For those of you still haven’t considered the fundamental questions raised in this exam paper between Truth, Fantasy or Fiction, please select one or more of these 4 case-studies and produce an in-depth blog post that illustrates your thinking.

1. In the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels Fox News was reporting from the Place de la Borse. Video footage shows a young photographer posing a woman in front of a makeshift memorial: is it bad journalism ethics, or just the way it’s done?

Read the Guardian newspaper article here and make a blog post that expresses your own thoughts and views.

Further insight can be read here on Petapixel

Here is the image that photographer, Khaled Al Sabbah posted on Instagram

 

2. Another image from the Brussels attack has also generated a lot of chatter on social media.

A photograph of a woman in shock with torn clothes and injured foot has gone around the world.

Read a few articles here.

Time Magazine

The Guardian

USA Today

Following the second explosion, Kardava  (the woman who took the image on her phone) fought her urge to run to a safe place. “I also wanted to take pictures. As a journalist, it was my duty to take these photos and show the world what was going on. I knew I was the only one at this spot.”

Is there a moral dilemma in photographing people injured or dying? As photojournalist should you take the image?

What is your view? How has this image become iconic of the terrorist attacks in Brussels airport?

3. Jeff Wall, Canadian artists known for his large scale tableaux image presented in light-boxes

Today, most of his images resemble reportage and, as such, are likely to incense his detractors, who claim he’s not a “true” photographer. His most contentious new work, called Approach, shows a homeless woman standing by a makeshift cardboard shelter in which we spy the foot of what could be a sleeping vagrant. Wall tells me it was shot under an actual freeway where the homeless congregate and that “it took a month to make, working hands-on” – but he won’t divulge just how staged it is. Is this an actual homeless woman, or an actor? Is the shelter real, or was it built by Wall’s team of assistants to resemble one?

Re-creating images from memory is crucial to Wall’s practice – perhaps because it flies in the face of the tradition of photography as an act of instant witnessing.

“Something lingers in me until I have to remake it from memory to capture why it fascinates me,” he says. “Not photographing gives me imaginative freedom that is crucial to the making of art. That, in fact, is what art is about – the freedom to do what we want.”

Read full interview with Jeff Wall here

In terms of truth or communicating an idea that make references to a real social problem such as homelessness, does it matter if the image is staged or not? Where does authenticity come into the picture?

4. The images of renowned photographer Steve McCurry, who made the famous and iconic image of an Afghan girl for a front cover of National Geography has recently been criticized for making ‘too perfect pictures’ which not only are boring but reinforces a particular idea or stereotype of the exotic other.

Read this article by Teju Cole in the New York Times Magazine which compares McCurry’s representation of India with a native photographer, Raghubir Singh who worked from the late ’60s until his untimely death in 1999, traveling all over India to create a series of powerful books about his homeland.

Reference to Coldplay’s new video also highlight the idea of cultural appropriation that harks back to Britain’s colonial rule and exploitation of the Orient.

Read this artcicle on Petapixel in In defense of Steve McCurry’s images

What is your view? Back it up with references to article read and include quotes for or against.

 

Assessment Objectives A2 Photography: (Edexcel)

AO1 – Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

To achieve an A or A*-grade you must demonstrate an Exceptional ability (Level 6) through sustained and focused investigations achieving 16-18 marks out of 18.

Get yourself familiar with the assessment grid here:

 

To develop your ideas further from initial research of mind-maps and mood-boards on the themes Truth, Fantasy or Fiction you need to be looking at the work of others (artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, historians etc) and write a specification with 2-3 unique ideas that you want to explore further.

Follow these steps to success!

Research and analyse the work of at least 2-3 (or more) photographers/ artist. Produce at least 2-3 blog posts for each artist reference that illustrate your thinking and understanding using pictures and annotation and make a photographic response to your research into the work of others

1. Produce a mood board with a selection of images.
2. Provide analysis their work and explain why you have chosen them and how it relates to your idea and the exam theme of Truth, Fantasy or Fiction.
3. Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth, FORM (composition, use of light etc), MEANING (interpretation, subject-matter, what is the photographer trying to communicate), JUDGEMENT (evaluation, how good is it?), CONTEXT (history and theory of art/ photography/ visual culture,link to other’s work/ideas/concept)
4. Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc.
5. Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post
6. Plan at least 2-3 shoots as a response to the above where you explore your ideas in-depth.
7. Edit shoots and show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop
8. Reflect and  evaluate each shoot afterwards with thoughts on how to refine and modify your ideas i.e.  experiment with images in Lightroom/Photoshop, re-visit idea, produce a new shoot, what are you going to do differently next time? How are you going to develop your ideas?

