The thing that makes my project as full as it is, is due to the archive of images my Mum and Nan have kept over the years. A lot of people don’t have many photos of their parents, especially not in the amount that I have of my Mum, my Dad for example has about 3 images from the whole of his childhood, his parents split up and he went to boarding school and his set mum got rid of all of his possessions and photos, and so if i had tried to do this project on my Dad, it would have only shown the last 20 or so years of his life.

“Archives are important because they provide evidence of activities and tell us more about individuals and institutions. They tell stories. They also increase our sense of identity and understanding of cultures.” Source

The fact that my Mum and Nan have kept these archives is very important, because it allows us to remember things better, how their hair was, what the clothes were like, the places they used to see and the people they used to be close to.It has allowed me to gain a closer relationship to my Mum and understand that essentially, she has always been the same person, who is always happy and up for almost anything, she’s never worried about being sensible and doesn’t care if she looks bad in one photo. She’s always had a close family and a busy life.

Daria’s parents unfortunately got divorced when she was only fifteen years old. This project of hers entitled Embrace is a six year project all compressed  into a body of work containing a total of thirteen images. For Daria, photography became a sort of tool in which was a way in which she released the pain that she was holding alongside a way of telling/showing her mother what she was really feeling. The divorce was never something that came up in conversation, and she was brought up in a family where you smile when things get tough; to hide your problems; pretend that everything was okay even if you were so lost, confused and broken on the inside. Daria studied photography at Moscow State University and at the Danish Media School of Journalism. She purposely presents this story in English and stated: “When I imagine the way I would talk about this in Russian, it causes me pain.”  Vulnerability, however, grew into strength as she worked.

” I didn’t believe that I could rely on them any longer so, all of a sudden, I had to grow up in one day. First, I was trying to become a mom for my mom but it felt wrong.” —Daria Klimasheva

Daria stated  the fact that  you cannot go any further when you are full of pain and fear, and that eventually you realize that you can’t ignore it, that it’s time to face the truth and heal yourself. That is what she did, and she did so by putting some of her memories on the shelf. By creating an emotional, expressive visual story about the challenges of growing up in a family where feelings long remained below the surface, her images capture this visual darkness that she perhaps held inside of her mind and heart. Although her subject matter differs from mine, as her project focuses on her mothers struggle with depression after a divorce and mine focuses on domestic violence, I still feel as if there is still this connection that both explore a ‘dark’ side within a home environment. I find both concepts of visual and contextual aspects interesting and I think that her work is very poetic and conceptual.

Her work is very inspirational to me and I really admire the fact that over a six year period, she narrowed down and selected only thirteen images that represent her deepest and darkest feelings. Something else that I find interesting about her work is the fact that all of her outcomes are is black and white. I think this is powerful and was done purposefully because black and white images don’t usually give depth to the image and by doing this, it challenges the way the viewer thinks and makes them think about what is going on within the image and why.

Here are a selection of her images:

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.itv.com/news/channel/update/2016-04-07/the-channel-archive-belle-vue-skatepark-1977/

In Jersey, when skateboarding first came about in the 70s, there was a big buzz in the community as this new sport was very popular with young people. It got so popular that a high quality skatepark was built, that was used by pro skaters. Although it was becoming very popular, many people in the community looked down on skateboarding and thought that it was a waste of time, as the kids who were focusing more on skateboarding than things some members of the community felt were more important. This led to the skatepark at Belle Vue pleasure park to be shutdown. This has had repercussions on skateboarding in Jersey, as ever since then there has been no more quality skateparks that have these kinds of facilities. Compared to today, things are the same in the sense that some members of the community still despise skateboarding. This is something I believe has to change as all that these young people want to do is practice and perfect their skills for their sport. With my documentary, I have focused on these topics in my film, as the message of the film is to inspire people to look for change in the community.

To get more photos, I went into my Nans attik with my Mum, who hasn’t been up there in years, however I have been in the attic a lot myself as a child whenever I would be looked after by my Nan, so I know where a lot of certain bits and bobs are within the clutter from when I used to nose around.

I filmed my Mum whilst we were up there so I could remember how my Mum reacted to seeing certain things we found.

My Mum laughed quite a lot looking at all the different things written on all the supports in chalk.

From this trip, I found a huge box of my Aunts photos, in which I found many of my Mum, which I have scanned in.

When we were rummaging through everything in my Nans fairly cluttered Attik, I found a tin with lots of small bits in, which meant nothing to me, but my Mum was amazed I had found it, as it was one of her favourite things to play with when she was younger. The plastic bits all go together to build your own garden. My Mums Dad and Grandad both care(d) greatly for they gardens, and so I have a feeling this was where my Mum got this love of gardens from. Watching my Mum look through all the stuff in the time again was great, and she was so happy she’d been able to rummage through again and it seemed to bring back so many memories.

Another item I came across was this old rocking horse type thing, which I played on when I was younger, but remembered seeing this within one of the slides of my mums youngest sister.

In the back bedroom of my Nan and Poppa’s house, she has also still kept all the old games they used to play as children, some which are seen in the slides when they are opening them for christmas.

The last thing I found which relates to a few of the slides, are these toffee hammers they used to play with, and even used as part of costumes.

Although I probably won’t be able to use some of this stuff within my original planned photo book, I may be able to incorporate them into a smaller phonebook somehow, comparing old and new photos, as the photo book I have currently planned follows chronological order and so I can’t really compare photos from different times very well.

In Jersey, the skateboarding facilities are limited to only two parks and one mini-ramp. There is one in St Helier and one in St Johns, the one is St Helier is the main park which is usable for skateboards, scooters and BMX’s, and the one in St John’s is mainly for skateboards and occasionally scooters. Although to some people this might seem like a good number for an island of this size, in reality it’s not very much as the parks are quite a small size and don’t feature things that proper skateparks feature. For example, there are no bowls that you can skate, and this limits people learning transition tricks as the only vert equipment is the quarter pipe and mini-ramp in St Ouen’s, Because of there being limited facilities, a campaign has been set up on Facebook to gain funding for more facilities in Jersey. 

The project has been set up to be a way to gain funding from the public for skateboarding facilities, as it usually costs a large sum of money to build equipment. The first thing that is being funded is a portable 8ft mini ramp, so that they are able to have vert competitions all over the island and raise even more money for more projects. The project has gained a large following by the skateboarding community, as they all want to see a change in Jersey and have more facilities produced. It has even been picked up by the Facebook page of popular international skateboarding magazine Sidewalk.  This shows that the community is really wanting new facilities as the following for the project is growing larger and larger each day.

In my documentary I am going to be showing the project, and the whole theme of the documentary will be about wanting and needing the new facilities.

Ray’s A Laugh

Richard Billingham is an English photographer who is well known for his book ‘Ray’s A Laugh’ which documents the life of his alcoholic father ray and his mother Liz. Born in Birmingham, he studied as a painter at the Bournville College of Art and at the University of Sunderland. He first came into ‘importance’ in the world of photography when he published his book about his family in 1996. The book shows the poverty and deprivation in which he grow up in. He took the photographs on the cheapest film he could find so that the photographs had a bad focus and had brash colours which adds to the authenticity of it. The book is very personal and shows Ray his alcoholic father in a very real way, I think he is portrayed as a vulnerable and troubled person.  In 1997, Billingham also won the Citigroup Photography Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize, for his solo show at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.  Critic Jillian Stallabrass describes the book as “what is in legend a particularly British stoicism and resilience, in the face of the tempest of modernity”.

After looking at Richard Billingham’s book I noticed that his dad Ray is trapped within the confined space of his home due to his addiction of alcohol. Looking at my photo book, I think that you also get the sense that my dad is trapped within my home although its for a very different reason due to his back problems. I also noticed that this has lead them to look like lonely and almost isolated characters. Both books are very personal, which I think makes it even harder to photograph because it allows you to observe through the lens of a camera which gives you a different perspective.  I think that Richards photographs allows the viewer to imagine what his life would be like, just by looking at a few of his photographs I can picture his home, the smell and the noise. I think he manged to capture a genuine truth in the photos.

“Billingham’s book of the photos Ray’s a Laugh was taken to have invented a squalid realism. His pictures, surreal, claustrophobic, gave meaning to the idea of “too close to home”.

Recently, Richard Billingham did a interview for The Guardian where he talked about growing up in a tower block in the west of Birmingham with his parents and making the book. Richard said that he had never taken a photograph until he was 19 years old, he was going to use the photographs he took to paint them however he never finished any of the paintings as he thought the photographs were more realistic. The article is below:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/13/richard-billingham-tower-block-white-dee-rays-a-laugh-liz

I heard from back from the women’s refuge in jersey and although there isn’t enough time to actually produce images from it, I still wanted to go and talk to someone about the work that goes on within this organisation.

These are some notes I made throughout my discussion with the chairman (Pat) of the organisation:

• it’s run by a management comity
• 11-12 people volunteer
• this organisation started about 30 years ago by a women who is still apart of this organisation today – Rosie Sutherland. Inspired by a group of women who decided that something should be done to aid women. That something should be done in order for there to be a place were women can  go and feel safe.
• 1 out of 4 women will be in an abusive relationship
•  the fact that getting over an abusive relationship is a long process that women go through  , and in some cases , they go back to the abusive relationship they were in… for many reasons, but mainly because of money problems, housing ect.
• this organisation allows the victim to be in control of their own lives and control the things they do and why.
• police are highly involved within this organisation.
• this refuge is highly confidential and their goal is to make this safe house a home and give women (and children) a safe and happy environment to live in.
• the organisation employs staff in order to help with day to day care and jobs, these people can look after the staff needs as well as the women’s needs.
• Volunteers can be anyone from lawyers to accountants and so on, the profession you are in isn’t important, what’s important is having a volunteer who is genuinely passionate about this cause and wants to help.
• over 1000 people reach out to this organisation every year
• conducting a training program is vital for each volunteer/staff member and it is all conducted here in Jersey by funding from the states and donations.
• this safe house contains 7 bedrooms , 2 sitting rooms which are occasionally transitioned into bedrooms if needed, amongst other rooms like laundry rooms, a kitchen ect.
• there are women who come back after a few years, or people that have previously been in a abusive relationship and want to talk about their past experiences.
• this organisation is available 24 hours a day (via landline) , having someone that is available during an emergency is vital within the  philosophy of the organisation.
• they accept anyone and everyone (from any nationality)
• this organisation / volunteers encourage women to create and form good relationship

-The chairman I met with was a lovely lady named Pat who had been within this organisation for around ten years and she actually became aware of this position because of a friend who had to leave the organisation, thus she took on this Job. She says she had always been involved in some sort of charitable organisation but settled within the women’s refuge in Jersey and is still there today.

-Pat was telling me about her daughters friend who was unfortunately involved in a domestic situation and she would always say she wanted to go back , her sadness was because of the fact that she made a house into a home, all of her memories were there, in that house, and that is is something really sad.”For any woman to leave the house she’s made a home , that is heartbreaking.”- Pat

-I was interested and asked her whether the organisation had ever thought about branching out (because of the fact that there is currently one safe house in jersey). To which she responded that because of our population, something would have to be very wrong for there to be so many people that feel as if they are not safe and need a place to go in order to feel safe. Therefore she doesn’t see it happening anytime to and hopes it doesn’t have to come to that.

-I talked about how the internet is a big part in supporting victims throughout these apps and when I asked about her opinion on this she commented on the fact that it all really depends on the stage that someone is at. In some cases, it may benefit the person in some way or another but from her point of view, she looks at the advantage of having someone there face to face, someone who can empathize and be there in person , and she says that it is a huge difference in comparison to a text or email.

-Because this organisation focuses more on women suffering in a domestic violence situation and less on other issues such as rape, it was interesting to hear that a collaboration of organisations is a possibility for the future.

Overall, this meeting was very insightful and Pat was so kind as to give me a back which held information booklets that they give out at talks and much more that discusses the organisation. She also made me aware of their website online and gave me her contact card if I had anything else to inquire about. Although it is too late to produce images and possible final outcomes, I am really pleased with the amount of information I was given just with one meeting.

Cindy Sherman is one of my favourite photographer and I have taken a lot of inspiration from her in my past projects. I wanted to look into her work again but not the famous film stills that she created in the 1980s but to look at some of the work that she created during her time as a student in the late 1970’s. One particular set of images is based on a Hollywood-inspired murder mystery story with a vast amount of characters waiting for the bus. Sherman becomes each of the characters and dresses in different clothes based on people that you would typically see in a 1930s movie. The story behind Sherman’s work entitled Murder Mystery People is an imagined crime movies that features 17 different characters inspired by stereotypical figures in 1930s Hollywood films.

Sherman’s early work: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/2451/cindy-sherman-early-works

“I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself. Sometimes I disappear” – Cindy Sherman

The quote above that I have extracted above really interests me as Sherman states that she doesn’t see herself in her images, which is what I feel in my images too. They aren’t self-portraits, Sherman becomes the character and creates a new persona in her work. I like that she creates new personalities and personas in her work becoming new people and changing who she is by her clothing, props, hairstyles and mannerisms and facial expressions. I find Sherman’s photographs really interesting and I like the way she makes her images as I use a similar method. In her images she tends to be in a studio on her own and have a shutter release to make her images, often we are able to see this in her images at the bottom of the image or to the side.

This is my favourite out of this series of Sherman’s. I like the composition of this image and how the subject is positioned in the bottom right. I find it interesting to look at how the subject is photographing and the camera with the flash attachment on top as this is what was often used back in the 60s when Sherman made these photographs. I like how Sherman literally becomes her characters and creates new and intriguing characters all the time, something that I like to do in my own work too. I like the added touch of sideburns and other details like the glasses and the hat in this image. I feel that the hat could have been an easy way to hide her hair without having to wear a wig like she often does. In my own images I took some inspiration and have made images wearing a hat and hidden all of my hair inside the hat. I like how Sherman shot all of her characters with the same background and in the same place, this makes it so much easier when shooting to just stick to one location in a studio, where often Sherman would photograph alone. I like that as a spectator you are able to see the shutter release at the foot of this image showing how Sherman would have made this photograph using her foot and I like that it isn’t perfect or that she hasn’t tried to hide it too much but it really manages to blend in well with this image and the character in this image.

I love this image! I just love how dedicated Sherman is to creating her characters and that she went to the extent of making herself a much darker skin tone than she actually is. I like that instead of leaving this character out, she went a step further and actually created this persona and made an effort to try to look like the woman she had imagined. I like how Sherman never seems to be limited with her work, whether a character is black or white, male or female she no character seems to be out of reach for her. I find Sherman becomes unrecognisable in her images and her characters look so distant from what Sherman herself looks like which I really love. I like the expression on the subjects face as she just stares into the camera. I like the simplicity of the composition and how the subject is just directly centred in the middle of the image. I also like that it isn’t perfect and the spectator is able to see in the background the plugs as well as the wire from the shutter release. Something about this image really intrigues me and I like the shadow in the background too as it just adds a little more dimension to the image. In the right hand corner there is a shoe which makes me think that she was possibly changing all of her clothes just off to the side of the camera and this shoe happened to make its way into the corner of the image.

With my project, I have created a documentary that focuses on the skateboarding culture in Jersey, and how this urban culture is looked at by other members of society. Because of this, I have researched different documentaries that look on urban culture. One of these films is ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ which looks at the career of famous graffiti artist Banksy, and how his work made an large impact on society in the UK and worldwide. The film follows Thierry Guetta, a french immigrant living in Los Angeles and his passion with street art and urban culture. Throughout the film Guetta encounters street artists such as his cousin Invader, but mainly on Shepard Fairey and Banksy. We see how Guetta begins to hear stories about Banksy, who is this mysterious and secretive street artist and how his art is impacting the world. When Banksy visits LA, Guetta becomes his guide of the city and the two start to become friends. Continually through the film we see their friendship grow stronger and how Banksy mentors Guetta and lets him see every aspect of how he creates his art. To many people, Banksy’s art is considered a disturbance as it persistently features on public property and he exhibits his art in the view of the public. This always causes the art to gain a reaction as the art is politically driven and sends a message some people do not agree with. An example of this in the film, is when Banksy goes to Disneyland and places a doll dressed up as a Guantanamo Bay detainee inside one of the rides. This caused so much attention that the ride had to be stopped so that the doll could be removed, and Guetta, who was filming at the time was arrested by security guards and taken into interrogation. 

Exit Through The Gift Shop and Banksy’s work in general relates to my project, as they both are representations of a form of expression that the general society doesn’t agree with. Where many of Banky’s pieces have been removed and skateboarders told to leave certain areas as they are not welcome. The urban cultures that exist in our society usually are controversial or challenging to normal life, but they persist in bringing diversity within the way people express themselves.

Within the documentary I have created about the skateboarding culture in Jersey, I have featured music that I have created to use as background music. The music I have created suits the style of the film as they are hip-hop style instrumentals, and this urban genre of music goes hand in hand with skateboarding, as they are both subcultures of our community. Ever since skateboarding first came around, music is something that has played a big part in all aspects of the sports. From featuring in skateboarding edits to skateboarders being in music videos. In many cases, musicians are also skateboarders themselves. One example of this is the rapper Tyler, The Creator.

Tyler, The Creator is a rapper who grew up in California, USA, and has been skating and creating music from a young age. He has featured sound effects from skateboarding within his music, and regularly skates in the California and LA area. As a way of bridging the gap between music and skateboarders, Tyler’s music has been a way for different subcultures to connect as they all have things that they can relate to when listening to his music or watching him skate. As well as making music and skateboarding, he also designs his own clothing line that musicians and skateboarders alike wear. I feel the reason why he has been able to connect with all these different groups is that they feel he is a voice for the youth and is saying things that are considered quite controversial. As he has said in interviews, he doesn’t care if people become offended by the things he says as they are just words, and if someone was to use derogatory terms agains him he wouldn’t be offended. 

With the music I created, I took inspiration for the style of music that Tyler makes as it is something that really reflects the urban society in today’s world. I also wanted to create my own music as its something that came from Jersey, and my whole documentary is about Jersey and its effect on young people.

I created the music for the film using the program Logic Pro X. I started out by using a synthesizer and playing in a chord sequence. I then edited the synthesizer sound until I got something that I was happy with and suited the genre. The next thing I did was write in midi drums to create a beat to go with the chords. I then experimented with dropping the drums in and out for effect. I kept the instrumentals I created quite simple, as the type of hip hop I was going for is usually like this. 

 

 

Allan Kaprow, was a photographer who pioneered in establishing the concepts of performance art. In this performance art, he also developed the Environment and Happening in the 1950s and 1960S.  Kaprow coined the term ‘Happening’ in 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal’s farm in a way of describing the pieces that were going on. The pieces usually consist of artists performing their art in public spaces, where these performances may be considered out of the ordinary. The performances challenge the normality and regulations of society, by being an unconventional form of expression, which goes against what people believe to be normal. Happenings also regularly involve audience participation as the artists want their art to be something the audience can engage in, which breaks down the boundaries between the artwork and its viewer. The happenings first started out as scripted events, where the audience and performers followed cues to experience the art. Kaprow describes the happenings as “A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing.” The happenings represent what is now called New Media Art, which is participatory and interactive, with the goal of breaking the fourth wall, where the audience becomes part of the art. One of the works by Kaprow was titled “Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts”, which involved an audience moving together to experience elements such as a woman squeezing an orange and a band playing toy instruments. From this, Kaprow’s work evolved and became less scripted, and began to involve more everyday activities. Another happening, was where he brought a number of people into a room containing a large quantity of ice cubes, which the people had to touch, causing the ice cubes to melt.

Kaprow’s work has inspired many performance photographers such as Tom Pope to challenge the normality of society and what people believe to be the truth of what life should be like.  Kaprow’s work directly links with my project as skateboarding is a type of happening, where a group of young people meet up to go and skate. The way they skate the streets challenges what the community believe to be acceptable, so many people such as the police, usually tell the group of skateboarders to stop skating as its not the ‘right’ thing to be doing. Skateboarding and Kaprow’s work are very similar in these instances as they both are a subculture of society, that take their art into the public world, and actively connect with the environment and people around them

For my project, I am looking at portraying the youth culture in Jersey, and how in particular skateboarding is an area of society that many people look down upon and don’t see it as a good use of time. I am showing how the government don’t want to fund the sport but are willing to fund other sports heavily such as Football etc. For this I am going to create a documentary that shows how the youth culture in Jersey, especially the skateboarding community live, and speak with people that are a part of this. To research for my documentary, I am looking at a documentary produced by VICE called ‘Skate World:England’.

The documentary looks into the skate culture of England as they speak to numerous members and affiliates of the community. They first look at London and speak to skater Winstan Whitter, who talks about Southbank along the River Thames. He tells us how the park used to be a lot bigger and extended, but since then parts have been taken up with offices and other buildings, which means the park is now only a fraction of what it used to be. He also takes us to parks that have been specially funded by the governemnt and community, but even though they have been building a few parks, the culture is still looked down upon as something negative. We also meet Ben Nordberg, who is a skateboarder from Bath, who talks about how he started out skating the mini ramp, then went on top develop his flat ground skills. Nordberg and his friend Kris Vile tell us that they had to skate street as the skatepark that was built charged a lot of money to enter. This made them more dedicated to skateboarding as it gave them motivation to adapt to the environment around them, and improve their skills. Doing this meant they both gained sponsors, where they would receive free stuff such as skateboard decks, trucks, clothes etc.

