing the high jump but also took images of people doing the limbo, he placed these images so that the pole was in the same place and they all made a perfect line. In this room there was also a photograph on a piece of wood called from Jeffery’s leap, Tom took a piece of wood and kept throwing it over Jeffery’s leap, he did this repetition 12 times because he used a film camera called Hasselblad only took 12 different shots. Tom had this inspiration from John Baldessari who has done something like this before.
One of Toledano’s most famous pieces is his work called ‘Days with my Father, When I was Six’ Toledano took this work within the last few days that he had with his father as he had short term memory loss. Toledano’s mother suddenly passed away in 2006 and he realised that his mother had been hiding him from the fact that his father has a mental illness. So Toledano took these image to savior the last few moments that he had with his father. I think that this would be a really interesting aspect of family to explore by following one of my family members around and photographing their everyday life. Usually to make these kinds of images you need to take a lot of photographs to have the same effect through the image that you take.
For one of my idea for the theme family i was thinking about following one of my family members around and taking some images of their life. These images have inspired me to photograph my grandma and see the comparisons between their two lives as she is fit and well. I think that this would be an interesting concept to photograph. I think that this image shows on Toledano’s fathers face how confused he is, and also i think that this is quite an upsetting image as the father looks hurt. In these images the lighting and the composition of the photos are not important, what is important is capturing a memory or a moment with his father and i think that these images reflect their relationship.
In class we watched a documentary film called ‘The Genius of Photography’ and we watched the scene which is called ‘We are Family’. From this video i think that to take documentary images a key aspect is to try to get someone to open up, so then in the images you can reveal the real person. Through the images that you take you are trying to capture a feeling or an emotion that comes across in the images. For these types of images it is not about the lighting the photos that you take can look quite amateur, as long as there is some kind of meaning behind them. It can also be said that when you take a documentary image and you try to get your subject to pose for you and it is not realistic that the feeling that comes across from the image is the feeling that the person taking the photograph is feeling. So the photograph that the photographer takes project how they feel onto the subject, so in reality the image is of the photographer and not actually the person who is in the photo. When some photographers take images they like to try and give it a vernacular feel to it, this basically means traditional and that the photographer tries to take images how an ordinary person would take them, and not from a photographers perspective. This is how they make their images look amateur.
The first photographer that was mentioned in the film was Tony Vaccaro. In the late 50’s and 1960’s there was a lot of high gloss images of celebrities.
Tony Vaccaro says that celebrity portraits shows the photographers opinions on the celebrity and not how the celebrity actually views them self. As when the photographer takes the image they get the celebrity to pose and that shows the photographers views on them not their own views.
In the film one other photographer that was mentioned was Duane Micheal’s, he said that he doesn’t believe portraits and they do not tell you who the person is. I think that this is true as when you look at a portrait you cannot tell anything about the history of a person or anything about their personality. If there is a background to the image then you can maybe get the context of their life, but if not then i think the photograph is just a still image. This is why some photographers choose to take photographs of celebrities as they are pre-packaged as the media know about celebrities lives and they do not need to tell their story through one still portrait image. Pablo Picasso refused to get his portrait taken for many years until around 1966 and 1967 when he asked Tony Vaccaro to take a portrait image of him. Tony says that Picasso kept pulling different poses and Tony could tell that the images just didn’t show his personality, so he pretended to be fixing the light that was on his camera and when he was doing this Picasso relaxed and Tony took the photo. This image of Picasso was taken in 1968.
This image of Picasso shows a relaxed version of himself compared to the other portrait images that were taken of him, and that Picasso himself did not like. I think that by Clarke taking this image when Picasso didn’t realise it shows more of Picasso’s personality.
When taking documentary photography there are two view points that the image can be taken from, one is an insider, where you are apart of the culture or family of the subject that you are taking photos of. Or you can take an image from an outsiders perspective, this would be taking images of subjects who maybe do not come from the same background as you, and these people may be strangers to you. Taking photos like these can be interesting as you are documenting life from an outsiders perspective and this explore someone else’s life.
Another photographer that was mentioned was Martin Parr, his documentary photography is considered as dairy photography, this is because Parr kept a diary while he was taking his images. In Larry Clarke’s book called Tulsa there are sections in the book which show Clarke’s dairy and what he wrote in his diary. These images that are in ‘Tulsa’ are very intimate images and can be considered as an impolite genre. In these images there is drug use in the photographs, which makes the images intimate.