To help you get started look at the starting points in the Exam paper on page 7 under Photography. Look also at other disciplines such as, Fine Art, Three-dimensional design, , Textile Design, Graphic Communication or contextual studies  – often you will find some interesting ideas here. Also make use of Reference Material on pages 12-18.

However don’t just rely on these pages and starting points in the exam paper. Often those students that achieve the highest marks are those that think outside the box and find their own unique starting points.

USEFUL WEBSITES

Lensculture – great source for new contemporary photography from all over the world

British Journal of Photography (BJP) – Journal on Contemporary Photography

Photographic Museum Humanity

World Press Photo – the best news photography and photojournalism

Magnum Photos – photo agency, picture stories from all over the world

Panos Picture – photo agency

Agency VU – photo agency

INSTITUTE – photo agency

Sputnik Photos – photo collective made of Polish and East European photographers

A Fine Beginning – photo collective in Wales

Document Scotland – photo collective in Scotland

NOOR – a collective uniting a select group of highly accomplished photojournalists and documentary storytellers focusing on contemporary global issues.

Here is a folder EXAM 2016 with a lot of PPTs about varioues genres and approaches to photography: USE IT !!
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\EXAM 2016

Here are some thoughts from me on different artists whose work makes link and references to the theme of Truth, Fantasy or Fiction.

Documentary vs Staged Photography
If we examine documentary truth (camera as witness) versus a staged photograph (tableaux photography) all sorts of questions arise that are pertinent to consider as an image maker. Remember our discussion we had at the beginning of September when we began module of Documentary and Narrative. We discussed a set of images submitted at the World Press Photo competition on 2015.

Read my blog post again: Standards and Ethics in Documentary

Link to article about controversial images made by Giovanni Trioli at this years World Press Photo context

Since then the debate surrounding what constitutes ‘documentary’, ‘truth’, ‘veracity’ and how much manipulation is accepted has raged within various bodies representing documentary photography and photojournalism.

Read here the new Code of Ethics, revised rules and detailed guidance to ensure ‘truth’ of entries for the WPP contest 2016 by its Managing Director, Lars Boering. Read further interview with Boering here in an article in the BJP

Case Study: Photography and War
How do you photograph war? Is it possible to represent the horror and complexities of conflict. Here are 4 photographers whose approach and methodology are diverse in depicting war and its effect on people caught up in the crossfire, scarred landscape of destruction and some reflecting on the instruments, weaponry and technology of modern war fare. Which images tell the truth of war?

James Nachtwey a photojournalist who make photographs within a humanist tradition on the frontline of war.

Listen to Nacthwey talk about his work as a war photographer in this TED talk

Simon Norfolk documents the aftermath of war through a set of landscape images that reference the history of painting. Here is a his celebrated work from Chronotopia: Afghanistan.

Giles Duley is a photographer who lost three limbs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, returned to the country to trace what happens to the thousands of Afghans who lose limbs.

 

Instead of heading out in the field of war to discover the devastating effects of antipersonnel mines and photographing the maimed, the amputees, Raphael Dallaporta leaves it up to the viewer to evaluate the consequences.

Lisa Barnard‘s ambitious and multi-layered new book of photographs, Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden is a complex and thought-provoking set of images of drone weaponry, arms conventions and missile fragments suddenly make the remote seem close to home. Read more here

The term “drone aesthetics” has been used of late to describe the work of several contemporary photographers and artists who have tackled the complex subject of modern technological warfare, in particular the use of missiles fired from unmanned planes at suspected terrorist targets in remote areas of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. This digitally controlled form of remote killing has changed the face of war, made it, in fact, faceless, detached and disturbingly similar to the virtual violence relentlessly produced by the computer games industry.

