The term ‘leporello‘ refers to printed material folded into an accordion-pleat style. Also sometimes known as a concertina fold, it is a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front and back. The name likely comes from the manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, who the Famed rogue and lover Don Giovanni (in Italian – also known as Don Juan in Spanish) has seduced so many women that when Leporello displays a tally of his conquests, it unfolds, accordion-style, into a shockingly long list. Many leporellos are used as a way of telling a story, while others are purely visual.

In the Victorian era, leporellos were quite commonly used as travel souvenirs, depicting beautiful, panoramic scenes of the places travelers had just seen, customs and culture of the region and the like. They are often used in illustrated children’s works, as well. Collectors of books and paper ephemera will love their scarcity and delicate beauty.

Book: The Dailies by Thomas Demand

Artist and photographer Thomas Demand partnered with London-based publishers Mack Books to create a limited edition catalogue for his project, entitled ‘The Dailies‘. Demand has created the poetry of the everyday; haikus of glanced objects, dreamlike scenes and liminal locations. ‘The Dailies’, as the photographic installation is called, recalling the daily rushes of a feature film, takes over a whole floor of the building. Accompanying the exhibition (presented by Kaldor Public Art Projects) is a limited-edition catalogue, which Demand produced in collaboration with London-based publishers Mack Books.

The substantial 32-page volume can be displayed in a circular fashion, appropriated to its leporello binding. Its concertina pages, a nod to the fluted pillars which make up the base of the building, come together to form a 16-pointed star which is encased with a magnetised closing system in faux leather, ‘The Dailies‘ was designed by Naomi Mizusaki of Supermarket, who has worked with Demand on a number of books – such as his most recent publication, “La Carte d’apres Nature“. The photographs that make up The Dailies are of cardboard and paper sculptures. Some 
of them – like the coffee cup caught in a chain link fence or the twist of paper trapped in a grating – speak of transient urban scenes. Other constructions (of windows, doors or changing rooms) are places of passage, not residence; as is the location of the exhibition, a members’ club for travelling salesmen.

In the CTA building, each of the photographs are framed on the wall of a different room, radiating from a circular corridor. Demand has made subtle adjustments to the contents and fittings so they complement his beautifully melancholic images of life’s lost details. The installation is a collaboration with the writer Louis Begley, author of About Schmidt, who has penned a short story about a commercial traveller’s dream-state visit to the CTA. Fragments of the story, Gregor in Sydney, are printed in each room and on the pages of the book. A unique scent has also been created by Miuccia Prada.

Read more at-  http://www.wallpaper.com/art/book-the-dailies-by-thomas-demand#kXF1HvFXJodlWO3u.99

My Further Interpretations

I feel using the concertina and leporello form would be a great way to narrate a story and a pattern, as well as being able to compare two different narratives exploring my hypothesis of love. By appropriating some of the works like Thomas Demand, I feel this is a good way of using similar skills by comparing ‘non-traditional photos associated with love‘ with those that of ‘traditional‘ love images on the other side, submerging the concept of how they can be cross-contextually similar or even indifferent.

During my research process, I thought it would be beneficial to contact the Societe Jerseaise Photographic Archive in Jersey, in order to get a larger perspective towards what ‘love‘ was like historically, and whether it fits my specifications of it being seen by society as ‘truthful‘.

I emailed Karen and Gareth explaining the hypothesis of my project and that I was exploring the perceptions of what love is like in the modern day and our contemporary lifestyle patterns, in conjunction to what was seen as traditional methods of relationships. Gareth suggested I should look into weddings as a good way of approaching love, and I visited the Archival Website and searched up images associated to words like “weddings“, “ceremony” and “Church“. These where the following results:

The Laporello 

During my time down at the Societe Jerseaise Photographic Archive, Gareth had kept ahold of a archival artefact that had been sitting around for a while within the archive. Gareth kindly allowed me to take the Laporello and to use it at my own will. I think this Laporello is beautiful, and could be something that I use as part of my final piece. The red colouring of the box could be used as a metaphor for Love. Love symbolically can be associated with the colour due to its passionate and vibrant animosity.

Further Research

Reading the news paper the other day, I came across an article explaining about how a story of a man names Joseph Tierney. The article reads how Tierney’s death during the Nazi War, is remembered on a “small plinth in a rural part of the Czech republic“, in the village of P´sov. The Jersey Islander was taken in 1943 after the German Forces arrested him for ‘spreading seditious information’ – “small hand written notes transcribed from BBC Broadcasts taken from illicit wireless radios“. The article’s main focus was how Islander Pat Fisher found the plinth in P´sov and discovered the remarkable finding of her father after spending decades wondering what had become of him.

“I knew he had been taken and I knew the reason why he had been taken, but mum never really spoke about it because it upset her so much”.

I felt this article has had quite an influence on my project as this concludes the desperation of communicating with someone when social media is not around. The difference of this is this is not particularly a ‘love story‘ but a story including ‘loved ones‘. This similar concept still speaks the same anthology’s, and that is that the difference between contemporary love and traditional love is obviously comparable. Mrs. Fisher goes on to add how letters where so important in tracing the footsteps of his life:

“Really, we didn’t know what happened because he wrote letters from Frankfurt, but there were no more letters after that.”

The discovery of her fathers whereabouts, Mrs. Fisher added how it “reduced her and her family to tears”, and following the breakthrough, Fisher was then invited to take part in a BBC Documentary entitled “Finding Our Fathers – Lost Heroes of WW11‘ along with Guernsey resident Jean Harris, who was also on the search for her fathers grave.

Here is a link to this documentary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b079yq31/finding-our-fathers-lost-heroes-of-world-war-ii

Mrs. Fishers mother Eileen kept allot of documents relating to Mr. Tierney’s imprisonment on the Island, as well as letters he had sent round from various camps. Despite the camps awful condition, the Jerseyman’s letters and messages from Europe maintain a lightness and a “sense of optimism“. Mr. Tierney frequently refers to his wife as ‘Snooks‘ and sometimes off as “the twerp“. The note begins:

“My husband Joseph Murray Tierney was arrested by the Germans on March 3, 1943, five months before the birth of our daughter. The Gestapo placed him in solitary confinement in the Nazi Prison in St. Helier, Jersey, where he went through many nights of mental torture. The Germans then took me to the prison where they used me as the final weapon in their foul endeavours to make my husband talk and confess to what they already knew. They threatened me, pregnant at the time with being sent to a concentration camp in front of my husband. After a whole day’s worth of questioning they allowed me to finally go home. After this experience I was I was always terrified whenever I saw a member of the Gestapo or the Feldpolizei”.

I feel this quote really strongly shows how relationships where put under allot more stress during the time of the Second World War. In contrast to our contemporary lifestyles, this shows how these sort of factors seriously compromised the emotional and physical states of what relationships had the envelop.

“Never in any of his letters does he ever complain. He said all the time, “don’t worry about me, I’m alright” He was so caring. Even in letters some people who had been in prison with him wrote, they said what a caring gentlemen he was”.

Mrs. Fisher is pictured below holding a picture with her father, Joseph Tierney.

This second outcome is a typology of 4 images which I have taken of food whilst it is being eaten. The intent of this was to show a collection of very daring and vulgar images taken to deliberately look bad, a more extreme version of the vernacular, often associated with the likes of Richard Billingham.

The resulting images subverts the typical view of looking at Jersey produce by showing it in an mostly unpleasant and unappealing light. Whilst this image subsequently gives a alternative viewpoint, it is not necessarily correct that this is in anyway more true, because it has like advertising images would be, manipulated to suit an agenda, in this case the opposite of the intent to appeal to the viewer.

These four images are put together as part of a mini-series I looked at over the course of this project, attempting to photograph different Jersey produce in a way reflective of Martin Parr, close-up and using flash.

I like this collection of images in combination because they show a variety of different vegetables together, which is interesting because of the level of focus and development to such a basic and simple concept.

The images are striking in the sense that they are highly colourful, with a balance of rich colours such as purple from the aubergine, red from the tomato and green/yellow from the peppers. This brightness draws the viewer immediately into viewing the typology with a degree of interest and intrigue, with such a balance of colours holding the visual aspects of the four images together.

Throughout this whole project, I have decided to select the following as my final outcomes:

With regards to presenting these images, I plan on using a triptych approach. I want these images printed out on quite a small scale because I think that that it is what would look best. These images were taken in response to a situation that my friend was in and I think I represented certain aspects within the story successfully.

The other outcome I have decided to present are these:

I plan on presenting them as a little series on foam board, and underneath I plan on having the statements (on their mouth) underneath each individual image. I think this body of work is quite strong and emotive and am happy with the outcome of this series.

This is a storyboard of images  made using a foam-board mount. The images I have used are the best compilation of images taken from the Henk Wildschut farm style shoots that I have completed.

I find that the way the images have been sequenced help to tell a very colourful and lively observation of my experience on the farm, as the images all seem to display a degree of intensity through two different features, bright colourful images, with more reflective black-and-white images.

In addition, the colour images combine with the grainy and vernacular black and white images to create a story which balances a contemporary and nostalgic feel, thus linking the cultural past of Jersey farming to the present and future. This idea is expressed most strikingly in the contrast between the dominance of colour in the Colin Roche photographs, with the more traditional sense of black-and-white in the majority of the Tom Perchard images. This links the idea that whilst cattle farming may represent the tradition and past of Jersey farming, watercress farming on the other hand represents present innovation with scope for development and progression in the future.

Thereby this storyboard draws this conflict to the viewer, a journey they are then taken on through studying the pictures in greater depth.

These images were edited in Photoshop in order to represent the subject (as a victim) being hit. I think I applied elements of Daria’s style within this particular body of work, specifically the blurred effect. Similarly to Daria, I used natural light to produce this image and although It could have been conducted in the studio, I feel that this way adds authenticity and is more comparable to Daria’s body of work. I used a slow shutter speed to make it look like the subject is moving and away from the hand and I think it worked quite well. I think that out of the two images, i prefer the first one as some facial features are more apparent than in the other image. When I took the individual images, I composed the frame so that the subject was in the middle, however I adjusted this in Photoshop because I personally think it looks a lot better visually within the  rule of third aspect.

This image here was taken in order to enhance the black mark o the neck. This here represents the victims situation in which she was being strangled, and I created this black hand print in order to reinforce that. Although it is slightly blocked by the hair, I quite like the fact that it’s subtle yet bold. Something I could have done to improve this shot would have been to make sure that there was no shadow surrounding the bottom half of the frame.

This image stands as representation as the victim realized how bad her injury actually was. Although I quite liked this image in colour (because of the fact that the mark was red and therefore more associated to blood), I think it would look weird being the only piece throughout my body of work that was in colour. Nonetheless, I still think it is quite  noticeable that it’s blood and I plan on leaving it in the black and white effect. Compositionally, this is not the strongest of images that I have produced but I liked the context behind it.

Overall I am very happy with how my photo shoots, experimentations, photo book and final pieces came out. I personally think that they are a good representation of what I wanted my project to be like and what I wanted it to look like as well. I feel like I explored my artists enough to be able to accurately and closely respond to each one. I feel like my research and analysis of some different artists, essays, articles, photographic methods and artist’s photo books really helped me and guided me into what final project turned out to look like. I feel like they gave me a lot of visual and contextual inspiration which I was then able to project onto my own work,which I think was successful. If I had to do anything different within my project, it would have to be to have explored the different truths from my mum’s perspective as well as from my dad’s perspective when looking at the same photograph. I wish I could have included this as it would have allowed me to better explore the theme of truth and therefore have a wider acknowledgement of how different people, no matter how close they are or even whether they are acquaintances or not can have such a different perspective from just a single photograph. I would also be able to interview them and see what they about it in contrast to what I feel like the truth is.