From this documentary, the main influence on my project is that it focuses on the same topic. This means I have been able to look at the things that Vice have done in this documentary and take it into my own piece. For example, in the documentary they use a lot of archived footage of people skateboarding, as it adds more background to the story. I will be doing this as well by sourcing videos of Eddie from Youtube, and cutting up different sections to feature in the film. I also have taken the way in which they conduct their interviews, by getting the people to speak directly into the camera as it makes it a more direct conversation with the audience. I will be doing this as well, by interviewing Eddie as he looks and speaks directly into the camera.

 

I find it quite interesting how technology has played such a huge role within the last few years when concerning the issue of domestic violence. For example an online app was created in order to aid those victims who are either afraid or cannot leave to talk to someone. However, victims are able to access help through this online app  in order to alert authorities if they feel as if they are in grave danger, and they can do this without the suspicion of the abuser knowing . There are many perks to this app, one is the fact that there is a button in which you press it to divert the page to a random page, this is done as a precaution if the  abuser suddenly enters the same room or takes an interest of what the victims are doing, they wouldn’t be aware of what the victim would be trying to do. This app is also a help line and directs victims to particular helplines and help centers which are highly dependable. This allows them to talk to a professional and get proper help.

 

Whilst doing some more online research about online help, I found an article which explains how high school students were asked to create an app for their entrepreneurship class ,  and two students in particular decided to create an app which is called SafeHaven, and allocates a victim  of domestic violence anonymously with a councilor/mentor. This allows victims to receive coaching and support and whether you are the victim or you are a friend of one, this app helps these people to get through some tough times.

These students explained how they did some background research on the topic and this aspect stood as one of their main inspirations for why they wanted to produce an app like SafeHaven. The fact that South Carolina has one of the highest rates in the nation of deadly violence against women played a huge role within this project and they stated that “We wanted to start this because we know there are so many people suffering from domestic violence, and we knew we could do something through this contest.” said Gathings. “We wanted to help them out.”I can only imagine how any lives these app has helped and potentially saved, and it’s a great reinforcement to show people that things are being done and there is help out there for those who need it but are perhaps afraid to go out in person to receive it.

http://www.wyff4.com/news/upstate-students-create-app-to-help-domestic-violence-victims/37751338

 

I came across this video and this whisper app is quite popular on Facebook and youtube, but I found this one which shares what people have said about being in a domestic relationship, the fact that people are still strongly effected even when they are not currently in this situation really shows the extent of their feelings and fears.

Sarah Pucill is a filmmaker and photographer who explores a sense of self in her work. The main features of her work look into mortality and the conventional filmmaking process. Pucill makes a lot of her films in simple places/rooms where she creates and enters different and new realms. Her work explores the representation of the feminine, queer or the dead. Her work is very strange and is very much surrealist works but I think this is what makes her work so much more interesting and captivating. Pucill’s first feature length production Magic Mirror explores the work  of Claude Cahun through her images as well as her writing from Cahun’s book Aveux non avenus (Confessions Denied, 1930). I like the idea of this as Pucill has basically taken Cahun’s work, restaged it and added some more context to it from Cahun’s own words in her book. I feel that this is a really great way to learn more about Cahun and to really understand the meaning behind her work as well as possibly getting an insight into the style of Pucill and her methods of film and photography.

Magic Mirror trailer: http://www.sarahpucill.co.uk/films/magic-mirror/

As I didn’t have time to watch the entirety of Pucill’s film Magic Mirror, I just watched the trailer but still found it to be very helpful and intriguing. I also think that the entire film can only be seen in the many exhibitions that it has been shown at. Something about this film really interested me and I really like that Pucill has mixed film with photography, something that I have done in the past and am making a constant link between in my own photographic work. I think that this way of bringing Cahun’s images to life more with her own words has really given me a clearer understanding of the context of her work and her constant thoughts on mortality. I like how strange and surrealist the trailer is, it really captivates me and makes me want to watch on as well as the voiceover from Pucill reciting extracts from Cahun’s book Aveux non avenue. The thing that  I’m struggling with this is that at what point does this become Pucill’s original work as the re-staged positions and images that she has created were Cahun’s and the voiceover was also extracts from Cahun’s own book. I do really like the idea of taking inspiration from other artists work and bringing your own twist to it and Pucill’s work is great but it is just re-staged versions of Cahun’s own images. Obviously no ones images can be as good or as unique as Cahun’s and her work really does stand out to me but I do like Pucill’s interpretation and recreations of it. I like the way Pucill looks in her images and really gets into the characters that Cahun has created, something that I can take inspiration from and work on in my own images.

Facts

• Twenty-five percent (25%) of young adults age 20-44 reported pain.
• 7% of people with acute back pain will eventually develop chronic back pain.
• Experts estimate that as much as 80% of the population will experience a back problem at some time in their lives.
• Low back pain is the single leading cause of disability worldwide.
• Almost two-thirds (59%) reported an impact on their overall enjoyment of life.
• More than half of respondents (51%) felt they had little or no control over their pain.
• An estimated 20% of adults report that pain or physical discomfort disrupts their sleep a few nights a week or more

In this blog post I am going to direct my focus into a slightly different artistic medium – music. I am going to look into the song ‘Shakermaker’ by Oasis and pick out the various references to advertising included within it. It will be interesting to see how song lyrics have been used to ridicule and satirize advertising in comparison to the visual language of the photography. From this study I hope to be able to better access the effectiveness of photographs in terms of being a mechanism to tackle an idea, and judge whether an idea is clearer if it is shown visually, or expressed through written language.

This study will also be useful in the sense that I am looking into the decade of the 1990s, when Parr’s ‘Common Sense’ was published. It will be interesting to compare Parr’s artistic intentions with that of Oasis, both now seen as legendary cult figuires in the world of British music and photography respectively.

‘Shakermaker’ is a 1994 single from British rock band Oasis from their debut album ‘Definately Maybe’. This song is directly references various commercials which existed in the 1970s, when Noel Gallagher (who wrote the song) was a child. The band have been very open about ripping off the names of these old brands.

The 1990s

The context of the time this song was written, the 1990s, was a time when advertising was going through major developments; commercials were becoming more frequent; photographs were becoming sharper and more vivid; the rise of the internet led to increased networks of advertising; and the general availability of advertising was really taking off. From a modern perspective, the 90s is seen as the benchmark for the expansion of technology and the effects this had on commercial ventures; the birth of ….

• digital photography (c.1998)
• the internet (c.1995)
• the SIM Card (1991)
• email (1993)
• DVD (1995)
• Apple iMac (1998)

Such technology changed the way advertising not only was, but how it was percieved. Some embraced it, whereas others fear such a rapid rise. Oasis formed in 1994, just at the point when advertising changed rapidly.

The song is in many ways a response to the madness and hysteria of advertising.

 

Examples

“I’d like to build myself a house out of plasticine”

The title ‘Shakermaker’ and this quote is a direct reference to the popular toy Shaker Maker made in the early 19700s by the ‘Ideal Toy Company’. It was a mouldable plasticine/clay used to make toy figures, which Gallagher recalls as being “a toy that I used to have in the 70s”.

 

“I’ve been driving in my car with my friend Mr. Soft”

Mr Soft is a reference to the the character of “Mr Soft” was taken from a Trebor Soft Mints commercial, which featured Cockney Rebel’s song “Mr. Soft”. This advert was critised for being extremely cheesy and annoying.

“Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben are living in my loft”

“Mr. Clean” is a 1978 song by The Jam, one of Gallagher’s favourite bands.

Mr Benn was a British children’s cartoon which was aired by the BBC between 1971-72

“Mister Sifter sold me songs when I was just sixteen”

“Sifters” is a record shop in Manchester, where Galllagher used to visit regulary to buy records when he was younger.

 

One theme that links all of these references together is the 1970s. This is because Gallagher (born in 1967), remembers these adverts clearly as a part of his childhood. Arguably, they are nostalgic reminders to a past when advertising was a bit simpler and there was less scrutiny over the fact that the quality was often shocking and terrible (at least from a modern perspective!). Oasis as a band stood for the expression off ideas simply and directly. Therefore it can be agued that the reference of these adverts is perhaps a celebration of how advertising in the past was much simpler, with its cheesy nature is almost accepting in a satirical way, the acknowledgement of its sole purpose, to manipulate and exploit. Gallagher never took this song very seriously and is not afraid to criticise its tacky and absurb nature. Furthermore, the melody of song in itself ripped off a verse of the Coca-Cola song  “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”, something which Gallagher shamelessly admits to. The Band was later sued for its uncanny likeness. Interestingly, this was yet another reference to the 1970s.

 

How does the message of this song compare to the message in Parr’s ‘Common Sense’?

Similarities

• The purpose of this song is to show how tacky advertising really is. In many ways Parr’s images are similar in this sense because they too express advertising, through copying the visual language, in a way which makes the resulting images appear gimmicy, tacky and at times grotesque.

• Both are similar in the sense they are very raw – Parr through his Vernacular style and Oasis through a very blunt song, sung by Liam Gallagher with his discintive coarse vocals

• Both satirise popular advertising brands and produce comical pieces of work

• Both send out a bright and powerful message.  Gallagher brings his abstract daydreams to life whilst Parr shows products and items in their greatest detail. As a result it can be argued that both serve to represent a positive message.

• Both represent the surreal; ‘Shakermaker’ through Gallagher’s imagination of building a “house out of plasticine”, and Parr through highly saturated colours and use of flash photography to distort a sense of how the image really looks

• Both were made in the 1990s, a time when advertising was rapidly changing

 

Differences

• Parr’s photographs are a document of what he sees, whereas ‘Shakermaker’ represents more of a mindset. As an assesment, this makes Parr’s work in a sense  more credible because their is a direct and central theme. ‘Shakermaker’ on the other hand goes off on a tagent

• Parr’s photographs were taken of a course of many years and are extensively pieced together, whereas ‘Shakermaker’ is a 5 minute song which Noel Gallagher claims took a matter of minutes to put together

• ‘Shaker maker’ is more of a look into the past, whereas  ‘Common Sense’ is a look into the present and a hint into the future of advertising

• Whilst ‘Shakermaker’ celebrates advertising, ‘Common Sense’ hints at it vulgarity and deceptiveness. Gallagher celebrates flaws whereas Parr seeks to exploit them

 

Conclusion

It is clear therefore that despite expressing their ideas in different ways, Gallagher and Parr both mock and satirize the role of advertising. Both are entertaining in the same way that they paint a picture in the mind of the viewer, both of the viewpoint that advertising is cheesy and tacky, done through the act of re-construction to emphasize such an agenda.

However it is apparent that Parr’s images are stronger than the song in the sense they express an actual document the viewer can see with their own eyes. Furthermore Parr is allowed more to play with in the sense that he has the means to create a 100+ page photo-book and sell commercially. Gallagher on the other can only produce a short song which hints a just a handful of ideas. Photography as a medium therefore arguably allows the artistic to express more, along with the additional advantage of being already there for the viewer to appreciate, whilst in music the listener must carefully study the limits and extract an interpretation.

Overall both are incredibly successfully in what they achieve are are equally intriguing and unique in their take on 1990s society.

 

 

Duane Michals in an American photographer who often uses his photographic sequences incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy. He usually makes sequences of images as if they are action shots or documentary photographs. He developed this style in the 1960s when photojournalism first became really popular and he adopted this method and used it to create his own narrative. In the 60s his work was not well received as critics rejected his work. When in the 1970s Cindy Sherman adopted this style and it started to become increasingly popular with more and more photographers taking on this style of creating narrative and not actually photographing documentary or photojournalist methods. He staged images and got people to act and pretend, his images touch upon life after death and what happens to those that die. He makes stories/narrative and creates a new concept.

“I never went to a photography school, which was my saving grace. I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to write on a photograph, and I didn’t have to unlearn all the rules that schools teach you.” – Duane Michals

A Duane Michals gallery: http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/duane-michals#1

I find Duane Michals methods of photography really interesting. I like the idea of it looking like stills from a film and that the characters are interacting with one another. The titles are on the pages with the images and some have writing underneath them bringing in more depth and context to what Michal’s was thinking or possibly what the characters where doing. I do really like this style and think it is a great way to tell a story just through images, the sequences of images are simple yet they are really intriguing. I feel that they interest me more because of the time they were made and how different the world looked and how different people looked in the 60s. Some of his sequences are really simple but are interesting to look at while others have more layers and depth to them. I like that some of his images are quite light and easy to follow while others are random and some others have deeper meaning making the spectator actively think about what they are looking at.

I chose to analyse this sequence of images as it stood out to me. I find that Michals way of sequencing interesting as usually in a set of film stills there are 12 frames per second but Michals has only used 8. I feel that this backs up the quote from above that he had no prior knowledge of photography or anything and so just made images that he wanted to make without having any influence from the photographic world being put onto him. I found the sequence to be unusual but my interpretation of it is that the main subject was an angel and by the clue in the title had fallen from heaven to see his lover one last time. He then kissed her and lay on top of her and seemed to loose his wings and had to run away. I feel that maybe he could have lost his wings because he wasn’t supposed to go back down to earth and disrupt the living but he still went against that and did it anyway. This image is really interesting and the spectator could take away a number of interpretations from it. I like that the images are in black and white, even though that would have been the  only option in the 60s, it looks a lot better and allows the spectator to focus in on the angel instead of being distracted by anything else. The intensity of the light coming in from the window just adds more to the effect that the subject is an angel but also eliminates any other distractions from the outside buildings. The images would have been made on a film camera and a long exposure would have been put on to give the slightly blurred effect making the subject more angel-like and is they are a ghost.

I had to choose this photograph as it is so odd. I do think that this is a great image as it does, in a way, reflect how many people think about God. For example, both men are sat naked while talking and many people belonging to Christian and Catholic religion say that they will stand naked before God at their time of death to see whether they will make it into heaven. Obviously they don’t quite mean literally but in this instance it works, making the image stronger and more hard-hitting for the spectator to look at. I feel that the piece of paper over the man on the rights face symbolises how possibly anyone can be a God or that your beliefs can be in anyone and you can confide in whoever you want without actually having to physically see any God. I like the style that this photo has been made with the caption as it makes it more personal and is more intriguing to me. I also find the way the man on the right is positioned is interesting as he looks as though he is teaching the other man a lesson or telling him about something and the man on the left is taking it all in and following the other mans lead. The image looks good in black and white again so there are no distractions from the main message of the image making it stand out even more.

This image really stood out to me when looking through Michals photographs as at first glance it looks very odd. I feel that this image is similar to the style that Francesca Woodman follows with using a slow shutter speed and getting the subject to move so that some of the image is blurred or distorted. I like this image as it makes it seem as though this man, Joseph Cornell, is a ghost and is looking in the mirror to see if he can see himself clearly. The subject is centered right in the middle of the photograph and the back lighting is over exposed and draws the spectators attention right over to it. The bright white light coming from the window attracts my attention immediately followed by the distorted figure of the man. I do really like this image as it is strange but also intriguing to look at at the same time. I also think that this image is more effective in black and white as the spectator is more attracted to the bright light rather than being distracted by any colours in the room. I find that this image represents a ghost or that the story/narrative of this person is that they have died. When researching about Michals I found that he makes his images largely based around life after death and his interpretation of what that would be like. He steers away from the mainstream photography of the 1960s which was largely documentary photography and creates staged images that are unique and a narrative has been created instead of simply bare witnessing.

For my attempt at studio style images I am taking inspiration from the series ‘No Seconds’ by Henry Hargreaves. In this series Hargreaves photographs the last meals as requested by death row inmates. The images are all taken in the same composition: a flat, birds-eye perspective.

What does this project shows and highlight?

In this series the photographer Henry Hargreaves re-creates notable last meals of death row inmates; past and present. The meals shown in this series are visually gripping and powerful, showing the meal, a small description of what is included and a brief description of the subject and the crime they were convicted off.

The sense of repetition of the way the image have been framed makes for a common link within all of the images, the most obvious link is that they are all a representation of a person’s last meal. Regardless  of how obscure, mad or even simple the meal may be, the viewer is forced to recognize by this pattern that the meals are all ‘last meals’ and that all of the images therefore represent a certain sense of finality. The title ‘No Seconds’ serves to re-establish this idea in a very clear way. In many ways this breaks the complication and chaos of such a controversial topic, examining its key principles and raw details.

Suspense is a key aspect in what makes this series effective. Every one of the images leaves a sense of impending death, especially through the use of notes which clarify the context of the situation and an insight into the method of the execution. This small amount of contextual information, combined with the image is very effective in affirming a mini-narrative within the viewers’ mind.

I find this series to be extremely power because it captures a very serious and controversial subject, the death penalty. Many photographers and documentary makers in the past have touched upon this subject, whether pro and against the idea. Work in this field in often very similar, looking at the facilities of the place, perhaps the subject and few of the staff and the general theme of the impending execution. What Hargreaves has touched on however is a little bit different to what is expected. He has simplified this theme greatly by concentrating on one particular aspects alone – the last meal.

I believe that this simple focus is extremely powerful because it is open to many different interpretations….

• On one hand the topic can be interpreted as a simply the crying personality of the inmates, usually crying out in eccentricity and tortured self-expression as they face their last ever meal on earth.
• On the other hand it perhaps serves as a debate of what rights a death -row inmate has – if they have commit horrific and barbaric crimes should they indeed even have the luxury of choosing, an at times simply absurd and totally chaotic meal.
• Another interpolation may even extend to a poetic look into a ethics of the death penalty, the flip side of the prior argument through which the finite and finality of a  last meal is simply an example of humanities cruelty to put to death an individual, regardless  of their crimes and what they have done.

In many cases, because of the simplicity of the project, the Hargreaves leaves ideas concerning to the intent behind the project open to the interpretation of the viewer. Regardless of the conclusions the viewer draws from studying this series, the important consideration is that the series invites the viewer to consider and perhaps re-examine their own views of the death penalty.

How might this series help my own work?

Studying this project has been useful because I have gained a greater understanding of the steps and methods to take in order to create a ‘controlled photograph’. Furthermore I have gained a sense of understanding about how simplicity is key to making such images appear powerful because they show the food its rawest detail, thus   representing a sens of vulnerability for whatever purpose this may serve, in my case stripping back the hype and glittering nature associated with classic ‘promotional images’ which so often appear in advertising.

Furthermore, this particular series has given me the inspiration to juxtapose my ‘raw’ images on uncooked and freshly sourced Jersey produce done in a Martin Parr style manner, which slightly more attractive an appealing images of cooked and well presented food on a plate, done in exactly the same way as Henry Hargreaves. In such images I will like Hargreaves, include basic background context of the product, supplier, amount and cost. In my photo-book I will include a section by which my Parr like images on the left directly contrast with the style of Hargreaves, thus showing a contrast of interpretation and furthermore highlighting my ability to experiment and alternate with different styles. I hope that this will add an extra dimension to my project and visually will be of interest to the viewer.

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer best known for her self-portraits. Many of her images obscure the face by blurring and moving with long exposure times or are merging with surroundings. Woodman killed herself at the age of 22 before her work was discovered. She had been battling depression for much of her life and her experimentations with photography explored different ideas including angels. Her work is very moving and intriguing to look at. Whenever I look at her work I wish I knew more and want to find out the meaning behind her images. I love her photographic work as I really do love black and white images. Something that I also really like about Woodman’s work is that she uses herself as the subject, which is something I have been exploring through my own work. Woodman often poses naked in her images and has many images of naked women within her images.

“A defining voice of her generation.” – British Journal of Photography

Woodman created a series of images entitled On Being an Angel. In the images Woodman becomes the subject and uses the photographic world as a very personal means of expression. Her work explores gender, representation and sexuality. Her work contains juxtaposition perspectives, some images show her completely naked while the others show her as trying to hide and distort her body. She shows through her photography her conflicted views and thoughts. This work really stands out to me and is so interesting in the way that she photographs showing two complete opposites possibly expressing the conflicted views inside her head. After researching more of her work I noticed that a few of her images are Untitled and most of her images are black and white. This also reminds me of Cindy Sherman and her method of allowing the spectator to think for themselves and come up with their own interpretations. What I like most about Woodman’s work is that it is so unusual and brings an element of surrealism to it, making her images stand out more to me. I feel that the fact that Woodman killed herself at the age of 22 due to suffering with depression shouldn’t be a factor of her work, I feel that her work is brilliant regardless of her mental state. I feel that her work would have eventually been discovered naturally as it did after she killed herself.

