All posts by Shannon O'Donnell

I am an A Level student currently studying at Hautlieu School. My subjects include, Media Studies, Photography and History. My blog includes updates of my current work in both media and photography where I am able to show research, planning and experimentation. I update this blog weekly with different posts relating to my subject topics.

Filters

Research

Surrealism Photographer: Christopher Mckenney

July 8, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

A photographer that I came across and really like is Christopher Mckenney. He is a photographer from Pennsylvania who specialises in horror surrealist photography, he is also known for his live concert photography. Mckenney makes very interesting photographs and I chose him as I think that he pushed the limitations of what makes people comfortable and can challenge the way people think, making them re-evaluate and re-think what they know to be right and wrong.

Mckenney’s social media and website:
Website: http://www.christophermckenney.com/work
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mcalister_/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_mcalister
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcalister570/

Mckenney used a lot of religion in his work. I think this is because it intensifies the aspect of horror to his images with the Angel of Death and the cross being a prop in a lot of his images. I think that a lot of his images are also linked together and can create a story even though they are in different places around his blog in his show real of images.

All rights of this photograph are reserved by Christopher Mckenney

There were a few images that caught my attention when scrolling through Mckenney’s work which I found fascinating.

These are all individual images but they all seem to connect. The same woman is seen in different places wearing what looks like a funeral gown, adjacent to tradition her clothing is completely white. This makes me think that she is possibly a widow, as white reminds me of purity and weddings. The images tell a story of how this woman seems to be sacrificing her loved ones to the sea as she is drowning the man [her husband] and giving her baby to the hand which could represent the ocean. I also see the photograph of giving her baby to the ocean a reference to the biblical story of Moses and how his real mother sent him down the river in a basket in the hopes he would have a chance of a better life, in contrast to this photograph where she seems to be sacrificing her own child to possibly protect him/her from the horrors that live in our modern day world. The image of that same woman drowning her husband could possibly show how she is killing her family in the hopes for a better life, possibly associated with the after life. She doesn’t want to see them suffer in the modern world and so believes that by sacrificing them she is saving them from the horrors of the world. The image of the woman surrounded by children’s coffins whilst holding a baby doll is strange to me and makes me think that possibly she actually sacrifices a lot of people or it could possibly represent the amount of children she couldn’t have. This woman may possibly not be able to have children of her own and the coffin’s represent all of the times she has tried to have children or the amount of children she has lost over the years. Contrary to everything I have stated, this woman could just be a psycho spinster who is angry at the world and has taken it all out on her family and the man who tried to leave her at the alter. I like that within these images you can generate many different meanings and interpret it in any way that you see as there is no set meaning behind it. These images are all just open to interpretation which is something I really like about the work of surrealism and Christopher Mckenney.

This image makes me think of the Angel of Death and that it is guiding a small boy down the path of evil. Possibly like the film Chuckie or any horror film where children are possessed by the devil or a dark spirit. I think the dark/black clothing represents evil and badness which is being passed on to the small child making him change the way he things and creates a new mindset where all he wants to do is destroy things and people to bring the darkness to the rest of the world. I think that this image is very intense and can be quite heavy for some spectators. I also think it has a link to religion as the man in the black clothing has a cross necklace which you would associate with religion. This is why I think of the Angel of Death.

These two images make me think of monks. At first I did think about the Angel of Death again but I know that there is only one Angel of Death and not multiple ones. The clothing that the subjects are wearing is something that you would often expect monks to wear as well as having the crosses round their necks which backs up the fact that these people are religious. They also look very serious in the way they are standing and almost as if they are doing some sort of ritual. I think these images are risks for the photography world as you just don’t know how people are going to react with such heavy images, especially the one where the subject model in the middle is holding the head of a wolf. This makes me think that they are possibly spiritual/religious men who are carrying out a ritual in order to gain something but you just don’t know what. However, these images could link to the image above these ones of the Angel of Death holding the shoulder of a small boy, they could have possibly be doing a ritual so that the boy would come across the knife or even so that he would turn evil.

I really like Mckenney’s take on surrealism photography and adding a horror element to it and could be seen as more nightmares rather than dreams. I find his images very interesting and unique to most photographs that I have seen. To me they are uncommon and I haven’t seen anything like them before which what makes them that much more interesting to me. I think that I will take a lot of inspiration from his work into my own work as I do find it more interesting and unique.

Planning, Research

Final Outcomes Inspiration

July 7, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell 1 Comment

For my final outcomes I have decided to focus on Dadaism and Surrealism. I find these two movements the most interesting and I think that I will be able to create some good final outcomes following these movements. I like the idea of photo montage within Dadaism as it is something that isn’t supposed to make sense, which actually tied into the movement of surrealism as it too isn’t supposed to make sense as it is based on your dreams or creating something that isn’t supposed to be realistic or a reflection on reality. To me, both these movements are a new form of reality.

