As part of experimenting with the photographs I took in St. Malo to get a final outcome I narrowed down the photographs to my favourite ones I then chose two different photographs and a video. At first I was going to use the video however, I then took screen shoots on Premier of 4 different moments which I thought would represent what the video was showing in stills. I think this looked appealing to the eye and showed the performance however you couldn’t see the audiences reactions as well as in the video which is a part of performance photography. I choose the second photograph because I liked the way it looks and the performance, however you can see two people from my group taking photographs of the performance. Finally, I choose the third photograph because I think It’s a different and more challenging performance but the photograph also doesn’t incorporate any audience reactions. Over all my favourite out of the three is the screen shoots of the video however I’m going to try and incorporate the audience into my final.
For this shoot I took a lot of inspiration from Christopher Mckenney, a surrealist photographer. I really enjoy his work and find it visually interesting. I think that this really gives off a dream-like reality as a lot of his work shows clothing without the person’s bare skin ever being shown. I adopted this idea for my own work and in some photos did a similar thing and others I got some inspiration from his work and put my own little twist on it. I enjoyed editing these too. I thought this style was great as it isn’t something you see every day, its weird and unique, it makes for a really interesting photograph and I like how experimental it is.
I find much of Mckenney’s work very intense and with a deeper meaning but my photographs do not hold the same meaning. My photographs aren’t supposed to make sense, they allow people to broad their minds and to think more in-depth than they usually would to really try to understand what I am trying to portray to them but the real meaning of my surrealism photographs is simply what the spectator thinks of them. There is no right or wrong specific meaning behind them, I want to give room for people to bring their own meaning to my surrealist photographs. Although, if I had to portray meaning in these photographs I would say how in our society we often judge people by what they look like and how they dress. We as humans don’t tend to see someone for their individual personality but we first judge them on their physique and we don’t allow them to first talk to us as we have already got our first impression and opinion of them. I want to say that people are quick to judge and if we only ever saw someone for their physique then we would live in a very different world, an invisible one whereby everyone hides behind their clothing and objects instead of embracing their bodies and accepting others for what they look like and who they are.
An image that particularly caught my eye was the one below.
All rights of this photograph are reserved by Christopher Mckenney
I find this image very hard hitting. The American flag wrapped around the subjects head and the suit the subject is wearing makes me think of the American Dream and that if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. The gun, to me, represents the pressure of being successful has brought on the subject and that the dream isn’t all its made out to be. The fact that the subject is submerged in water makes me think that he possibly doesn’t want to be found when he does shoot himself and the dream. I think this is a great surrealism piece as it isn’t something you would ever expect to see in real life, especially the American flag wrapped tightly around the subjects face. The background looks very dull and gives more of a chilling atmosphere to add the the main prop of the gun in the image. I really enjoy this and think that it is a great visual representation of how people may actually feel and really embodies surrealism. I really enjoy the reflection of the subject in the water which adds more to the image. Overall I think that this is a really great image and can say a lot about the subject and is a great surrealist piece. I really want to explore this movement further and come up with some more ideas with a deeper meaning behind them.
Surrealism Plan/Ideas: Images all in woods/forest
– Subjects legs and shoes only on a log with everything else rubbed out
– Image of subject holding balloon up on a long coil of string. Wearing black hat. Face rubbed out/or balloon covers it [experiment with swapping face of balloon with face of model]
– up close shot of subject with black hat on holding balloon in front of face, everything rubbed out accept balloon, hair and hat
– sheet covers certain parts of body all bare skin/clothing out of sheet is rubbed out
– image of subjects clothing but all bare skin is rubbed out
In this project I was able to imbed chance, change and challenge. It was a bit of a chance to guess how he managed to create him work. For this I took a photo of the background image and then got my subject to stand in front and I positioned them how I wanted them and then in Photoshop layered the images on top of one another and used the eraser tool to create a new image where the bare flesh of the subject isn’t there at all. It was also quite challenging as it isn’t something that I would usually do and a lot of people may not understand it but I did actually really enjoy it and thought that it was successful. The change is also the style of the photograph and my experimentation with surrealist photography which also ties into performance photography. My subject has to stand in various odd positions in order to create a good photograph and to make them as visually interesting as those of Christopher Mckenney.
Here are the images I made as a response to Surrealism photography, specifically Christopher Mckenney.
Invisibility Cloak
For this shoot I went with the theme of not being able to see any bare skin. I like the idea of this as I wanted to portray people as invisible and can only be seen for their clothing. I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where everyone is invisible and whereby instead of hiding behind clothes to cover ourselves we use them as a way to be identified, to express ourselves and to make our presence known.