Larry Clark photography
Larry Clark photography
Nan Golding was another photographer that was mentioned in the video. Golding was a New York photographer who photographed her ‘own tribe’, this consisted of transsexual’s and images of drug taking and party animals. However Golding did not call them this she called them third gender, i think she did this so she did not discriminate them from everyone else. Golding took this images to show people how ‘third gender’ people live normal lives and she wanted this to come across in her photography. Golding considered her photographs as confessional photography and for this she was inspired by film makers when she took her images. Sometimes Golding puts herself in this images to tell a story, there is one famous image of Golding with a black eye that her boyfriend at the time gave her.
These images show part of Nan Golding’s life and show how her life was not always perfect. Nan said on the film that in a photograph there is an ‘ability to be present in the moment, but you can be there and get lost at the same time’.
Some photographers consider it that when you do not take a photograph then you do not remember the memory or the moment, so therefore they believe that is you don’t shoot you don’t remember. But also documentary photography can be seen that you only photograph what you want to remember, as sometimes you do not want to remember the memory. When taking these images it can be considered that you have to be in the mindset that you are going to take the perfect documentary image otherwise you will never take the perfect image. Black and white photographs are interesting as they show past to present in one image.
Richard Billingham is a famous photographer who photographed his drunk father, his father could drink uninterruptedly. When Billingham first started taking his photos they were to make art out of, he would use a triple print as he thought this made for more interesting paintings. So when Billingham was taking these images of his father he was not taking these from the eyes of a photographer but from the eyes of an artist. However Billingham was criticized as people said that he was photographing his parents for his own fame. Whereas i think that Billingham took the images so that he could understand his father and so he could be closer to him. I think that by him taking these images it made him more aware and try to understand why his father/family was like this.
On the other end of the scale, a photographer Sally Mann took idealistic images of her family showing them off in their best light. She took these images from an insiders perspective whereby she took image of the idealistic family life. She took these images in collaboration, as when she was photographing them she said that they need to ‘give you the picture’.
Sally Mann family photographySally Mann family photographySally Mann family photography
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.
Ed Kashi is a journalism photographer who documents life events that happen in the world. Kashi believes that these still images can change the world as they have such an impact on us. He believes that as people let us in to photograph their lives then this is how these people can tell their stories to the rest of the world. With this comes people being open, if they are not open then the photographs cannot be taken, and we will have no document of the occasion. Kashi is known for documenting the ‘social and political issues that define our times’ and through this he tells a story which he then shares. On the other hand Kashi is involved in mentoring students in photography and in filmmaking to help others achieve their goals in photography.
Kashi has also been involved in making short films, books and exhibits with his wife Julie Winokur who is a writer and a filmmaker. They founded Talking Eyes Media – http://talkingeyesmedia.org/what-we-do which is about visual story telling whereby they produce documentary films to improve society for future generations, whereby they celebrate the people who make a difference.
Donia Remedios, 73, who has pancreatic cancer, and her daughter, Orlanda Hernandez Ramirez Remedios, 44, check in at the National Cancer Institute to receive palliative care and pain medicine in Mexico City, Mexico on Sept. 1, 2014.
Samuel Mora Calderon, 70, spends his final hours in the Palliative Care Unit at the National Institute for Cancer in Mexico City, Mexico on Aug. 28, 2014.
Donia Remedios, 73, attends a service at the Church of San Miguel Arch Angel in Atitalaque, Mexico on Aug. 31, 2014.
Dr. Sylvia Allende, Director of the Palliative Care Unit, takes care of of a patient, along with her colleagues, at the National Institute for Cancer in Mexico City, Mexico on Aug. 28, 2014.
A man watches as his daughter, 34, is treated for leukemia in the Palliative Care Unit at the National Institute for Cancer in Mexico City, Mexico on Aug. 28, 2014.
Donia Remedios, 73, who has pancreatic cancer, travels with her daughter, Orlanda Hernandez Ramirez Remedios, 44, to the National Cancer Institute to receive palliative care and pain medicine in Mexico City, Mexico on Sept. 1, 2014. They start the journey at 4am at their home in Colony Dendho in Atitalaquia and then have to walk for 30 minutes to catch a series of 4 buses for a total journey of 4-5 hours.
These images which are from Kashi’s work on Palliative Care in Mexico document how cancer and how getting palliative care affects these families in Mexico. Some of these images are heartbreaking as you can see the pain in the subject’s eyes as they look at their loved ones. I think that these images show how much pain people go through and this document of these images shows people that it is not easy, and there are a lot of behind the scenes that goes on like going to the hospital and caring for them as they are sick.