Exhibition of Woodman’s work: http://www.foam.org/museum/programme/francesca-woodman

This image really stood out to me when looking through Woodman’s work titled On Being an Angel. I  really love the whole composition and miss-en-scene of this image, it really interests me. I find it odd that she is hanging off of the door and holding on to it while hiding her face from the camera behind her arm. I love that she is wearing an oversized shirt that almost looks like pyjamas or something. At first I wondered how she managed to get herself up there and saw that the chair was near so she would have most likely positioned herself from there. I don’t quite understand this image but that doesn’t really matter as it is so intriguing to me and leaves room for me to make a variety of different interpretations. Knowing that Woodman was suffering from depression I see that this could be a less intense way of showing someone hanging themselves, she wants to end her life but needs to see how elevated she must be off of the ground before doing so. The way she is covering her face as if shying away from the camera also interests me as I feel that she has a conflicted view of photographing herself. She wants to make these amazing images and use herself as the subject but at the same time conceals her identity. I like the room as there are so many little details all around that I am able to interpret and see her environment. I really do not know what to interpret this image as, it is so unusual but it looks so great and really did stand out to me. I like how she is slightly off centre in this image but your eyes are still immediately drawn to her followed by the chair giving the spectator the assumption that she used the chair to get herself up there.

This is another image that really stood out to me in Woodman’s work. I like that she uses slow shutter speeds to make her images blurred and the end results are so intriguing to me. In the 70s/80s there would not have been any kind of editing software for Woodman to make surrealist images with effects added in afterwards so she had to improvise and actually make images that she envisioned there and then in front of the camera. I love that her work is so simple, she would have made this image on a black and white film camera most likely and that would be it. There would be no re-touching or changing in editing. I like this style and think that I could possibly create some images in this format too. The use of a white dress/ cloth is really interesting as typically people see a white cloth as a symbol of a ghost, which has now become an unrealistic joke kind of halloween costume. I like that this image is blurred and that the spectator is unable to see Woodman’s face or her expression  as it brings more mystery to her work. She does look like a ghost in this image as the slow shutter speed has created an almost ghost-like complexion with Woodman’s legs looking see-through as well as part of her dress and her arms. I really like this image and think that it is simple yet brilliantly done. Looking at the background of this image looks as though she is in some dirty car park somewhere which is really interesting that she chose to photograph in a darker room/space as to not over expose the entire image with there being a slow shutter speed to capture in more light. I like her method of work and find it really interesting to see and learn more about.

This image probably gives spectators the best look at Woodman’s face without it being blurred or distorted. I really wonder what is going on in this image. She is kneeling down in a dirty old room with decaying walls and pieces of wood covering the floor as she stares blankly into the camera with her hand half covering her face. I find it strange that her dress is unzipped and it looks almost as if she is holding her breast or possibly keeping the dress from falling down. I do really like this image as we are able to actually get a glimpse of what Woodman looked like. The composition of the image is again with Woodman more to the right side of the image and not centred. I find Woodman’s work intriguing as it is so unusual and does have an element of more gothic style images with the expressionless look on her face and the way she makes ghostly self-portraits. I think her photographic work is extremely strong and does stand out to me as unique and bold.

Roger Ballen is an American photographer, now living in South Africa. He began work as a documentary photographer but soon ventured into fictional methods and staging images. One particular body of work that I am interested in is one of his books entitled Shadow Chamber. This work looks into lunacy and in his images he uses poor people who pose in cell-like rooms that occupy the grey area between fact and fiction. His images are intriguing and hard-hitting. The spectator wants to venture further into the world that he is created and try to make sense out of his peculiar images. The rooms in his images are strange and unsettling; their walls are grey and the room is always dirty. His images are unique and the figures within them always seem to be hiding away or are curled up on the floor with motionless expressions on their faces. Shadow Chamber was published in 2005. His work is very unique and stands out in the photographic world.

“I don’t think things that are nightmarish are actually dark. Sometimes nightmares give you a lot of insight.” – Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen’s website: http://www.rogerballen.com/

I find Ballen’s work really interesting and different. It leaves a lot of questions open and allows the spectator to think outside the box. I find his work quite strange as he uses animals, objects and people in obscure ways. Within Ballen’s images he creates an environment that is dull, dirty and very much staged. There is something about Ballen’s images that make me kind of uncomfortable as they are so bizarre and the subjects in the images always seem to be in another world or they are despondent to the camera, which is most likely the desired effect. Some of his images really intrigue me and make me want to know more about them but there are some that are really quite disturbing and uncomfortable to look at.

When looking through the book entitled Shadow Chambers I came across this image and found it really intriguing. My attention was captured by the doll hanging on a cross made of twigs with a piece of paper attached to it with ‘GOD’ written on it. Something about this image is almost sinister, it really makes me wonder what Ballen’s message was behind it. My initial interpretation is that this person may not have enough money to be able to get an actual wooden plaque of Jesus on the cross but in some way wanted to show their religion and so made one out of things that they have found. When researching more into Ballen’s work I found that everything in the rooms is a performance, staged. I like how the baby is in the middle of the shot, it just makes it more visually pleasing with the boy lying directly underneath it, almost as if it is protecting him. I like the little puppy in this image looking directly into the camera and with its paw resting on the boy as if he is being cared for by the puppy in some way, a comfort to him. The image is kind of creepy when you look at it for a while as the baby doll looks almost decapitated and one of its eyes looks as if there has been dirt rubbed into it. Also the boy’s feet are extremely dirty and it looks as though he has been unable to wash them for a while, this also matches the dirt of the cover adding to the effect of how grim and dirty the entire room is. I also just noticed that written on the wall is ‘Christ + Me’ as if the subject in the image is looking for some sort of saviour and is going by based purely on their faith in God and Christ.

Another image that stood out to me while looking through Shadow Chambers was this one. Something about it is really odd, maybe it’s just everything in the image itself. At first glance I thought that the subject was being tied to something through the chair but when I look closer I realised that it is actually a snake. Ballen’s images are so strange. When you first glance his images don’t look like much but when you really focus in on the image and see all of the little details i that small space you really get a sense of the efforts that were made to create and stage his images. I really wonder why there is a snake just going around the room and how odd the position of the subject is slightly crouched over. My attention is then drawn over to the reflect on the floor of the subject making the floor seem wet. This makes so much sense when I think of how the subject is wearing a rain jacket, as if it has been raining inside.

This video really interested me as it gave me more of an insight to the thinking behind Ballen’ s work and how he creates images so that people remember them and keep them in their mind. His images are so out of the ordinary and call for deeper thinking to really understand what is going on in the images. I find his work to be more about a deeper meaning rather than just what you can see in the images. This video has actually inspired me in a way to create content that will stand out and that is stranger and more hard-hitting. I want my images to impact my spectators and leave them wanting to find out more, images that are really unusual and almost uncomfortable to look at just like Ballen’s images. Ballen illustrates his art through photography, it is just another way for him to be able to express his art freely and share it more broadly around the world.

For this project I have decided to look more into the way our island treats those that are seen to have mental illnesses and the historical views of people who were on the island. I am using the Archisle to get help from this as they have many images there that I could work from. Interestingly it turns out that the Archisle doesn’t have much in terms of outcasts or those that aren’t in social circles as back in the early years of photography it was only the rich elites that were photographed and especially in Jersey it was all about getting the richer people on the island photographed. This isn’t something that I see as a setback because it just goes to show how our island treats those that are in need of help or are deemed insane. We tend to forget about them or try to ignore them and hope that they will sort themselves out when in actual fact they need help for a reason. I chose to look at local history as it is something I have access to. I want to make a series of staged images going more in depth on different cases within Jersey of lunacy and really embody and show how those people were treated. When reading more about this topic I have found that, especially in the late 1800s, residents really do not treat people with mental illness well at all. They usually tie them up or completely disown them which is awful.
I wanted to do further and more in depth research to really get a clear understanding and feel of those suffering with mental illness on the island and to see whether or not my theory will be proven that those within our society who are slightly different or misunderstood are outcast and neglected even when they are the ones in need of support and care the most. I also want to be able to make well informed images as a response to this research and wouldn’t want to create a false image of how people suffering with mental illness were treated on the island. It is something that I have a genuine interest in and want to search further in to and find out as much as possible to create clear and strong images.

When looking at an article, Lunacy and the ‘Islands in the British Seas’ I found out a lot about how the mentally ill were treated in Jersey in the late 1800s leading up to the creation of the Jersey mental asylum. There were so many cases in the island were islanders leave and neglect them. All cases of domestic issues were determined by the island Parliament, Bailiwick of Jersey. In 1859 Jersey was still using the general hospital, in part, to hold pauper (poor) lunatics without any form of medical help. Eventually a separate building was built near the Town Hospital. This held 70 people and was open to pauper lunatics from the town. It was only in 1868 that a permanent public asylum was opened.
When reading more about local lunacy and how those that were seen as mentally ill on the island I was really able to see how society cast them away and just how much my point has been proven that those that are slightly different or are in need of any kind of help that is not physical they are completely shunned and left to rot on their own. It is actually really sad to read and shows the kind of neglect that people give just because they can’t fully understand someone. One case that I looked at in particular was that of Jane Le Maistre were basically she was confined in an out-building without clothing expect and woollen cloth thrown over her. It was written that she would sit in the attitude of a monkey and was in this position for so long that she was unable to use the lower part of her body, it was motionless. After a while Le Maistre became a public issue with more and more people finding out about her wellbeing. the Royal Court soon convened but local inhabitants became defensive claiming her to be well cared for and being cleaned regularly. Inhabitants were supported by local professionals, two doctors whose visit was clearly anticipated found Le Maistre wrapped in two warm blankets, hair short, clean with no appearance of filth or vermin. This just shows the manipulation and stirring of the truth that the people of Jersey did in order to avoid others being judgemental or disapproving of them. It’s also sad as Jane Le Maistre would have been unable to defend herself or tell the truth as she was deemed insane and no one would fully understand or believe her.
Another case that I looked at was that of Dr Lowe, a neighbour of a Jersey lunatic. Dr Lowe locked away this mental patient after he attacked him and left him there for twelve years as he thought an asylum would cost too much, especially as the island was already faced with debt. The Hospital Committee of the States Parliament concluded that a lunatic asylum was not needed after hearing from Dr Lowe. There was known to be less than fifty cases that needed confinement which would lead to isolation and as stated, in most cases of lunacy, it would only increase their insanity. It was concluded by the committee that it would be better for lunatics to stay at home for their families to care and look after them. In 1847, the Hospital housed 38 lunatics. When reading further I found out that in most parishes there were those living with mental illness and they would be confined and chained into a room in the dark, filthy and in solitary cells. They were seen to have had incurable madness. There is a story of Castletown that a lunatic was being confined in a room with food being given to him through a window. Many were held down with chains or rope. Lunatics were often kept/left in inhumane conditions as they were neglected by society. It was seen as a misfortune to have a lunatic person within your family. A final case that I looked at really intrigued and astonished me. It was that of a lunatic called Waterson who was frightened out of his wits by an apprentice who jumped in front of him in a white sheet. He never recovered and was confined in a filthy outhouse, damp walls. He was barred in and had very little light, here in this prison he existed for 17 years.

Questioning the truth in documentary photography

During the recent terrorist attacks on Brussels, Fox News was reporting from Place de la Borse. Whilst recording the journalist the camera man  from Fox News also captured some footage of a photographer in the background staging a photograph of a young girl by directing her to show the young girl paying her respects to those who were killed in the attacks. This sparked a social media outrage and made the public question the ethics of photojournalists and how often these kinds of photographs are staged. This photograph was taken by the photographer called Khaled Al Sabbah and later posted on Instagram.

In serious events such as the ones of recent terrorist attacks the public expects the media to portray the events in a realistic way so that they can get a real understanding of what is going on. Photojournalists are often thought to be photographing events in a natural way to document what is going on rather than manipulating what the public sees and therefore after seeing the photographer stage this photograph, the public lost trust in the media and began to question if most photographs were staged meaning that they are ‘not real’. This also made us question the balance between getting a good headline photograph and the ethics involved in photographing such a vulnerable situation.

After the public outcry the young photographer Khaled Al Sabbah aged 21 made a public apology on Facebook where he said that he was not working for the press, however he was taking the photograph for ascetic reasons and would then post it to his own Instagram and Facebook page. Although he wasn’t working for the press some people still argue that the photograph is still deceiving to the people who will then go on to look at it.

In my opinion, I think it was wrong of the photographer to have staged the photograph although it does represent what was going on at time it decreses the authensity of the photograph, which is morally wrong and also goes against the reasons why documentary photography was created in the first place.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/25/staged-photo-brussels-attack-memorial-ethical-debate-photographers

Jerry Uelsmann is a surrealism photographer, he tends to use Photoshop and other editing software to transform his pictures into creations of art. He usually mixes humans and inanimate objects together which creates a surrealistic feel. His photos are questionable and some may find them weird but that it is his aim, in an interview Uelsmann said ‘People ask me, “What does this image mean?” I really like the fact that the viewer completes the image, that they find some personal basis that they can either pass over or they can relate to it’

Colin Pantall’s Sofa Portrait are a series of images of his daughter watching TV on their sofa.

“My Sofa Portraits are about the physical and psychological absorption of Isabel’s childhood” Colin Pantall, Source

I find these images really honest because of the way they have been taken, he hasn’t made her pose and hasn’t dressed her up in any particular clothes, he has just taken photographs of times when his daughter is engaged with whats on the TV, and its interesting to see the way she sits and her facial expressions.

Although I am not so certain about including images of this type, I was considering taking photos of my families reactions to seeing the images and such and include them in the book as well, instead I decided to video them viewing the images, so I could remember their reactions to certain images and record them telling old stories that they were reminded of in the images.

To continue researching online-dating, I thought it was necessary to focus mainly on debates on Appropriation, as this is something I will focus on during the production of my photo-book and videos during the creation of my final pieces. This video (below) I thought was very helpful within the discussions of ethical boundaries of uses of library collections online and in physical spaces. What is given online within the public domain is discussed to show how people manipulate, copy, and appropriate images to trademark it for themselves.

To mark Fair Use Week 2015, a community celebration of fair use coordinated by the Association of Research Libraries, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship’s Scholarly Communication Program and the Copyright Advisory Office hosted a panel discussion around freedom of expression in art and photography as it relates to fair use. Panelists discussed fair use from different perspectives in librarianship, copyright law, photojournalism, and copyright activism, and explored the opportunities and impediments that fair use in art and photography presents.
Panelists:

• Greg Cram, Associate Director of Copyright and Information Policy at The New York Public Library
• Rachelle Browne, Associate General Counsel, Smithsonian Institution and Adjunct Lecturer at Goucher College’s Masters in Arts Administration program
• Mickey H. Osterreicher, General Counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA); Parker Higgins Director of Copyright Activism, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Moderated by Rina Elster Pantalony, Director of Columbia University’s Copyright Advisory Office.

For more about the event and the Research Without Borders series:

www. scholcomm.columbia.edu/events

Tinder has matched more than 11 billion potential couples since it was founded in 2013, so the dating app has a tremendous amount of data about what works and what doesn’t.

Tinder’s CEO Sean Rad states:

“one of the most surprising things I have learnt from looking at an aggregate of all the data is how we underestimate how much information humans pick up from a simple photo.”

–   “So what makes the perfect photo?”

Rad was asked on stage at Advertising Week Europe in London on Wednesday by Cosmopolitan UK editor Farrah Storr.

“The data shows this: When your photo expresses something about your interests — like a skier skiing — or something about your personality, you do better”

Rad says.

“You do better as in you get more matches. I always tell people to be yourself.”

This argument shows that Rad encourages people to become their own individuals, and not those that ‘follow the crowd‘. The suggestion that matches purely come from your interests is controversial, as the first thing people see on your profile is your profile image – does this suggest people fall in love purely by the sight of someone else. Tinder is then put in the light of a dating website more for the looks of someone rather than personality based – its the immediate decision for people to either ‘swipe right‘ or ‘swipe left‘.

“The model-y poses never work”

Rad, who uses the app for both work and dating, said. He said also he didn’t understand why people put up photos of themselves with a lot of their friends. Eventually, users swipe through the initial image and work out who people really are. Head-shots apparently don’t work either.

“Shots that display what you look like but the environment you live in, and your interests — they work,”

according to Rad.

Tinder’s algorithm 

Rad reveals that Tinder’s algorithm gives unpopular users “a little boost“. An algorithm can be defined as: a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations: “a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations“. Rad gave away how the Tinder algorithm, which attempts to surface people that users would like to meet in the real world, actually works. There are plenty of eligible singles on Tinder who pick up dozens of matches every time they log in to the app. But some find it a little harder. Those users get an extra “boost” and find themselves presented in front of some of the most popular users on Tinder.

Rad said:

“About 89% of our users, just through normal behavior, find matches and have meaningful connections. But there are a group of users that despite swiping, I think, can’t find a match. We give them a little boost to get extra love and attention and hopefully they end up meeting someone.”

It’s initially the “meeting someone” that is Tinder’s ultimate success metric.

– “Success is ultimately defined by how much real-world interaction we can created” 

Definition

“Online dating or Internet dating is a personal introductory system where individuals can find and contact each other over the Internet to arrange a date, usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship.”

Online dating services usually provide unmoderated matchmaking over the Internet, through the use of personal computers or mobile phones. Users of an online dating service would usually provide personal information, to enable them to search the service provider’s database for other individuals, using filters in order to find their ‘perfect match‘. Members use criteria other members set, such as age range, gender and location.

“Online dating sites use market metaphors to match people. Match metaphors are conceptual frameworks that allow individuals to make sense of new concepts by drawing upon familiar experiences and frame-works. This metaphor of the marketplace – a place where people go to “shop” for potential romantic partners and to “sell” themselves in hopes of creating a successful romantic relationship – is highlighted by the layout and functionality of online dating websites. The marketplace metaphor may also resonate with participants’ conceptual orientation towards the process of finding a romantic partner.”

Heino, R.; N. Ellison; J. Gibbs (2010). “Relationshopping: Investigating the market metaphor in online dating.” The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Deferences between the preference of online website:

• Most sites allow members to upload photos or videos of themselves and browse the photos and videos of others.
• Sites may offer additional services, such as webcasts, online chat, telephone chat (VOIP), and message boards.
• Some sites provide free registration, but may offer services which require a monthly fee.
• Other sites depend on advertising for their revenue.
• Some sites such as “OkCupid.com“, “POF.com” and “Badoo.com” are free and offer additional paid services in a freemium revenue model.

Online Dating Downfalls

Online dating however, makes it easier for people who have less confidence and can end up putting people in the position of having a relationship purely online. This can be cause to many people who are self-conscious about their sexuality or have trouble communicating this across to people because they are scared of what they might think and will end up being put off by them. These videos bellow show how online dating in this context has effected a group of men and women who call themselves transgender.

Reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)

A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that around 35% of the couples who got married between 2005 and 2012 met online. This data surely reveals how important social media has become in the field of relationships and love.

The  Internet, social networking, and online dating has affected how people meet future spouses, but little is known about the prevalence or outcomes of these marriages or the demographics of those involved. We addressed these questions in a nationally representative sample of 19,131 respondents who married between 2005 and 2012. Results indicate that more than one-third of marriages in America now begin online. In addition, marriages that began on-line, when compared with those that began through traditional off-line venues, were slightly less likely to result in a marital break-up (separation or divorce) and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married. Demographic differences were identified between respondents who met their spouse through on-line vs. traditional off-line venues, but the findings for marital break-up and marital satisfaction remained significant after statistically controlling for these differences. These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself.

The rise in the Internet has transformed how Americans work, play, search, shop, study, and communicate. Facebook has grown from its inception in 2004 to over a billion users, and Twitter has grown from its start in 2006 to more than 500 million users. The 2011 American Time Use Survey indicates that, on average, men now spend 9.65% and women spend 6.81% of their leisure time on-line. The Internet has also changed how Americans meet their spouse. Meeting a marital partner in traditional off-line venues has declined over the past several decades but meeting online has grown dramatically, with on-line dating now a billion-dollar industry with many markets people invest in. Experiments in which strangers are randomly assigned to interact using computer-mediated communications versus face-to-face communications show that the more anonymous online meetings produce greater self-disclosure and liking as long as the interaction is not under strong time constraints. Consistent with these experimental studies, research of online users suggests that authentic online self-disclosures are associated with more enduring face-to-face friendships. 

The demographic characteristics of the respondents who married between 2005 and 2012 as well as US Census data for married individuals indicated that the weighted sample of 19,131 respondents was generally representative. For each marriage, participants were asked the month and year of the marriage and, if the most recent marriage ended in divorce, the month and year of the divorce. As summarised, 92.01% of the sample reported being currently married, 4.94% reported being divorced, 2.50% reported being separated from their spouse, and 0.55% reported being widowed. As in prior research, marital break-ups were defined as separated or divorced and constituted 7.44% of the sample.

Online Dating has been critically acclaimed however that it is more of a ‘Taboo‘ subject rather than a serious matter. Ellen De Generes was discussing on her show the major online mobile and internet site ‘Tinder‘ in conjunction with a viral video claiming that Queen Elizabeth was using the site. This video shows a parody towards the Queens masked reaction when a person asks her opinions towards the app, this is all however, a false claim made by Elizabeth herself.