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 experimentationThis 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.
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.
Family Album – My sister and I
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.
Above are some photographs of my surroundings on the day of the first Tom Pope workshop. Our task was to get into groups, and each member would have to write down a task that everyone must perform for a minute.
The images above are the outcomes of a very intriguing experimentation with Tom. We had to throw the oranges in the air to another partner, and take a still-image whilst they were coming towards us. I left it in color when editing because i wanted the orange color to stand out. I had to use a very zoomed out camera lens, so that i could capture the fast moving object. This relates to Tom Pope’s work because he’s always trying to find new ways and perspectives to capture images. This also relates rather well to the theme of
For this outcome, we were told to stand on one leg whilst taking pictures. I really like how the lighting coming from the direct sunlight creates a shadows and contrasts the people’s bodies.
I edited this picture to add a violet tone. This picture was taken whilst performing. We each had to come up with an activity to do for a while, from each member in our group. We were told to hold our camera upside upside down for this one, which gave me these outcome. they turned out to be perfectly aligned, and i didn’t have to rotate them to make the horizon straight. The purple tone and orange highlights make this image look very mysterious and unrealistic, which i like.
Here Tom Pope was demonstrating a third activity to us. The aim was to try and take as many selfies as possibles, but on the other persons camera.
Above, is another one of my outcomes from this day. The camera was being held upside down and at an angle. I spontaneously took this, whilst moving around. I also managed to capture someone else during their performance in background.
Cubism was the new age and beginning of Modernism. It was a new regime and cycle of artists expressing themselves with new materials (photography in particular). It surrounded the subject matter of contemporary life, that aside with not anything religious and historic. Traditional aspects and regimes have been tested and the normal perspectives where therefore abandoned.
Cubism holds many multiple viewpoints and is not based on naturalistic observation but on mental conception. It was then situated that there was a sort of freedom to manipulate a subject-matter to create new and variable compositions. Elements in a picture would then be chosen and placed purely according to aesthetic consideration rather than being based in reality. This thought by the normality of society , it allowed people to suppress the norms and expectations through art and various multimedia.
Cubism relates to chance, challenge and change because it expresses the movement of people going beyond the public domain and expectations.
“Nature should be treated as cylinders, spheres and cones” – Paul Cezanne
Some of the more early works of Cubism.
Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-06, oil on canvasPablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas
Cubism nowadays has been modernized by various technologies and techniques. With new and developed processes, Cubism has been turned into a more eye-catching and popular approach to everyday life.
Elvis PresleyMicheal Jackson
Some of the more modernized interpretations of cubism is example of Philippines-based designer Dre Ilutsre. He is just one of the many artists that has created a collection of pop-culture character illustrations in his own distinct style.
The eye-catching illustrations are cubism-inspired digital art where the characters are portrayed in an abstract form, made up by different shapes. Ilustre uses mostly red, blue and yellow in his works.
In his collection, famous figures such as pop-icons Michael Jackson, Bob Marley and martial artist Bruce Lee have been featured.
For our first photography study we went on a trip to St. Malo. The trip consisted of 4 main shoots, during the shoots we split up into 4 groups of around 10 people accompanied by 1 adult.
For my first group shoot we started off by walking around inside the walls of st.malo up towards the north wall. Early on we found a set of steps that thought would be aesthetically pleasing to do a performance photography shoot. i stood at the base of the stairs and angled my camera to face the peak, I then positioned the girls to stand in a zig zag, unexpectedly a ball was found so i asked the girls to throw the ball between them. Tom pope the artist we were with then suggested the idea of rolling the ball down the banister so the video could be easily looped. we therefore did so and the result was excellent. After we did this shoot we then carried on walking up the stairs and came to an area that was a busy public walk way, there were some old empty boxes nearby so we had the idea to ask one of the girls to hide inside the box and pop out when a member of the public walked close by. we did this in order to see peoples reactions.
we then positioned ourselves across the street in order to not let the public know they were being recorded to get a natural reaction.
we came to an area just up the road from the walk way that had traffic cones laying in the road, two of the girls without comand picked up the cones and put it on their heads, this was a chance act and as i wasnt recording i asked them to reinact what they did exactly.
Just up the road from this coned area was a multiple walled area shown below, i had an idea as a performance photography piece for the girls to position themselves behind different areas of the wall and ‘pop up’ randomly, the video which is currently being edited was then looped to create an infinity affect. This then concluded the end of the first shoot.