Use of Archive and Found images
Right now in contemporary photography and in particularly in photographers making photo books the use of archival material is dominating ways that photographers tell stories. We have discussed this earlier during Personal Study and many of you incorporated family archives and photo albums into the narrative and making of your photo book. There is no reason why you can’t explore archives again, both public (Photographic Archive Society Jersiaise, Archive of Modern Conflict) and private (mobile phones, social media, family albums etc.)

Here is a selection of photographers using archives in making new work: Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (Divine Violence/Holy Bible, War Primer 2, People in Trouble, Spirit is a Bone etc) Christian Patterson (Redhead Peckerwood, Bottom of the Lake), Tommasi Tanini (H. said he loved us), David Fahti (Anecdotal, Wolfgang), Dragana Jurisic (YU: The Lost Country), Anouk Kruithof, Ed Templeton (Adventures in the nearby far way), John Stezaker

https://vimeo.com/116139900

Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Doug Rickard, Daniel Mayrit all use found images from the internet, Google earth and other satellites images as a way to ask questions and raise awareness about our environment, state operated security facilities, social and urban neighbour hoods, prostitution, and London’s business leaders of major international financial institutions.

US oil fields photographed by satellites orbiting Earth.

Mishka Henner: I’m not the only one, 2015
Single channel video, 4:34 mins

Photographer Trevor Paglen has long made the advanced technology of global surveillance and military weaponry his subject. This year he has been nominated for the prestigious The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize which aims to reward a contemporary photographer of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to the medium of photography in Europe in the previous year. The Prize showcases new talents and highlights the best of international photography practice. It is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography. Read more here

Doug Rickard is a north American artist / photographer. He uses technologies such as Google Street View and YouTube to find images, which he then photographs on his monitor, to create series of work that have been published in books, exhibited in galleries.

Months after the London Riots in 2008 (at the beginning of the economical crash) the Metropolitan Police handed out leaflets depicting youngsters that presumably took part in riots. Images of very low quality, almost amateur, were embedded with unquestioned authority due both to the device used for taking the photographs and to the institution distributing those images. But in reality, what do we actually know about these people? We have no context or explanation of the facts, but we almost inadvertently assume their guilt because they have been ‘caught on CCTV’.

In his awarding book: You Haven’s Seen the Faces.. Daniel Mayrit appropriated the characteristics of surveillance technology using Facebook and Google to collect images of the 100 most powerful people in the City of London (according to the annual report by Square Mile magazine in 2013). The people here featured represent a sector which is arguably regarded in the collective perception as highly responsible for the current economic situation, but  nevertheless  still live  in a comfortable anonymity, away from public scrutiny.

Read article here in the BJP on Shooting the Rich

Read and see more here on his website and the publisher, RIOT Books 

See also this book Looters by Tiane Doan Na Champassak

Photography and Propaganda
Photography has been used as Propaganda for as long time. One of the most iconic images made during the Economic Depression in the 1930s America is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. It was used by the federal agency FSA (Farm Security Administration) to raise money and awareness has been reproduced for decades on stamps, posters etc. The controversy surrounding the image is an interesting study where the account from Lange and the woman photographed, Florence Thompson  differ significantly.

Here is a link to a Case Study I have used in the past which will provide you with different ways to ‘read’ the image. 

Before migrant mother was made photography was entrenched in producing propaganda material for the Russian Revolution and socialist uprising. See the work of El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Kazimir Malevich. These artists and many more were part of the new European avant-garde movements such as Russian Constructivism, Dadaism and later Surrealism. See also the work by some of the pioneers of photo-montages such as  John Heartfield, Raoul Hausman, Hannah Hoch.

See my PPT on an extensive overview of development of photomontage here: 

Peter Kennard is one Britians most productive artists using photo montage to producing propaganda style images with highly political comments and satire. All forms of advertising is a form of propaganda with material used to promote and sell a particular item, merchandise or lifestyle.

Most protest groups such as Occupy London (like to website) or even the evil ideology of ISIS uses propaganda disseminated through new media and social media in order to reach a wide audience.

For those of you who studying Media, you should be able to link this with your module on We Media. Make links both to historical and contemporary means of propaganda, visual material produced and forms of communication and dissemination of images/ messages/ ideology/ mechandise etc.