A man watches as his daughter, 34, is treated for leukemia in the Palliative Care Unit at the National Institute for Cancer in Mexico City, Mexico on Aug. 28, 2014.
I think out of all the images this image is the most upsetting as you can see pain in the fathers eyes. The approach that Kashi has taken to this image is to focus this portrait image near the eyes so he has kept it close up so that it is the main focal point of the image. This image shows the theme of family as the man is watching his daughter being treated for leukaemia. I think that this image along with the other images in the series shows a story of pain that goes behind being sick with cancer, and i think that taking these images to document them shows other people that it is not just them who is suffering. In this image i think that you can tell that the man knows this photo is being taken of him, and even though it is a very realistic image i think that it would of been more beneficial if the man did not know the image was being taken of him. In addition by blurring the background of this image it draws attention to the man’s eyes and the mask that is over his face for hygiene reasons. The machines that are in the back of this image show the environment that they are in and give detail to the photograph and contextualise it, because without the machines in the background then this image alone would be hard to understand/read.
Walter Arsenio Rivera, 29, a sugarcane worker suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease of non-traditional causes, CKDnT, poses for a portrait in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua on Jan. 7, 2014.
Sugarcane workers begin their morning commute to the fields before dawn in Chichigalpa.
A sugar cane field is burned in order to make harvesting more efficient in terms of labor, transportation and processing, by cutting down on extraneous material.
Sugarcane workers begin their morning commute to the fields before dawn.
Cesar, 12, tends to his ailing father, Don Julio Lopez, 35, a former sugarcane worker, as he suffers through the end stages of CKDnT in Chichigalpa. He worked for 15 years in the cane fields before getting sick.
The body of Julio Lopez, 35, is on display for his wake in Chichigalpa on Jan. 8, 2015.
Juana Chevez, 45, who is sick with CKDnT, sits with her monthly food ration from the sugar mill, in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua on Jan. 8, 2015. Her husband died 3 years ago from Chronic Kidney Disease and she worked in the sugar cane fields for 7 years before getting sick. Two of her four kids also suffer from CKDnT.
In the community of La Isla, residents of all ages come together to dig trenches for a fresh water project in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua on Jan. 9, 2015. The 2.5 kilometers of trenches will hold pipes that supply water from a new well to 400 people in 98 homes.
A crew of cane cutters load trucks with bundles of sugarcane in a large field near the town of Viejo in Chinandega, Nicaragua, on Jan. 6, 2015. The majority of the crew is sick with kidney disease and some are underage.
A crew of cane cutters load a truck with bundles of sugarcane in a large field near the town of Viejo in Chinandega, Nicaragua, on Jan. 6, 2015. The majority of the crew is sick with kidney disease and some are underage.
A batch of sugarcane is lifted from a truck at the El Angel Sugar Mill in San Salvador.
A janitor cleans the floors of the dialysis clinic in the El Salvador National Hospital, the largest in Central America.
Family members mourn over the deceased Julio Lopez, 35, who passed away earlier that day.
Miurel Lopez, 15, cries by the body of her father, Julio Lopez, 35, who died of CKDnT earlier that day.
In these images Kashi took of Sugarcane and Kidney Disease sufferers some of the images are completely different to his other documentary images. Some of these images are very powerful images of family members who have passed away and children who are crying and look vulnerable. But some of these images are very cheerful and show a different side to these families lives. A few of these images are of the countryside and show the environment that they are in and show the workers living happy lives and enjoying time with their families. I think that these images are important as they remind us that its not all to life to be upset about what problems may occur, and it shows how to make the best of any situation.
In the community of La Isla, residents of all ages come together to dig trenches for a fresh water project in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua on Jan. 9, 2015. The 2.5 kilometers of trenches will hold pipes that supply water from a new well to 400 people in 98 homes.
I think that this image is lovely as it shows the family of workers working together and having a good time. As this community are digging for trenches for fresh water i think that this image documents what else is to come for this community and it is a very exiting image for them. It also documents how the society is changing and they are becoming more privileged by having a supply of water to 400 people in 98 homes. I think that this style of photograph is one that brings everyone together and is a very happy image. The smiles on the subject’s faces as they are digging the trenches shows the enthusiasm and excitement.
Documentary photography is usually informal photographs that show a realistic perception of everyday life that are usually taken of ordinary people. In some cases the photographs can be taken to show an audience what is happening and to warn people and give them further knowledge to make for a social change. ‘Neither art nor advertising, documentary drew on the idea of information as a creative education about actuality, life itself’
Documentary photography shows a story within pictures of what is happening in the world. However, any photograph can be seen as a document, as it documents an event in one way or another.