Case Study: Tinder

Tinder is a location-based dating and social discovery service application (using Facebook) that facilitates communication between mutually interested users, allowing matched users to chat. The app was launched in 2012, and by 2014 it was registering about one billion “swipes” per day. Tinder is among the first “swiping apps”, where the user uses a swiping motion to choose between the photos of other users: swiping right for potentially good matches and swiping left on a photo to move to the next one.

As seen above, the image shows the company’s slogan:

“Its how people meet”

The confidence and boldness of that statement shows a considerable amount of change within the dating game since online dating became a well-known, popular way of going about romance. VFMagazine, on 6th August 2015 published an article explaining: “Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”. Vanity Fair explains that in a typical night of the suburban downtown area of Manhattan’s ‘Stout Sports Bar‘ –

“Everyone is drinking, peering into their screens and swiping on the faces of strangers they may have sex with later that evening. Or not. “Ew, this guy has Dad bod,” a young woman says of a potential match, swiping left. Her friends smirk, not looking up.”

 

“Guys view everything as a competition,”with his deep, reassuring voice. “Who’s slept with the best, hottest girls?” With these dating apps, he says, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

Alex,  Tinder user.

“SEX HAS BECOME SO EASY”

“I call it the Dating Apocalypse,”

says a woman in New York, aged 29.

“Hookup culture”, which has been percolating for about a hundred years, has collided with dating apps, which have acted like a wayward meteor on the now rare rituals of courtship.

“We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder.

 Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

There have been two major ‘transitions‘ in heterosexual mating in the last four million years, Garcia says. The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled, leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. The second major transition being the rise of the Internet. People used to meet their partners through proximity, through family and friends, but now Internet meeting is surpassing every other form.

“It’s changing so much about the way we act both romantically and sexually,”

Garcia says.

“It is unprecedented from an evolutionary standpoint.”

As soon as people could go online they were using it as a way to find partners to date and have sex with. “In the 90s it was Craigslist and AOL chat rooms, then Match.com and Kiss.com”. But the lengthy, heartfelt e-mails exchanged by the main characters in You’ve Got Mail (1998) seem positively Victorian in comparison to the messages sent on the average dating app today, showing that in a space of ten years people’s attitudes have changed towards the way we go about the contexts of love.

Mobile dating went mainstream; by 2012 it was overtaking online dating. In February, one study reported there were nearly 100 million people—perhaps 50 million on Tinder alone—using their phones as a sort of all-day, every-day, handheld singles club, where they might find a taboo sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida.

“It’s like ordering Seamless,”

says Dan, the investment banker, referring to the online food-delivery service.

“But you’re ordering a person.”

This lends the comparison between movie dating and online shopping as it seems Dating apps are the free-market economy come to sex. The innovation of Tinder was the swipe—the flick of a finger on a picture, no more elaborate profiles necessary and no more fear of rejection; users only know whether they’ve been approved, never when they’ve been discarded. OkCupid soon adopted the function. Hinge, which allows for more information about a match’s circle of friends through Facebook, and Happn, which enables G.P.S. tracking to show whether matches have recently “crossed paths,” use it too. It’s telling that swiping has been jocularly incorporated into advertisements for various products, a nod to the notion that, online, the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable.

Has Social Media changed the ‘Face of Love‘?

Social media is everywhere in our contemporary lifestyles and millions of people around the world have their profiles on these platforms. According to a study by the statistics portal Statista, the number of social media users has been on the rise globally since the last few years. And in 2014, it is expected to reach a whopping 1.82 billion. According also to the data of January 2014, as many as 74% of the global population have their active presence on social media. This immense presence and the resultant activities are reason enough for these platforms to have their influence on a wide range of events. And these include the most intricate things of human civilizations as well – relationships.

Reference: The Cut Magazine: ‘An Instagram Proposal‘

The story of the Instagram proposal for marriage is now visible almost all over the internet. But this is not unique to Instagram only. Social media has made it easier for people to get connected with one another. And this is visible across a wide range of platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

The account unfolds like a metaphorical slideshow of their relationship, ending with a note to look up as Parris proposed verbally, in person. Just as Diddy used Instagram to ask his long-time girlfriend if she liked a picture of an enormous diamond ring that he posted to his 3 million followers, couples are increasingly using social media as part of their marriage proposals. If Instagram and Facebook are the backbone of their social lives, it’s fitting that couples turn to these networks as a way to realise important life milestones.

Number of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2019 (in billions)

This statistic shows the number of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2015 with projections until 2019. In 2018, it is estimated that there will be around 2.55 billion social network users around the globe, up from 1.87 billion in 2014.

The Guardian have released a statement following the allegations of Video footage showing a young photographer posing a woman in front of a makeshift memorial. The question has arisen whether if its bad journalism ethics, or just the way it’s done?

A young photojournalist caught on video posing a girl in mourning after the Brussels terror attacks has sparked a furious debate among internationally renowned news photographers about how often news photographs are staged. In the footage, captured by Fox News during a live cross to Belgium on Wednesday morning, photographer Khaled Al Sabbah can be seen moving the arm of a young girl and directing her in front of the makeshift memorial, while he snaps away with his camera. Photojournalist ethics – outlined by media organizations, industry associations and major competitions – state that news photos cannot be posed.

“It’s one more example of a photographer doing something that destroys public trust in the media”

Michael Kamber, a former staff photographer at the New York Times and founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, after viewing the video.

Al Sabbah is a 21-year-old Palestinian photographer who lives in Brussels; his work often focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His photo last year of a father mourning his son during a funeral parade in Gaza won first prize in the Hamdan international photography awards and was republished by international outlets, including National Geographic.  Social Media has shown a major impact of the choices people make when supporting the ethics of photography. Controversially, social media can be a source of a ‘diary’ form, where opinion opinion can be shared not with the promise of critical debate or expectance. In an apology posted to Facebook, he said he was not working for a press agency and had taken the photo purely for aesthetic reasons, to practice and post to his own Instagram and Facebook. A picture from the event was then uploaded to his personal Instagram – where he identifies himself as a photojournalist – but was removed after commenters accused him of posing it.

“My main ultimate goal is to take an aesthetic photo in solidarity with children no more, no less, a photo that shows the humanitarian side … Fix my mistakes instead of criticising me”

Sabbah wrote in his Facebook apology.

However, the video of Al Sabbah directing the child, posted on Facebook by photographer and artist James Pomerantz, prompted a wide debate by photographers about how common posed pictures have become.

“I see it everywhere, sadly. Congo, CAR [Central African Republic] by very well-known photographers who are seemingly respected in their field,”

wrote by renowned documentary photographer Marcus Bleasdale – winner of last year’s Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club of America and two-time winner in the World Press Photo competition.

Kamber covered Iraq for the New York Times between 2003 and 2012, and said posed photographs were “fairly routine” by local photographers, particularly because so many Iraqi publications were owned by political parties. “That’s what they’d been trained to do: take a picture of everyone shaking their fists,” he said. And if someone wasn’t shaking their fist, says Kamber, the photographer would tell them to do it. When covering the war in Liberia, Kamber said he saw a French photographer directing child soldiers to make it look like they were fighting. “These were famous photos on front pages all over the world,” he said. “You think it was taken in the middle of combat, it was a totally quiet day there with no fighting going on at all.” Another day, a different European news photographer in Monrovia, Liberia, led a chant with protesters, recalled Kamber. Once the crowd was worked up and shouting, the photographer grabbed his camera and starting shooting.

Iranian-American photojournalist Ramin Talaie, who also works as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism, says he has encountered many local photographers in the Middle East who don’t see posed news photos as a ‘problem‘.

“I’ve been in situations like … a political rally, where the politician did something and suddenly someone missed the shot and they yell to do it again,”

– Talaie

When he was in Tehran for Iran’s 2005 elections “this one guy literally was giving people instructions on how to do it again and moving them around to get a better light on their faces,” recalled Talaie.

Posed photos aren’t new: in response Yevgeny Khaldei posed one of the most famous photos to emerge of the Second World War, known as Raising a Flag over the Reichstag, which shows a Soviet flag being waved over Berlin. Yet in juxtaposition with problems today, as Al Sabbah points out that he is self-taught – is purely a lack of training.

“We have a lot of great photographers in places such as Palestine and Iraq. They learn photography … but they didn’t learn ethics,” said Talaie. “A lot of times, editors sitting in New York or London don’t see what these guys do to get shots.”

As media organizations close down or tighten photography budgets, staff photographers have been cut. Kamber points out that 15 years ago most news photographers would be on staff, in union jobs, and if they had a quiet day with no great pictures, they still got paid.

 

Martin Parr is a very successful and internationally renowned photographer. His work has sold in millions and he has been very commercially successful.

Parr has a very unique style of photographing and has produced images now considered classic in terms of British contemporary photographs. Parr achieves this style through his unique eye, opting to take the majority of images very close up, in addition the uses ring flash to make his images highly colourful. This style has brought Parr acclaim and has made him one of the most distinct photographers of his generation. But this same style has also made Parr one of the most controversial photographers.

Arguments that Parr’s images do not represent truth

Firstly some critics argue that Martin Parr’s work simply is too colourful and energetic to be taken seriously as a from of documentary photography. Parr’s satirical and playful approach  is potentially an argument for a lack of objectivity because he goes in which an idea to draw something from a situation, not just record what he sees. For example Parr’s distinctive style of photographing close up, such as the below image, highlights a sense  of deceit because the image is taken in this way is more of a representation of advertising language, than is it nessecary showing anything with a degree of truth.

Secondly it can be argued that Parr’s outcomes do not reflect reality as they are prone to sensationalize objects and reflect images very much in the same way to how they would be represented in advertising. This can be considered true in some of the images in his photo-book ‘Common Sense’ – and a general impression I would draw from this book is that Parr seems to evoke a deliberate ‘advertising language’, full of colour and rich in detail.  The main criticism that of this that can be drawn is that it makes Parr’s work deliberately deceptive as they are sensationalized,to show a representation of something in a way which isn’t entirely truthful, showing something for artistic  effect, not its value as a form of documentation.

For example the above image of a plate of bread is immediately made more interesting through the way Parr has staged the image; appearing on a colourful, bright table-cloth to draw intensity and emphasis to it. Furthermore the shadows draw more emphasis and presence to the image, making the subject matter appear more intense and exciting than perhaps would be expected.

A third criticism of Parr’s work is that it is exploitative of certain ideas and situations, and therefore is automatically biased and thus difficult to trust the integrity of. Perhaps one of his most successful photo-books, ‘The Last  Resort’ gave a raw depiction of life in the north of England in the mid-1980s. Many of the images featured in this series appear to show working class people in a very bad way, suffering due their improvised circumstances. There  is scope to argue that Parr’s intentions are genuine and sympathetic to the working classes, a protest against Thatcherite Britain. On the other hand this series can be considered largely exploitative because the nature of the images arguably reflect aspects of Northern life in a mocking way , implying the working classes are tasteless and have a lack of style. Parr’s role as a middle-class photographer going to the north and taking these raw and highly uncomplimentary images drew this suspicion in the press.This type of controversy has in many cases tarnished Parr’s credibility as a documentary photographer because it has questioned the integrity and general motives of his work – is he seeking to photograph truth, or is he creating a sort visual freak-show so that he is commercially successful?

 

Arguments that Parr’s work is truthful

One argument in favour of Martin Parr being truthful in what he presents in his photographs is the suggestion his photographs are just as honest as any other form of documentary work, it is just that this truth is not expressed in exactly the same way. This view is true if it is recognised that all documentary photography is a way of responding to an idea. Whilst a lot of photographers, nonetheless Henk Wildschut are drawn to photographing key ideas and features, Parr on the other hand is more concerned with photographing though out aspects of a place. For example in the below photograph taken at an English seaside resort, the most obvious things to photograph would be the masses of people enjoying being on the beach or playing in the sea. However Parr has completely reversed this idea, stead opting to photograph from the perspective of the  beach goer, with his foot the main aspect of focus and the other more usually associated aspects of the beach serving simply as a blur in the background. Therefore what Parr has done in this instance is to change the context – he is still truthfully documenting what goes on at a beach, but not what the viewer what traditionally expect to see nor associate with.

Another argument in favour of Martin Parr’s work which supports his integrity as a documentary photographer is his desire and obsession to literally document and photograph anything he sees. In the documentary ‘The World According to Martin Parr’, he admits that he is a somewhat obsessional individual who will go out of his way to photograph anything he sees, declaring that “nothing is not worth photographing”. This commitment to attempt to hold as little barrier to the degree of his photographic exploration highlights that Parr is not limited by what he perceives to be relevant. In many ways therefore it can in fact be argued that Parr is in fact more truthful than most photographers, because he does not limit himself to what he sees as truthful. Instead what the viewer sees is simply more unusual, but referring to the last paragraph, not in anyway less truthful.

A third argument to this is a direct challenge to the idea that Parr seeks to exploit people in is work, for example the controversy surrounding whether he sought to exploit the working class in ‘The Last Resort’. In his own defence, Parr refers to the fact that all photography effectively is exploitation. Furthermore, rather than actually denying he was exploitative in this series, Parr says how he “looks to exploit all classes”. If this attitude in recognised than it would bee very difficult to refer to Martin Parr as anything other than honest an truthful in what he seeks to represent in his work, because instead of using exploitation to create a fabricated picture, he is claiming than he is simply exploiting the truth and reality of an event in its fullest detail. For example the below image may be argued in two ways; either that it is exploitative because it shows working class children are rude and have no manners by getting ice-cream everywhere. Perhaps a more sympathetic argument instead would be that it shows children can make a mess of ice-cream, taking the political connotations completely out of the picture. This is a matter of interpretation.

Conclusion

Overall it is clear that Martin Parr’s work is simply too complex to define as simply truthful or untruthful, and there are arguments for both sides. I am of the position that although I recognise some of Parrr’s work is in many cases surrealist or partly illusional, I am nevertheless of the opinion that he seeks to show truth in a slightly different ways, using unconventional features such as advertising language. Therefore Parr very much balances truthful expression with his own ideas and satirical elements. Thus balancing these themes together creates work which may not appear truth but in many cases is, because of the simple fact it is a documentation of what Parr sees and experiences.

 

 

I’ve Lived in East London for 85 1/5 years 

http://martinusborne.com/ive-lived-in-east-london-for-85-12-years-signed/

The book ‘ I’ve Lived in East London for 851/2 years’ is about an old man called Joseph Markovitch who has lived in East London for the whole of this life and has barely left London. He has never had a girlfriend.  Yet Martin said Joseph’s life was colorful and strange. Martin spent 5 years getting to know and photographing Joseph. He dreamed of being a ballerina, he was fascinated by the life of Nicolas Cage and always wanted to live in the amazon. While researching Martin Osborne’s work I didn’t find much information about him apart from the one provided by his own website.

I am looking at Martin Osborne’s work because I think it has links to what I am currently doing. It also fits in with staged vs ‘natural’ documentary photography.  Martin was documenting Josephs life like I am doing with my dad, but in different circumstances. Martins photographs are staged however I think it works well. I am trying to keep my photographs as real as possible therefore I am going to avoid staging any photographs apart from portraits. . I like the use of graffiti in the photographs because its something you associate with younger people so it creates a contrast and make the photograph more visually attractive for the viewer. Martin also photographed objects which or just parts of Josephs body, I think this adds more detail to the story. I am going to try and experiment with this and take photographs of objects which something I haven’t done yet.

“The history of mankind is rife with love producing illogical and oddball behaviour. Alec Soth’s newest book Looking for Love, 1996 is, in its way, about the search for love guided by the heart and the search of love guided by the eye.”

Jeffery Ladd,  TIME INC. Network

About

“Love makes people do strange things states Soth. The history of mankind is rife with love producing illogical and oddball behavior. When it comes to photography, falling in love with the medium is hardly an exception.”

For example, Jeffery Ladd from TIME INC. Network states that someone as painfully shy like Soth might find themselves impulsively photographing “strangers” without asking for permission. Or, they instinctively photograph something without any ability to later explain why.  Alec Soth’s book “Looking for Love” (1996) is initially about both— the search for love guided by the heart and the search of love guided by the eye.

In his brief introduction to the work Soth describes that time as one of working a “miserable job” (printing photos at a large commercial lab) and retreating to a bar to be comforted by “the solitude I found among strangers.” He began to concentrate on his own pictures, slyly using the lab to make prints which he smuggled, concealed under his jeans, out to his car. He writes of imagining one day “a stranger would fall in love with me” – a mantra or a statement he goes by when composing his images.

The first photographs of couples we encounter in Looking for Love cling possessively to their partners and leer at Soth’s camera as if to ask, “this is mine, where is yours?” While his journey takes us through the outside landscape and various social gatherings—the aforementioned bar; a convention hall that seems to bridge religion, spirituality and dating under one roof; poker games; singles parties; high school proms—we can sense as a reader, a young photographer eager to hone his photographic instincts for metaphor and craving the fruits of collaboration between artist, medium and world.

A photo of a flirtatious blonde cheerleader sits on the opposite page of a lone, slightly gothic teen outside a music club. The prom king and queen stand proudly before an auditorium empty but for a few hidden background observers and a basketball court scoreboard. An older man sits phone to ear at a ‘Psychic Friends Network’ booth while a quaffed blonde with a #1 ribbon pinned to her lapel passes by paying no mind. Alongside the underlying melancholy of some of these pictures is also the excitement of a photographer discovering their talent and seeing an affirmation of life stilled in photographs.

That affirmation makes the parting photograph all the more important. In it we see Soth himself sitting sprawl-legged in a rental tuxedo as if his own prom has just ended. Perhaps it had. I hope the love he may have found, lasts. I thought it was very important to include in my research Soth’s dominating work “Looking For Love” (1996).Soth toys with the idea of teenage sexual desires. ‘Love’ for teenagers stereotypically demises to that of little passion and loss of innocence, yet with the combination of images surrounding this idea of love as a perspective but also an ownership, allows the reader to want to crave it themselves.

The Longest Way Round is a photo book by Photographer Chris Dorley-Brown. This photo book contains 183 colour and 43 black-and-white illustrations containing notes and memories from his parents lives.

“There was a suitcase filled with letters, photographs, folders and boxes that sat in Chris Dorley-Brown’s studio year after year. In it were images, notes and memories from his parent’s past lives that weren’t quite ready for the family album. They were eventful lives.” Source

I really like the way this photo book is like a printed scrapbook, so as to not damage the originals, I have found with my familys photo albums that a lot of the images have been damaged from falling out the albums and being handled a lot.

I find the contrast of the old and slightly damaged/dirtied images and scans of documents compared to the clean white pages of the photo book a nice juxtaposition, and I think i would like to include an element of this within my photo book.

The digitalised slides I have retrieved weren’t looked at for a long time and so were in good condition, and a couple of them look as though they could be digital images, and so they don’t have quite the same effect as the scanned in physical photos and written down notes.

To try and add this element within my photo book, which will explore my mothers life and memories from when she was born to present day, I am going to look through the photo albums I briefly explored in my archive project to find images which bring certain memories to my mums mind, and I am also going to include scans of the book my nan wrote in to keep track of who was in each of the slides. I feel like this connection to my Mum’s Mum will help with making this a quite personal book.

These images represent her work and underneath them, powerful statements explaining what is happening.

 

thumbs_DF_IAM_001.jpg

http://www.iamunbeatable.com/the-archive/

Here is a short video in which explains everything about this body of work. She talks about her first hand experiences about being a photojournalist and the struggles she faced when documenting this lifestyle.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/419652/photographing-the-evolution-of-domestic-violence/

I wanted to focus in on some more famous transgender people that I knew of before researching too much into the topic. It really interests me to see how different people transition and how they are perceived and the way they present themselves to the public. I do think that it can almost be harder to transition when so many people know who you were and there is also so much pressure and stigma coming from those who don’t know much about the topic. I wanted to research this topic as it is something that I don’t know a lot about and want to find out more so that I can make accurate images. I am intrigued by this topic as for me it seems so sad that a lot of these people never go through their transition because they feel to scared or trapped based purely on fear that society will judge and ridicule them.

Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner has to be the most famous transgender person in the world right now. She went from being father, Bruce Jenner, of the Kardashians as well as an Olympic gold medalist for the men’s decathlon in 1976. Everyone knew who Bruce Jenner was. He was married to Kris Jenner for 24 years. Caitlyn’s transition seemed to come as a shock to everyone, including his own family. It must have been such a difficult transition as it would have been so different to any other trans person’s transition. His was televised all over the world as he is part of one of the most famous families at the moment, the Kardashians. On Keeping Up With The Kardashians we really get an insight to the struggles that the entire family are going through and how they are dealing with their father coming out and going through this transition. It really does interest me to see this and I feel that because they are so much in the public domaine that they kind of have to accept the transition as they don’t want to be seen as transphobic and I do think it’s hard to live your life constantly being followed by cameras. When Caitlyn transitioned she said she felt free and that she could be her “authentic self”. I could never imagine being trapped inside a body that you know isn’t really who you are, it seems like such a hard thing to accept and to be able to openly come out and have the strength to go through that transition. I do think that the topic of transgender people is becoming more widely known and possibly becoming more accepted within our Western society. Caitlyn has also started her own TV show entitled I am Cait, I think that this show is actually educating people on transgender and what it is to feel the way she does and how people can be their true authentic selves.