This is the full layout for my photo book. The title I decided to go with was ‘Destruction Is Creation’. I decided to go with this title as throughout the whole exam project, I ended up looking and only focusing on the theme of Truth. Therefore, as I was ‘destroying’ my photographs I was actually creating a whole new meaning to them. I was creating whatever I wanted the photograph to mean and therefore that became my truth. The next thing that I decided to do was to keep all the pages of my book in black. The reason for doing so is because I feel like my photographs would stand out more from the page to the viewer rather than having the color of my pages white or any other color. As you first open up the book you will be able to see a portrait photograph of from when I was little, and this was done to set the theme that is book was going to be based on my interpretation of what I believe to be truth as well as the truth that I created for myself using old photographs of me and my family. As you look through the photo book you will be able to see a range of experimentations  that I had previously created as a response to the four artists that I based my research, analysis and inspiration from – John Stezaker, Liz Steketee, Chino Otsuka and Joachim Schmid. You will be able to see some photographs that have just been inserted into the book without having been manipulated. The reason for this is due to the that I wanted to have somewhat of a balance between my manipulated photographs and some original photographs. You will also see that I don’t really have a standard and neat order to my photographs. I didn’t make the layout of my photo book neat as I wanted it to look like what a family looked like as well as having an authentic vintage feel to it. I got inspirations for some of my page layouts from the various photo books that I have researched and analysed which were –  Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin – Divine Violence / Holy Bible,  Christian Patterson – Redhead Peckerwood ,Chris Dorley Brown – The Longest Way Around and Yoshikatsu Fujii – Red String.  Once my photo book arrives I will also be adding things to it, which I talked about in notes form in my photo book planning blog post. Overall, I am happy with the outcome of the photo book and I think that it will represent what I wanted to project to be based and and what I wanted it to look like very well.

John Stezaker –  I really enjoyed creating my responses for John Stezaker, not only were they easy but they were also very closely represented. I like the way that they turned out and how I was able to create some interesting photographs with interesting meanings behind each one of them to create my version of the truth. I also really liked the visuals of putting two faces together, and I personally think it looks very interesting and it looked almost as if I created a whole new person.

Liz Steketee – My experimentations and responses to Liz Steketee were my favorite responses to create. This is due to the fact that I really connected to her visuals and how she was working with the images in various different, simply yet very creative and effective ways. Therefore, after looking closely at her work , I got really excited to start producing my own responses to her work. I also like the fact that the images that she has worked looked very similar to mine and therefore I feel like that allowed me to connect more to her work and therefore be able to produce similar photo montages.

Chino Otsuka –  This was the responses that I least enjoyed. This is because of the fact that I found it very hard to create almost like an illusion like Chino Otsuka creates with her photo montages. When I was trying to create my own responses, I didn’t really like the outcomes as much I did for other artists, and this is because I felt like I needed to approach this situation the same way as Chino Otsuka approached hers when she was creating these photo montages, however that was just impossible to do therefore I just tried my best. using all the Photoshop skills I knew to create my best responses.

Joachim Schmid – These responses were fun to create digitally and also manually. I decided that, just in case the photographs did not come out the best way when I was trying to do the ripping effect digitally using Photoshop, that I would also print out some photographs onto some printer paper and rip them up just like Joachim Schmid has done. However, with the right brushes that I had found online and had downloaded I was able to create some interesting photographs, which I am happy with the outcome of.

My own – I decided that I would do my own version of some of these photographs as I was in the process of creating my responses for my other artists. I like the way that they cam out, as I feel like I had more creative control over the outcome of the images and therefore I was able to include or exclude whatever I wanted, however always keeping the theme and aesthetic in mind. I feel like some of my own responses are as strong visually and contextually as some of my responses to my researched artists, where I had less creative control however being inspired by them and their own work.

For this exam project, I did not take any new photographs. Instead I scanned, used and manipulated archive photographs from when I was a child. I had previously brought some of my photographs and old photo albums from Portugal over to Jersey. I then just scanned the photographs that I was going to use after I implemented a selection process, which you can see on a previous blog post and started to digitally manipulate them. I decided to use a variety of photographs which go from formal portraits, to landscapes, birthday parties, important ceremonies, to grouped family photographs. I really like the way they look due to the fact that some of them are more than 20 years old and the quality of the photographs back then wasn’t as great as they are now, which is something that I personally prefer. I also included photographs of family members that I have seen in years, that have passed away or even family members that unfortunately I am not close with anymore therefore those photographs are all the memories I have of them as well as with them. I didn’t take any new photographs as I didn’t want to interfere with the aesthetic of the vintage look to the photograph as if I were to put them together in any way, they just wouldn’t look as good as they could do they weren’t included. Overall I am happy with my decision to use old archival photographs as it allowed me to re-tell my version of the truth and some of my feelings towards some of the photographs and to be able to reflect on some of the events that have happened in my life and manipulate them to whatever I wanted.

5×7

A3

A4

Ever since I started searching up for this exam project, I decided that I was going to want to have a photo book as a final piece. When I have previously designed my photo books, I had always used Adobe Lightroom and Blurb. However, after having a look at some books that had been created with this photo company called Albelli, I decided that that was where I was going to be creating my photo book for this project. One of the main reasons as to why I decided to use Albelli to create and design my photo book is because of the fact that the website and the company offer a software which in fact seemed much better to use than Adobe Lightroom has been to use.

Throughout this blog post, I am going to be designing my photo book using the Albelli software and posting my progress from when I start it to when I finish it. I am also planning on posting anything that I thought could have worked however may have not looked so good on the photo book or any other changes that come to mind as I am in the middle of designing it.

This is the software, Albelli, that I decided to use for the designing of my photo book for this exam project. The main reason as to why I decided to use this software instead of Lightroom is because I noticed that this company gives us the option to have a photo book that is lay flat. This means that the photographs that are placed in the middle of the photo book will not be distorted as a regular book would be as you would not be able to see then properly because some of the photograph would be lost. This is what comes up when you first start your photo book, once you have chosen what size and type of photo book you want. You can either chose to have an image wrapped around the photo book or have a regular rough fabric cover. I decided to have a regular photo book cover as I wanted my book to have a vintage and family album type of feeling to it. It also need that I can glue stuff on top possibly like Yoshikatsu Fujii on his Red String Photo book. I also decided to go for the lay flat option for the reasons that I mentioned above.

The next thing that you will need to do is to import your folder of photographs which you are wanting to use. One of the features that I really liked is the fact that you could import multiple folders, however they would not all merge together which meant that you would organize your images into different folder for the different purposes.

For the actual photo book designing, this is what I was working with. It was very simple to use. as well as customizing it. You can have different colored backgrounds as well as having a photograph as a background if you wish. You can also add as many photographs as you would like as well as being able to place the image wherever you would like on the page, which is something you would not be able to do if you were using Lightroom to designing your photo book.

This toolbar here appears on the left hand side of the software, and it allows you to to different things with / to your photograph like add borders, shadows, different effects, change the placement of the photographs if you want a more standard and neat look to your photographs.

NOTES:

• have actual pages with sewing done
• have photos where I add a vintage lined paper background border and draw on the picture as well as outside of the picture
• hava a normal photo but then stick paper faces on top of it that have been drawn on
• actually glue photos on top of other photos, possibly make it so it sticks out like 3D
• have another ‘me’ cut up so only my body is cut and glue it on top of another photo – chino
• like John Stezaker – have the outline of someone then cut inside of the body of the person in the picture and then have another photograph underneath it
• have my ‘family tree’ as the opening of the book like where mimosa bloom, but have one for my mum’s side and another for my dad’s but only have me at the end and not my cousins
• have parts of photos ripped out – for this print out a photo then rip it then put it back together and scan it to digitalise it then add to book then leave one or two pieces out of the ripped photograph out when scanning so then when the book comes i can glue the missing pieces from the photograph onto the book
• glue random strings on top of photos in straight lines, crossing each other and others covering a whole face or person – liz
• use paint like liz has to cover parts of photos or add borders
• print photos onto tissue paper and have then facing down or scan them in.

As I wanted to create a book, I needed to think of a title for it. I first of all thought that it could have something to do with family, seeing as my project has been  centered around photographs of me and my family. However, I needed to think of something that would also resemble truth or the creation of a new truth, which is exactly what I did with my photographs and my project. So I started by looking at some quotes of both family and truth. Below are some quotes that I either thought could be good as a photo book title for my project, or gave me some inspiration to come up with something else:

–All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

-It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

– From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.

– Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

– Destruction is a form of creation.

family albums – memories

destruction is creation

de -construction

– every act of creation is first an act of destruction

“In Japan, legend has it that a red string connects lovers by their fingers from the moment they are born.”

https://vimeo.com/102344549

The ‘Red String’ photo book by Yoshikatsu Fujii  is about the breakdown of his own family as his parents went through a divorce. Therefore Fujii is using archival images and different materials from when he was still a young  kid and when his parents where still married. The photo book it self is call red string as “In Japan, legend has it that a man and a woman who have a predestined encounter have had each other’s little fingers tied together by an invisible red string since the time they were born.”  this will mean that those two people are connected through that string forever.  What is interesting about Fujii’s photo book is that throughout time, that red string begins to weaken. Cleverly and creatively, Yoshikatsu Fujii’s photo book begins to have less and less red string, and the string even begins to split leaving some of its string behind. This was done to represent how overtime, his parents began to loose the love that they had for each other and eventually loosing that red string all together, and that’s when the red string finally breaks.  All of the photographs included are all vernacular snapshots with the primarily intention of them being memories to hold on to and to be able to look back at them in the future. For Yoshikatsu Fugii, it would eventually be to be able to remember a time when him and his family where still all together and happy. He is now able to look at those memory snapshots to try and feel what it felt like when his family were all still together.

The whole book itself is divided down the middle and it looks like there’s two different books in one, which some people may argue that, that there are meant to be two books, one for each of his parents. However, the way I personally see it, the book is divided into two separate parts to symbolize his Yoshikatsu’s parents splitting up however they are meant to be telling one single story instead of two. When we first open the book, we can see straight away that the book is separated into two different sections, and in each different section there is a photograph of Yoshikatsu with his dad on one side and then another photographs of Yoshikatsu with his mum on the other. Therefore, it is already setting up the scene of that, his parents being divorced. The photo book itself has a whole range of different photographs, from new to old, from back and white to some more abstract visuals. Yoshikatsu in an interview has commented that all the photographs by themselves do not make a lot of sense, as they didn’t to him at first when he was starting to think about the concept of this photo book. However he has also mentioned that as soon as the photographs where placed together, they intertwined to create a narrative of his parents divorce, them being together, old photographs of Yoshikatsu as a child, as well as some photographs that where produced to convey feelings and emotions rather than evoke memories.

I have chosen to include this photo book as one of my photo book inspirations as I really like how raw and emotional it is. It also connects well to the theme that I am exploring  for this A2 exam, and that being ‘Truth’. Another reason as to why I decided to include it, is because I really liked the way that the photo book itself was put together and how everything is connected. I found it really creative also, the way that the book included different extracts from different stages in Yoshikatsu’s life, some different written notes that seem that they are not meant to be part of the book. I also really liked the way some of the photographs were laid out, some on top of each other, some juxtaposing each other, however Yoshikatsu somehow managed to make them work well to create an emotional visual story.