Surrealism Photography

I find this particular photograph very interesting as it isn’t something you would ever expect to see, especially because it is a human being fished from the ocean. To me this represents how fishing is going too far and that we are taking too much from the ocean. I think that Brian Oldham wanted to send out a message to fisherman and that we shouldn’t be constantly fishing. On the other hand, as it is a surrealist photograph I think that maybe the subject could actually be a mermaid and has been caught by fisherman. This could also be a role reversal with a fish possibly being on the other side of the fishing pole. This image is very simple, with the blue of the ocean being the brightest part of the image. I think what draws you in is the subjects mouth and the hook on a piece of string, which seems to be pulling him out of the ocean.

http://www.partfaliaz.com/photographers/surreal-twisted-photographs-by-brian-oldham/

Dadaism Photography

I think that a lot of Dada is art based and many consists of montaging. This is why I think that Dada is so interesting as it doesn’t really make any sense. I have looked at quite a few different Dada photographs and I have found that most of them us the actual word ‘dada’ within their work, which is interesting. I think that this is stating the obvious and kind of marking the photographs like a painter would mark each of their paintings but in this case the photographers are marking the movement of Dada rather than their own titles.

Editing, Experimentation, Record / Photoshoot

Dadaism: My Experimentation

July 7, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell 1 Comment

Here I have just put a few photo montages together in an attempt to practice and see what my outcomes could look like. Over the week I think that I am also going to print off some images which I have made and cut them out and put them back together in a different way to try and create a brand new image. I am going to use photos from my old family archive and my Great Uncle Archie’s photographs to make a montage of a load of his old war photos and to create one image as a memory of him and the time in which he fought during World War II.

For this image on top of itself and rotated it each time. I think this worked well as it looks odd and possibly like something from a dream where you have no idea what is going on and there are just so many faces everywhere making you confused. Workshop with Tom Pope experimentation

This image is similar to the one above and is the same photograph but has been edited in a slightly different way. Workshop day experimentation

I am going to experiment more with this as well and make more images and try different ways to montage them all together as I find this an interesting concept and want to explore it further.

Final presentation

Performance Photography: Final Outcomes

July 7, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

#1
My first set of final outcomes are going to be put together on one window mount. This is where I edited a few photographs of mine and was heavily inspired by John Baldessari. I think that you cant really take away too much inspiration from him without somehow copying a part of his iconic images, especially with the dots in front of peoples faces.

#2
The next set of images that I am going to use for one of my final outcomes is two photographs from St. Malo. These photographs were inspired by Tom Pope and his set of images entitled Weak Anarchy. Here I decided to challenge what is morally right in society and see what the public’s reaction was to this. I did get a few weird looks when doing these performances and people also took some photographs. I will be putting these images together on a window mount.

#3
For this final outcome I took inspiration from Dadaism and photo montage. These photos are made up of one image each which I have just layered on top of one another and rotated them round to make an interesting photograph. Both photos come from the workshop day that we had with Tom Pope.

Editing, Experimentation, Final presentation

Surrealism: My experimentation

July 7, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

I am really interested in this movement and have decided that I want to create images based around this. For this have taken inspiration from John Baldessari and have recreated his works with the dots in front of people’s faces. I used photographs which I have already taken and just added in the dots on top of the images. I am also going to take inspiration from Christopher Mckenney and will be experimenting with his style throughout the week as well as experimentation with photo montage and dream-like images.

I have also been looking at the surrealist photographer Christopher McKenney and I find a lot of his work very interesting and I enjoy looking at it, which is why I am using his work as influence for my own work and my own surrealist dreams brought to life through photography. I wondered what it would be like if two surrealist photographers joined together to create a brand new image, unique to the rest of their own images and I decided that I wanted to use my inspiration from John Baldessari and Christopher McKenney in order to create a new surrealist photograph. I have started with some experimentation and used photographs that I had taken while on the St Malo trip and on the workshop with Tom Pope. This is just so I can get a feel of what I will need to do during the week to make the perfect image. I am not using this next image as one of my final outcomes but it is just an experimentation to see how I will need to take photographs throughout the week. The meaning behind this photograph has different elements. The oranges on the floor and the giant orange represent the workshop day out we had and the small wheel on the floor represents our day in St. Malo. The reason I chose to have all of the faces covered in the same purple dot was because Sophie and I were copying this man and imitating him so I thought it would be a good idea to have the same coloured dot as we are supposed to look the same as one another.