Lili Elbe
I had no idea who Lili Elbe was before late last year when I went to go see a film entitled The Danish Girl. The film really enlightened me on what transgender people go through and this was the first time I really think that I sat down and thought about it and the lives that this topic effects. The film was amazing, showing the fun aspects of Elbe’s life and how she lived. Lili was born a male, Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, and lived alongside his wife. They were both painters and in fact he was a very well known one. At first Einar posed as a woman for his wife to finish off a painting but it turned into something more, he came to realise that he was a woman authentically. The film goes through the ups and downs of Einar’s life as a man and Lili’s life as a woman. This film was so interesting to watch and I really think that I learnt a lot from it. Without this film I would never have known about Lili at all. She was one of the first known people to undergo proper surgery to become a woman. She successfully transitioned in 1930 but later died due to complications of one of her sex reassignment surgeries. Lili’s memory lived on in Gerda [Einar’s wife] who made her fortune on paintings of Lili. This story actually makes me really emotional as it seems so rare to have a transgender case at such an early time period, 1920s-1930s, yet Gerda was so understanding and supported Lili the entire time. She must have loved her very much as she painted her.

Colonel Victor Barker
Possibly a less famous transgender person but a local one. I came across this story while working with the Jersey Archisle. This story really is amazing and almost unbelievable to actually fathom that there were many, not just one, transgender people across this island at a period as earlier at the 18th century. It really amazes me how still so many people are transphobic and don’t care to understand it. I myself do not fully understand but I am trying and am finding out more and more about this community through my research. I want to know because I want to be able to fully accept it. Victor Barker was a war veteran, he worked as a hotel clerk when he was arrested for not paying a debt he owed to a restaurant. This story truly is gripping and, in a way, it excites me that it happened in Jersey because so often I feel that not a lot happens here and that not many great people live or have ever lived here. I find this island to be very consumer driven, we seem to passively accept things most of the time but the more I look into local history the more I find that not to be the case. It is so interesting to find that Victor Barker was on the island around the same time as Claude Cahun, a photographer who challenged gender norms. When reading Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment I found that Barker seemed to want to be a man because of the life men led back then compared to how women lived theirs. This has really taken my interest and made me want to research into the lives of transgender people more.

Gigi Gorgeous
Gigi is a Canadian YouTuber who has actually gone through her transition in the public domain. She has been making videos since she was male and has carried on making those videos throughout her transition. In Gigi’s videos she comes across as a very open and strong character and is full of confidence. It just shows how different it is nowadays for transgender people and, in the Western world especially, people are more open to them and more accepting. I do think it is still really difficult to be transgender in our current world and society but Gigi is just living as her authentic self regardless. I find it baffling to even think that she was ever a man. Obviously she has undergone a somewhat large amount of surgery to get to the physical stage that she is at now and it is so interesting to see how far surgery and procedures have come even from the 1930s. Gigi is always so open in her videos and lets people know about her personal life and how she feels and who she is, something that those in the 1930s for instance would never be able to do. I really do think we live in a more intelligent world where most people can accept others for who they are and although might not fully understand it they will still accept that it is that person’s choice. Gigi is also friends with Caitlyn Jenner’s daughter Kylie Jenner who, I feel, has become more open to the transgender community and showing other young people that accepting transgender people is a good thing. The age of social media really is taking over and celebrities are becoming more and more influential which is why I think Gigi is so great as she is in the public domain and does show herself for who she is.

Gigi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/GregoryGORGEOUS/videos

When working with the Archisle I was given a really interesting book to have a look at and take inspiration from. This book is basically about a Colonel who came over to Jersey during the first world war after getting a bad injury. He made his way through the circles and men of Jersey, unknown to everyone else that he was actually a woman. He was arrested and imprisoned when he was found out. This is the basic information that I know but after reading the book I found out so much more and find it so interesting and unique to actually have a transgender person living in Jersey as well as Claude Cahun around the same time who challenged gender norms. The book is called Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment. To me the title sounds awful as if Barker had done something so horribly unforgivable and evil that is was a ‘montrous’ thing to do as if they could be nothing much worse, when in fact all that Barker ever did was pose as a man and maybe because she felt in her self that she was a man.

Victor Barker

Barker was obviously treated differently as a man to when he was a woman and preferred the treatment he received as a man. 1929, Central London Barker was a reception clerk of the Regent Palace Hotel. He wore very formal clothing and constantly wore an extremely tight belt. The story goes that he would tell a long story of how he was blown up in the war and without his surgical belt he would not be able to move. He would often tell stories about his experiences during the war. Something that I found interesting too was that in 1929 there was a warrant for Barker’s arrest, he owed a lot of money after the failure of a restaurant he once owned. The book also suggests that Barker had a son who he looked after and was at boarding school. His first wife left and in 1929 he was with another woman who he took good care of and would take time off work to care for her. This is really intriguing to me as maybe as a woman Barker had a child and when he then went through the transformation [non-surgical] into a man he had to make up a back story and came up with this.

Family Background

father: Thomas Barker
mother: Lillias Adelaide Hill
The couple married in Jersey when he was thirty and she was just eighteen years old. He spent his time on gentlemanly pursuits and enjoyed playing out this role. He also put his dog into shows alongside his wife. He had a smooth-haired fox terrier while she had two bloodhounds. Lillias Adelaide Hill belonged to a family whereby a relative, Olave Baden-Powell [female], founded the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. The Barker’s moved to Jersey in 1889 and settled in St. Clements. Around this location in the sixteenth and seventeenth century it was the prevalence of witchcraft, were witches were tried. Thomas was the Honorary Secretary of the Jersey Dog Club. He was also club captain at the Royal Jersey Gold Club in 1898. The Barkers first born was a girl on 27 August 1895 but she wasn’t registered until 13 September 1895 due to her father being busy with the Jersey Dog Club holding its 8th Annual Show at the Vegetable Market. She was named Lillias Irma Valerie but everyone was to address her as Valerie. They had a second child, a boy, on 20 April 1899 he was named Tom Leslie. Valerie was very tomboyish and grew up enjoying reading boys books and pranks. Thomas [father] taught her the skills of fencing, cricket and boxing. Valerie attended a convent school at Graty to finally finish her schooling. She would shock the nuns by dressing up as a boy as well as smoking.  Back in the Victorian days it was not seen as feminine to aspire or want to achieve success.

Local Transgender cases

William Pallot was an islander who went to court because he would dress as a woman and walk around near Fort Regent. In the court it was declared that ‘from the eccentric manner in which he had seen him parading in the streets’ that he had no sanity and was to be taken to the asylum. He ‘dressed partially like a woman, with curled hair, powdered face, bracelets, etc. He had the voice and gait of a woman, as well as the mind of a woman.’ I find this so interesting to see how people would react to possible transgender cases and how they could not see that a gentleman would ever be trapped inside his own body or that he could quite possibly be trying to be himself with becoming a woman. Their immediate reaction is to say that he must be insane and that he must go to the asylum because no man would ever think in such a way. It amazes me that back then people would be so naive and unaware of what others may be going through. We now live in a time were we are a lot more accepting of transgender people, women and gay people [nowhere near a perfect world but a better one]. These people are so narrow minded and closed minded to the fact that quite possibly this man was born in the wrong body that he knows deep down that he is not a man but in fact a woman. I guess back then that it would be uncommon for a transgender person to be so open and free but then again it seems to me that people have been challenging gender norms more often then than say now in Jersey. Claude Cahun, Victor Barker and William Pallot all seem to know who they are and they all seem to have had this fascination with challenging gender norms and seeing what life is like as someone else or even if they adopted to the opposite sexes way of living. This book is really interesting and I am really enjoying finding out more about local history too. It is interesting to see how men were treated compared to women and how Pallot was found to be insane and that a sane man would never think is such a way. It shows how differently they treated men to women. Women were often found to be witches and were tried and killed while men were never really tried as witches and even though Pallot stated that he was reading another man’s fortune with cards he was not tried as a witch but seen merely as insane.

During the 1890’s there was a huge amount of suicides and attempted suicides. This suggests that for most people that was there only escape with there being on average two suicides a month with a population of barely 55,000. Jersey seemingly hated anyone or anything that was different and so if you did not conform to the norms of life back in the 1890s you were seen to be a witch or insane.

Edward de Lacy Evans was an Australian man who married his third wife, Julia Marquand, a Jersey girl. He would dress as a woman and when in the mines, to amuse the other residents, he would dress as a woman and sing. He suffered an accident in the mines and somehow ended up in court and was checked by doctors and the verdict came of lunacy and was certified with amentia [softening of the brain]. He was admitted to a lunacy ward where he shared a room. He would never change in front of anyone. After a six week period on this ward he was transferred to a hospital in Melbourne where he was furthered examined. It was revealed that Edward de Lacy Evans was in fact Ellen Tremaye, a woman. He was deemed to have amentia by doctors and was insane. There was no way that he could actually think in such a way as a woman. Ellen Tremaye was the anonymous author of a book entitled The History and Confession of the Man-Woman.

Louis Jobosch was a German in his late fifties. He wanted to travel over to France but was stopped and checked by a doctor who then would not allow him to travel into France. As a result he headed to Jersey where a witch hunt was going on and people were told to keep an eye on him. He was arrested as soon as he arrived at his lodgings. He was in fact a woman. The Jersey police soon learned that Jobosch had been living as a man for forty-two years. He was orphaned at the age of thirteen and then went on to travel the world working as a courier and who by then could speak several languages.  He was often head saying that he wished he was dead and had before attempted to jump into the sea but was caught by passing boat’s. He died after being taken from Jersey to a Southampton hospital where he died on pneumonia. A note was left after his death that read ‘I die of misery – trust God forgive me’. This is so sad because I think that Jabosch truly felt trapped inside the wrong body and that dressing up as a man wasn’t enough and that throughout Jabosch’s whole life he could never come to terms with himself or make peace with his own demons. He asked for forgiveness from God as though he had done something terribly wrong, this is really sad to read as it makes me think about all those that feel trapped and encaged in their own bodies that the body that they inhabit isn’t actually their own and that they don’t belong.

For this photoshoot I edited these photographs both in Lightroom and photoshop. I started in Lightroom by experimenting with different levels of exposure and contrast. I then cropped some photographs because there was too much background which distracted the viewer from the subject. I also used lens correction to make sure that the photographs are straight. I then transferred these photographs once they had been edited to Photoshop and used the patch tool to correct any ‘imperfections’. This goes back to the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable in documentary photography. Although I didn’t make many changes to the subject, I feel as if I can’t claim that the photograph portrays a true copy of what the subject looks at. Some photographs have a shadow in them, however overall I am happy with these outcomes.

A big part of my project is going to be formatting my photo book, with the mixture of old photos, my photos and scans of writing im hoping to include.

In order to do this in the best way possible I am going to look at some different ways of formatting photo books, and different ways of intergrating old and new images.

First i’m looking at Lydia Goldblatt, and her photo book, Still Here.

“In the series Still Here by Lydia Goldblatt (*1978 in London), the artist immerses her intimate photographs in sublime extremes of light and shade, tracing the fleeting shadow of personal existence onto enduring human narratives.” Source

Goldblatt’s book, similarly to my project, focuses on family, specifically her elderly parents, and they record three years in her parent’s lives.

“I didn’t want something observational, something with critical distance, and I never thought of taking the photographs as work; I don’t quite know what it was.” Lydia Goldblatt

These are a couple sample pages from her book Still Here, the layout is very simple, with her square format images being placed in the centre of each page. The images she has placed on each double spread compliment each other, having similar light levels, colours and/or subject matter. The images each focus on a singular thing, which I like because it highlights that one aspect object and brings it to the viewers attention, helping to build a story within the book.

“while the images depict the physical decay, indignities and vulnerabilities of old age without sentimentality, they also reveal the perverse beauty in wrinkled, mottled flesh and grey hair, making visual poetry out of a mole, a scar or even the stain of bodily fluid.” Source

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/farming-confessional-we-need-to-evolve-so-that-we-do-not-kill-to-eat-9152958.html

This was a very interesting documentary I found looking at the ethics of farming. Some of the views raised in this article are very conflicting as they are the views of a farmer, who makes I living out of something he is reluctant to do, kill animals. The writer talks of his moral dilemma, and how he attempts to find the balance by killing animals in the most humane way possible.

One morning, I woke up absolutely certain that killing animals to eat their meat was wrong. So it might seem as though I’ve sided with animal-rights advocates, but the long view that I’m taking on this makes my position more complicated than that. My feelings about the ethics of livestock farming ebb and flow. I have no plans to stop eating meat or raising animals for slaughter. But I believe that we as a species need to evolve into the sorts of beings that do not kill to eat. For now, I justify non-industrial farming as a necessary compromise that will gradually shift how we think about using animals as food.

 

 

What is ‘Common Sense’ all about?

‘Common Sense’ is a photo-book by Martin Parr, published in 1999. It is a collection of images he has took from the period 1995-99, looking at trends in British consumerism.

The images in this photo-book are extremely bright and colourful, and use the typical language of advertising, something which Parr has openly admitted to doing. The images are both attractive through their colour and vibrancy but at the same time are in many cases vulgar and grotesque.

The core principle of this book in my opinion is to explore through the language of advertising what a product looks like – in a more vulgar and perhaps realistic way then a company trying to advertise their product would dare intend to do – showing more how a product actually looks, then how it is manipulated to appear. Subsequently, it can be argued that Parr turns the theme of advertising on its head, by using the techniques of advertisers to show exactly what they don’t want to viewer to see.

 

What is it about Parr’s images which are so powerful?

Parr’s images in this book are so effective because of the fact that they poetic and make the viewer think and consider what they have seen – they are a form of visual poetry; Parr’s own unique way of looking at the world. One example of this can be seen through the way Parr has photographed a teapot. He uses his imagination to envision the connection between the shape of the teapot as being the same shape as an elephant tusk. Parr has subsequently created an image with these two similar shapes together, photographing a teapot in the foreground, and blurred out in the background, the inclusion of a blow-up elephant statue. He is therefore made a clever connection which is visually interesting to the viewer.

Furthermore, Parr achieves a sense of distinctness about his work through his style of  photographing close-up. In doing so, he subverts the traditional concept used in marketing that something is better when viewed from further back. Instead he shows objects in their fullest detail, which is often uncomplimentary and unattractive as a result. This style in many cases creates abstract images, and the viewer must use visual clues to determine what the object is that has been photographed. In this sense, Parr often confuses the viewer and forces them to read into the image to subtract the meaning behind it, adding a sense of uncertainty to the viewers visual journey.

Simplicity is key to Parr’s work in ‘Common Sense’. What he photographs is often very ordinary and basic, such as a close-up of an apple or many cigarette butts. Parr gets away with this highly simplistic style because of the way he photographs the object. Through the use of flash photography and other techniques such as manipulating natural lighting and photographing at an obscured abstract angle, Parr is able to ensure what he photographs is as visually interesting as possible, even if the context of what is photographed is simply not that exciting.

 

How important is colour in ‘Common Sense’?

Colour is a fundamental part of the images in ‘Common Sense’ because it enables Parr to make his images as vivid  as possible. Parr’s use of a ring flash means that his images are highly saturated, and therefore bright and colourful.  As this series of images shows, the more colourful the image, the more vulgar and visually aggressive it will appear. In many cases, the overly bright images go beyond reality, and are slightly surreal in appearance.

The effect colour creates visually is extremely powerful. Colour has he ability to alter the viewers emotional response to an image; for example red is known to resonate feelings of aggressiveness and anger. Parr’s subsequent use of sharp, luminous colours such as red, pink, orange and blue makes the viewer interpret images with a sense of urgency, as if the colours on the page are racing to the attention of the the viewer. These bright colours can be in many cases unwelcoming to a viewer, and when taken to the extreme, can be simply grotesque and repulsive, more example the of the extremely sunburned man’s chest.

The use of ring flash in this instance serves to enhance the redness of the chest, to the extent that it is simply vulgar and in many ways, unrealistic. This is contradictory to the expected intent of advertising images, which is to excitedly invite the consumer in. Whilst retaining a sense of energy, Parr goes essentially over the top  with colour saturation to the extent that the viewer is not attracted, but instead made to be repulsed.

 

What is your favourite bit about ‘Common Sense’? 

I think one of the most memorable and effective qualities about this body of work is Parr’s ability to link images together. Page by page, it is apparent that his images are inherently connected by certain patterns and themes, for example one page links a picture of Jesus with fish and another links birds and bread together – links between contrasting themes are also noticeable, for example a banana with a sugary doughnut; a contrast between healthy/unhealthy eating. Parr’s linking of images add a sense of interaction and fun to the images, as the viewer is invited to find and search for their own creative links.

 

 

 

Martin Parr is a British photographer best known for his unique style of documentary photographs. As well as being one of the most successful and widely acclaim photographers of his generation, he is also one of the most controversial. I have recently watch a documentary of his life entitled: ‘The World According to Martin Parrr’. I found this documentary useful because I gave a in-depth insight into Parr’s experiences an influences, explaining how this has affected his unique and distinctive photographic style, based on “finding the extraordinary within the ordinary”.

Introduction

“this man is stalking me; he is waiting for my phone to ring, he’s obsessed ….. so far he has taken over 10,000 images of them, all over the world”

This is the opening quote of the documentary ‘The World According to Martin Parr”. Martin Parr is considered one of the most unique photographers of his generation. His style is very unique and interesting. Unlike many photographs to seek to photograph something exciting which has never been done before, Parr will photograph things which have already been photographed millions of times – ordinary, everyday objects, such as mobile phones, everyday foods and other consumer items.

 This opening of this documentary implies that Martin Parr thrives of the normal, a view which is epitomised through the quote: “the more mundane the image, the more it excites him” and later through Parr’s exertion himself that “we are surrounded by things which are surreal, we just don’t see it”. Throuh such statements it is clear even to a viewer who ha sno prior knowledgeable of Martin Parr, that he is someone who has been able to capture the essence of the mundane, a photographer who has been greatly succesful for interpreting the ordinary in a way which is interesting, exciting and most importantly, thought provoking.

 

Parr’s Early Life

Parr was born 23 May 1952 in Aston, Surrey. Parr has described his upbringing as “completely bland …..content but at the  same time momentous and boring” where “nothing really happened”. He claims that this upbringing fuelled his desire to take photographs, because it allowed him the opportunity to get out into his community and meet with all sorts of people, as Val Williams explains:  “Martin would have reason to be there, because he was the photographer”. It also allowed him the chance to use his imagination and express himself creatively. Although he had a very conventional and essentially unexciting upbringing, Parr does not criticise or hold his upbringing in bitterness: “blandness of suburbia was an essential part of my upbringing – it made me the person and photographer that I am today”.

One early experience which has greatly impacted the style of Parr’s work is his experiences of bird-watching. As  a child he would accompanying his fanatical bird-watching father on a weekly basis. Rather than developing an interest with bird watching himself, he focused his interests on the followers of this hobby, studying with a keen eye, the absurd nature and behavioural patterns of those involved in bird watching. Parr found their behaviour and enthusiasm for what many would consider to be monotonous, un-fulfilling and boring to be fascinating in itself. It made him realise that even the most ordinary of things, could be perceived and therefore expressed in an interesting way. Parr himself, later became a train spotter, a hobby he cites as an experience which has fuelled to a great level, his “fascination with obsession”. 

 

Hebdum Bridge Project, Yorkshire – 1974-78

In the 1970s Martin Parr, along with 3 other fellow photographers, moved to a small village community, Hebdum Bridge, in Yorskshire. As a child Parr had always been interested in the north of England, often visiting his Grandparents in Yorkshire. Parr was drawn to the north because he admired the their sense of community, where everyone knew and depended on each other, in stark contrast to his experiences of separatism and hostility growing up  in suburban Surrey.

Over the course of 4 years, Parr totally “immersed himself in every aspect of life”, getting to know the people who lived there very well and photographing them lots. As Parr became more deeply involved in the Hebdum community, so did his understanding and appreciation of the traditions of northern life. Rather than exploiting the community as outdated or plain, Parr instead set himself the challenge of celebrating and creating an essentially positive view of the quirky traits of Yorkshire life, documenting how traditional attitudes and values of the community gave it a sense of charm. His work during this period was also meant to be somewhat sad and reflective, a documentation of disappearing working class life.

This project, with its quaint and quirky images full of energy and life, very much extended Parr’s fascination with celebrating the beauty in simple things – the excitement in the ordinary. 

Work in the 1980s

In the 1980s, Parr documented how Thatcher’s policies were changing Britain. Parr sought to challenge the impression Thatcher had presented herself, that she was changing Britain for the better, sacrifices for the good of communities. In protest to this view Parr went into small seaside communities of the north of England. The images he produced during this time were in many cases shocking and grotesque, showing people in the north to be in horrible conditions and suffering greatly. Rather than photographing the closing down of factories and the effects of northern cities, Parr work during this period was more subtle and poetic, photographing how one of the most romanticised British cultural areas, the seaside, had changed in this period, a metaphorical look into the degradation of Britain in this period.