“The design of ‘Red String’ is so integral to the narrative, what lead you to make these decisions in the work?The idea actually came quite simply. As the book focuses on my parents divorce it didn’t make sense to have their stories together in the same book, so it was decided to make two parts to the one book – just as there are two lives within the one marriage. That is also why it was so important to make these two sides speak to each other as well, to refer back to the fact that they were once together but now are separated. This was also the reasoning behind the use of the red string. The string acts as a binding within the spine of the book but no longer connects the two lovers together – however the children become the red string, the history of the relationship, the connection that no longer exists apart from the threads.This is also why the book cover is made of white felt, it is soft and comforting to touch yet can be easily dirtied and becomes quite precious. The cover will show ageing over time the more it is read and worn down, it symbolises how the family relationship becomes worn over time too.”

“How did you go about mixing photographs of your childhood and parents past with your own work?When I first decided to create a book I didn’t have that much material as I’d only been photographing for about 2 years. I had been documenting only my father photographically as my mother did not like to be photographed as much. The decision was made to use the family archives as it was integral to have the family history behind the work, to add context to the meaning and also to reference the family’s collective memory.As a photographer of course I thought it would be nice to have a book all of my own photographs but now I am much more flexible with using both family photos and my own, especially when it helps build the photo-story. However, I must be careful in what respect I use the found imagery and where it has come from.”

“Was it hard to find imagery that spoke to you and your concept in the archives of family photographs?In the beginning it wasn’t easy to find photographs but after searching through the archives of the remnants of my parents own childhood and mine it has become easier to find material to use in creating a narrative. Once I widened my search to include more media not only photography it became easier. There is one picture that my mother drew when she was a child that I used in the book, it represents her own childhood so the viewer can see much further in time and history.”

“What lead to the decision to turn the works into a photobook?I had so many single images that I didn’t know to fit them all together or to tell a story. However, once they were in book format it was easier to curate a narrative, there was a place for my images within the book, and the story began to reveal itself within the images.“

The photo book named ‘The Longest Way Around’ produced by Chris Dorley-Brown, is a photo book that visually investigates the Dorley-Brown’s family history. It is constructed by historical images that have been interlinked together to create a whole new set of images. It aimed to uncover a treasure trove of archive material not intended for your typical family album. The new images that have been created present a multi-layered alternative narrative for the course of events that shaped the later 20th century. The book looks at two Londoners, Peter and Brenda,  that were born in the 1920’s. These two embark on a series of journeys that were shaped by war, romance and a subsequent settlement in a seaside paradise. The book got started when, these two Londoners were unable and much unwilling to recall some of their most traumatic experiences to their five children. Therefore, a box of photographs, film negatives and letters was handed down to their youngest child, who so happens to be a photographer. From then on wards, Chris Dorley-Brown started to form a new narrative with the archive, integrating his own pictures made in the UK and on travels through Europe that follow in the footsteps of his mother and father. The book is very ‘war’ heavy. This is because of the fact that they were growing up with the times of World War II. Dorley-Brown’s parents were not yet married during the world war two, however they had already known each other as childhood friends. At the of 19, Dorley-Brown’s father Peter volunteered as a heavy artillery sergeant and survived the Battle of Crete, four years as a prisoner of war in German stalag camps, and a death march of more than 500 miles in extreme weather that happened towards the end of the war. Some of Peter’s photographs that he had taken were confiscated as he served his four years as a prisoner of war, however , somehow, they are included in this photo book. The photo book itself addressees subjects of personal identify and memory, and offers potential for a sense of closure for the author. So there is a construction of a narrative here, but it’s quite low-key. This is a very gentle retelling of the story, one where the archive images are put back into places that they very easily fit. There is neither the deconstruction and recontextualization that you find in archival projects where the original meaning is almost lost, nor is there the conscious reworking of key elements in the image through integration with other materials.Instead Dorley-Brown glues it all together with images of his own. The old is mixed with the new to create a scenario where the past is visually connected to the present through images of lakeside restaurants, Warsaw roundabouts and Hackney demolition jobs.

“The question was, what to do with it? It’s the basic question of old pictures, of how you reinvent them and make them into something new. Or do you simply recycle them as something that belongs to the past?”

“I believe in ghosts. The dead and departed remain with us. I would look through this old suitcase full of folders and boxes of faded documents in my studio from time to time – Mum and Dad’s collection of personal pictures, letters, negatives, and more. They held a suspended threat of revelation, but i could not parse them into a legible chronology. They remained just random sparks of another person’s nostalgia. I would put them away but somehow they were burning a hole in my soul. Perhaps I was delaying the inevitable assembling of the jigsaw. I thought maybe I was just the keeper of these treasures, designated to hand them on to a more imaginative descendant. “

“The silent and ongoing inner dialogue with memory and experience seems to become more reliant on hard evidence as time passes, while the brain is steadily upgraded with fresh events. They are accompanied by new artifacts that, being a documentarian, I manufacture at a prolific rate and transfer to unstable forms of media. Archivists call it migration. Unreliable memories are partially deleted as we go on, and what remains is a compilation of edited highlights. At unpredictable moments the remaining detritus announces itself as ready to re-interpret and reorganize. Be prepared; time-travel comes at a price. “

“The innate optimism my young parents exude in these pictures remain as reassuring to me now as it ever was, but i know what happened next. Reading their faces, it’s as though they believe they are immortal. Seeing your mother and father as young people is like seeing the future, not the past. You realize your own existence came about through the most slender and tenuous matrix of events. “

“With photographs you can extent and compress time as you choose, they are interactive and can be assembled into narratives of your own design, without meditation. “

“I start to reconstruct a visual history of these two young and attractive Londoners, both with family rooted in the East End immigrations of the 10th Century. They were just the right age to be up to their necks in the largest-scale conflict in history, but the photographs don’t show fear or pain. “

“We only get the camera out for the good times, right? What the pictures do show is a kind of achievement of escape velocity, a transcendence of terror, a reunion of childhood friend finding themselves beached on an island paradise, so good the can never leave.”

I decided to choose this photo book as a photo book of inspiration as I feel like, with what I wan to do for my own A2 exam, I am wanting to explore the truth about where I was born and where I grew up with the use of old archival photographs of me and my family. Therefore, although completely different situations, I feel like in a way, this photo book is very similar to what I am looking to achieve out of this project. I also really like the way the photo book has been presented and the whole aesthetic of the photographs, as it really creates a sense of memory in the future through the use of manipulation of old photographs with the intention of creating new ones from those.

https://vimeo.com/66457078

“A boy and a girl and a car and a gun. The formula is deeply encoded in American mythology, a twentieth – century commonplace, half threat and half desire. The threat part needed just the slightest suggestion from the broader culture to implant itself in the minds  small – town burghers, trembling in their beds; the desire angle could only have been born of desperate times. Imagine what the appeal might be: you and your love object are desperadoes on the run, hauling the back roads, pursued by sheriffs’ deputies, a loaded weapon on your hip, death in one form or another the only possible outcome. It’s a suicide mission with no conceivable effect, only consequences; a political action for and by a constituency of two. It is the sort of fantasy that can emerge only when people are trapped like rats even while they know that there is an unreachable alternative out there somewhere. To go on the run is to chase the dragon of that vaguely envisioned other life, in full knowledge of the futility of the effort and the inevitability of the end. Since the formula stirs together three of the most combustible elements in American life – sex, speed and ballistics – you simply have to accept that you will explode along the way. The formula was already traditional by the time Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate hit the road in 1958. The principles were laid down ,most famously and enduringly by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in the few years before they were gunned down in 1934. The romance in their case was as evanescent as the damage was real; they were accomplices rather than a couple, although popular imagination supplied the sentiment. But they were married in blood – Bonnie took 23 bullets and Clyde 25. “

“Redheaded Peckerwood” is a photo book that was produced by Christian Patterson which unerringly walks that very fine line between fiction and nonfiction. It is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and it’s place on the land. It is a work with a tragic underlying narrative, as it is telling the story of 19 year old Charles Starkweather an 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate. These two murdered 10 people, including Fugate’s family. During their three day killing spree across Nebraska, they were capture in Douglas, Wyoming. The photographs include the places and things / materials that are thought to be central to the story, depict ideas inspired by it, and capture other moments and discoveries along the way. The photographs themselves include a range of different photographic techniques and approaches, such as photojournalism, forensic photography, image appropriation, reenactment and documentary landscape photography. What Patterson does is that he is able to  deal with a charged landscape and play with a photographic representation and truth as the work deconstructs a pre-existing narrative. The use of fact and fiction plays in well with our exam theme, and therefore being one of the reasons as to why I decided to look at this particular photo book. As well as that, it also presents the past and present, with elements of myth and reality, whilst expanding and re-presenting the various facts, factors and theories that surrounding this story.  Something that is very important in this photo book and something that the viewers will notice straight away, the first time they open the photo book is that, the photographs are complemented and informed by documents and objects that belonged to the killers and their victims. These include things such as a map, a poem, a confession letter, a stuffed animal, a hood ornament and other various items. In several cases, these material are discoveries first made by the artists and presented here for the first time. Something else about the photo book that many will notice is that the work itself is presents as some sort of visual crime folder, with the enhancing aesthetic by including pieces of paper which have been inserted into the book. The many individual pieces included serve as cues and clues within the visual puzzle. In this way, there are connections that are left for the viewer to be made and mysteries that are still left to be solved and told.

The Photo book  named ‘Holy Bible’  was produced by the photographers / artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. it is an extended visual rant that pull together 512 bizarre and disturbing imagery that they collected from the Archive of Modern Conflict. It also presents those photograph superimposed, which means that they are on top of something else, on the precise structure and the physical form of the King James Version, which includes snippets of Biblical texts underlines in red on essentially most pages. Something people have to keep in mind when looking through this photo book, whoever that may be is that, this photo book is constructed by and meant to be viewed in multifaceted contexts. When looking through the photo book,  you will be able to pretty quickly come to the conclusion that most of the photographs that have been superimposed over text are striking photographs which show many sensitive subjects topics such as violence, catastrophe, global and regional politics, religion. power, corruption, greed, propaganda, consumer advertisement, human conflict, nature, sex, life, as well as death. It is using photography as a powerful visual language that can be used and may also be abused for multiple purposes, therefore, it is something which in a way or another can relate to everyone at some point or level. The themes of violence, calamity and the absurdity of war were recorded extensively, and are held within The Archive of Modern Conflict. This is the largest photographic collection of its kind globally. When Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin were looking through the many photographs included in this type of archive they always kept philosopher Adi Ophir’s central tenet in mind “God reveals himself predominantly through catastrophe and that power structures within the Bible correlate with those within modern systems of governance.”. Something quite unique about this photo book is that, due to its brilliant and unnerving format, the viewer is able to open the photo book at any random page and they will most certainly be confronted with some kind of rather absurd, obsessive phrases that have been extracted from the Bible, which within themselves include a juxtaposition of disturbing images of different cruel realities, or some photographs of magic tricks, hoaxes or visual illusions that we as a connected human race go through. Within the photo book, there is also a brief essay named Divine Violence, which is a small extraction from a Hebrew book written by the Philosopher Walter Benjamin.The format of Broomberg and Chanarin’s illustrated Holy Bible mimics both the precise structure and the physical form of the King James Version. By allowing elements of the original text to guide their image selection, the artists explore themes of authorship, and the unspoken criteria used to determine acceptable evidence of conflict. The format is brilliant and unnerving — open to any page at random and you are confronted with rather absurd, obsessive phrases from the Bible, juxtaposed by disturbing images of various cruel realities (or, one of the repeating motifs, photographs of magic tricks and hoaxes based on hokey visual illusions). Lest there be any doubt, a brief essay glued inside the back cover drives home the intent: its title is “Divine Violence”.Inspired in part by the annotations and images Bertolt Brecht added to his own personal bible, Broomberg and Chanarin’s publication questions the clichés at play within the visual representation of conflict.A few thunderously violent lines from Exodus – “… lie for lie. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth … wound for wound, life for life” – are illustrated by an image of an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud. A black-and-white photo of a couple kissing, meanwhile, refers to “My lips … My tongue … my delight” from Psalms. Each time the line “And it shall come to pass” appears (which is often), it is accompanied by shots of circus performers or magicians.

