Tag Archives: surrealism

My Manifesto

July 15, 2015 Shannon O'Donnell Leave a comment

For my final ideas I have decided to stick with the movement of Surrealism for this I want to create images with no boundaries. To me surrealism is the creation of a new world, a new form of reality that is why I chose to focus on it. I really like the idea of having no limitations within my work and being able to come up with the craziest ideas imaginable and see how well they work out for me and whether some of the weird ideas from the depths of my brain come across well in the photographs. I think that this applies a lot to challenge as it is something very different to anything that I have ever done before in this photography course, it is a new style of performance. I find it challenging for the model in my images as a lot of the time the ideas in my head stay in my head and I simply direct them and position them without them really knowing whats going on or what is going to be produced, I do explain all my ideas and progress my ideas. It is also challenging in the editing process as I need to layer the images and find new ways to develop my creations in order to make them look good and to come across how i imagine them inside my head.
Through my work I plan to communicate a wider message than just a non sense surrealist image, which is what I think a lot of surrealist work has, a concept behind it. For my shoots I am going to name my project Invisibility Cloak, I decided on this name because it makes me think the most and I feel like a spectator would see this title and wonder what it meant and would make them want to read on. I have already done one of the shoots for my project and one of the images that I made reminds me of the Harry Potter films and when Harry receives the cloak of invisibility. Here I got an idea of what the message behind my project was. I think that we live in a world where everyone judges you on your appearance, the first time you meet someone it doesn’t really matter how hard you try to impress them because they’ve already made a judgement on you based upon the clothes you wear, how you’ve done your hair, how your makeup looks etc. Now I imagined what if we lived in a world were you can’t see any of that? And instead of hiding behind our clothes to cover ourselves up we use them as a way to be known to the world for people to see that we are living. I thought this would be a good concept and although it is quite cheesy I like the message behind it and I think it will make for some good images at the end of it all.

I’m taking a chance with this project because I think that a lot of people might not get it and might just think its strange, which is the risk element of this project but I like it and I haven’t seen anything EXACTLY like this before so it will be a good chance for me to show my skills and try and create some really good work. I have looked through many surrealist photographers and in the end I found two that I really like as I think their work is different and imaginative. The first one, my absolute favourite, is a photographer named Christopher Mckenney who specializes in horror surrealist photography, to me this is very interesting and is a huge risk to take because for a lot of people it can be too much. For example, I showed my parents one of his images [man holding gun to head] and they did not like it at all. My mum didn’t really get it and wasn’t keen on it and my dad just hated it because he thought that it was going too far and too much for an image. I explained to them what I thought the image represented [see earlier post] and told them the whole concept behind it. The next photographer who I really like is Brian Oldham as his work is very unique and I think has a deeper message behind it. He sticks to surrealist photography and has work which won’t make people as uncomfortable and Mckenney’s might for some.

My Manifesto RULES:

I’m not really keen on having set rules for my shoots as I think that anything can happen and a lot of the time things that are unplanned and unprepared can turn out looking better than those that I have planned weeks in advance. If I had to give myself rules and limitations this is what they would be:
1. Keep track of time, don’t shoot when dark [creates more of a horror mood, which I do not want]
2. Allow models to have their own say and don’t restrict them to following the exact directions that I give to them
3. Remember to take a photo of the bare background before starting to shoot with model to make editing simple
4. bring all props and allow time for preparation before shooting
5. don’t go crazy and make hard images to edit and change
6. stay in woods for first shoot and don’t mix locations [unless it looks good]
7. allow space for spectator to generate their own meaning behind the photographs, don’t make it obvious
8. no black and white images for this shoot [doesn’t allow for enough detail in photographs]
9. remember it’s PERFORMANCE photography so stick to telling some sort of story, performance doesn’t necessarily have to have a live public audience waiting, the spectator can see and image it for themselves when looking through images]
10. there are no limitations in surrealism or performance photography so keep strong ideas and allow them to be expanded

“So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost.” – Andre Breton [1924]

Experimentation, Record / Photoshoot

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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