His series ‘The Last Resort’, made up exclusively of these sea-side images, is a classic example of Parr being able to challenge and poke fun at ideas and preconceptions. Parr himself is not afraid to admit he exploits people in his work, claiming that “all photography is exploitation”. This series is a good example of Parr’s take on documentary photography, because his images both realistic, but at the same time somewhat surreal and animated, highlighting his ability to both be objective in what he produces whilst also adding his own colourful and imaginative twist on his images. This style makes his work descent, because he documents what he sees in his own way – he controls how the audience sees something, but not what they see; therefore manipulated but truthful at the same time.

1990s – Present: Consumerism and Advertising

This aspect of Parr’s work and style is what has attracted me most, because it is extremely revevant to the focus of my work, looking at the language of advertising. Referring to ‘Common Sense’ in the documentary, Parr mentions how his intention of photographing was to challenge advertising techniques by the very act of copying and embracing them: “I am using the language of advertising; I am using these bright, saturated colours to slightly subvert it”. It is a direct statement which highlights what Parr sets out to do in his style of photographing close-up with flash, to show detail to the event where it goes beyond the benefit of being well detailed. This style is clever because he is exploited what he wants to expose, in many ways hypocritical and a contradiction of his intent. Parr in ‘Small-World’: 1987-1994 , extends upon his study of British lifestyle and consumerism, exploring how these issues affect other cultures – a challenge in all of mass tourism and global advertising, looking at the broader picture in terms of how consumerism has affected all cultures around the world.

From ‘Common Sense’

From ‘Small-World’

Conclusion

This was a very interesting and fascinating documentary. I learned that Martin Parr is a photographer who seizes the opportunity to exploit the way something is perceived in an ironic manner, through the language and style of advertising. Parr was someone who had a very plain and bland upbringing and so used these personal experiences, emphasis blandness as a key part of his identity and thus affecting what he photographs, in the case of ordinary everyday products. Parr is a clever photographer who has benefited from the way society expanded and changed in the 1980s Britain, he look at the decline and society and the effects this had on the working class, to produce work which had both elements of truth, as well as elements of fantasy.

This is a video I came across during my research process when analysing Alec Soth’s work ‘Niagara‘.  I felt this interview was very beneficial when exploring his prospect of the project and his thoughts on love as an open force within the location.

Bio

Alec Soth is a photographer and artist from Minneapolis, United States.  who makes “large-scale American projects” featuring the midwestern United States. His photography has a ‘cinematic‘ feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story and a narrative behind his images.

New York Times art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a “photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers” and photographs “loners and dreamers“. According to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth, his work tends to focus on the “off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America”. Soth’s work has been compared to that of Walker Evans and Stephen Shore and is a member of Magnum Photographs.

The Context behind Niagara Falls

For hundreds of years, couples from around the world have made their way to Niagara Falls to reaffirm and celebrate their love. Niagara Falls has earned its title as the

“Honeymoon Capital of the World”

in the early 1800‘s as the world’s most wealthy, notable and elite people began to travel to Western New York for its Great Lakes, jaw-dropping vistas and,  the scenic wonder of Niagara Falls. This location became a rich haven for people most fortunate to visit, and was instantly labeled as an upper-class gold mine for romance and tranquility. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, Niagara Falls suddenly became more accessible. Couples were drawn, not only to its thundering, majestic waters, but also to Niagara Falls State Park and its many green, secluded nooks and paths. The spacious, sublime scenery was an idealic place for love. Today, Niagara still lives up to its glorious reputation, whether on your honeymoon, wedding, an anniversary treat or to honor a long-standing family tradition of love, couples embrace this special destination for the one-of-a-kind attractions that have charmed millions for centuries. From Niagara Falls itself to the Maid of the Mist- couples can get up close and personal with the Horseshoe Falls and get kissed by the mist. This special location provides a honeymoon you’ll treasure and fondly remember throughout your years together.

“Niagara”, 2006

Soth uses a range of landscape and portrait images to re-connect the idea of love with the picturesque monument Niagara Falls. This location sparks various emotions connected to romance, as it can be seen as an notorious spot for Marriage, proposals, and even breakups within relationships. The dramatic sequence of Soth’s impacting work “Niagara”, narrates love as a histrionic force, embarking its truth and purpose within American culture.

“I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers,”
(2008.)

Soth explores  various uses of mixed media; collections of love letters which have been found in various locations surrounding Niagara, such as motels and lets,  surround the extreme emotional ties this location has in terms of love. This clever narrative form allows the reader to understand love as a round perspective, questioning the truth between Soth’s original photographs and peoples’ personal archival diaries. Soth adds thats when he photographs people, he feels nervous at times:

“My own awkwardness comforts people, I think. It’s part of the exchange.”

Soth’s persona within this series counteracts his relationship with the subject he’s photographing. For instance, his comfort in finding love within relationships could be a manipulated subject, he doesn’t know himself what the definition of love is therefore approaching the aim in a rounded way. The inclusion of actual “love letters” and “confessions,” using actual documents and artefacts as devices to tell his story make the book overall more personal and invasive.

“I became interested in the idea of Niagara as a metaphor for love and passion and began e exploring those themes. Why do people have honeymoons in Niagara Falls? Why is it associated with sexuality and passion and new love?”
Magnum in Motion. (2007).

One of his photos is of “Melissa” in a bridal gown sitting outside what appears to be a motel; he describes having made an arrangement with a particular wedding chapel in Niagara Falls which let him take pictures of couples getting married, by photographing them after their weddings. The sort of simplicity and bareness behind the photograph underlines it stereotyped feel, it can be easily repeated and sanctioned for people to copy. The fact Soth has decided to photograph her in a non-recognised, less significant area, makes the reader feel compelled more to her facial expression. Soth’s closely analysed photographs brings out the common ground within American Society.

Soth also uses the falls as a constant referral within his book. Every so often there would be a break within portraits which shows a repetition of different images of the falls. This symbolically could represent a constant reminder to the reader of the main source of love within this series. This also can present different forms of love in a very effective, clever way, as Soth plays with the idea of how Landscapes bring out emotions in Portraits, much like Rita-Puig Serra Costa in my previous study of “Where Mimosa Bloom”. Soth does this very regularly throughout his study, for instance his work “The Great Leap Sideways, 25 Niagara 28 Falls” (below), may suggest an anger, and a negative affluence with connection to his images, as the darkness within its frame suggests Niagara for some a place of violence and deceit. On the other hand, the image below shows a parallel with those images associated with passion and desire, as the red colours illustrate these positive emotions.

 

The images in Martin Parr’s ‘Common Sense’ are very energetic and colourful. Parr uses the same language of advertising through the bright vibrancy of the images which makes them stand out and entice the viewer in. Parr however produces his own satirical twist on this, through evoking this style not to depict beauty but instead a more vulgar aspect of advertised imaging. In doing so Parr forces the viewer to question the manipulative effect of advertised images

Documentary photography

For my personal study I looked at Dorothea Lange who was a documentary photographer who worked for The Farm Security Administration (FSA) which was Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty and make people aware of what was going on. I am going to look further into this by researching Walker Evans who also worked for the FCA.

Walker evens

I want my work to be – “literate, authoritative, transcendent”.

Walker Evans is a documentary photographer who is most well known for his work while at the FCA which was documenting the effects that The Great Depression had on people.  During 1935 Walker photographed in the South of America.  In 1936, he was sent by Fortune Magazine on a project to Hale County, Alabama where he stayed with three tenant white families photographing them during the depression. The photographs he took were not published by Fortune Magazine but later in 1941 these photographs were published and considered to be a ground breaking book called ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’. This book included detailed accounts of the three farming families living in rural poverty. These photographs like the ones of Dorothea Lange were used as ‘ icons’ to represent poverty and the depression era in America. Walker Evans continued to work for the FCA until 1938, he then became an independent  photographer with his own first exhibition held later that year at The Museum of Modern Art.

https://lis471.wordpress.com/walker-evans/

I think that Walker Evans photographs particularly the photographs from the Alabama series achieve what most documentary photographer want. I think they look very raw and credible. As well as interesting.  Being used to seeing portraits of people in a very glamourous way, looking at some of Walker’s photographs make me feel a bit uncomfortable.  I think they portray the true likeliness of the person, although most of his photographs look as if they gave been staged I think they still manage to capture something genuine although I can not pin point what this is.

Examples of portraits from ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’

 

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a 17 minute long surrealist film and was created in France in 1929 and is a black and white silent film. It is basically a film where a man uses a blade to cut into a woman’s eyeball. Within the first few moments of the short film the audience see the moon, the blade and the eye being cut. You don’t actually see the eyeball being cut into but instead you see a thin cloud passing by the moon, which obviously represents the eye. I like old films like this as they seemed to be more creative and left more to the imagination and allowed spectators/audiences figure things out for themselves and make them think that they had seen something when in fact it was just the trick of the camera shots/angles. I love that old cinema would do this all the time purely because there wasn’t the budget to spent on elaborate special makeup and effects whereas nowadays technology has moved on and audiences almost want to see everything, like they need to see every detail of a scene just to believe it more. I find this short film so random and strange, which kind of made me laugh because it was so out of the ordinary. I like the transitions and how a character could be in one place and suddenly be transported into another. I find this concept interesting and adds more to the short film, making it so much more inviting for the audience to keep them guessing and to move them away from the ordinary and passive way of thinking. For me this short film was made to provoke thinking and to really make audiences think for themselves and start to interpret things for themselves too instead of constantly being told exactly what is going on and what is happening in a film. After watching this short film I was left wondering what I had just watched. It was so random but strangely enough I found it amusing. It is one of those things that are just so strange and out there that you can’t help but laugh at it but also question how strange it is. I thought the cutting of the eye ball at the beginning was a signifier that they were living in a surrealist world and it was also gross to see and split open eye. The ants made me think that the man was dead and they were for some reason feasting on his dead hand, like bugs do when people die. The leading male protagonist literally seemed insane to me and was the most random in the short film but he really did intrigue me with his facial expressions and the eyeliner around his eyes.

Notes | Thoughts

-holding ants in his hand and is in a frozen position staring at it
– woman with hair slicked back pocking at a severed hand that she had in  a box in the middle of the street while police try to push spectators away
– characters always freeze in a moment
– woman run over in the street, man looks so excited about it
– the man gropes the womans boobs [so odd]. she doesn’t want him to but he makes her and he images her with no top on and seems to be dribbling
– very theatrical performance and they use there facial expressions as obviously they never used to speak in these silent films
– doesn’t make any sense, he appears in different rooms etc
– the man is strange and somewhat creepy
– the man seems to be a bit delusional or just really weird as he seems to get excited for the gory and unsettling painful parts of the film
– books turn into guns
– transported to another place, in a woods somewhere. touches womans bare back before he falls to the floor possibly dead
– she looses her arm hair which ends up on his face. she leaves through a door in the house and ends up on a beach with some other man

KOYAANISQATSI (Life Out Of Balance)

Koyaanisqatsi is a 1h23minute film that brings to the light the beauty of our natural world alongside contemporary urban society. This is something that I want to focus on in my own photographic work and so this film is a perfect example to gain some inspiration from. This film shows the true horrors of our urbanised world and how it is constantly being destroyed, re-built and is taking away natures natural beauty. I love this film as it is really relaxing to look at with the music per the top and being able to see these beautiful landscapes with the sun and clouds moving showing the time-lapse. I have always been a lover of the natural world and often find myself going down to the ocean when I need to de-stress or relax. Something about the natural world is so therapeutic and more beautiful than any building ever could be. The main thought that I left with after watching this film was how often destruction does on in our urbanised society and how often we abuse our natural world, throwing rubbish around and not caring about the consequence that future generations are going to be focused to face because of the people of todays selfishness and carelessness. This film has really helped me with my thoughts on my project and inspired me to make a really great series of images that will really give a clear message on what I want my spectators to see and the movement that I want to follow.

Notes | Thoughts

-aboriginal drawings
-earrie , with soft calming music
– the voice makes it sound like some sort of ritual
– the music makes the destruction look almost poetic, as it falls you feel more empathy towards it and just watch as it slowly falls to the ground
– beautiful landscapes with music playing over it
– showing off the natural world with slow pan shots as well as the music making it more fascinating to look at
– shot of bats in a cave, sound of their voices and flying
– one huge time lapse
– cloud time lapse replicates fire and smoke, going fast pace
– water fall blue sea and clouds of smoke
– calm ocean
– different shots transitioning across smoothly
– clouds moving fast to transition into the ocean making a smooth transition that blends well
– clouds look like the ocean going over all of the mountains, looks amazing
– really relaxing to watch
– film made using a drone, flowing across water and miles of land with crops and flowers
– visually beautiful shots
– large truck, black smoke, electronic systems build over the natural world to make roads and garbage disposals
– giant connect pillions that carry electricity and holds the wires that the internet and electricity goes through
– power station throwing out gas into the natural world
– unnatural gases coming out of these stations
– roads and pathways being built over the natural world, confining it
– construction building, moving around dirt and remoulding it to suit people
– mass construction
– explosions
– amazing shots make it look almost sad that the natural world is slowly being taken away to make room for the urbanised society that we live in
– people on a beach next to a large construction site
-tourists coming to see these buildings
– skyscrapers are so tall, reflection of the clouds in them
– plane out of focus, blurred moving as if staring from a reflection in the ocean or showing the fuel that is used for planes that infects the air [pollution]
– you could make a photo book out of the shots made in this short film, it’s almost poetic
– the film is more effective as it makes you focus on one thing for an extended length of time, making you focus on the little details and think more about what we are doing to the natural world
– highways, hundreds of thousands of cars using fuel and polluting the earth. people don’t use their legs anymore because it isn’t convenient
– war, explosions, people dying and nature suffering, cluster bombs
– intense explosions constantly in nature while tall building and cities are doing just fine
– buildings are all geometric shapes, perfectly constructed and lined while nature is suffering and being abused and ignored
– rubbish and destruction everywhere
– people living in dirt and human waste
– mistreated
– dirty and disgusting
– repetition of buildings, cars etc
– everything in nature is different and unique in its own beautiful way whereas urban society looks all the same
– tall, ugly buildings
– smashed windows, destruction
– emphasis on how the urbanised world is mistreated and a waste of space
– constant destruction and being blown up, remoulded and changed to suit people
– formation of the clouds is dull and gloomy
– seeing the destruction of the buildings made me feel more on edge, it was horrible to watch. made me more tense
– so unnatural and everything looks the same
– floods of people, in masses walking around
–  people looking into the camera stood in front of machines that people made, fast pace trains, large plane with pilot staring into carema
– huge lights and cameras behind a group of women staring into the camera
– sun setting through the reflection of windows of a huge building

Julian became interested in photography when he was at school, he went on to study it at the Royal College of Art in London. He published many books which include combinations of both his own photographs and family archive photographs. Julian believes in the value of of amateur photographs which is shown in one of his recent books called ‘ For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’ which was published in 2005.

Julian’s website – http://www.juliangermain.com/

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‘For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’

‘ He was my antidote to modern day living’ 

This book is about an elderly man names Charles Albert Lucien Snelling from Portsmouth who Julian photographed for 8 years. He met Charles through a coincidence in 1992 when he was on his way to photograph the Portsmouth V Nottingham Forest cup and was attracted to the house because of it’s bright yellow colour. Through out the photo book there is a substantial amount of photographs which include flowers this is because Charles sold flowers and plants outside his home. ‘ He loved flowers and the names of flowers’.  Which helps us to understand his personality a bit more. Julian included scans of pages from Charles personal archive which include his wife who had past away 2 years before, but is a big part of his life. He shows this by including various archival portraits of  Charles’ wife.  I think this is really important and gives us an understanding of what his life was like before and what it is like now. However i’m not sure how the title links to the story but I think it may be something to do with Charles’ wife.

I decided to do some research about Julian Germain because although he is a documentary photographer he takes a different approach to it than most other photographer for example Eugene Smith. This is because he photographs are staged, Julian manipulates the way the photographs look by telling his subjects what to do and planning what he wants the photographs to look like in advance. Where as Eugene Smith has a more traditional approach to documenting. He doesn’t interfere with the subject and uses the camera as more of an eye witness and ‘documents’ the situation. Therefore Julian Germain pushes the boundaries between what is real and what is not because he is staging the photograph it could be argued that the scene is not real which links in with the exam title truth and fiction.

Tableau Photography can be seen as a ‘Visual Fiction’: 

Tableaux ‘vivants‘ have been around for tens of centuries. The recreating of famous scenes and paintings was a popular pastime and in our contemporary world,  the digital age  brings us new stories and narratives that can be created with the revival of the tableau photograph.

A “tableau vivant” is a French phrase meaning “living picture.” Before photography was established, it was a popular pastime to re-create scenes from famous paintings at parties and other social events. Participants would dress up, use props, appropriate backgrounds and poses to re-stage the original image, to almost ridicule or mimic, encouraging more audience interest and participation. This technique saw large radicalisation, as people were going against traditional norms to suppress different emotions within photographs.  A good example of this is included in Goethe’s series “ELECTIVE INFINITIES” where the Count in the story suggests:

“There are many well proportioned people here who are certainly capable of impersonating the movements and postures of paintings. Such tableaux demand a great deal of troublesome arrangements, I know, but they produce an unbelievable effect.”

Since the time photography came about, ‘tableaux vivants’ have remained a popular method to recreate old paintings as photographs and to create new narrative scenes in a tableau style captured as photograph. Early pioneers of the tableau photograph were David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson who, in the 1840’s, created many staged portraits of famous men of the time. They also staged images of local fish wives, fishermen and working people.

The Revival of Tableau Photography, 1970s 

The 1970s was a time of experimentation in photography, showing a rise in the use of performance art and photography among women. Photography almost acted as a ‘sanctuary’ for women, as their liberation and freedom grew from being able to experience art forms that men originally performed instead. Cindy Sherman is a good example of how women began to express themselves through photographs in the public domain. Cindy Sherman’s “Film Stills” series dating from the late 1970s to early 1980s are all narrative tableau constructions that create archetypal women from B movies: posed, staged and lit to convey meaning and message.

Sherman starred in every image, turning herself into an art form. Sherman still creates tableau scenes that use herself in the image in a managed way to expose a character or tell a story.

Bernard Faucon is another example of the revival of tableau photography, and differently to Sherman, uses mannequins in his tableau photography, giving his work a surrealist edge. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred as some of his images used a mixture of real people and mannequins; making the viewer look deeper into the image to discern what is real and what is not. Faucon’s career took off in 1976 with his exhibition “Les Grandes Vacances.”

This work explored themes of childhood, with the children being replaced with mannequins who play with the elements fire, earth, water and sky. Faucon was obsessed with childhood and in 1995 his obsession came to an end as he retired from photography stating, “I had to eventually make true my claim to finish, my obsession with closing. This became The End of the Image.”

Contemporary Tableau Photography: Ryan Schude

Contemporary artists and photographers have used the tableau to create stunning imagery that reflects modern society and has an underlying narrative. The use of theatrical or filmic lighting adds to the effect of the images. Ryan Schude is a great example of how tableau photography as an art form has allowed him to manipulate any situation in a ridiculed way. Schude’s American lifestyle allows him to play in versitile scenes, as America is known for its variation in scenery, as well as its reputation to always commit to its vibrant character. In the words of Aline Smithson of “LENSCRATCH”,  Fine Art  Articles,  she describes Schude as “creating new photographic worlds by combining a mixture of humor, chaos, constructed environments, and ironic fun. Ryan is a photographer who does it all, producing commercial, stock, editorial, and fine art imagery ” . Below are pictures from his series “TABLEAU VIVANTS“. This series surrounds a range of images surrounding the abnormal lives of people in American Lifestyles.

Appropriation – The action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.

The idea of appropriation in art, is to use already existing objects and images, and recontextualising them to give them a completely new meaning. It has been a concept used by photographers and artists so that they can give something that has no meaning and give it a meaning by presenting it as art, or giving something that already has a meaning a new one. It allows us to question these pieces, and think to ourselves ‘what is art?’. Are we able to blatantly use someone else’s art, and not change it, but consider it our own?

An example of this is Sherrie Levine’s ‘After Walker Evans’. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evan’s famous picture of a sharecroppers wife and didn’t manipulate or change the image in anyway, and stated that it was her own piece. Talking to Arts Magazine in 1985 she said ”The pictures I make are really ghosts of ghosts,”. With this mindset, we have to try and think of the truth and fiction behind her work. Some people describe it as innovative, as she was able to take a photograph of a photograph and call it her own photo, because in essence it was. Other people such as the estate of Walker Evans, believed it to be copyright infringement, so bought the whole collection to prevent anyone else from doing so.