I decided to analyse this photo montage that I created for my own experimentation part of my exam project because this is a very important photograph to me. The photograph underneath all the writing is a photograph of my mum in January of 1997.  This is a very important photograph to me as this is a photograph of when my mum was on the phone to my dad, and also when she told him that she was pregnant with me. The writing on top, although you cannot read it properly and it is in Portuguese, it is a message that my grandmother had written to my mum on the back of one of the photographs that were taken on the 18th birthday. I decided to add them together as this is kind of juxtapositioning  the meaning of both photographs. The time of when my mum officially became an adult comparing to a few years later when she is calling her husband telling him that she is pregnant with me, who is now telling the story about it 18 years later.  When editing the photographs I decided to blend the two photographs together using the difference blending mode as I feel like that added a sinister look to the photograph and therefore would also speak out as a loss of innocence and how the times changed. I personally really like this image and especially the message that it is conveying as well as the story behind it.

This photo montage is composed on tracings done from a photograph that was taken of me and some of my family members during my 5th birthday. I decided to do this photo montage with the some of the work by Liz Steketee in mind with the stitches. However, I decided to go one step further than what she originally did and I decided to duplicate my stitches layer as I was creating this photo montage and reversed it and changed the colour to black, The reason as to why I did so, was because it is actually representing how we all used to be so close and always together as a family, however, that quickly turned to black when me and my parents moved away from where we had lived all our lives. Therefore, the black is almost like representing the absence of the times we used to spend with our family as now it’s been  years since I have seen or talked to some of my family members included in the original photograph. As well, I decided to go with the colour red, for the original layout of the photograph to represent how we, as a family, are all connected by blood, and that’s what keeps us together when we are apart from each other.

For this part of the project, as well as wanting to closely respond to the four artists that I have looking at for this project, I also wanted to have a go at thinking outside of the box and create some of my own images where I wasn’t really looking at a particular artist or photograph. Although I used some of my artist research when creating my own and that is apparent. I also wanted to create some other photographs that ended up being created and produced through the process of when creating other photographs that have ended up being close artist responses. I also just decided to randomize my options and ended creating some weird photographs, however they all seem to have a link to one another and therefore creating a new truth.

I am going to be showing how I was able to create two of my own perspective experimentation photographs using Photoshop .

The photo montage above will be the first one that I will be showing a step by step on how I was able to achieve the look.

1. For this photo montage, I needed to use some resources that you cannot find on the standard version of Photoshop, which means that they have to be downloaded online and then they have to be imported into Photoshop.  What I needed to download to be able to create this look was that I needed to create this photo montage, was some ripped paper brush presets.
2. To download the brush presets, I simply used this website http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/19717-ripped-border-brushes and downloaded the brushes. Then to be able to use them in Photoshop, all you need to do is to go to the brush option and then you will be able to see at the top of the window  a little screw. You will need to select that and then a drop down menu will come up and you will need to select load brushes and then just select the file that you have downloaded and then you will see that your new brushes will be automatically added to your brushes collection.
3. The next thing that you will need to do is to select what image you want to use. Then you will need to open it in Photoshop by pressing ctrl+o and selecting the photograph.
4. The next step is to chose what brush you want to use as this will determine what kind of effect ends up on your photograph.
5. After you have chosen the kind of brush you want to use and have determined the sizing of the brush you are wanting to use you are one step away from achieving the same look.
6. The last thing that you will need to do before you paint your photograph that you will need to select the brush blending mode. To do so you will need to have the brush option selected and then select ‘mode’ at the top of the window. This is what will allow you to achieve that unique look. I personally selected the ‘difference’ blending mode. Once I did that, I just simply clicked once on my photograph, where I wanted the effect to go on and that was it. That’s how I was able to achieve this unique look.

The photo montage above will be the second one that I will be showing a step by step on how I was able to achieve the look.

1. For me to be able to create this photo montage I needed to use the same stitches brush presets that I had previously downloaded and used to be able to create my Liz Steketee visual responses. As we can see, this photo montage was very inspired by the work of Liz Steketee, however I decided to include in my own perspective responses and not hers as I did more manipulation to the photograph than what she has done.
2.  I also created my own background for this photo montage. I was able to do so by pressing ctrl+n and creating a new file. I then painted it a shade of brown. Then with a darker shade of brown I simply used different brushes with different effects from the brush collect that has been included with Photoshop to create the look that I wanted, which was a old, vintage paper effect.
3. I then needed to open up the photograph that I wanted to use. To open up the photograph that I was wanting to use for this photo montage, simply and already  on the same file / window as the file in which I created my background, I simply just dragged and dropped the photograph into Photoshop.
4. I then re-sized the photograph, by pressing ctrl+t so that it would fill the space which I thought to be good enough for my idea.
5. The next thing that I did, was to drag the photograph down in the layers panel so that it would be below the layer of the background.
6. I then created a new layer in which I was going to be adding my stitches to. To do so, I just went to the bottom of the layers panel and select the button that looks like a folding piece of paper.
7. I made sure that this new layer was at the top and this would allow me to have more control over the stitches, just in case I needed to do anything different or erase something.
8. To be able to see both the background that I created as well as the photograph that I was wishing to trace. Therefore, I simply reduced the opacity of my background layer to the point where I was able to see both of my photographs.
9. The next that I did, with my empty new layer on top and select, I just simply selected the brushes that I wanted to use and its colors and just started tracing around the people included in the photograph.
10. The last thing that I did was that, after I had traced the people in the photograph, I duplicated the layer by pressing ctrl+j, changed the color by pressing ctrl+u and inverted it so it would create almost a mirror image by pressing ctrl+t. Then you can either delete your photograph or simply turn the opacity of the background back up to 100% and you are done.

This photo montage was created as one of some responses that I created when looking at the works of John Stezaker.  The main photograph is of my dad at the age of 18 when him and his older brother ran away from home, and with some money that they had gathered decided to go to Disney Land in Paris. Something already interesting about the photograph itself is that without background context, you would not no that he had ran away and would probably have thought / assumed that this was just a happy photograph that was taken during a whole familys’ holiday where everyone seemed happy. As a response to John Stezaker, I decided to insert a photograph of myself from when I was a toddler inside of the outline of my dad’s body. A reason as to why I did so was because he was a dad at an age that is still considered young, and that’s representing that. Another reason  for this is due to the fact that it has been one of his dreams to take me to Disney Land in Paris, however, due to money and work and the fact that my parents had to take care of me that was never a possibility. Therefore, by inserting a photograph of my in the original photograph where my dad was actually there at Disney Land it makes it seem like I was there too, almost.

This is another photo montage that I created as one of some when looking at the works of John Stezaker. This is a photograph of me when I was only a few months old. At this age babies do not have a clue what is going on and will certainly not remember anything from the beginnings of their lives, which is something that I find interesting. I decided to create a phot montage where I ‘removed’ my eyes from the photograph as I do not remember this photograph being taken and therefore it almost feels like this isn’t even me.  I also decided to put it in black and white as when I look back at these photographs of me, even though they were only taken 17 years ago, it feels like they are much much older than that, therefore I felt that by putting it in a black and white filter would enhance that feeling.

The type of photographs and photo montages that I have analysed and used as influence for my own exam project are all quite simple to create whether you create them by hand which is how Stezaker created his photo montages, by having the photographs all printed out and then just folding them in different ways and putting on top of other photographs, or even more simply by just placing one photograph on top of the other depending on what he was wanting to create with each of the photographs. I personally decided to respond to John Stezaker using a digital format to create the same look.The example of my own response that is shown above, is a response that I created when looking closely at John Stezaker’s work.

1. First of all I had to choose what photographs I wanted to use for this photo montage. To decide what photographs I was going to pair together, I had an overview of all of the photographs that I had, then started looking more at the relationships between the people, rather than just deciding on what I thought would look the best.
2. The second thing I did after deciding the photographs I wanted to use I just opened them up using Photoshop.
3. When you first open your photographs they will appear in two different windows, as they are two different files. However, what you need to do is to have both photographs in the same file. To do so all you need to do, is open one of the photographs, doesn’t matter which photograph it is, and press ctrl+a to select the whole photograph. Then to copy it, you will need to press ctrl+c. Once you have done that, you can then close that window as it will no longer be needed. Then the next thing that you will need to do is to paste it on top of the other photograph. To do so, all you need to do is to have the other photograph open, then press ctrl+v to paste it.
4. The next thing you will need to do is to re-size the photograph to the scale that you want. You want re-size the photograph by pressing ctrl+t whilst holding shift as this will prevent your photograph from distorting and becoming out of proportion. As one photograph is on top of the other, it might be hard for you to see exactly where you want it to  end up, according to the photograph underneath. Therefore, whilst you’re re-sizing the photograph, you can decrease the opacity so you can still see the photograph, but you will also be able to see the other photograph underneath.
5. Then next and final step is to cut the photograph to create the classic Stezaker look. To do so, you will need to select the polygonal lasso tool. The reason to use this one is because it will allow you to select part of the image that you do not want in a straight line. To use this, you will need to go around the part of the photograph that you do not want and then press enter so that a selection can be made. Then all you need to do is to press the backspace key as that will delete the part of the image that is selected. Once you do so, you are done, and have created a classic Stezaker photo montage.

Another type of photograph that is also very popular although you might not think so when you are searching him up, and those types of images are the ones where Stezaker places, most likely landscape photographs on top of portraits. There are many reasons that I personally can think of for why John Stezaker could have done so. However, it has seen to prove effective, and I personally really like it and will be showing how I managed to create that look  digitally using Photoshop.

1. The first thing I did, was that I decided what photographs I was going to be using. For the photographs, I had to think about who I was linking with what photograph to be able to create the truth that I wanted.
2. After choosing one portrait photograph and one landscape photograph, I simply opened them up in Photoshop. To do so, I pressed ctrl+o and selected the photographs that I want to use.
3. The next thing that I had to do, was to put both photographs together instead of having each photograph on separate files. To do so and the way to not have to mess around with layers, was to simply have the landscape photograph open and press ctrl+a to select it all and then press ctrl+c to copy the photograph. I then just closed that photograph window and just had my portrait open.
4. After this all I had left to do was to paste the landscape photograph on top of my portrait. To do so, I just pressed ctrl+v to paste it and then pressed ctrl+t to re-size the photograph to whatever size I needed it to be.
5. And then you can either leave it like that, to have it exactly how Stezaker had it, however you can actually use the blending mode options that Photoshop comes with to create a unique look. However, that is all you need to do to be able to create that classic John Stezaker look with your own photographs.