During the Vietnam War, conceptual artist, Marta Rosler made a series of photo montages that were a critique of America’s involvement. in 1981 she wrote one of the key essay on documentary photography and its fraught relationship with its inherent truth, ethics and the politics of representation, In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography.) Read it here.

Tableaux Photography and the Staged photograph
Tableaux photography is a style of photography in which a pictorial narrative is conveyed through a single image as opposed to a series of images which tell a story such as in photojournalism and documentary photography.  This style is sometimes also referred to as ‘staged’ or ‘constructed photography’ and tableaux photographs makes references to fables, fairy tales, myths and unreal and real events from a variety of sources such as paintings, film, theatre, literature and the media. Tableaux photographs offer a much more ambiguous and open-ended description of something that are subjective to interpretation by the viewer. Tableaux photographs are mainly exhibited in fine art galleries and museums where they are considered alongside other works of art.

Tom Hunter, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michaels,  Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg, William Wegman.

Watch video behind the scenes of Gregory Crewdson shoot

See my PPT om Tableaux Photography for more details

Stranger than Fiction: Should documentary photographers add fiction to reality?
Documentary photography belongs to the realm of truth, yet some photographers are testing the boundaries between reality and fiction in a bid to reach a public that is accustomed to these narrative forms in the literary and cinematic worlds. In contemporary photography today your have what some people call Fictional Documentary (similar to TV genre such as doc-drama) where you interpret real or historical events through fiction.  This is  often expressed through a personal and artistic vision which are operating somewhere between fiction and fantasy with some elements of truth or historical data that has been re-imagined.

See the work of: Cristina de Middel (Afronauts, Sharkification, This is What Hatred Did), Max Pinckers (Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty), Vasantha Yogananthan (A Myth of Two Souls), Ron Jude (Lick Creek Line), Eamonn Doyle ( i ) Paul Graham (Does Yellow Run Forever), Yury Toroptsov (Fairyland, House of Baba Yaga, Divine Retribution), Gareth McConnell (Close Your Eyes), Joan Fontcuberta

 

Read this article in the BJP : Stranger than fiction: Should documentary photographers add fiction to reality? Interview with Cristina de Middel http://mediastorm.com/clients/2013-icp-infinity-awards-publication-cristina-de-middel

Appropriation/ Conceptualism/ Performance
What are the connections between Marcel Duchamp‘s gesture of painting a moustache on the iconic painting of Mona Lisa, a photograph of a cup of tea by Martin Parr and Andy Warhol‘s paintings of Campbell’s Soup Cans?

What is “original” and “unoriginal” art? Does an art object only qualify as authentic if it’s made by the human hand? Does the context in which one sees an image change its meaning? Why is a photograph of a photograph worth less on the market than its original?

How are we to understand the difference between Walker Evans famous portrait of a sharecroppers wife, Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife (Allie Mae Burroughs), 1936 and Sherrie Levine appropriation of that image titled, After Walker Evans made in 1979 when she rephotographed Evans’s photographs from the exhibition catalogue “First and Last’, or when Michael Mandiberg in 2001 scanned these same photographs, and created AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.com to facilitate their dissemination as a comment on how we come to know information in this burgeoning digital age.

Read more in this article here and this one here 

Richard Prince and the art of ‘rephotographing’

Richard Prince is a New York-based artist famous for appropriation. His work relies heavily on the work of others. Not all of his pieces or projects are appropriated, but his most famous pieces owe their existence to the technique.

Take, for instance, Prince’s “rephotographing” of Marlboro cigarette advertisements, specifically those featuring the Marlboro Man (originally shot by Sam Abell). The series, entitled – and some might say, appropriately – Cowboys, began in the 1980s. A more recent piece from the series (2000) sold for more than $3m (£1.9m) at a 2014 Sotheby’s auction.

Interview with Sam Abell on Richard Prince’s appropriation of his images.

