Gillian Wearing uses the idea of chance, challenge and change which she uses in a video she made called ‘Dancing in Peckham’, in this video it is just of a lady dancing, with no music in the middle of what looks like shopping centre, in this video there are people walking past at all different times within this video, with different facial expressions which makes them keep a distance from her, whether this is because they think it is strange or they have seen the camera and they do not want to have photographs taken of them. Gillian Wearing was born in 1963 and made 70’s television into fine art and because of this TV programme makers and advertisers have copied her. Wearing works with video recordings of performances but also photography, she characterises her art as a ‘kind of portraiture’. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jun/03/art

In some of Wearing work she has tried to use the idea of challenge and change by using masks and other disguises to remove her face so there is no visual of the person, some say that this is as if she ‘distrusts the face’. One of Wearing’s projects was when she walked down Walworth Road and bandaged her face and videoed herself walking down the street while she had people tell their secrets, as she had a mask on and so did the people, this removed their identity, and the idea of wearing a mask i think plays with the idea of performance photography. In the video of Wearing dancing in the shopping centre…

William Blake – “The most sublime act is to set another before you.” This portrait is an attempt to become, rather than to paint, another person.

When Wearing went to take this video she first saw in the distant there was a lady who was dancing to some jazz music where she was dancing completely out of time and it looked as if she didn’t care as she was ‘caught in the moment’ but this women caught Wearings eye as she was away from everyone else in her own little world. So in Wearings video she sets out to recreate the idea that she saw of this lady in the Royal Festival Hall who was caught in the moment by dancing completely out of sync to the music, but enjoying herself so much. 

“Dancing in Peckham is a 25-minute video that shows on an ordinary television monitor. The dancer, Gillian Wearing, under the vaulted glass roof, on the shiny pavement, has a look of intense seriousness on her face. She throws her hair about, shakes, gets down. She looks ridiculous, in a public place in broad daylight. She is not dancing to a Walkman, just to sounds in her head. Before making the video she practised dancing to some of her favourite music – Nirvana, Queen, Gloria Gaynor.” http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jun/03/art

On this trip we went to ST Malo with Tom Pope, we got split into groups and went off to take our own ‘performance’ photographs. This is where we had planned for around 3 different shoots which we were going to take while we were in St Malo.

Here we could also use  the concept of psycho-geography and we could use the environment to inspire us, for this we walked around until we found something that gave us an idea. As we walked through and opening me and my group saw the carousel which was not turned on. So for this performance idea we went onto the carousel and spun the teacups on it and took videos of each other while spinning around.

For this image i took a photograph of a man blowing some bubbles, i think that i could of improved this image by changing the composition and showing other people in this image, to get the ‘audiences’ reaction. However, i think that by just showing this man in this image makes it interesting as the man is performing for the camera and blowing the bubbles.

SHOOT 1:

For one of my shoots there was a man and his two dogs and two people from my group placed themselves next to the dogs and tried to reenact what the dogs were doing; which at this point was just lying down. 

I think that these images are interesting  because of the man in this image, by having the man in this image you get his response to what the two girls are doing, and he looks very concerned. We noticed that whenever you ‘performed’ in front of the camera it would attract people to look over and see what you were doing as they were very interested.

SHOOT 2:

For this shoot two of the girls went and sat down next to a man and copied his facial expression and his posture. As the man spoke french and did not really understand what they were saying he thought it was funny. 

For these images i tried to take some varied focal lengths when i was taking them, but i think that i should of changed the angles to make the images more interesting and get a more straight on view of them coping what the man was doing.

SHOOT 3:

For this shoot we were with Tom Pope and we carried around one of the girls through the town and she would have to direct us where to take her. 

I think that the top image is interesting because you have the people far away watching as if they are the ‘audience’ in this performance and they  were watching to see what was happening. From being on this shoot we walked past a fancy dress shop where we saw some costumes which the group where inspired by and started having a sword fight with each other.

After we took these photographs the man and his son came out of the shop and told them to stop playing with the swords, i think it would of been good if i had videoed this and then got the man coming out which would of made a good video.

Psychogeography is used as a name for an approach which plays on the idea of ‘drifting’ around different locations/environments. 