This photo montage was created by john Stezaker. It is clear to see that he has used only one single image to create this illusion like photo montage. The photo montage is made up of a photograph of a man, who looks like he could belong to an upper class, judging by the suit, clean shave, appearance as well as the pose that he was adapted for the photograph. This photo montage is actually very simple. John Stezaker has cut the photograph into two parts at the region of the eyes and has then joined them up again however, when joining these two separate parts again,he has decided to exclude most of the eyes of the man. There are endless possibilities that could be brought up as an explanation to why Stezaker has decided to do so. Something that I can say from closely looking at this photo montage is that it may be that Stezaker views this man in particularly or maybe views that class that this man seems to belong to as powerful. We as normal viewers of this photo montage, do not know what relationship John Stezaker has with this man. It may be the case that it was the man could have been Stezaker’s dad or a role model, or maybe just a random photograph that John Stezaker stumbled upon and thought to use it in his works. As I personally feel like this photograph has some kind of relationship to power, I feel like a reason as to why Stezaker has decided to exclude the man’s eyes in this photo montage is because the gift of sight is something that is very important to all. Someone becomes much less powerful if they are not able to see what is going on around them etc. Therefore, I almost feel like this is a metaphor or a response to how this artist views powerful men in suits or the upper class all together, for the fact that they may seen to be  so powerful, but when something so precious is taken away from them, they become powerless. This is my main thoughts that came up when I was looking at this photo montage, where it is something that is simple but can become very powerful and effective as well as being able to explain a lot of context.

This is another photo montage that was created by John Stezaker. This photo montage consists of two separate and completely different photographs. It is very easy to explain how the photo montage has been created, but that may not be the case for when trying to explain and analyse it for the reason as to why it was created in the first place. First I am going to talk about each photograph individually and just then, I think will I be able to analyse the photo montage as a whole. The main photograph that we can see and the one that stands out the most, which, if I am not wrong is a picture of the Virgin Mary. In a nutshell, the Virgin Mary is essentially thought to be the purest woman that has ever lived and someone who has not been touched by the devil. She is supposed to represent purity and perfection, hence her being chosen by God. The photograph underneath is what seems to be a man either sitting down at home or at a cafe / restaurant reading the newspaper whilst having his morning coffee. He is reading about what is going on in the world whilst drinking a drug, caffeine. I feel like the one photograph is in colour and the other one in black and white so that is the photo montage not only eye catching but it is also meant to be seen as more serious than if both were in colour or black and white. Subjectively, I feel like the reason as to why these two individual photographs were put together is essentially due to the fact that, as mentioned previously, Mary is seen and meant to represent purity and evil less, whereas the common man is cannot resist into the temptation of everyday ‘evil’ acts such as taking drugs such as caffeine, which alter the mood and actions of a human, when we are not supposed to alter anything about ourselves according to God and actions such as reading the news, which subconsciously heavily influenced by many people that have the jobs of telling the public a certain version of the truth, however, as common people, are not entirely aware of this act, therefore it could cause it to influence our actions, again another thing which we are apparently not meant to do.

“I love that moment of discovery, when something appears out of the ground of its disappearance : the anonymous space of circulation, where images remain unseen and overlooked” – John Stezaker. 

We can trace the legacies of the Surrealist movement and of International Situationism in the work of British artist John Stezaker. However, his work also defined a synthesis between the appropriated photograph, media culture and the politics of perception that was to percolate through the London and New York art scenes in the late 1970s.

John Stezaker’s work re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. In his collages, Stezaker appropriates images found in books, magazines, and postcards and uses them as ‘readymades’. Through his elegant juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings.

In his Marriage series, Stezaker focuses on the concept of portraiture, both as art historical genre and public identity. Using publicity shots of classic film stars, Stezaker splices and overlaps famous faces, creating hybrid ‘icons’ that dissociate the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. Coupling male and female identity into unified characters, Stezaker points to a disjointed harmony, where the irreconciliation of difference both complements and detracts from the whole. In his correlated images, personalities (and our idealisations of them) become ancillary and empty, rendered abject through their magnified flaws and struggle for visual dominance.

In using stylistic images from Hollywood’s golden era, Stezaker both temporally and conceptually engages with his interest in Surrealism. Placed in contemporary context, his portraits retain their aura of glamour, whilst simultaneously operating as exotic ‘artefacts’ of an obsolete culture. Similar to the photos of ‘primitivism’ published in George Bataille’s Documents, Stezaker’s portraits celebrate the grotesque, rendering the romance with modernism equally compelling and perverse.

British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

This first major exhibition of John Stezaker offers a chance to see work by an artist whose subject is the power in the act of looking itself. With over 90 works from the 1970s to today, the artist reveals the subversive force of images, reflecting on how visual language can create new meaning.

This is a photo montage that I created as part of my response to Liz Steketee, which is one of the artists who’s work I have been looking at as part of research for this exam project. This photograph was originally a photograph of me and my great grandma from when I was little. I decided that I would  create a photo montage where I would replace the body of my great grandma with some news paper and stitches for a few reasons. The first one being that I wanted to create a photo montage where I was closely responding to the work of Liz Steketee as much as I could. The other reason being the fact that my great grandma sadly passed away the same year that I moved to Jersey. Therefore I felt like replacing her body with a newspaper would almost make it seem like she was the news and that you would be able to tell the real story just by looking at this photo montage. However, something weird that happened whilst I was creating this photo montage is that, I google searched the term ‘old vintage newspaper background’ and one of the first ones that came up was a news article talking about an accident where a few people died and it was written in the Augusta Chronicles, which I found to be a strange coincidence as both my great grandma passed away and the fact that she was also called Augusta. Therefore when I was creating this photo montage I made sure that the name Augusta was present inside of the outline of her body. 

This is another photo montage that I created as a response to the works of Liz Steketee. The original photograph is of my auntie / god mother and my uncle on their wedding day.  To be able to respond to the works is Liz Steketee, I decided that I would cut the eyes of both of them and swap them. I did this almost as a metaphor for the saying that ‘I only have eyes for you’. Therefore, I took that concept and seeing as they are in love and getting married that I would take it literally and swap their eyes around. I really think that the idea worked and I personally really like the way that it came out. They are both looking at the camera at not into each other’s eyes, therefore I feel like it would not the message across as well as I would want it to however, I still think that it has worked well. Also the reason as to why I decided to use this particular photograph and use this particular concept to construct a photo montage is because the truth is that unfortunately they were not married for that long and therefore, the reason for using this image is because I now find it ironic that they look so happy together and now the truth is that actually they are not together anymore. This also works, as they are not looking into each other’s eyes and instead are looking at the camera, it makes it seems like they are already looking at different people are not interested in each other anymore, therefore the love is forced, which in this case is represented by stitches, but it just didn’t work out.

Liz Steketee has many different ways in which she manipulates her photographs as we are able to see when looking at her work. However, Liz Steketee doesn’t really, if ever, manipulate her photographs digitally. The photographs that she works with are all printed out and just then, she begins to manipulate them the way she feels appropriate for each of her photographs.

For the purposes of my project and visuals as well as personal preference, I decided to manipulate some of my photographs in the style of Liz Steketee, however digitally. I used Photoshop and some add-ons that I found online to create my responses. Therefore, I will be showing how I created two of my Steketee responses.

The photograph above is the first one that I will be showing a step by step on how I ended up with the finished look.

1. First of all, you will need to choose what two or more photographs you are wanting to use.
2. Another thing that you will need is a few brush presets that will look like stitches. What I had to do to get them was that I searched up online a few packages of brush presets and ended up downloading two different ones. I decided to download a set that was cute and clean and then another one that was meant to look less neat and more of a trial and error type of stitching. These were the websites where I got both of my sets from.  http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/1637-stitch and http://www.obsidiandawn.com/stitches-sutures-photoshop-gimp-brushes.
3. Once you have your selected photographs and you brush presents, you will need to open these in Photoshop. To open your images simply press ctrl+O and select the images you want to use.
4. To add your brush presents, simply select the brush option on the left-hand side toolbar and go to the top on the program, and open up the brush selection. Then you will see a little screw button on the right-hand side of that window, you will need to select that and then select add / load presets. Then all you need to do before you are able to use the downloaded brush presets is that once you click add/ load a window will come up and then you need to select your download. Once you do so, you will see that your new brushes were added to your preexisting brushes panel, which means that you are now able to use them.
5. The next thing that you will need to do is to have all your images that you selected inside just one window. To do so, you will need to go to each one of the windows that will have your single image on, press ctrl+a, which will select the whole image for you, then press ctrl+c, which will copy the whole image, then you can simply close that image by pressing ctrl+w. Then you will need to place this image on top of the other. So you will need to press ctrl+v and this will paste the image.
6. The next step is to re-size your top image to the size that you want, whether you want the head and facial features to match closely or you may want them to do not look proportionate to each other. Therefore, to re-size an image all you need to do is to press ctrl+T and then whilst pressing shift just simply re-size the image to your liking. To have more of an idea of what it will look like before you start cutting the image, you can see where your images are being placed more accurately by decreasing the opacity of the top image until you are happy and then increasing it to 100% again.
7. Once you are happy with the positions, you can then starts cutting your image. For the image above I only needed to do one cut, this is because I only used two photographs, however, you may need to do more cuts if you are going to be using more than two images. To cut my photo I used the lasso tool, which is on the right-hand side toolbar. The reason as to why I decided to go for the lasso tool is because it allows me to freely cut where I want, and that is how you can get your cuttings to look uneven and more realistic. Then press enter and you will be able to see a selection formed. After this, whilst the selection is still available, all you need to do is to press the backspace key and that will delete that part of the photograph that you selected.
8. The last thing that you will need to do is to add the stitches. So to do this all you need to do is to select the brush tool and the stitches brush preset that you want to use, then select the colour, which in my photo montage above I decided to go with red and white,  and then all you need to do is to click on the area you want to add a stitch. That is all I did to create my Liz Steketee shown above.

This is another photograph of mine that I edited digitally using Photoshop to be able to create a clear response to the work of Liz Steketee. I will also be showing how I was able to achieve this final visual.

1. First of all, like before, you need to make you have selected the photograph that you want to use.
2. You will also need to use the same stitches brushes presets as well as another photograph to go in place of the inside of the person.
3. I decided for this photograph to use an old newspaper photograph that I found on Google images.
4. So what you have to do is open your chosen image in Photoshop, as well as the saved image of your choice that will go inside of the person.
5. Then what you want to do is to cut of the inside of the person. To do this all you need to do is either erase inside or a quicker way is to use a selection tool of your choice; for this one I used the quick selection tool. If you choose to use a selection tool, what you need to do after your selection is done  all you need to do is to press the backspace key and that selection will be deleted.
6. The next thing you need to do is to go back to the photograph that you want to replace the inside of the person with. which in my case was a old newspaper that I found online, and press ctrl+a to select the whole image, then press ctrl+c to copy the image. Once you do that, you then need to go back to your original photograph and press ctrl+v to paste it in.
7. You will notice that your photograph once it has been pasted will be on top of your original photograph, therefore you need to send it to the back of your original photograph. To do so all you need to do is to back the layer of for example your photograph of n old newspaper so that it is below the layer of your original photograph.
8. Then you will need to just drag the photograph into place and if you need to re-size it all you need to do if press ctrl+t and this will allow you to get the photograph to the size that you want.
9. The last thing that you need to do is to add the stitches effect. For this all you need to do is to go to your brushes and select the stitches brush of your choice, select a colour; I personally went for white as Liz Steketee used white stitching and I wanted to respond to her work as closely as possibly. Once you are happy with your stitches, you are done.