I think that the idea of documentary photography is interesting, as i think that without knowing we have always been documenting our lives in one way or another. But by documenting an occasion by photographs it shows proof that this document happened. These documents are usually real-life things that have happened and they are taken to warm others about what is going on in the world. But sometimes the photographers are taken to document private and special moments to people, that maybe they do not want to share with everyone, but it is special to them. Sometimes the photos are taken to document real-life crisis to show the media what is happening.
Documentary photography
Documentary photography
Documentary photography
These are some images that i found when i looked up documentary photography. I think that these images are similar in a sense that they document a significant occasion that has happened. However, the the images all represent different life events that have happened.
For example, this image is a very shocking image as in this image it looks like the bird is going to attack the little boy. When looking at this image some people would look and question the photographer as to why they took it and did not help the little boy, and others would say that the photographer took it to document what was happening in this part of the world. This image was probably taken with a telephoto lens, as i can imagine the photographer would not of been able to take this image as close up as it seems because of the bird. I think that because of how close up this image is it makes it more upsetting as you can see the fine details in the image. By fine details i mean that you can see the little boys bones on his ribs which shows how he is obviously malnourished, but also because you can see the birds face and it looks like any moment it is going to jump onto the boy and attack him. This is why photographs like these question the moral aspects of documentary photography.
Documentary photography can be documented as street photography, photo journalism but also on documentaries central aesthetics – political and moral associations.
Street photography:
With street photography the images that i found are not upsetting as some of the other versions of documentary photography that i have seen. I think that these images document a normal persons everyday mundane life and i think that these images do not shock you when you look at them. However, i do think that these images look very beautiful and i think that by some of the images being in black and white it makes them more aesthetically pleasing, but i do not think these are the kind of images that go into the news to tell people about how the world is, as i think in everyday life for ordinary people they see this, and some people would say that these kind of photographs do not need to be taken as we can see them all the time.
I think that this street photography image is heart warming because it has a man and a women who look like they are in love. I think that this kind of documentary photograph is special because it shows the bond between two people. I think that how this photograph has been taken is good because the boarders around the man and the woman draw attention to them.
Photojournalism:
I think that photojournalism photographs seem to document occasions that would be placed into the media for everyone to see what is happening in the world. I think that some of these images are shocking to look at, as it is actually scary to see how some people live and what is actually happening around the world. And if it wasn’t for documentary photography we would not know about these occasions that are happening. These images can also be said to question moral aspects, as some people would argue that you should be helping in these occasions and not taking images, but in my opinion i think that these images need to be taken so that, in some cases they do not happen again but also that if they do happen to us we know what to expect and what is coming of it. If these images were not taken we would never know what was happening and we would never be able to help those who are suffering around the world.
I think that this image is alarming because the faces on the children’s faces is heart breaking as you can see how genuinely terrified the children look. This image is also shocking because there is a naked girl in it, i think any photography that has a naked person in always seems to shock everyone, but i think in this case it is even more shocking because of the circumstance of this image as they are running away from the explosion that you can see in the background of this image. The first thing you see in this image is the children’s faces and then you realise that what they are running away from is ever more terrifying as they are running away to survive as they are running away from an explosion.
Camera as a witness:
Sometimes in documentary photography the camera can be seen as a witness, this is because the images that are taken document what happened, and the camera proves what has happened and acts as a witness as proof. Sometimes these images raise up certain questions in the community about the moral aspects behind them, but if the images were never taken then how would anyone know about what was happening in the world? I assume that after the photographs take the images they drop their camera and try to help to situation as they are human and they do still care about others, but the photographs need to be taken to warm everyone.
Over the past time of working with the project Chance, Challenge and Change i think that it has been interesting to find out different ways of seeing how photographs to be taken, as before starting this project i would of never said that a video could be classed as a photography, but seeing as each frame/second of the video is a photo, i think that it can be classed as photography. I think that when learning about the idea of performance photography it is interesting to see how artists like Tom Pope chooses to take his images, using the idea of change, challenge and change but also with theories such as Psychogeography, and i think this makes you think about it when you are taking photographs. When going through this project i found it quite hard to relate to it and to become interested in it, as i think that some of the performance videos/photos are a bit boring and pointless. However i can see how some people would find it fun and enjoyable to play with different aspects of performance when making photography. I think that if i was to do this project again i would try and be more engaged in taking photographs and try make more of an effort to see what aspects of performance photography i would like.