Developing on Levine’s work, in 2001, photographer Michael Mandiberg set up the websites aftersherrielevine.com and afterwalkerevans.com and made the photographs from each one of the projects available to download in a high resolution format, so that it is possible to print the images out at exhibition standard. This is to develop the argument on how information, art and a number of other things are becoming easier and easier for us to access within this digital age, and making us think about how easily art can now be created. With this idea of a developing digital world, in 2015 Mandiberg created the project ‘Print Wikipedia’, where he  printed out the 7,473 volumes of Wikipedia as it existed on April 7, 2015. Mandiberg says there are two reasons to why he created this project, the first of which was because he had his own personal interest on wanting to know how big it really was. The second reason behind this project was because Mandiberg usually works with found materials, and tries to see what the smallest move he can make that will transform them. So with ‘Print Wikipedia’, it was taking a text form in a database or website, and turning them into books, which Mandiberg felt that the transformation was enough that the meaning of the information became different.

For my project, I’d like to take inspiration from these appropriation artists by using material that is accessible online and incorporating it into the idea of my project. For the project I want to explore the online personas of politicians in Jersey, compared to what they are actually like in real life.

 

“Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can’t get inside and know the subject.” – W. Eugene Smith

Documentary photography 

I have chosen to do some more research on Eugene Smith because he is one of the most well known documentary photographers. He’s work  links in with the exam theme truth which is an area I am considering exploring  in my project.

Eugene smith is an American photojournalist photographer he is known for his dedication to projects and ethical standards. He developed photo essays into visual forms. His most famous work includes: World War II photographs were he was on the front line documenting the effects of war, the clinic of Dr Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa and he joined the Magnum photo agency in 1995 where he began his project on the city of Pittsburgh. Smith began his career by taking photographs for local newspapers.

In January 1972 he was attacked by employees from Chisso Company in Japan near Tokyo in an attempt to stop him from publishing photographs of the effect of Minamata disease. Although he survived this attack his vision in one deteriorated which stopped him from working for a period of time. I think this shows a lot about Eugene’s work and how much he is willing to show the world the reality of some situations. Which could upset quite a few people. I think this links in to a quote from the exam book by TS Elliot which says ‘ Humankind can bear only so much reality…’  I think this situation puts the quote into context. This also brings back the ethics and standards of photography which questions where the line of photographing is and what should and shouldn’t be photographed.

Eugene Smith Magum photographs-  http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL5347YF

Eugene Smith also produced a famous photo essay about the Country Doctor which is something I looked at for my personal study. From this I found that Eugene photographed the Dr’s  work life and personal life with his wife and children as well as his patients and surroundings therefore he spends a lot of time photographing his subjects and gets to know them well so he is able to produce photographs with an intimate perceptive which gives the viewer more of an incite and allows them to make a connection to them.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADVERTISING

William Bernbach   – “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art”                

As establish in the previous blog-post, the nature of advertisement changed forever as a result of “mass-production”, it was now easier than then ever for companies to advertise their products. Whilst creating obvious advantages this also created a significant barrier to companies trying to sell their products to consumers, a rise in competition due to this increased practicality and availability.

As people now had a much greater market in terms of available products, it was now more important then ever for companies to ensure that consumers were most likely to be drawn into and attracted to that particular companies product alone. For example, if a consumer has a choice of 10 available cigarette brands, than they will be bound to go for the one which appeals to them the most.

From the 1920s onward, companies began to tap into consumer psychology, realizing the link between how presentation of an advertisement may effect the connections/associations the viewer has with such a product. As psychology slowly began to grow in influence and the impact it had on the consumer, this was met with criticism from various writers and philosophers at the time, seeing the artistic methods used by companies as exploitative – a form of opportunism playing on sub-conscious urges, thus manipulating consumers into purchasing products. On the other hand many avant-garde artists were prepare to dismiss any moral restrictions, in celebration of the opportunity this allowed artists for creative expression.

GROWING LINK BETWEEN ART AND ADVERTISING

Modern advertising began to emerge and develop soon after the First World War. In the U.S. Various advertising groups and agencies can be largely credited for this growth, groups such as N. W. Ayer, J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erikson, who formed part of the ‘American Association of Advertising Agencies’.

Additionally 1920 led to the creation of the Art Directors’ Club, which helped to create the bridge between art and the commercial work, creating an organisation whereby artists could be commissioned to produce work for these newly developed advertising agencies – an incentive for better and more insightful artistic work to be produced for advertising purposes . Also in Germany, designers and photographers were brought together through the establishment of the Deutscher Gebrauchgraphiker, another example of the link between art and design.

Specialized magazines encouraged the use of photography and colourful graphic design, to create more realistic and visually exciting formats of work – moving away from less accurate and tedious methods of design and artistic presentation, such as sketching and line-drawings.

RISING INFLUENCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY 

By the mid 1920s, advertising found a new and powerful way which photography could have an influence on advertising – using photography to show with clarity, the usefulness, comfort , luxury, (along with other benefits) of a particular product. A growing number of photographers including Edward Steichen and Andre Vigneau, began to specialize in ‘publicity photographs’. Steichen for example, was commissioned to photograph Camel cigarettes, in which he experimented with chiaroscuro lighting to create dark, gripping and enticing images of cigarettes, showing them in a charming and exciting way.

Although the health effects of smoking were perhaps less known or considered in 1920s, it is still interesting to consider that photography could be used to promote a product such as cigarettes, in such an attractive manner. From a modern perspective at least, it is easy to question the morality of such forms of advertising – the use of lighting and other photographic techniques to manipulate a ‘realistic’ interpretation of a product which is extremely unhealthy and highly addictive (to the extent that it is banned as a form of advertising in the UK nowadays).

However, soon many photographers working in the advertising industry soon sought to distance themselves from the restrictive and controlling task of ‘promotional advertising’, and instead venture into more experimental, avart-garde work. Many previous publicity photographers began to concentrate on creating a mood associated with an object, rather than just objectively recording the object alone. In order to achieve this, photographers started to follow the ideology and principles of the ‘Bauhaus Art School’ and the surrealists, evoking techniques such as tilted camera angles, lining up rows of objects, photograms, superimposition, solarization altering images and X-Ray techniques.

As a result of this change in attitudes – photographers began to diverge into advertising for things other than basic consumer products, such as manufacturer brochures and seasonal catalogs of big department stores, expensive jewelry and designer products. Subsequently the type of work photographers were required to do altered dramatically. At first, photographers had a degree of control over their equipment and photo-shoots,  free to delve into different and varied means. However, soon a much greater degree of control was imposed on photographers concerning what they can and could not do, as photographic agents, copy-writers and editors became increasingly involved in the production of images, commissioning and the organisation of photo-sessions.

 

During the Second World War, advertising  was inspired mainly by the exploration of patriotic themes. Whilst going about the selling of ordinary products, they sought to incorporate slogans, posters and news articles in support of the Government and War, some for financial gain other simply due to feelings of patriotism and loyalty for their country. During this period, Photography was used by all nations as a means of reassuring civilians, boosting the morale of soldiers, and preserving national security. Increased censorship on photo-journalist was introduced to ensure that the images they created did not undermine and disrupt the war effort, which the Government wanted to convey to the general public as successful.

In the post-war years, U.S. industry expanded at a rapid rate, whilst Europe also experienced a period of relative return to growth and prosperity. During this period, as commercial industries sought to recover, and so quickly needed to find a way of encouraging people to resume spending and consuming after a drop in such activities due to the disruption of war. To achieve this, companies recognized the need for new and refreshing advertising campaigns and slogans, to encourage and motivate consumers to buy in a period of uncertainty, Luckily, this was made easier by improvements in printing techniques and the improved quality of colour film – greatly increasing the attractiveness of images.

The commercial opportunities for professional photographers to sell their images also enhanced dramatically during this period, with the rise of colour photographic magazines such as, Time and Life, giving photography as a visual art more status. The powerful documentary photographs which were produced during the periods of the Great Depression and later the war were very powerful and effective,  to the extent that text soon began to be compromised and reduced to meet the needs of photographs.

One of the most prominent ways in which photography influenced the masses was through the various ‘general interest’ photo-journalist magazines such as Time, Life and Weekly Illustrated which looking at ordinary lives and changing trends expressed largely through photographs, in the process reporting on, changing and influences cultural trends and patterns in consumerism, television, fashion etc. As a result many companies sough to associate themselves which these extremely popular magazines through selecting advertising slots and paying for special commissions for editors to include the companies own ‘promotional images’. This even caught on to the point that  large companies created their own general interest magazines, targeted at selling their specific products.

Now photography was not just influential in advertising but equally, it played a substantial part in reflecting and challenging commercial trends. It grew in commercial value and large corporations started to respect the powerful and influential nature of photographs; whereby the photographer has a greater degree of freedom to express and explore creative ideas.

 

I found this video during the research process of ‘The Science of Love’, module of my project. I thought this module of my project would really draw in contextual perceptions of love, but in an alternate way of ‘science’ instead of the mainstream ’emotional’ meaning.

 

A Modern Perspective of Love in Literature

A Psychological Perspective of Teen Romances in Young Adult Literature: Cheryl L. Dickson

Cheryl L. Dickson is a high school literature teacher and explains in her article “A Psychological Perspective of Teen Romances in Young Adult Literature” Dickson finds it impossible to ignore the “bantering of teenagers in love”. Dickson works against stereotypes of love when stating”

“I question who gives them the impression that love is always fireworks and roses”.

Controversially, Dickson blames the ‘media’ as she gives examples of teen movies such as “She’s All That” and television programs like Dawson’s Creek, she states: “It’s no wonder adolescents have unrealistic views of love”.  “Teens watch these programs for a number of reasons. Most viewers enjoy the fantasy world they can enter, or they enjoy seeing other teens facing situations similar to situations they encounter. A problem occurs when teens expect their lives to be like their favorite character. Just as violence on television is hypothesized to increase real-life violence, television romance can likely affect views of real-life romance”.

Dickson adds that being a literature teacher creates the hope that  literature could “undo television’s mistakes and bridge the gap between real love and fantasy love”. In our modern day and age it’s understandable that teenagers are influenced daily by the ‘next best thing’. Dickson sympathises with this, and compels the reader to empathise with her:

“In my mind, the literature had to be real fiction, not the supermarket romance novels. I believed teen romance series were likely to be just as damaging as teen movies.”

She then adds that she ‘predicted‘  that quality literature would more accurately portray images of teen love than teen romance novels. However, during my comparison of two novels from the Love Series published by Bantam Books and two novels recommended by the American Libraries Association, I learned that I had made some hasty assumptions.

Dickson creates a difference between ‘teen love‘ and ‘romance‘

Teen: a person aged between 13 and 19 years, (synonyms) a young adult, adolescent

Love: a strong feeling of affection and sexual attraction for someone, (synonyms) affection, fondness, tenderness

Against

Romance: a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, (synonyms) passion, ardour, adoration, devotion; affection, fondness, intimacy, attachment.

Here, Dickson established how romance is a ‘mysterious‘ and a delved part of love. Against the definition of love, Dickson almost suggests that love, even though associated with romance, contradicts the idea that there is much more to romance than a ‘teen love‘; for instance, know one really understands love until they experience it, yet adolescents are melded with the harsh stereotypes of love in the media, and therefore are ‘let down‘ in a way when experienced.

“The Art of Loving” is a 1956 book by psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm, which was published as part of the World Perspectives Series. Fromm presents love as a ‘skill‘ that can be taught and developed, rejecting the idea of loving as something magical and mysterious that cannot be analysed nor explained, and is therefore skeptical about popular ideas such as “falling in love” or being helpless in the face of love.

“I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and not in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me”.

Because modern humans are alienated from each other and from nature, we seek refuge from our lonesomeness in romantic love and marriage . However, Fromm observes that real love “is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone.” It is only through developing one’s total personality to the capacity of loving one’s neighbor with “true humility, courage, faith and discipline” that one attains the capacity to experience real love. This should be considered a rare achievement . Fromm defended these opinions also in interview with Mike Wallace when he states:

“love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a…as something one falls in. But the question is that one cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love. And that means that loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.”

“Loving oneself is quite different from ‘arrogance, conceit or egocentrism’“. Loving oneself defines along the lines of caring about oneself and taking responsibility for oneself, respecting oneself, and knowing oneself, for example, being realistic and honest about one’s strengths and weaknesses in awe for giving constructive criticism. In order to be able to truly love another person, one needs first to love oneself in this way. Fromm calls the general idea of love in contemporary Western society égoïsme à deux: a relationship in which each person is entirely focused on the other, to the detriment of other people around them. The current belief is that a couple should be a well-assorted team, sexually and functionally, working towards a common aim. This is in contrast with Fromm’s description of true love and intimacy, which involves willful commitment directed toward a single unique individual. One cannot truly love another person if one does not love all of mankind including oneself.

According to to the creation of myths of the Abrahamic religion, Adam and Eve where the first man and first woman ever to set foot on Earth. The story created by God was for people to believe that humans would live an idealic lifestyle, and were created to endure pure paradise to its most form. However, Adam and Eve both end up falling away from that state, and live under the realistic world of suffering and injustice for their unruly consequences.

In the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, there are two creational narratives with two distinct perspectives: In the first, both Adam and Eve are not references by name, yet instead God created humankind in ‘Gods image” and instructed both of them to become custodians of all of his creations. In this essence we don’t receive the same purposeful affiliation with that of normal humans, as they are controlled by someone, and stripping them of their own individualities. In the second narrative, God fashions Adam from dust to which he then places him in the Garden of Eden. God commands that he is allowed to eat and devour anything in the garden, everything but The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve however, is carved from one of Adam’s ribs, to be known as Adam’s companion. As a reader of this story, you immediately come to the assumption that Eve is created from Adam purely to be demised sexually and powerfully; he is her owner. Symbolically, this has changed the way the modern reader perceives love, as this creation started the roles in relationships we see today. During my re-creational processes, I would like to consider using essences from the original stories of sin and love to suppress the religious definitions and representations of its perceptions. Further along in the story, a serpent appears and tricks Eve into delving into the Tree of Knowledge, questioning her venerability. Like all females today, the stereotype to perceive women as the ‘weaker sex’ could possibly remise from this original story. Generously, Eve seen as the ‘care-giver’ offers fruit to Adam for the result of his own happiness. This also represents the stereotypical view as women as ‘housewives’, providing for males in return for their strength and well-being. God ends up killing the serpent, and prophetically tells the woman and the man what will be the consequences of their sin of disobeying God, he then banishes ‘the man’ from the Garden of Eden

Art Interpretations of Adam and Eve

JAN BRUEGHEL D. J.

Brueghel was born in 13 September 1601, in Antwerp and is a Flemish painter and draughtsman. Breughel’s depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden creates a  myriad variety of forms and motifs with bright and intense colours, creating the ‘jewelj-like‘ effect so prized in his œuvre. This illustrates the sublimity within his work, and bringing out the idea of nature and natural creation, as religion is a big part of Breughel’ s depictions. The image of The Tree of Knowledge surrounded by nature and creatures suggests Breughel almost sets boundaries for the reader to understand, as there is  narrative presented in the whole image.

PETER PAUL REUBENS 

I have decided to explore the ideas of all three applications to photography. I feel there can be some exploration to do with my personal study: the concept of love. Love can be appropriated, performed and conceptualised, and I wish to explore that aspect in a greater depth.

Appropriation in Photography

“The deliberate reworking of images and styles from earlier, well-known works of art.”

Appropriation in art and art history refers to the “practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original”.  Appropriation can be tracked back to the cubist collages and constructions of Picasso and Georges Braque made from 1912 on, in which real objects such as newspapers were included to represent themselves. The practice was developed much further in the readymades created by the French artist Marcel Duchamp from 1915. Most notorious of these was Fountain, a men’s urinal signed, titled, and presented on a pedestal. Later, surrealism also made extensive use of appropriation in collages and objects such as Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. In the late 1950s appropriated images and objects appear extensively in the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and in pop art.

However, the term ‘appropriation’  seems to have come into use specifically in relation to certain American artists in the 1980s, notably Sherrie Levine and the artists of the Neo-Geo group. Levine reproduced as her own work other works of art, including paintings by Claude Monet and Kasimir Malevich. Levine’s aim was to create a new situation, and therefore a new meaning or set of meanings, for a familiar image.

Appropriation in art raises questions of originality and authenticity  belonging to the long modernist tradition of art that questions the nature or definition of art itself. Appropriation artists were influenced by the 1934 essay by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, and received contemporary support from the American critic Rosalind Krauss in her 1985 book “The Originality of the Avant-Garde” and “Other Modernist Myths”.

Conceptualism: Alexandra Bellissimo 

“The theory that universals can be said to exist, but only as concepts in the mind.”

The Conceptual Art Movement is probably the of the most radical and controversial planes in modern and contemporary art. Conceptual art is based on the notion that the “essence of art is an idea, or concept, and may exist distinct from and in the absence of an object as its representation”. Many examples of conceptual art (well-known works or statements) questions the notions of art itself. Some conceptual artists believe that art is created by the viewer, not by the artist or the artwork itself, for example Bellissimo (pictured above) connotes that the eye of the reader is there to manipulate the subject, in any way shape or form. Ideas and concepts are the main feature of art: aesthetics and material concerns have a secondary role in conceptual art. For example, Conceptual artists recognise that all art is essentially “conceptual“. In order to emphasize these terms, they reduce the material presence of the work to an absolute minimum, for example, a tendency that some have referred to as the dematerialisation of art, counts as one of the main characteristics of conceptual art. As many conceptual art examples show, the conceptual art movement itself emerged as a reaction against the tenets of formalism. Formalism considers that the formal qualities of a work, such as line, shape and colour, are “self-sufficient for its appreciation”, and all other considerations, such as representational, ethical or social aspects and are secondary or redundant.

Performance Photography: Tom Pope

“The action or process of performing a task or function.”

What are the connections between Marcel Duchamp‘s gesture of painting a moustache on the iconic painting of Mona Lisa?  

Simply, Duchamp’s gesture nominates The Mona Lisa as a male figure. Arguably, Duchamp created an iconic sort of ‘mask’ that reads instantly as male but does not even pretend to conceal the woman behind the mask. In a sense, “L.H.O.O.Q.” is an artificial hermaphrodite, an image of a woman with that most superficial and nonfunctional characteristic of maleness, a moustache. (The beard is superfluous to the effect of L.H.O.O.Q., and in one version of the piece does not appear at all.) Both, however, acts as backward- looking in that their most immediate effect was to redefine the Mona Lisa itself. At the same time, both are prophetic in the way they project major shifts in the grounds of art as a system of knowledge. Duchamp uses appropriation in order to ridicule and radicalise the history of art, in a contemporary light which changes the normal social representations of women. This also suggests women as various role reversals – women are usually depicted as the ‘weaker‘ sex, and Duchamp toys with this idea possibly to lift female and male equality

What are the connections between a photograph of a cup of tea by Martin Parr and Andy Warhol‘s paintings of Campbell’s Soup Cans?

 Martin Parr’s series is a good example of contemporary Pop Art as it depicts an everyday object. Everyday objects were often used as subject matter for Pop artists such as Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ as he was able to manipulate mundane objects in his widely elaborated prints.

 

“Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle both significant and relevant to history and historical events and everyday life.”

Documentary photography is a form of storytelling, usually with one powerful photograph and deeper meaning which often moves people. This form of photography is used to ‘document’ events and people in everyday real life situations which in the past has been used to bring the attention of an audience to a particular subject, change their perspective and create a social change for example: a photograph taken by Nick Ut in Vietnam in 1972 of children running from a bomb explosion caused outraged protests in America and changed the outcome of the war. Views on documentary photography are controversial as some people believe that certain situations should not be documented which  also brings in social and political associations such as whether or not it is deemed ethical or moral to take these pictures and publish them.

Today many people are pushing the boundaries of what can be defined as documentary photography, and if photographer should still abide by the rules and ethic codes of documentary photography. Below is an example of an article about  the World Press panel discussing the rules of documentary.

http://www.worldpressphoto.org/news/2015-07-01/awards-days-discussion-recap-rules-documentary-photography

Photojournalism 

Documentary photography are  generally related to longer term projects with a more complex story line, whilst photojournalism concerns are more about breaking news stories.

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism which involves collecting and editing news material for a news publication or a broad cast. Photojournalism uses photographs in order to tell a story, it’s different to other types of photography such as documentary and street photography because of it’s rigid ethics  which demands that the photos are honest and impartial and are only telling the story in journalistic terms. The objective of photojournalism is to have images which are a fair representation of events of situations. Illustrating news story’s with photographs began in the mid 19th century in The Times newspaper of Lord Horatio Nelson’s funeral. The first newspaper with weekly illustrations was the Illustrated London News.

From Wikipedia: “Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.”

Visionary art has been prominent in different art movements throughout the centuries, with artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst exploring the ideas of a fantasy reality. Twisting the thoughts and ideas of life, with their own interpretations of how they view the world. For example, Dali’s famous painting ‘The Persistence Of Memory’, depicts a scene with melting pocket watches in an outdoor landscape. The piece of work is a surrealist piece which Dawn Ades describes as “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”. It shows how Dali was able to grasp this idea of time, and turn it into a tangible work of art, exhibiting the way in which he understands and views the world from a surrealist perspective.