This photograph was created by Liz Steketee. I still have not been able to find out if the photographs that Steketee uses her own photographs from her childhood or even from people that she knew / knows. Either way, this is a very powerful image. I believe that, from my perspective, this photo montage is telling us the truth about the young girl that we still in the portrait.  Essentially, what I think this photo montage is telling us, is the true way that this young girl views herself and how comfortable she is in her own body. There’s a few ways in which this photo montage could be interpreted in a few different ways. One way in which I see this photo montage is that maybe this woman has been feeling this way ever since she was a little girl around the age of when this photograph was taken. The fact that the little girl is smiling could be seen has how shes’s been hiding the secret about the way she feels and view her own body and image. She has been smiling to lie to everyone saying that everything is fine and that she is fine and happy with herself, when truly behind closed doors her real self comes out, a part of her that only she knows, and has gotten to know so well over the years, form when she was a little girl. Another way in which I have considered this photo montage, is that maybe the portrait of the little girl has been used, as if to represent a time when she wasn’t caring about what she looked like and was truly happy with herself. However, as she started growing up those views changed and because of that she started to feel bad about herself. I also feel like, still in the same context, that maybe a reason as to why the photograph of the little girl has been used to represent her thoughts that she now has, as a woman, thinking about the times when she was care free and wishing she could go back and learn to love herself from a young age instead of growing up hating her body.  I also think that’s another reason as to why the woman’s face was hidden behind the smiling portrait of the little girl, as I feel like she doesn’t like her face so much that she doesn’t even want to show that as she might think she’s too ugly for people to see, therefore replacing it with a photograph where she thinks she looks nice and pretty.

This is another photo montage created by Liz Steketee, where she seems to have taken an informal portrait of a man, which I personally do not know if this man had any relationship between Steketee or not, therefore just like with my other analysis, I will only be commenting on what I think I see and how I personally interpret the photograph / photo montage. With that being said, I personally think that this is a photograph of someone that Steketee knew very well and  someone who told her a lot about himself to her. I say this as what I am getting from the photo montage and  the way that she has created it, it seems to me that this man has had a lot of internal struggles that maybe not everyone knew about, however Liz happened to be one of them, therefore being able to illustrate it well.  The photograph that has been placed inside of the body of the man is representing darkness, death, destruction, demons in what is seems to be a field of flowers, maybe daisies. These may have been some of the things that he is / was struggling with and only the people who were very close to him knew about. I think that the main reason as to why this such dark photograph, was covering the whole body of the person instead of maybe just the mind, which represent these inner thoughts and feelings being a creation of only his mind, is because maybe the person felt like these thoughts were the ones to control him and therefore feeling that they were taking over his whole body and that these demons, thoughts and feelings where living for him. Another idea is that, maybe this man was hiding his feelings from everyone and that no one knew what was actually going on in his mind, so he thought. Maybe he just got worse at trying to hide it, there more that these demons, thoughts and feelings were taking over him, that he became an open book about his emotions. Essentially what I am trying to say is that, these things became his new image, therefore when people looked at him they didn’t really look at him as all they would see was his inner struggles, he became transparent. However, there’s no way to know the truth about this photo montage

“ I used my life as material for my work. By doing this, I am able to explore the conflicts that exist within the everyday and the richness that is found in the mundane.”

“I feel strongly that life and art belong together, intertwined in everyday experiences. I began doing this in earnest when I got married and started a family.”

“I created composites or “paintings” that define my vision of an experience. Through the use of montage, collage, and purposeful juxtaposition of images, it is my intention to present the “truth” of life. I alter, chop, merge, and recompose photographic elements. This process allows me to represent a moment, a memory or life’s reality as I see it. I disrupt linear structures and confuse elements of time and space to convey my notion of how life truly exists; a combination of independent moments that converge to leave us with a unique experience. This process is intended to jar the viewer and call into question our history through memory and as photographic document. “

“For over a decade, I have altered, chopped, merged, and recomposed my photographs.  By doing this, I create work that deals with the notions of truth in photography and its impact on identity.”

“I use my family images and those from my family’s past albums as material for the work. The resulting imagery tells a “new truth” with re-imagined memories, situations, and experiences. “

” ‘SEWN’ expands this notion by incorporating mixed media elements to expand the work to a new realm, to create object that comes off the wall and has its own experiences.  I cut out, obliterate, and cover up elements of an image to draw attention to what is missing, what may have changed, or what needs to be considered. “

“Pieces are sewn together and dyed to congeal the elements and ideas together.  Thread binds the content. Dye binds the colors. Past and present collide.  Memories are colored by the past, guided by the images burned in our brains.”

“True feelings emerge and break through the expected parameters of vernacular imagery.The pieces in this work are purposefully raw and unrefined, recalling the impulsive and rough nature of childhood.”

These are a few different quotes by Liz Steketee where she explains what materials she has used, the reasons behind using them, as well as talking about some of the processes that she has used in order to alter her images into her final pieces. I personally find it interesting, the fact that she is so aware of the untold truth and the ‘what hasn’t been told or the what has fallen between the cracks’. She talks about some of the processes that I am looking into using with my own photographs to create a similar look to hers. I am also going to be looking through and using photographs  that have already been taken and are of me, from old family albums and old family photographs. I really like what she has decided to do with her photograph. I think that it is very creative and something that not everyone will be able to understand, as it is a complex body of work that you really have to look into in depth to understand or get an idea of why she did what she did with particular photographs. We will never know the actual truth, however her type of work allows us to really come to our own conclusions as reasons for why and what is going on.

This is a photo montage that I created as a response to the works of Chino Otsuka. The original photograph is of me handing my bottle of milk over to my mum or my dad, and the second photograph that has been inserted in, is of me when I was playing with some toys at home. I decided to create this photo montage to respond to the works of Chino Otsuka. However, the way she did her work was completely different to how I decided to do it.  For he to produce her work of illusion, she actually visited the places where she had been photographed as a child and then digitally combined the photographs and therefore they look very realistic, This is something I could not have done due to the fact that I live in a different country to where those photographs were originally taken. Something else that was different to what I did, was that she added herself in photographs with a great age gap between them however I could not do so as seeing that I wasn’t in the same location therefore I couldn’t have taken photographs of myself then. Going back to this specific photo montage, I like the way that it turned out, as I feel like it looks like the most realistic one that I created as a response to the works of Chino Otsuka. I also really like it, as it looks like the sister that I never had or it could also be interpreted as being like two sides to my personally where on one side I am calm and obeying and the other I am crying and screaming. This is another photo montage response that I created when I was looking at the works of Chino Otsuka. The original photograph is of me as a baby, my mum and my dad. The photograph that I inserted is of me and my mum during one mother’s day that was taken at my school. The reason as to why I decided to add these photographs together is because we  are able to see how, even in a small space of a few years, you can already see a big difference and how much people, which in this case is me and my mum, have grown and developed over that small period of time. Personally, the editing of this photo montage isn’t great, and you are definitely able to tell which photograph was inserted and how it looks like it just doesn’t belong there. However, I still really like it as I feel like it’s the future posing the with past, however it is the past posing with the past .

Chino Otsuka’s work is very interesting and looks at what it would look like if you happened to see yourself walking down the street, whether looking at a younger version of yourself or an older version of yourself. The way she creates her creative and astonishing work is that she looks at a photograph from when she was younger, analyses where and when that photograph was taken and then goes back to the same place, when the weather looks similar to when she first took the photograph and takes a photograph of herself in the same setting. She then combines the two images digitally. However, due to me living in a completely different country to where I grew up and where all my photographs of me growing up and that I have used for this project, I could not attempt to try and do the same thing as Chino Otsuka has done. Therefore, instead I just combined two of my photographs, that were taken individually using Photoshop.

I will be showing how I have been able to create my response to the works of Chino Otsuka which ended up looking like the photo montage shown above.

1. The first thing that you will need to do is to select what two or more images you are wanting to use and combine together.
2. Once you have chosen them, you will then need to open them up in Photoshop. You can do so by pressing ctrl+o and selecting your chosen images.
3. The next step is to make sure that they are all in the same file instead of being in different files which is what will look like when you first open your images up in Photoshop. To do so you will need to select the window of one of your images, then press ctrl+a to select the whole photograph, followed by pressing ctrl+c to copy the image. At this point you can close the photograph you just copied down.
4. Then you want to place it on top of the other photograph that you have selected. To do so all you need to do is to press ctrl+v to paste the photograph.
5. Then you will need to re – size the photograph you have pasted. You can do so by simply pressing ctrl+t and holding shift whilst you are dragging the photograph to the size that you want, as this will prevent you from distorting the original look of the photograph.
6. The next step is to cut out the part of the photograph you are wanting to use, which in my case was me. To do so, simply select the lasso tool on the right hand side tool bar and roughly trace around the body or the object.
7. The next step is to delete the background, which you are able to do once you have made your rough tracing by pressing  shift+ctrl+i and then press the delete button.
8. The second to last step is to then carefully erase the rest of the background that you do not want, by selecting the erase tool from the right hand side and by selecting an appropriate sized brush depending on the areas that you are trying to erase.
9. The last step is then to drag and drop it to wherever you want the second ‘you’ to be. You might notice that the colors may not match too well, however with some leveling and color balance you should be able to get a closer color to the original photograph.
10. Once you have done all of that you should end up with your own response to Chino Otsuka’s work. 
    

This is another photograph that was taken of and created by Chino Otsuka. This photo montage is again the manipulation of merging two different photographs into one. The original photograph was taken in 1981 and the second photograph being taken in 2006, therefore meaning that there are 25 years between the two photographs.  These photographs are only a few from Chino Otsuka’s series called ‘Imagine Finding Me’.  The title alone can be viewed and considered in a few different ways. The first way that I have considered this title is that maybe she has always wanted to see herself from an outsider’s perspective and see what see looks like or is like. Another way in which I have considered this title is that maybe the title is a metaphor for her wanting to find herself. Maybe she still, after all those years and after growing up she still doesn’t really know who she is, or who she wants to be. Therefore, maybe she is/was in hope that by finding herself she would know exactly who she or what she wants to become. This could be telling us the truth about Chino Otsuka as a person, however, she found a way to visually present those feelings, thoughts and conflicts between herself. Now going back to the photograph itself, just like all her other photographs, we can see that they are a classic example of what vernacular photography is. However, this particular photo montage is not the same as her other ones that she has included in this series. The original photograph is of her as a little girl posing and looking at the camera in front of what it looks to be a Japanese monument. However, the second photograph that she has included of herself, just makes it look like any ordinary woman walking up the stairs as the original photograph was being taken. The thoughts that come to mind that could be a reason as to why Otsuka has decided to create this particular photo montage is that maybe she has come to a stage in her self discovery, where she can seem to get anywhere, and she just cannot seem to figure out who she is or who is wants to become that she has decided to ignore herself. I feel like this photo montage was created with the intention of representing the fact that she feels like a stranger within herself, that if she, at this stage in her life and self discovery found herself in the street or metaphorically she would have not recognized herself therefore ignoring her. These are just some of my thoughts when looking and analyzing  Otsuka’s work in some depth and detail.