SECOND SHOOT
Shorty after a brief rendezvous at the meeting place, the second shoot started. directly next to the meeting place there was a merry go round, we all decided to go on it and video the experience from the horses. The video is still being edited but here was the making of it.
We then had the idea to go and buy some yellow roses from the supermarket and hand them to random people as random acts of kindness. This shoot was by far the hardest to conduct and capture as some people didn’t understand and thought they had to pay for the flowers. Capturing peoples reactions was hard as well, some people noticed the cameras and became shy or would smile and wave at the camera, this therefore was not a natural reaction but one provoked by the cameras presence.
We then thought of the ball we had found earlier on in the day and thought of an odd idea to use it in a public place, we originally wanted to conduct a fake rugby game in the middle of the street. As this was to difficult for multiple reasons, we decided to pretend that the ball was very heavy. this was the result of the piece.
First of all we were split into our small groups of 10 and went off with different teachers. The first place my group and I went to was the beach area and the long walkway. Here we worked in our pairs and came up with a few of our own ideas. Tania and I came across a large window which had these massive bars on them. With the idea of weak anarchy in mind we decided that it would be a good idea to film me climbing it. The meaning behind this was to challenge the norm and what is expected of us as a society, to see the reaction of the public around. Some people decided to film us and take photos of us while we were performing as well as other students recording at the same time to get different perspectives of the performance.
Another idea we had was actually taken as inspiration from one of Tom Pope’s Weak Anarchy photographs. Here I hid in a bush to see how any spectators would perceive it. We didn’t manage to get the spectators on camera but some people came by and took photographs and left. This one wasn’t the most successful footage but was some good experimentation anyway.
Mr Toft came up with the idea to go sit on a bench with a man and mimic his pose. After Sophie and I volunteered we went and sat right next to him. I greeted him in French and sat down and copied his pose. We sat there for about a minute but the man didn’t catch on to what we were doing and I could tell he felt uncomfortable. I think that this was a fun thing to do although I did feel bad that the man was so uncomfortable. I thanked the man for his time and walked away.
We had the idea to draw on the walls down at the beach area with chalk. We simply wrote ‘St Malo 2015’, this was just to start off the final montage video of all of our performances. This wasn’t very interesting to do and no one really saw but still it was a way to start us off on the beach and so that anyone later on in the day would be able to see that we were there.
On the beach there were a pair of two men playing with a bat and ball so Tania and I decided that it would be an interesting idea to go and stand in the middle of their game to see how they would react. This was successful as they reacted well by laughing it off and they just carried on playing around us. This was one of the most interactive performances that we ended up doing and actually worked well.I did attempt to just walk alongside a woman on the beach as she strolled along but this wasn’t successful because I felt awkward just following her and I could see that she felt uncomfortable so I walked away. I did however go up to a couple who were sat on the wall eating, sat next to them and started drawing. This worked ok as the could just looked at me once and didn’t seem to be bothered by me. This also showed that the two didn’t feel like their space was being invaded even though I was quite close to them.
On the next hour we lacked ideas and inspiration. We were walking along a large walkway and there was just nothing around that I felt inspired by or interested in. We did a few group performances. The first of which was pretending to be the statue and mimicking it. This for me wasn’t very interesting and didn’t really have anything to do with our idea of weak anarchy. It had no real reason and spectators just did not care at all.
The second thing that we did as a large collective was for one person to go and sit on the bench, put down an object and walk away. The next person would pick up that object and replace it with something of their own. This for me was boring and didn’t really make sense. A few people were looking at us but I think this was only because there was a large crowd of us photography students all taking photographs of the same thing, spectators wanted to see what all the fuss was about and if they too should be taking photographs of what is going on. I feel like this sort of worked as it did get some audience attention but it wasn’t overly successful with actually being interesting or much of a movement within performance photography.
For the final hour we worked alongside Tom Pope. This was a great hour for doing work as a large group. The first thing that we did was walk backwards in a busy street. We each filmed from our own perspective of the walk which is interesting to watch back. This was fun to do as we all just walked through the street and people had to move out of our way in order to avoid bumping into us which is different to how we spent most of the day when we were the ones who were avoiding French workers and students.Another collective idea that we had was to carry one person round the streets of St Malo. Here we nominated Holly with other students carrying her as she navigates everyone around. This got a lot of looks and people from all around were watching us as we did this.
We decided that it would be a great idea to navigate our way around St Malo with a map from Jersey St Helier. Here we just walked around in a large circle and came across as small shop with a load of wooden swords which we battled with and Tom Pope photographed on his film camera and as other students filmed and took photos of. This was fun and we were able to mess around for a good minute before the owner of the shop told us to stop. So on we went with our map and navigated around the streets of St Malo right up until we got ice cream and have to leave for the Harbour to get the boat back home to Jersey.
