Tom Pope is a performance photographer that lives and works in London and he produces guess work as he never know what hes taking as he uses old fashioned cameras and or uses tripods with a trigger release cable which he won’t know the outcome until after he performs. What I like about Tom pope is that his work is very spontaneous and even though his pictures aren’t perfect, they still tell a story. I do find some of his work a bit bland, as in some of his videos don’t interest me but then again some of his videos are very clever and creative and I like how he thinks outside the box and is more unique compared to other photographers. The reason Tom produces more videos rather than photographs is because he feels like you can’t capture a whole performance in one photograph.
On our French Trip in June, he was very helpful in developing our ideas and helping us try something new, he isn’t scared to try something different and get negative reactions from it, he seems to enjoy bouncing off the negatives and make them into positives in his films and photographs. I was defiantly inspired by his work and was happy to have him help me in my development as a photographer. His work reflects his personality which is quite difficult to portray, but that is my new aim, to make my work unique and I want my work to reflect my personality and aspirations. I want my photographs to have public in them because usually I would just do one or two people and i would direct them a lot more, but for my videos I want them to be more spontaneous.
The space hijackers are a group of people who originate in the United Kingdom. Space Hijacking is mental graffiti, designed to change how the space is perceived and take some of the power away from the people who own or design the space. The aim is to ultimately prove to people that space isn’t used effectively and to show how restricted areas can really be unrestricted, you can boycott the rules right, then you’ll get away with stealing power from someone.
When they were formed in 1999, their first major action was the Circle Line Party – a party on London Underground’s Circle Line which attracted around 150 people armed with sound systems, disco lights and bars all disguised as luggage which attracted a lot of attention, but they were not being illegal. The Space Hijackers exist mainly to change the public’s perception of spaces it regularly uses, mainly by staging unexpected events. Their explicit objective is “to effect and change the physical space of architecture”, and, avoiding violent protest and other forms of transparent direct action, their methods aim “to invade and re-brand corporate space”.
The Space Hijackers inspired me to try more ‘out of the box’ ideas for my final outcome as I want my work to have a wider range of ideas to show more diversity in my work. They’ve made me think of lots of ideas to use for more videos rather than photographs which is more my thing, I want to do something i’m not as comfortable with to do how I cope with it and to see how I do with it.
I have an idea to shock the public just like Tom Pope does in his photography to try and get the audience to get involved. I want to achieve this by walking through the streets of St. Malo and just threw powder paint into the air, I want to record it as a video and get some images from them to ensure I had some members of the public in them and their reactions. I won’t throw a vast amount of powder because I don’t want to disrespect/damage French property, just enough to make it visible and able to wash away with the rain. The powder paint is like releasing some sort of physical energy into the air but by creating a beautiful cloud of pink. It’s like expressing some emotion to people that I don’t know me and don’t speak the same language as me and who live in different environments to me. This interests me as some reactions will understand that it is creative but some will think I am just disturbing people and creating mess.
Flowers
As a kind gesture, I plan to buy a bunch of roses and give out a rose to random people walking in the street to see what their reactions are. This idea is more to get a positive reaction from the public rather than a more negative will likely happen when I shoot some of my other ideas which may cause some aggravation to some members of the public.
I would like my videos to be spontaneous as well, because I find it easier to walk around, see something then come up with an idea of what I can do. These types of videos are in the heat of the moment which can either go good or bad which is always helpful for experimentation.
