Surrealism Planning + Experimentation

July 9, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

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.

http://www.christophermckenney.com

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.

Research

Tom Pope Inspirations

July 9, 2015 Sammie Leave a comment

Tom Pope spoke of a couple of things when we first met him which have inspired his work, for example Dadaism, Situation-ism and Psycho-geography were a couple he mentioned.

Dadaism was a revolt by certain 20th Century painters and writers in France, Germany and Switzerland against traditional art and Western Society.

The artists affiliated with Dada did not share a common style or practice so much as the wish, as expressed by French artist Jean (Hans) Arp, “to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order.”

Their works illustrated absurdity through paintings of purposeless machines and collages of discarded materials, which expressed their cynicism about conventional ideas of form and their rejection of traditional concepts of beauty.

‘Dadaism’ is a nonsense word which the creators used to protest against the First World War.

Participants claimed various, often humorous definitions of “Dada”—“Dada is irony,” “Dada is anti-art,” “Dada will kick you in the behind”—though the word itself is a nonsense utterance. As the story goes, the name Dada was either chosen at random by stabbing a knife into a dictionary, or consciously selected for a variety of connotations in different languages—French for “hobbyhorse” or Russian for “yes, yes.”

A group of situationists, called the Space Hijackers, were also mentioned by Tom.

The Space Hijackers is an inventive and subversive group of London ‘Anarchitects’ who specialize in reclaiming public spaces – usually without permission. Projects have ranged from ‘guerrilla benching’ (taking benches to sites where they had recently been removed and bolting them to the pavements) to organising a midnight game of cricket in the middle of the City.

The group do these projects to try and change the way people view public and private spaces with these unexpected events.

They point out issues that people may or may not notice and make them really obvious. For example, the ‘rules’ of being in certain spaces.

“If you’re a local council, selling off land to private developers is an easy way to raise capital. But the undermining of social liberties that comes with these sales is unprecedented. Take the construction of the Olympic village in Stratford for example. It’s an entirely privately owned complex. Although there will be public space, shops and entertainment, there will also be robotic CCTV drones monitoring everyone coming and going – thousands of cameras watching your every move, a ban on begging, busking, skateboarding, hoodies, public assembly, protest, loitering and much much more. Everything that makes our city so vibrant is drained out of the space and replaced with a 2D image of a city. Unless you’re shopping you’re not welcome.”

Analysis, Research

Analysing Dynamo’s Performance: Walking on Water

July 9, 2015 Max Le Feuvre Leave a comment

In this performance, Dynamo is filmed walking down the steps of the river Thames, and without trying to direct any attention to himself, begins to walk on water. This performance by Dynamo is a good example of surrealism in Dynamo’s artistic mindset. The idea of walking on water, as claimed Jesus did in the bible is seen as a legendary symbolization related to achieving a miraculous feat, something considered to be physically impossible. The way in which Dynamo casually walks on the water as it was no big deal, is connected to Dadism in art because there is a sense that, despite being as impressive as it is, there is no real meaning or point to it. Dynamo, in this example is taking this concept to the extreme by relating it to such an unusual and extraordinary situation. Dynamo is also in this performance, using the influence of subversion. This is because he is creating an extraordinary illusion, which questions human rationality and social boundaries. On a deeper level, this means that Dynamo is pushing the audience to question there own view of reality and social expectations.

The reaction of the crowd in this piece is very interesting, there is a mixture of responses, ranging from shock, denial, awe, fascination and wonder. Regardless of the type of reaction, the fact that such and event has caused a conscious reaction from an audience is testament to Dynamo’s ability to stop people in their tracks, forced to process the outstanding nature of his masterful illusions. Literally speaking, Dynamo by stepping on the Thames had broken the trespassing law. When the police boat comes to detain him, a sense of comedy is created through the ridiculous situation of a policeman arresting a man for breaking the law, seemingly unaffected by fact that a man is walking on water! This, somewhat intended by Dynamo, is a direct challenge and protest against society, because through is majestic achievement which is representative of possibility and hope, Dynamo has subsequently characterized himself as a champion of the people, who is being brutally suppressed by the limitations of authority.

This piece has inspired me to in the direction my own performances to be more expressive and try to create situations which are out of the ordinary, instead of something which is relatively average and excepted. The influence of surrealism, had made me interested to study the aesthetic nature of my pieces. It is all good and well having a concept, and deeper dead, but these concepts will never be properly expressed or have an effect on the audience, if they are not visually poweful.