Currently I am working on making a montage video of the entire day in St Malo as well as performance videos. This should be completed in the week. Over the day I made short little clips so that I could use them for documentation of the whole trip as well as recording all of the performances we decided to create. For my first video I am just going to show little clips of everything that we did in the day as a teaser for the actual performance videos. This includes snippets of my performances as well as other groups performances. We thought it would be a good idea to help each other out and record each others performances so that we have different perspectives of things and different approaches to looking at them. We also decided to film the spectators reactions as performance photography is all about the audience and who is there at the time to see you and your performance.
I like looking at the images, created from the videos, in black and white instead of colour because it allows the spectator to focus on what is going on in the image rather than being distracted by all of the different colours in the background that are not important.
Tourist Stuff These six photos were just extra photos that I decided to take on my phone so that I had a record of the different places that we went to in St Malo.
Our trip to St Malo on the 17th of June 2015 with guests Gareth Syvret and Tom Pope, developed or aim to succeed the expectations of the locals in a foreign arena. In our small groups, we came up with several ideas to incorporate this enigma. Our first idea was using Sian. Sian bought 24 yellow roses at the local Market and our idea was to hand out the flowers in order to receive the reaction of the public. This was very successful in a way I felt encapsulated the senses of community and relationships.
Sian holding the yellow roses.
One of our targets for receiving the roses.
This experiment suggested positive, as many people where up to the challenge of exceeding this performance. In awe to Tom Pope, this idea of performance has given challenge by testing the public’s response. Chance has been established through the duration of the performance as many people changed their mind about receiving the flower. This then enabled the way we change our approach to people and the way we dictate our performance in order to receive a more positive outcome.
A woman happily receiving her yellow rose.
I was really happy with this photograph partly because you can clearly see the reaction upon this woman’s face. I am glad that our aim was established and that the roses gained a positive and interesting experience. I felt this interaction was key and I’m glad i challenged this.
Our next task was to use a blow-up ball through a mundane environment. The main aim was to characterize a movement which would represent a normal and sophisticated stance that we would use to challenge and chance the public community passing through this area and time. This movement was simple, the ball would roll down the metal railings and eventually, be passed back up to the top in which the movement would start over again. This action was repeated, and half way through, members of the public passed through and reacted in a surprised, un-realistic way. However, because we didn’t take much notice and reacted as if there was no abnormality, the action was suppressed as normal. This was also dictated through the way we kept quiet; regarding nothing abstracted or influenced our performance.
This technique proved very successful. I felt the aim was fulfilled due to the ordinariness, and the pace was very smooth and interactive. I feel an element of change was anticipated due to the challenge towards the transitions of normal and abnormal. I feel as a group we turned an action so simple to an action worth meaning, that the typical and mundane values where transgressed and pushed to the extremes.
Here is a link to the video of the Blow-Up Ball:
The next task we took was during our experience in St Malo’s local supermarket. The aim was to venture up and down the aisles of the market and pick up various items from the different shelves. This was among the public circle and wasn’t staged to the extreme. This was all captured on video and when one of us shouted ‘slow’, the movements of normal pace turned into slow-motion, leaving the only the public to react in a surprising and humorous way.
Surprisingly, the people of the public didn’t know quite how to react and in this in fact made them not appear in the video at all due to them realizing the performance and warding off because of it. The avoidance in such a public and mundane place ensured to us that we had really challenged and changed the transition of normal to radicalized, proving our performance as successful.
Setting up into our positions.practicing the repetitive actions.
Here is a link to the video of our Slow-Mo Market Dash:
The next task was to challenge the reaction of the public further. We directed one of our group members, Molly to climb into a small cardboard box. She then placed herself with our instruction in the middle of a busy pavement, central of St Malo’s town. We captured on video the audiences reactions and how they were challenged with the change of normality. This idea of chance was established too, as people who walked past gave molly the chance to perform.With the influence from Tom Pope, the suggestion of how if there wasn’t any people there would probably be no chance of any performance, so concluding this the location of this act gave this performance a chance to challenge the change in the public arena.
Molly waiting for her performance to start.Molly hiding in the box.
I felt this performance was very successful, and from the video you can clearly see the aim of this action being established. The feeling of change from normality to becoming surprised was clearly evident, and from the video this challenge was successful as we changed the normal transitions that wouldn’t of been there if our performance didn’t take place in that moment of time.