In today’s modern art world, artists have been able to develop on this surrealist ideals, by distorting reality and creating a fantasy world that explores the subconscious. One of the fore-running artists today is visionary artists Alex Grey. Grey has created his own unique style by taking his own ideas of reality, such as a simple family portrait and transforming it into a fantasy piece.

As well as looking into reality as a way to base his work off, he has also delved into the subconscious with pieces that portray an idea of fiction.  He has explored dreams, death and tried to picture the way he feels certain situations may look like.

In the above painting ‘Wonder’, Grey has looked at the subconscious and how you are able to put dreams, thoughts and fantasy onto a canvas. He has painted a image of a young child looking up to the moon, trying to paint what he thinks it might feel like for a child to dream of the universe and the world itself. He uses bright colours and intricate details, such as showing  the inside of the brain, as a way for the audience to really delve into the painting and think for themselves on the particular topics he covers.

With this in mind, moving forward I am going to be taking inspiration from these visionary artists, in a way that will help me connect these ideas of truth, fantasy and fiction and merge them into one idea that will showcase all three of the topics.

 

OVERVIEW

Post World War One led to the emergence of modern marketing techniques; television, newspaper advertising, magazines and artistic posters, among others. This meant that advertising was now more powerful and viable than it had ever previously been, and impacted people to an extent that had never previously been achieved.

As the technology of printing progressed and became a more viable option, photography as a form of advertising soon began to greatly expand and develop. This led very much to a new genre of photography known as ‘commercial photography’. Through this genre many photographers saw  a viable market in working for cooperate companies, selling their images to companies looking for attractive and striking images to appear in various advertising formats.

CHANGING IDEAS AND ITS IMPACT ON ART

Post WWI Europe was very much based on people trying to progress and move on from the trauma of war.

President Woodrow Wilson spoke highly of ‘self-determination’ for all nations, the right of small ethic groups and cultures to establish and form their own nations, after the break-up of the Empire who ruled over these territories. In the 1920s, whilst some nations had already fallen under the vail of totalitarian rule, such as Russia and Italy, the majority of people Europe seeked to enjoy new and attractive principles of democracy and individual freedom, a prime example being Germany.

These new ideals greatly effected the progression and development of art, with artists embracing this time of enlightenment to celebrate new artistic ideas and challenge the old. This was subsequently a turbulent period of history, with tradition and modernity coming face to face. During such a time, photography through the development of the film camera  which started to emerge in the late-1920s, proved to be an effective and affordable means of photographers across Europe spread a variety of ideas and lifestyles. This was very much made possible because of the role the media played in advertising and publishing.

THE RISE OF ADVERTISING IN THE “MACHINE AGE”

One of most powerful and effective art forms in the last 100 years is arguably, the art of marketing/advertising. The general basis of an advertisement is to put forward an argument to a consumer in a manner which is persuasive enough to attract the consumer into investing in the product being sold.

In the early 20th Century, sales techniques relied on powerful writings distributed in posters, leaflets and newspapers, accompanied maybe by the occasional drawing. The main drawback to this method is that it takes an extremely power and sustained argument to captivate the readers attention, and the reader is not necessarily attracted straight-away to what is presented to them.

However the 1920s saw the development of more visual methods of advertisement being introduced; such as, canvas paintings, photo-prints and the enhancement of posters – larger and more visually inclusive in their design. This style of advertising can be considered more attractive to viewers because it is more striking and attractive to the viewer as it creates a quicker and more immediate impression. This enhancement, development and sophistication of presentation coincided with the arrival of the “machine- age”, which revolutionized production and sales methods, going from small batches of production to suddenly a wave of mass-marketing and publications through the invention of printers and machine presses.

This new commercial trend, ‘mass-production’ would bring about a huge increase in consumption. This led greatly to the enchancement of corporate adveritising, nowqdays a multi-billion pound business. It is very true to say that photograpphy played a significant part in this rise, both through its rich and attractive visual quality combined with its ease for mass production.

 

EXAMPLES OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1920s ADVERTISING

 

by Edward Steichen, 1927

by Florence Henri, 1929

Bright visual poster from the 1920s

 

Background 

After WWI, artists in Germany and the USSR began to experiment with an avant-garde technique known as the ‘photo-montage’.

‘Photo-montage’ is the making of a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. These images are then merged together in a way that make it appear like a single image. It is a very general term which allows for a degree of interpretation.

Traditionally a photo-montage often formed part of a larger collage, through the inclusion of other photographs, text, words and even newspaper clippings.

The 1917 Russian Revolution led to the formation of a young Communist state that was celebrated by many artists and intellects, who saw this revolution as an opportunity to end the corruption and poverty that existed in Russia.

Propaganda in the press, literature, radio and visual art was part of the post-revolution process, allowing the government to control and manipulate the public into supporting and tolerating the regime, using creative expression to insight and enlighten. The state increased its control of artists, using fear and threats to ensure the artists used their talents to the benefit of the new regime.

This is certainly the case in the various photo-montage posters which were commissioned by the government in the 1920s, work by artisits including El Lissisky, Alexandder Rodchenko and Vavara Steponavo. In this blog post I will look at how photo-montages at the time, served both as measures of creative expression, as well as regulation and suppression. I will use the work of ‘constructionist’ Vavrara Steponavo to support my findings.

PHOTO-MONTAGE: THE MANIPULATION OF REALITY 

Photo-montages are essentially images which are combined and constructed in a manner which express whatever message the artist wants to convey.  In the USSR, the photo-montage was considered to be the artists interpretation of events, but under strict supervision.

The ‘Five Year Plans’ was a period of extremely radical and supressive measures, which led to extreme poverty and widespread famine. Therefore, what started off as a positive propaganda programme soon became a cover-up of disastrous economic policy.

VAVARA STEPONAVO – PIOONER OF CONSTRUCTIVISM

Vavara Steponavo was a Russian ‘constructivist’ who produced a vast collection of photo-montage posters  throughout her lifetime. The term ‘constructivist’ refers to a trend of art that saw art as a practice for social purposes, instead of just a form of expression. Stepanova, among other such as her husband Alexander Rodchenko, used constructivism to serve the political ideals of the Soviet Union, linking the policies implemented by the regime to the supposed benefit of the people.

By the end of the first ‘Five Year Plan’, the USSR was a leading industrial power. The ‘photo-montage’ was designed by the state to be an ‘ideological image’ which established through visual ‘evidence’, the great success of the plan. This was done by the photographer cutting out newspaper a series of newspaper clippings and sticking them on a large canvas. This can seen as one of the many examples of heavy experimentation during the 1920s in terms of art and what its meaning was.

STEPONAVO …. ‘USSR IN CONSTRUCTION’

‘USSR in Construction’ is a propaganda publication by Stepanavo looking at the various ‘successes’ of industrialisation during the ‘Five Year Plans’. This poster was a foreign publication, designed to show countries such as France and Great Britain of the success of Communist Russia, a nation who were a ‘leading force in the global market and economy’

In this photo-montage, it is apparent that everything is carefully constructed. There are only three types of colour and tone: (different ranges of) black-and-white, and sepia, and the integration of geometrical planes of red to structure the composition. This balance of colour tones ensures that there is a measured range to how the image is viewed.

In this poster the artist has used symbolism to link the visual and written elements of the poster together. Such is apparent through the artists insertion of public address speakers, on a platform with the number 5, symbolising the ‘Five Year Plans’, along with the CCCR (USSR).

The most recognisable aspect of this poster is the large image of Vladimir Lenin, which has been cropped and oversized. The intention of this is to draw emphasis to Lenin in a striking way, to draw the idea to the viewer of his cult like status in contrast to the smaller representation of a crowd of people, indicating ‘mass appreciation’ for this ‘large figure’.

CONCLUSION

I find photo-montages to be very interesting because they are a clever way of photographers working with multiple images to create a response. Photo-montages allow a degree of creativity and are fun and interactive, thus appealing to the audience.

It is clear that during the early period of the Soviet Union, photo-montages, along with the many other experimental forms of art were an exciting and innovative way of the Party and Government drawing public attention towards their ideology. The early photo-montage of Lenin and Stalin speak of hope and prosperity for the future, whilst using clever techniques such as extending the size of the face of the two leaders to represent them in a cult-like, demi god form.

I find that a lot of the Soviet photo-montages look almost a bit like drawings and sketches. They go beyond ‘straight’ or ‘pure’ photography and instead are more abstract and experimental, thus creating this obscured appearance.

A photo-montage is something I could definitely look into creating for my own final outcome, and it is something which would be very fun and experimental to construct.

 

 

 

 

Background

Since 879, Russia was ruled by the Romanov family, a long lasting dynasty. For hundreds of years Russia was a agricultural feudal system and power lied with the landowners and the masses, who were suppresses, peasants who were tied to the land.

Over the course of the 19th and early 20th Century, Europe underwent an Industrial Revolution – a dramatic period of political and social change whereby the old agricultural systems which existed for thousands of years were replaced by the creation and expansion of industrial societies, with large numbers of peasants moving to the cities and becoming ‘workers’ in factories.

These social changes put pressure on the old autocratic systems of monarchy which existed throughout Europe. Many Governments – Russia included – were extremely reluctant to introduce reform to meet these growing demands. Growing dissent among the workers led to a rise of a political ideology known as Marxism, which advocated the ‘workers rise up against the proletariat’ and establish a new system of Governing known as Socialism (Communism), through which means of production was distributed evenly across all members of society.

In  October 1917, Vladmir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party organised an armed uprising against the newly formed Russian Provisional Government (after the Tsar’s abdication in Feb. 1917), leading to the creation of the world’s first Communist state.

Lenin turned Russia into a totalitarian state, which meant that the government had complete control of every aspect of life – and individual rights and freedoms suppressed brutality by the Bolshevik Secret Police. One of the key characteristics of a totalitarian state is the belief that the masses should embrace the ideology and actively love the regime.

An effective way Lenin, and later Stalin, ensured this was through the introduction of State Propaganda.

State Propaganda in Russia was intended to brainwash and manipulate the masses into supporting the regime. Both Lenin and Stalin used propaganda to make themselves appear in to be brave, honourable, loving and courageous. As a result the masses were subdued into total and absolute admiration for their dictator. In Stalin’s case in particular, propaganda was used to make the masses both love him whilst simultaneously fear his enormous power.

PROPAGANDA  POSTERS 

STALIN – PROPAGANDA AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY 

BACKGROUND

1929	Founding of ‘All-Union Co-operative of Workers in Representational Arts
1932	Decree on the Reformation of Literary-Artistic Organisations
1934	First All-Union of Soviet Writers – adoption of ‘Social Realism’
1935	General Plan for Reconstruction of Moscow
1936	Committee for Art Affairs (KPDI) established
1938	Publication of ‘The Short Course of the History of the All-Union Communist Party’ and ‘The Short Biography of Stalin,

RUSSIAN ART AND CULTURE BEFORE STALIN

In the early days of Communism, the Soviet authorities were prepared to tolerate a great deal of diversity in revolutionary art and culture. Art during this period (1920-30s) was revolution in many senses, deliberately experimental and different from traditional art forms

• Kasimir Malevich = abstract paintings such as ‘Black Square’

 

• Leon Theremin invented world’s first electronic musical instrument – the theremin

• Filmaker Dziga Vertov, Kino Pravda; slow-motion, freeze frames and playbacks – films with no sets actors or plot

Thiis period also Celebrated modern industrial technology – abstract geometrical          shapes that resembled shapes in factory buildings

• Composer Alexander Mosolov – ‘The Iron Factory’ and ‘Steel’

… and promoted revolutionary heroics

• Sergei Einstein = trilogy of films celebrating the struggle of the workers against the Tsar

RECONSTRUCTING THE ARTS

1930 – Stalin expresses his discontent with Soviet Art. In ‘The Bolshevik’, he argues that revolutionary art should ‘express government opinion’ rather than ‘individual creativity’

Art meant nothing to the average peasant or worker – abstract shapes, surrealist films and experimental music were incompatible with the Soviet masses

REORGANISING SOVIET LITERATURE – SOCIALIST REALISM: ‘ART FOR THE WORKERS’

Art was re-organised in April 1932, following the ‘Decree of the Reformation of Literary-Artistic Organisations’. This decree established ‘Union of Soviet Writers’ which defined the style appropriate for Russian authors

Ivan Kulik of ‘Ukrainian Writers’ Union’ argued all Soviets writers who supported the revolution should adopt ‘Socialist Realism’. In 1934 – ‘All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers’ officially adopted ‘Socialist Realism’

‘SOCIALIST REALISM’

Refers to art which provides a ‘true reflection of reality’ whilst ‘participating in the building of socialism’

Based into three concepts …. Partynost (party spirit), Narodnost (national spirt) and Ideinost (new thinking)

Primary aim of Government = ‘educating the workers in the spirit of communism’ to deliver ‘art for the workers’….. using art to sell Communist ideology

Return to traditionalism was part of Stalin’s ‘Great Retreat’, a return to traditional values based on modesty and morality

 

ART FOR THE WORKERS

1929 – ‘ALL-Union Co-operative of Workers in Representational Arts’ established – worked in very similar way to the ‘Five Year Plans’ …. Members were set targets to complete a certain amount of pieces of work on a subject matter they were told to complete

1930 …. 200 artists were sent to collective farms and construction sites with the task of recording the ‘heroic work’ they witnessed

1936 …. ‘Committee for Art Affairs (KPDI) …. KPDI, under Yezhov, began to purge Soviet artists

Soviet Government and supports saw this period of a ‘creative atmosphere of enthusiasm’, however in reality artists were controlled, suppressed, and like industrial workers/managers, force to reach unrealistic ‘targets’

INSPIRATIONAL ART

‘Socialist Realism’ = designed to inspire the workers

Artistic required to ‘reflect in art the spirit and experiences of life out in the major sites of socialist industry’

Sculptures celebrating achievements of ‘Five Year Plans’ such as Dnieper Power Station and 70 metre long model of Dnieper Damn

Propaganda posters …. Gustavs Klucis commissioned to produce poster – ‘In the Storm of the Third Year of the Five-Year Plan’, portraying heroic workers mining

Novels …. Valentine Kataev = ‘Forward, Oh Time!’

 

ACHIEVEMENTS OF COLLECTIVISATION

Russian Artists attempted to glorify the achievements of collectivisation

Anti-Kulak Propaganda …. Samuil Adlivankin’s painting ‘Voting to Expel the Kulak from the Collective Farm’

Joy of Collectivisation … Aleksei Vasilev’s painting ‘They are Writing About Us in Pravda’ – depicting happy peasants eating a plentiful meal

Dziga Vertov’s film ‘Three Songs about Lenin’ described the way in which new technology had created farms in the desert

‘Socialist Realism’ continuously expressed they people enjoyed and benefitted greatly from collective farms despite the suffering and hardship and famine the policy resulted in

 

CITIES FIT FOR HEROES

Urban workers = heroes of Socialist Russia

Stalin commissioned the ‘Union of Soviet Architects’ to redesign Russia’s cities …. Cities designed to ‘demonstrate that there is no country in the world as blessed as the Soviet Union’

Stalin wanted to reconstruct the architectural design of Moscow to create ‘a truly socialist city’

Plan followed Five Year Plans by trying to transform the city in an extremely short period of time

Moscow Metro Station – underground station designed like a palace, decorated with grand columns …

Landmark that Russia could show off to the rest of the world

Achievement the workers could be proud of – triumph for Socialism

Distraction from poverty and suffering in the city

Connecting architectural advancement to convey the successes of Stalin’s policies

 

ART FOR THE LEADERS  

Part of totalitarian system = demands complete and absolute respect for dictator

Various forms of art designed to establish the ‘Cult of Stalin’ – making up myths, exaggerations and re-writing history to present to view of Stalin as a revolutionary and ideological genius and the father of the nation

THE ‘MYTH OF TWO LEADERS’

By the late 1930s, Soviet history = extensively re-written

Stalin created the ‘Myth of Two Leaders’ – myth putting himself alongside Lenin as a hero of the revolution

Greatly emphasised Stalin’s role in the early days of Communist rule, at the expense of many important figures of the revolution, including Trotsky

Propaganda created, history re-written and photos manipulated to fuel the idea that Stalin was Lenin’s closest friend and ally and thus his natural successor – evidence in Lenin’s Testament very much counters this idea

REMAKING THE PAST

1938, two ‘historical’ novels = central to creating and developing the ‘Myth of two Leaders’ – Erasing Trotsky completely from history and emphasised/fabricated Stalin as the most vital and significant contributor to the Communist Party …..

1. ‘The Short of the History of the All-Union Communist Party’
2. ‘The Short Biography of Stalin’

History was written and made up to fit around ‘The Cult of Stalin’

Novel’s supported newly formulated history …. Maria Krickova’s ‘The Tale of Lenin’, telling the story of Lenin’s death … Lenin is the ‘sun’ and Stalin is the ‘light’ that overcomes the ‘darkness’ which is Trotsky

Various paintings constructed fictional historical situations from 1917-24 to show Stalin always by Lenin’s side

Photographs altered, replacing Stalin’s rival and ‘old Bolsheviks’ with Stalin and his supporters

Nature of the Purges meant art had to be constantly changed – after former NKDV leader Yogada’s arrest for example, Dmitiri’s painting of ‘Stalin, Kirov and Yogada at the White Sea Canal’ had to be re-printed

‘THE CULT OF PERSONALITY’

1930s and 40s there were two ‘Cults of Personality’ – Lenin and Stalin; Lenin = teacher + Stalin = Lenin’s star and favourite pupil

1930s, Lenin Cult had a god-like hysteria; Dziga Vertov’s ‘Three Songs about Lenin’ – Lenin literally seen as a ‘ray of truth’ who ‘brought life to the deserts’

Building of Lenin’s mausoleum – Lenin wish was to be buried next to his mother but Stalin had his body embalmed and put on public display – immortalised in a god-like way ….. Mausoleum = effectively a Communist shrine met by masses of Lenin’s ‘followers’

‘Lenin Cult’ = crucial to totalitarian regime – powerful new symbols and rituals which replaced Christianity and allowed Russian citizens to form an emotional bod with the regime

Mid-1930s – Soviet artists and journalists generated a ‘Cult of Stalin’

Implied Stalin was Lenin’s naturally, divine successor and in many ways the embodiment of Lenin’s immortal revolutionary spirit

Some artists even implied that Stalin was the ghost of Lenin: ‘Long Live the Stalinist Order of Heroes and Stakanovites’ in which Stalin stands in front of a ghostly apparition of Lenin

‘Pravda’ praised Stalin’s ‘divine’ wisdom on a daily basis

Birth of a new ideology – ‘Marxism-Leninism-Stalin’: linking/connecting Stalin to Marx and Lenin, the legendary figures of the revolution

Stalin’s birthday becomes a national celebration – organised parades of marching troops, happy children and workers

Purpose of Cult = allow ordinary citizens to identify with the regime – discontentment with local conditions and economic hardship blamed on regional leaders and general ‘sabateurs’ whilst good things in life were associated directly with Stalin

1940s ….. ‘Cult of Stalin’ had progressed significantly

1941-45 = stressed his role of war leader …. Proganda posters, news reports and propaganda films showing Stalin and the ‘Red Army’ as a fierce force who resited the evil force of Nazi

Post WWIII – Stalin presented as a world leader

Soviet media presented Stalin as the hero who ‘liberated’ Eastern Europe from Nazi Control…. Eastern European nations taught to respect Stalin and encouraged to embrace Communist ideology + a union with the USSR

1950s – Stalin the intellectual: Wanted to be viewed as a master theorist and genius of communism …published ‘Marxism and Problems of Linguistics’ …article appeared in 1950 and was praised in the Soviet Press, described as an intellectual breakthrough

THE ‘CULT OF IMPERSONALITY’

Stalin’s biographer, Robert Service, has suggested that the Stalin cult is best understood as a ‘cult of impersonality’

In spite of the Russian people being taught to worship and respect Stalin in an obsessional, ‘god-like’ manner …… very little in fact was revealed about his history and character

Kept his personal life extremely private …..

Pre-1936 = no mention in the official press of Stalin’s children or family life

Stalin actively discouraged the publication of his early speeches and any attempts to write officials biographies

Rather than focusing on Stalin’s personality, the cult concentrated on the glamorous/appealing side of the Soviet regime ….

General view of Stalin as a mysterious, brilliant embodiment of socialism rather than any insight into Stalin’s life – focused of Stalin’s professional life and achievements rather than Stalin as an individual – he was in many ways a symbol of the regime rather than a person himself

Stalin was a complex and unstable character driven by hatred and paranoia …. This had to be disguised and kept from the public

 

CONCLUSION

Stalin’s regime = built on fear but not fear alone

During the famine, terror + hardships of Five Year Plan, Soviet Art/Propaganda offered the people a vision of a new society designed to inspire them and to continue the struggle to build socialism

Leadership cult gave the impersonal nature of the Soviet bureaucracy a human face, and created a point of emotional contact between the regime and the people

Art = allowed the people to escape the fustrations of everyday life …. Escapism which tied them to the ideals of the regime

‘Socialist Realism’ = very much a form of Social control.