Research

Neo-Dada: The new Dada

July 6, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

Neo-Dada is a visual art movement that has similar methods to earlier Dada artwork. It has revived some forms/objects of Dada and has put more emphasis on the importance of the work of art produced rather than focusing on the concept creating the work. Dadaism was rediscovered by a group of art students. It is seen as the foundation of pop art. Neo-Dada uses modern materials, popular imagery and absurdest contrast.
Neo-Dadaism was made popular by the American art critic Barbara Rose in the 1960s.

A man called Marcel Duchamp was part of the Dada movement in 1913 and came up with an idea entitled ‘Readymade’. This came from the concept where you can take any object, remove it from its normal context and put it in a new on. You can change your point of view on it completely. For example you can take any old chair, put it behind some glass in an art exhibition and people will look at it as if it is art and something really amazing.
A lot of people were offended by Duchamp because they thought that he wasn’t taking art seriously and was trying to make a mockery out of it when in fact he was just part of the Dada movement, in which it isn’t supposed to make sense anyway.

I don’t really like this movement as I think it is just completely random and, to me, it doesn’t really hold any meaning. The one thing I would take from this is that some people go crazy over art work that a famous painter has created but it isn’t always the most amazing pieces. I think that often people get carried away and stop thinking for themselves and just go along with what art critics or the rest of the world is saying. This is where I think spectators become passive and just go along with it for the sake of it and are led to believe something is great when in reality it really isn’t that spectacular.

Planning, Research

Russian Constructivism: The Social Art

July 6, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

This movement came around in 1913-1930. This is where layering photographs comes along. This act was often used in Communist society back in Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolshevik party won lead by Lenin. This movement was created in favour of art as a practice for social purposes.
A famous Russian film maker called Dziga Vertov. He was a Soviet pioneer documentary film director and cinema theorist. His ideas influenced the style of documentary movie making, he was a radical filmmaker active in the 1960s. He created a film called The Man with a Movie Camera because he became so interested in the idea of filming and what it could bring to the world. In this film he carries around his heavy camera and films various different things, when put together the film almost looks random and out of place but it is embracing the film world.

Russian avant-garde
This was a large and highly influential wave of modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Here many images were put together, much like photo montage, in a new and unique way. Some of which was used as propaganda for the benefits of leaders like Lenin and Stalin.

I find this movement very interesting as the photo montage’s are quite unique and use many geometric shapes to make up the image. There also always seems to be a smiling person, looking up at the leader or trying to persuade its spectators to follow what the posters want.

Analysis, Research

Surrealism: A New Form of Reality

July 6, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

Surrealism is a different form of reality and is heavily influenced by dreams. This is the world that we create in our heads, often when sleeping things that we have no control over and often don’t make any sense but by the end of it we still gain something, whether that being we gain a moral or more of an understanding of something but sometimes we take nothing from them. Surrealism is the unconscious mind and a different world almost. This movement was created in Paris 1924.

I like the idea of surrealism because I am able to explore my dreams and express them in a creative format as well as creating something so out of the ordinary that not a lot of people would often think about. Everyone’s dreams are unique to them, we will never ever have the exact same dream as another person. I like the idea of being able to express this and show people what my dreams are like or even some crazy ideas of what a dream might look like. I think I am going to explore this as one of my ideas as it does really interest me and I love to find out about dreams that people have had as well as sharing my own.
There are many surrealist photographer including Man Ray, Maurice Tabard, Hans Bellmer, Dora Maar, Eric Johansson, Christopher McKenney and Stephen Criscolo etc. One of these photographers that I particularly like is Christopher McKenney as I find a lot of his work very interesting and the way it has been shot and edited looks very professional. I really like these two images because of the way you can see parts of the person’s body behind the sheet but you never see their full body or who they are. It is almost as it that person isn’t really there, just like in some dreams when one minute your stood next to a specific person and a second later they have disappeared. This to me is very dream-like and I really enjoy looking at this. I think it would have been tricky to edit this image as they would have had to take a photograph firstly of the background of the image and then got the subject to sit on the chair so he took take the second image and in editing use the eraser tool to get rid of the rest of the body which the photographer didn’t want to see in his image.

http://www.christophermckenney.com/100surrealisticphotosivemade

On Mckenney’s website he has a set of 100 surrealism photographs which I find very interesting to scroll through. He tents to go for the same pattern with someone not completely being in the frame, a part of them is always rubbed out as if in a dream world. I really like this work and find that you can be very creative with this style and are able to explore new things.

There is also a hugely iconic surrealist photographer, John Baldessari, born in 1931 and is still alive today. In the 70s Baldessari decided to BURN all of his work and stated ‘I will not make anymore boring art’. After which he created a new form of the digital photography world and put dots in front of all the people’s faces that he photographed. This, to me, is a way of making the person unidentifiable so that no one knows who he is photographing and why he has photographed them in that specific way. I like this as it is interesting and I find that sometimes in dreams you can never really make out what a certain person looks like or who they are and this is a great way of visualizing that and bringing your dreams to life.