Tom Pope said that he used psychogeography when taking his images. When Pope was going to different places wherever he was he would always bring his camera, and there so if he was inspired to take a set of images he was always ready to. As Tom had a film camera he usually only had 12 chances to take the image that he wanted, which would be completely up to chance. The environment which Pope was in would inspire him and give him an idea for a photograph and this is what Psychogeography is, it is being inspired by the urban landscape that you are in. When Pope would think of an idea he would set up his camera and then he will just start taking the images. 

These photographs show at different times in Pope’s photography how he was inspired by a location and took an image, to take these images he would use a button which he could hold in his hand so he could press the button when he wanted the photograph to be taken, this was to test whether the idea of chance worked and if the image turned out good or not. 

The themes of chance, challenge and change are the title of which our current work is upon. The main photographer which we are looking at is Tom Pope, who uses these concepts within his photography. I think that the them of chance relies of the idea that when taking a photograph you are taking a chance with it, you have no idea whether the image is going to turn out how you want it to, or whether the image is not going to work. This is why in some of Tom Pope’s photography he uses a film camera which only has 12 takes, which means that when Tom is taking his images he has 12 chances to make the images that he wants, and if in those 12 chances he does not make the image, then he does not make the image. And i think by using this idea of chance it makes taking photographs quite exiting and can make a photographer become more adventurous with how they take their images. The idea of challenge i think is to do with when Tom is taking his images he like to challenge what people in society believe to be the norm in everyday life, he challenges this by doing things out of the ordinary and that are strange, not things that are illegal, however some people would believe it to be because they have never seen someone do such a thing before. By showing other people how Tom is challenging everyday norms in his photographs or videos that he makes he shows the people that are in the background to see their view on what he is doing, in this videos tom is completely silent and lets the viewer focus on what is happening in the images, and makes the focus on the people in the background who are either looking over or even some are asking questions. The idea of change in photography i think relates to the idea of challenge as it photographs or everyday people who are trying to change the opinions of viewers who are looking at the images/videos and questioning them and it is getting people to change and stop being so rigid on their views between what is right and what is wrong in society. 

When learning about how to engage with the Photo-Archive it was clear that a lot of pride had to be taken in the work that you had produced. This was made clear when going on our trip to the Jersey Archisle when we saw some of the photographs that had been placed in the archive over the years. I think that some of the images that have been placed in at the time the people who took the images did not realise the significance of them documenting that specific time in history, but for photographers and even for everyday people it is interesting to use the archive to look back at portraits and landscapes of people in the island and of the island to see the differences in how Jersey has changed. I think that by looking at different portraits over the years, which was one of the tasks that we had to do, it was clear that the style that photographers use to take portraits has changed over the years, as back in time there were very classic portraits of families all together looking all happy, maybe doing an everyday task. Whereas nowadays the portrait images that are taken are usually taken in a studio with professional studio lighting and it would of taken a lot of time and effort to get the image exactly how the family imagined it, and good enough for the photographer to be proud of the image. I think that it brings up the question as to whether in the olden days when portrait images were taken where they more realistic of the true person and their identity?  

Yury Toroptsov

Some of the work which is in the Archisle is of projects which different photographs, some of which have been the photographer in residence at the time,  have taken of the island to show the islands true beauty, but usually the photographers try to show this in a different light. For example Yury Toroptsov who was the photographer in residence in 2014, when he was going through the images he found some images from the Jersey Battle of Flowers and he was inspired by the name of one of the floats which was called Fairyland and this helped him understand the island more. Yury found this nation of ‘fairy’ was very present in Jersey, as because he came across some documents of cows where most were named after fairies. Yury believed that Jersey was a very ‘discrete’ and ‘mysterious place’. http://toroptsov.com/en/projects/fairyland.htm

When planning for taking photographs in St Malo the images needed to be related to the idea of chance, challenge and change. 

Shoot 1: Take photographs or videos walking into a pond/fountain somewhere and video it and show peoples reactions

Shoot 2: Take photographs/video of someone being carried around St Malo 

Shoot 3: Get a video of everyone walking backwards and change it so that everyone is walking forwards and the people walking past are walking backwards