This is a photograph that was taken of and created by Chino Otsuka. Although, the original photograph was a normal and simple vernacular photograph, it has been altered, therefore I am going to be referring to it as a photo montage. So, this photo montage that we can see above is showing us Otsuka attwo different stages in her life.  We are easily able to tell which photograph is the original photograph, this is because she cannot go back in time therefore the original photograph is of when she was a little girl. The first image was taken in 1976 and the second photograph was taken in 2005, therefore having  a big difference of 29 years. Something fascinating about Chino Otsuka is that she is able to manipulate her images so well that it really looks like they are two separate people having a photograph being taken of them at the same time. I personally think that, for Otsuka to be able to create illusory photo montages such as this one, she is having to analyse the original photograph and going back to where the original photograph was actually taken from. Then, with these two similar but different photographs, she is able to digitally alter them to make them look very real.  Here we can see that, she is at the beach, where she is looking straight at the camera both of the times, making it look like someone staged her, however not looking like the same person to look straight at the camera. This is a classic example of vernacular photography, where a holiday or a fun day is specially recorded so the family can have a memory of that day, place forever.

Born in Tokyo, Chino Otsuka came to Britain at the age of 10. The core of her photographic work is based on the personal experience arising from this move and her sense of a dual inheritance from both East and West. In many of her projects she uses self-portraiture to explore themes of belonging, identity and memory. For her, memory is a form of storytelling and the narrative element is important throughout her work. She is preoccupied with the idea of home, displacement, memory and loss. What makes a place a home and where does a sense of belonging come from? For Chino, tracing back and recreating the past is a way to deal with such issues. The imagined and the real, reflection and projection, past and present are all recurring themes.Trained at the Royal College of Art, London and at the University of Westminster, Otsuka has exhibited throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, China and Japan, and her work is held in several public and private collections

Her photo book is narrating the past and present simultaneously, Japanese photographer Chino Otsuka documents her cultural identity, ideas about displacement, and international travels through a series of photos that present her adult self, standing beside an image of her as a child. The images that make up ‘imagine finding me’ are seamlessly integrated digital composites of the artist in different stages of life in various places around the world, cataloging the biographical materials into one synthesized shot. ‘the digital process becomes a tool, almost like a time machine, as I’m embarking on the journey to where I once belonged and at the same time becoming a tourist in my own history.’, Otsuka explains of the both the nostalgic and unfamiliar territory probed within the set. the portraits taken of the artist as a youngster — shyly posing in front of her family home, and whimsically enjoying a baguette on a trip to Paris — united with the mature and developed woman she presently is, invite the viewer to imagine what might have been, and provoke a poignant awareness of the brevity of time.

For the research of my project, I looked at photographer Allan Kaprow, who in the 50s and 60s started the ‘Happenings’ which is the earliest version of performance art, and he pioneered the whole movement. Because of this, I want to also talk about Tom Pope, a photographer I have met through school and made pieces of work with.  Tom Pope is a performance based photographer who was born in Bristol but lives and works in London. Tom is very different to conventional photographers in the way that his work is more about the act of taking a photograph instead of the actual photograph itself. His style of photography is very performance based instead of standard photography and usually creates short films for his work instead of just stills. He performs his work in public and usually involves audience participation, as he tries to break the fourth wall with his work.  

His first project entitled ‘Over The Edge’ was a project he worked on while studying at the Royal College of Art in London. The projects features Tom taking pictures of himself jumping up in the air to make it look as if he is floating, and captured these images by jumping in the air and using a cable release.  His other works include ‘Potentials’ and ‘Blinded By Armor’ where they were more about the art of taking a photograph. Potentials featured him throwing oranges at the camera to try and hit the cable release which would then capture the image. Blinded By Armor is a video where Tom shoots arrows at the camera until he finally hits the lens. Tom is heavily inspired by the work of Allan Kaprow, as the pieces he creates are usually revisions of works that Kaprow had performed and produced. 

This is a photo montage that I created as part of my response to the works of Joachim Schmid. The original photograph is of me and my grandmother from when I was a baby.  I decided to, instead of ripping my photographs, that I would try and create a ripped up photograph look using Photoshop.  The main part about this photograph that really draws the eye is the fact that I have decided to remove / rip the eyes out of my grandmother’s part of the photograph. The reason as to why I decided to do so is due to the fact that me and my grandmother only see eachother once a year due to living in different countries, therefore she doesn’t see me growing up and changing from a little girl to a young woman. Therefore it is almost like a metaphore the fact that she is holding me but she cannot see what who I have become. This is another photo montage that I created when I was looking at the works of Joachim Schmid, This is a photograph of the house where I grew up and where most of the photographs that were taken of me from when I was a baby / kid were taken, I decided to use this image and ‘rip’ it up as when I look at it and remember all the time living there I get mixed feelings about it. Although it was were I did most of my growing up in first part of my life, it was also where I was living happy with my family, thinking this is where I was going to be doing the rest of my growing up in. However, when I now look back at it, and at the thoughts that I used to have whilst living there, I know that that wasn’t going to be case and that one day we were going to move away not only from that house but away from everyone we knew and interacted with everyday; moving away from a happy place to what my parents must of thought would be a happier place, but was it ?

Joachim Schmid’s work involves working and presenting the photographs of others, through the vernacular photography visual. Therefore, the images show various different aspects of vernacular photography, showing lives and key moments in other people’s lives. From the types of photographs that I have been looking at the most, it shows some photographs that seem to have been superimposed, whether this is something that Schmid did after we collected some of his images or not I do not know for certain. Also, Schmid presents some photographs that have been ripped up, and even some that have missing pieces. Again, if this is something that was done before the collection of photographs or not I do not know for certain. Furthermore, from the work that I have been closely analyzing, it seems that Schmid has worked with some of his photographs in a very similar style to John Stezaker. This is as they have both presented some photographs where two portraits have been used and folded so that two faces become one. I am not going to be doing that as a response to Joachim Schmid’s work as I have already done it as a response to Stezaker and have also shown how to do so already. Therefore, I will be showing how I digitally recreated and responded to some other work presented by Schmid.

Here I am going to show how I created the ripped up photograph effect digitally, without having to rip up any actual photographs, although this is something I am also wanting to try out.

1. So first of all I am going to choose what photographs I am going to be using and ‘ripping up’.
2. I am then going to be opening them up in Photoshop. To do so, all you need to do is to press ctrl+o and selecting the photographs that you are wanting to use.
3. The next thing you will need to do is to download some ‘ripped’ brush presets to be able to get the ripped up photo effect. I downloaded these brushes to create my response – http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/19717-ripped-border-brushes
4. The next thing that I did was, I loaded my downloaded Photoshop brushes. To do so all you need to do is to select the brush tool on the toolbar on the left hand side and then at the top, where you go to view your brushes, click the little screw button and then select load brushes. This way you will be able to add those downloaded brushes to your collection.
5. Then all there was left to do is to either use the brush method where you just paint on top of the photograph with white, or you can just use the same brush style that you have downloaded and erase parts of the photograph to create the effect.
6. You will notice that when you start to brush on or erase the photograph that you may want to rotate the brush to that you get get it at different angles to create a more realistic look. To do so you just simply have to go to Window at the top of the screen and then select brush (f5). This will open a window where you are then able to not only rotate your brush, but where you can also have / add different effects to your brush depending on the look and final image you are going for. Once you have done all these steps you should then have your own response to Joachim Schmid.

This photograph or photo montage was presented by Joachim Schmid, and the first main thing that we can see is the fact that the photograph is ripped and therefore almost completely removing a person from it. There are many ways in which I could interpret this photograph just at first glance. My main idea about this photograph is that maybe this photograph was originally ripped up the way that it was, because maybe the two people included in the photograph were a couple and the girl in anger, due to a break up ripped up the part of her ex  – boyfriend. Or it could be the other way around in the way that perhaps the photograph belonged to the boy and the girl was the one that ended the relationship, thinking he was the reason for the breakup therefore removing himself from it but leaving her in as he still has feelings towards her and wants to have a good picture of her to remember. Another way in which I have considered this photograph is that maybe, the people included in this photograph are brother and sister, but perhaps the reason as to why the brother is hardly included anymore could because the brother may have passed away and the sister cannot bare to look at his face anymore and it will only make her feel worse. Again, as mentioned, there are many ways in which we could look at a single photograph and interpret it.

This is another photo montage that was created / presented by Joachim Schmid. I think that this is a pretty easy photo montage to analyse and talk about as I feel like the main reason as to why this photo montage was created was to contrast and show how the little girl has aged into a woman, however their main features new change even with such a long time in between each photograph. One small detail that I noticed is that with time, the eye comes down slightly more from the face when comparing it to when she was a little girl. This could be seen as a representation of how the little girl turned into a hard working woman and not only that but also the struggles in life can be seen in her face. I think that that is another reason as to why the photo montage was created the way it was, using the images it did. This is because you are able to really contrast and analyse the aging process of someone, almost as if you could see their whole life with just that one photograph. Another way in which I personally view this photo montage is in the way that maybe the young girl is the daughter of the woman, and the reason as to why they have been  put together way they did is because of the fact that they look very similar to one another and you can clearly see a resemblance between one another. However, we will never know for sure what the relationship between these two photographs are, if there is any relationship between them at all. We will never know the truth between them, however, it is interesting to see the many different ways in which a single image can be interpreted by different people with different views.

” I think there are no meaningful images. Meanings are created outside of the image. “ – Joachim Schmid 

The work of Joachim Schmid remained something of an inside secret in photography throughout much of the 1990s. despite over a decade of international exhibitions and numerous publications. But by late 2004, it was clear to those involved in this project tat Schmid’s contribution to the field deserved wider recognition, critical assessment, and documentation.

The images showing some of Joachim Schmid’s work and what I will be using as reference to my own work and how I will be getting inspiration from his work all comes from the photo book called ‘ Joachim Schmid Photo Works 1982 – 2007’. It was conceived as nether a traditional exhibition catalogue nor an illustrated critical monograph, but a blend that takes the best from each format. The results are visually beguiling, often hilarious, and deeply moving on a human level, constituting one of the most sustained and original investigations of vernacular photography yet created. Schmid’s work blurs the boundaries between artistic, critic, historian, archeologist and anthropologist in a radical re – reading of the history of photography. He asks viewers to look seriously at photographic material formerly considered unworthy of either the art museum or archive, including discarded snapshots, Brazilian ID photographs, purloined imaged from internet webcams, and eccentric groupings of vernacular photography. At once expanding and short – circuiting inherited notions of the photographic canon, his work deftly questions the nature of authorship and artistic intention in the post – romantic, post – Duchamp western tradition. At its heat, Schmid’s work expresses a quiet but persistent scepticism about the central role assigned to art photography and what we might call ‘high journalism’ as documents of human photographic culture. Without disputing the value of accepted histories and collections of photography, Schmid chooses to focus on what they leave out, and what those other scorned and neglected images reveal about the world of cameras and people.

Joachim Schmid suspects that few people in the world have looked at more photographs than he has. It is a surprising and unstable assertion, but he is probably right. ‘For several years in the late 1980s to mid 1990s – I was a professional looker. I looked at thousands of photographs a day. Once I checked it: I could look at about 10,000 in a day. But after you finish that you just want to close your eyes. No more visuals information.’ At the time, he was working on archive commissions, both as an artist and as an editor critic, combing through mountains of material in search of unseen patterns, undiscovered themes, exceptional images and new ways to understand photography outside the museum walls. Driven by the conviction that ‘basically everything is worth  looking at,’ his work since 1982 has burrowed deeply into the photographic ‘Bilderberg’ of everyday life, extracting a mother lode of insight into the life and death of photographs in our time.