Research

Surrealist Photographer: Brian Oldham

July 8, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

Brian Oldham is a twenty-two year old fine art photographer from Southern California, currently living in Los Angeles. I came across Oldham’s photographs when searching for surrealism photographs. One particular photograph, which I wrote about in a previous blog post, really caught my attention and led me to read on and find out more about this photographer. I read a quote from Oldham which I think it a great way to express the art of photography: ‘I make art to replace the words I cannot fathom’. I really like this quote as it is so true in photography as a lot of the time photographers will use the visual arts to show their inner emotions or what they are really feeling. They want to create a visual world and representation of something to make the spectator feel something and to try and to challenge the way we think as a society.

http://brianoldham.format.com/home

I like Oldham’s work as it really makes me think of a dream-like reality and does come under the surrealist photography movement. I like how unique a lot of his photographs are, most of which I have never seen anything like them before. This is what I want my outcomes to look like but I think it will take a bit more time to get my ideas together and to carry on working on this over the summer period.

I find a lot of Oldham’s work very unique and dream-like. These photos make me wonder what is going on and how he managed to do certain things such as the fire on the arms of the male and female, possibly in editing or possibly both of them wearing a special glove in which can take fire. I think that his work is very artistic and really embodies surrealism photography as many spectators may not understand what is going on or why the subject is doing what they are doing. I like how there is not one photo of his that is the same. Each is unique to its own and adds more and more to his work.

This piece of work is entitled ‘Beautiful Lies’ which I think is amazing as it puts focus on an important matter about our earth and what we are doing to it. Manmade objects and large corporate factories adding more and more pollution into the air and ruining our earths most beautiful skies and natural clouds and blue skies. Instead we are faced with polluted grey skies covered in grey manmade clouds. I really like this photograph as it is an environmental movement which is something I feel strongly about and think that we should change in order to keep it alive and to protect the natural world we live in instead of trying to create a corporate jungle filled with skyscrapers and harsh chemicals covering the world’s atmosphere. I like the message Oldham brings behind a lot of his photographs as I think they mean a lot more than just a dream. Maybe he has a dream that one day we will actually see that beautiful blue sky in real life without having to dream about it or visualise it inside our heads.

This image really interests me as I interpret it in two ways. The first way is someone falling out of the sky from the clouds above. They could possibly represent a fallen angel or even someone who has been rejected by the sky. On the other hand, I also see it as someone being taken up to the sky. This could be by aliens, much like you would expect in a dream or as a conspiracy theory. The subject could have been taken from a spiritual being or it could even be magic like something from the Harry Potter films. I really like this as you can interpret it in many ways and you can see different scenarios rather than there just being one clear message and meaning behind the image, it is open for interpretation. I like this work and I want to experiment with different methods of photography like this and to create new unique photographs that haven’t ever been seen before.

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.

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.

Uncategorized

PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHY

July 8, 2015 Emily Vetier Leave a comment

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.

Uncategorized

CHANCE, CHALLANGE AND CHANGE

July 8, 2015 Emily Vetier Leave a comment

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.

Planning

specification st. malo:

July 8, 2015 2873 Claudia Viveiros Leave a comment

This week we were given the opportunity to travel to France with Tom Pope.

I think that this will be a great way to experiment with new ideas. This will give me an insight into the different methods which I can use to photograph. I will be using concepts/ theories such as situationism,

First Idea/ The Disposable Camera:

In my group, we will be placing a disposable camera on a specific area of the town. It’s essential that we place it on an easily seen area, so that the public can easily see it.

In groups, we will place a disposable camera on a certain area of the town. We will use some string to tie it on and write a notice asking the foreigners to take a picture. It will be interesting to see how many people actually take pictures and the amount of people that are hesitant. The outcomes will also be very unique and will have varied angles and expressions.

Second Idea:

This idea arose when we got to France. We found a lost blanket, which we decided to carry with us to wherever we went and create a story. We placed in on several locations and displayed the name that was sown into it. At the end of this shoot, we threw it into the air and saw where it landed.

Third Idea:

This idea was spontaneous. We spotted a very long balcony leading up to a school and decided to have a member from our group slide down it. It took several minutes to slide down on. We also shot some video of the performance.

Uncategorized

ENGAGING WITH THE PHOTO-ARCHIVE

July 7, 2015 Emily Vetier Leave a comment

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

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.