Prince’s work raises a lot of fascinating questions, the most hotly debated of which, at least in recent weeks, has been whether he is infringing others’ copyrights. The discussion follows an exhibition of Prince’s work at New York’s Frieze Art Fair in mid-May. The show consisted of about three dozen photos that were copies of other people’s Instagram posts, a mix of images from celebrities and ordinary people. Prince enlarged them, printed them out on inkjet paper, and added a cryptic comment at the bottom of each. Then he reportedly sold the images for $90,000 a piece. Read more here

Here are a few articles in Huffington Post

One of the photographers of his own instagram image sued Price for infringement of copyright. Read more here

Jemma Stehli’s appropriation of fashion photographer Helmuth Newton‘s famous images of naked models is a critique not only on fashions’ obsession with selling ‘sex’ but the representation, objectification and male gaze on the female nude in art history from Botticelli’s paintings of a naked Venus to nudity and sexual fantasy seen in Pop and Urban music videos, such as Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus and others.

 

Read this review of current exhibition at the V&A museum in London: Botticelli Reimagined

Some feminists say Cyrus’ twerks is a way for women to reclaim their own body and sexuality, others say she is reinforcing a female stereotype for the male gaze upon women as sexual objects of desire. What is your view?

Read this article in the Guardian: Miley Cyrus’s twerking routine was cultural appropriation at it worst

For those interested in exploring identities, stereotypes, gender, alter-egos through self-portraiture using varies techniques such slow shutters-speeds, use of dressing up, make-up, props, masks, locations (mine-en-scene) Often these images are questioning ideas around truth, fantasy or fiction.

Francesco Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun, Yasumasa Morimura, Gillian Wearing, Sean Lee (Shauna) Juno Calypso

Cindy Sherman
Claude Cahun

Juno Calypso won the recent BJP International Award 2016 and is currently exhibiting in London at TJ Boulting Gallery. See more here. Read also this article on artists exploring their alter-egos and inner selves in photography.

Photography and Performance
Tableaux photography always have an element of performing for the camera and the exam themes lend themselves really well to revisit Performance in Photography and explore fantasy, fiction, parody, alter-ego, identity etc. Read my blog post from last Summer when we were exploring Tom Pope’s practice in Photography and Performance and the themes of Chance, Change and Challenge . You should be able to find some starting points here

For example, write a manifesto with a set of rules (6-10) that provide a framework for your performance related project. Describe in detail how you are planning on developing your work and ideas. Think about what you want to achieve, what you want to communicate, how your ideas relate to the themes of Truth, Fantasy or Fiction and how you are going to approach this task in terms of form, technique and subject-matter.

A list of art movements that you may use as contextual research. Many of them also produced Manifestos:

Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism,  Situationism, Neo-dadaism, Land/Environmental art, Performance art/Live art, Conceptualism, Experimental filmmaking/ Avant-garde cinema (those studying Media make links with your unit on Experimental film)

Here are a list of artists/ photographers that may inspire you:

Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Yves Klein, Bas Jan Ader, Erwin Wurm, Chris Arnatt, Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Francis Alÿs, , Sophie Calle , Nikki S Lee, Claude Cahun, Dennis Oppenheim, Bruce Nauman, Allan Kaprow, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing, Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade, Andy Warhol’s film work, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Marina Abramovic, Pipilotti Rist, Luis Bunuel/ Salvatore Dali: , Le Chien Andalou, Dziga Vertov: The Man with a Movie Camera

images

Photography and Sculpture:
Images produced through transformation of materials and making things to be photographed. See work by: Lorenzo Vitturi (Dalton Anatomy), Thomas Demand, James Casebere (see Emily Reynolds work), Vik Muniz, Chris Jordan (Midway Atoll), Stephen Gill.

Write a specification with 2-3 ideas about what you are planning to do. Produce at least 2-3 blog posts that illustrate your thinking and understanding. Use pictures and annotation.

1. Write a paragraph of each idea and provide as much information as possible on how your ideas interpret the theme of Transformation.
2. Illustrate each idea with images to provide visual context
3. Produce a detailed plan of 2-3 shoots for each idea that you are intending to do;  how, who, when, where and why?
4. If appropriate, think about locations, lighting and choose a setting or landscape that suits your idea. Take recce shots or experiment with different camera skills/techniques before principal shooting.  If appropriate, think about how to convey an emotion, expression or attitude and the colour palette, tone, mood and texture of your pictures. Consider mise-en-scène – deliberate use of clothing, posture, choice of subject objects, props, accessories, settings (people/ portraits etc.)

illustration of a specification from students blog