Research

Feminism: The Start of Equality

July 3, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

This theory follows the concern of how women are often represented in many artist and photographic works. Women such as; Cindy Sherman explored this further. This act suggests that women have more than just their physical appearance. To me feminism is the act of an equal life, respect and opportunity for both men and women. It shows how women are often labelled with derogatory terms and are ignored as intellectual individuals. In the past I have done quite a few pieces in photography based on how women are faced with all these negative connotations and objectifications which are unfair and we don’t deserve. Throughout history women have struggled to gain equal rights to men, starting simply with the right to vote. Women weren’t seen as intelligent enough or able to vote as they weren’t educated. In 1918 women in Britain finally got the right to vote only if they were over the age of 30, with women of the age of 21+ had to wait until 1928 to be able to vote. Feminism is more than this though.
Often when people hear the word feminist they think of anti-men and man haters when in fact this is completely wrong and untrue. A feminist can be a woman or a man, it is the equality of the sexes that we stand for and the equality of life too. Women are often faced with negative looks or derogatory names. I think that feminism has really come to light in the past few years as many more celebrities are becoming aware of this a spreading the word. Influential celebrities include; Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Katy Perry, Hillary Clinton, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and many more.

Cindy Sherman is a famous feminist photographer who came up with a series of film stills in 1977. These took her years to create and she is the subject of each of her photographs. These film stills reflect on the cliched stereotypes women were faced with back in 1977 and that they are still very much faced with today.

My own work on the role women are often faced with in society. This is work which I have already done during my photography course during the AS year.

Struggling for Perfection – Shannon O’Donnell

This image represents the pressure put on women in our modern society of being perfect and slim. The measuring tape around the subjects face and neck portrays a indexical sign of how a lot of women feel about themselves and the strain it is on their own mental health to be this ideal woman, to be something that all men want or all people desire to have. I find as a woman there is an immense amount of pressure put on us in society to look a certain way and to be a certain body type/shape.
I also did another shoot later in my AS year and decided to expand on the idea of the measuring tape and how women feel in our modern society.

Fake it ‘Til You Make it – Shannon O’Donnell

This shoot was an array of different types of photographs focusing on the way young women see themselves and how they try to change themselves in modern society. These photographs show the spectator how often young girls will look at themselves in the mirror and only see imperfections and that they need to change and be skinnier. It shows the spectator how most young girls will wear makeup to try and cover up, hiding any imperfections that they think they have. Along with some of the photographs showing how young women should love themselves and not care about what society thinks they should look like, this is in the photos of my model posing outside and being happy with who she is.

For shooting with this model I decided to do quite a few different set ups and props. I did this so I could get a nice range of photographs. In this shoot I wanted people to really focus on how women feel they should look like due to the harsh comments of our modern society. These shoots symbolize what are expected of women still in our society and how there is still this stigma in the air that women should be doing the work at home and are there to look pretty while the men go out to work and bring the money into the home. It shows feminism in a negative light to me because this old way of thinking is so cliché and wrong. I think women should be able to go down whatever career path they choose and should be paid the same amount as men.

This photo represents how a lot of young women are seen as ‘catty’. It shows two ‘friends’ are laughing but will actually stab each other in the back to get what they want. In this photo I give a visual representation of the metaphor ‘stabbing someone in the back’.

Competition

Generations of Family Photos

July 1, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

For this competition I decided to look through all of the old family photo albums. I managed to get some stuff from back when I was younger in the late 90s and early 2000s but that wasn’t really long ago so I decided to go further. In my search for a great old photo I came across some old medals and photos that came from my Great Uncle Archie who fought during World War II. This really interested me and I am so proud to have had someone who actually experienced the war. I also found a diary that his father kept during the First World War and after his son was born which was interesting to read. My Great Uncle also got medals for his efforts during the war which to me stand for courage and bravery. I wish that I could ask him questions about the war and what it was like but at least I have the photos, medals and diaries that were kept during such a dark time. This also gave me an idea for an experiment to do with photo montage as part of my performance photography coursework. For a lot of the photos I don’t know the exact dates but they were done during the War between 1939 onward.

My Great Uncle fought all over the world during the war effort and got medals for his contributions to the war. He got the Germany star, France Star, Africa Star, Italy Star, The Defense Medal, The 1939-1946 Star and another one but I can’t tell which medal it is. I think it is amazing how he went around the world to fight for the freedom of his country. He was born in Glasgow and so were his family. It was interesting to me as his father kept a log book of all of his children over the years.