My visual and photographic focus for this photography A2 exam is to use old photographs of me from when I was younger, as well as using my old photographs of when my parents and other family members were younger. I have produced a different blog post where I briefly talk about why I decided to use the photographs that I am thinking of using. However, I decided to use old photographs with the purpose of telling the truth about my childhood and what it was like growing up in a whole different place to what I live in now. I am also using old photographs so I will be able to manipulate what they are representing and their truth, into something that will be able to tell a completely different story to what they originally did, which is something that I find to be very interesting and unique. Because I had an awful huge amount of photographs, there had to be a selection system for me to be able to decide which photographs I was going to be using for this exam.  Therefore, before starting to select my photographs, I had a look back at my four main artists that I was looking at which are Liz Steketee, Chino Otsuka, Joachim Schmid and John Stezaker. I had another look at their photo montages and what they would be doing to their photographs, then had a look back at my own photographs that were similar in visuals, however still making sure that those visually similar photographs were still telling the kind of story that I wanted. Not only was I looking back at this artist’s styles for inspiration but I was also looking and visualizing what I wanted to do with my photographs myself, as I wanted to respond to each of my artists closely but I also wanted to do what I felt like the photograph needed, being able to manipulate them in my own way and style. Above I have included some photographs of the amount of photographs I had to go through to make sure I had a good selection of photographs to use. Because they are all printed out and / or in albums, which used to be the only way to get your photographs twenty years ago, I had then scan each one individually using my printer. By scanning them, I was able to have a digital copy of each one and this therefore allowing me to digitally manipulate them using Photoshop.

Photoshoot One: For this photo shoot I am wanting to respond to the work of Liz Steketee . I am going to be using photographs that I found from when I was younger and manipulate them in the style of Liz Steketee. For this, I will be adapting different techniques like the ones she has used to give a new meaning and truth to my photographs. I will be using sewing techniques to deface some of the subjects included in some of my photographs. I will also be adding faces / parts of different faces to other faces, to create completely new people and / or faces. I will also be scribbling on top of some of my photographs as well as writing words or phrases that represent my feelings towards my situation or my feelings towards a certain event.

These photographs are some from the work of Liz Steketee that I will be looking at when creating my own responses and photographs as inspiration.

Photoshoot Two: For this photo shoot I will be looking at the work of John Stezaker and going to be responding to his work with my own photographs.  I am going to be looking for any portraits that I can find in my archive of old photographs, and will be doing the same style of manipulation as Stezaker does as his own main body of work. I will mostly be doing this in photoshop, however, I think I will experiment with trying to print out some of my own photographs again and try to fold them to create new faces. I can see from Stezaker’s work that more often than not, he creates his new faces either diagonally or straight across in a landscape way. Although I will be doing that, I also want to try to use more than just two faces and incorporate more angles and different features than what John Stezaker has used in his work. For my next response to his work, I will also be putting photographs on top of other photographs like the one we can see on the top right hand corner on the mood board that I created of his work. I will be using different images that I used as well as found photographs online to represent and visualise what the photograph underneath means to me and what feelings arise when I look at the photograph. By using found photographs online, I am also looking into vernacular photography, which using found photographs is the main concept of this genre of photography. Lastly, I will be using the outline of people and buildings and adding something else inside of that outline. I think this is a creative way of representing inner feelings and a good way of telling the truth about someone or a place.

Photoshoot Three: For this photo shoot, I will looking at the works of Joachim Schmid and will be responding to some of his most known pieces. The only area that I will be responding to from his work is the use of ripped up images. I really like that concept of ripping up an image and trying to piece it back together, however, it will never look and be the same as of when the photograph was still intact. I also really like the fact that some parts of these photographs are missing, which is something I will also be doing to my photographs. I will be doing so, as I personally think, it adds a sense of mystery to not only to what the photograph would look like if it wasn’t missing any pieces, but also as it will leave the viewers wondering the meaning of the photograph, the concept behind it and the reasons for ripping up certain images and leaving parts out.

Photoshoot Four: For this last photo shoot, I will be looking at the works of Chino Otsuka and will be responding to her creative and meaning however still simplistic body of work. I will be looking to find photographs of where I was photographed alone, as it will give me space to add myself to the same photograph. Although, Chino has included herself with a wide age gap, that is something that I will not be doing the same thing as her. Instead, I will be including myself almost at the same stages in my life as the original photographs. The reason as to why I will be doing so is so that I can make it look like I am more of a twin like a true reflection of the same person instead of making it look like there are two different people in the same photograph. I think that this way I will be conveying the fact that I was still a kid when my life completely changed, and the fact that I still was in the same frames of mind, which all changed when I moved away.

A lot of these ideas for photo shoots will seem very similar, however, I am going to be making sure that the visuals will be correspondent to the different visuals of each artist that I am looking at for this project.

If You Want It To, The Camera Can Lie: 

David Burnett

Obama selfie controversy is not new 02:32

Vernacular Photography:

‘is the creation of photographs, usually by amateur or unknown photographers both professional and amateur,who take everyday life and common things as subjects.’

Though the more commonly known definition of the word ‘vernacular’ is a quality of being ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’, the use of the word in relation to art and architecture refers more to the meaning of the following sub – definition form The Oxford English Dictionary ‘ concerned with ordinary domestic and functional buildings rather than the essentially monumental’. Examples of vernacular photographs include travel and holiday photographs as well as family snapshots, photos of friends, class portraits, identification photographs and photo booth images. Vernacular photographs are types of ‘accidental’ art, in that they often are unintentionally artistic.  Closely related to vernacular photography is ‘found photography’, which in one sense refers to the recovery of a ‘lost, unclaimed or discarded’ vernacular photograph or snapshot. Found photographs can be found in various different places such as charity shops, markets, car boot sales, in the bin, between the pages of random books or even on the side of a street. The use of vernacular photography in the arts in almost as old as photography itself, as back to when photography was just becoming a known thing and when it got to the point where a lot of people were taking photographs, almost all photographs were taken by strangers and people who we will never get to know, but somehow their photograph could have been seen by thousands of people. Vernacular photography has become far more commonplace in recent years as an art technique and it now a widely accepted genre of art photography. The idea of vernacular in photography is also an indication of photography as a medium informing the everyday, prevalent, naturalised. Something interesting about this type of photography is that it can be seen and understood as an oppositional photography, as it is outside of all the technical or artistic histories, yet, especially with the snapshot, it could also be entirely conventionalised, a manifestation of visual banalities, This relates to the theme of truth in the way that we might understand the images may or may not be separate from their initial intents.

Although our exam title is a mixture between truth, fantasy and fiction, I am interested in focusing only in exploring the theme of truth in photography further. My plan for this project is to be able to explore the truth within family photographs, through the media and the visuals of vernacular photography. I have been researching the works of such people like Joachim Schmid, who is an artist who works with found photographs to create his own meaning of what someone else’s photograph could mean to him, as of course he is unaware of the true meaning behind that photograph as the photographs as the photographers themselves are unknown. This is something that I will be interested in exploring further, which is the perception of different people from the same photograph. I have also been looking at the works of Chino Otsuka, who is a very visually creative photographer with brilliant ideas as well as manipulation skills. What Otsuka does, is that she takes old photographs where she is included from when she was younger and puts herself as she is, where she is much older in the same photograph to make it look like two different people at the same time. Another artist who’s work I have been looking at is John Stezaker. Stezaker’s work involves creating a new person through the manipulation of two different portraits of different people. I personally find this idea very creative, and something that can have a lot of different meanings and reasons behind them depending on the perspective you are looking at the work from. And lastly I have also been looking at the work of Liz Steketee, who is someone who is very creative in the way that she ‘erases’ people out of photographs. Liz’s work is interesting in the way that she uses photographs, and I feel like she has a reason behind each and every photograph, and the method that she uses to create her final images is always unique. Therefore, for this project, whilst focusing on the visuals of these fur main artists that  I am looking into, in much more detail, I am wanting to create photographs that will be depicting the truth about who I am, where I came from, where I am now, and why everything happened the way it did. I want to create my own meaning from photographs that where taken of me, my friends and family as well as my surroundings. My main focus for the visuals is to use photographs from when I was still young. The reason for this is because, it was a period of time where I had no idea that one day that was all going to be taken away from me, where I thought I would spend a lot of my life, and people who would see me grow up from a baby to an adult. However that would not be the case and the truth would sooner or later become my new reality.

I decided to created these images, purely from an idea that I had, however I wanted to connect it somehow to an artists that I have previously looked at and decided to connect this idea with Valerie. The images that she creates are quite perfect in the sense that everything is set up, it looks like she uses some sort of professional lighting and that is something I wanted to incorporate throughout this shoot. The staged and adjusted lights setting about the whole thing definitely connects with the work that she produced. Alongside the written statement I found from her website that I used to represent those (victims) who spoke out. My main reasons for conducting this photo shoot was because I was so shocked at her research including things that women have said to her and I found that just unbelievable, and it really horrified me at the fact that women felt like this/what people had said to them (e.g. ‘my mother asked me what I had done to cause this’).

I already adjusted these images into black and white and did this because that is how I want my final outcomes to be look like. An interesting idea that I could experiment with when considering final outcomes could be to mount them up a foam board, with the written statements underneath each image. One reason for this could be because when printed out, they might come out small and thus the writing may be difficult to read. Another reason to conduct this would be for a powerful and emotive effect, I also think that presentation wise, it would look quite interesting to have that standing out (as I want that to be the primary focus).

Fiction:

Fiction is a form of literature in the form of prose, especially in short stories or novels. Fictional stories usually use imaginary / fictional people, places and or events to create a whole new world. Stories that are classified as fictional are often ones that have been created through the imagination, compared to history or facts. Fiction is open to interpretations and is an act of creative inventions. This therefore meaning that fiction is not expected to tell the truth, which allows to create very unrealistic stories for our entertainment, while allowing someone to open their imagination up to us. Fiction is actually very similar to fantasy but it is also an opposite of the truth. Some photographers and artists that I have come across when I first researched this topic were people such as James Casbere, who creates fictional landscapes inside a studio and makes them look realistic. I find his work very interesting as it is blurring the lines between the truth and the fictional.; Ursus Wehrli, who uses small toys such as cars and figurines to create a fictional reality world.; Lucas Simoes ” To burn pictures, a way of physically erasing a memory by burning it, so with time, the image that is burnt will disappear from your memory”. Lucas Simoes uses photographs which he has printed out and burns them to create a whole new fiction memory in his head about that one photograph, therefore distorting the original meaning with a new one.; Didier mansard creates fictional and dream like landscapes in a gloomy way, which are very simplistic, however enabling you to emerge in his vision of the world.;   Kyle Kirkpatrick constructs tiny dioramas using the topographies of carved books. “My practice is primarily concerned with the notion of the imagined landscape. I present man – made objects and natural materials simultaneously to form carefully and meticulously composed installation works. I capitalise on intrigue taking objects out of context reinventing their use, pushing the viewer to see beyond what I present before them, a glass could be interpreted as a lake, a metal bracket as a cliff.”

Fantasy: 

Fantasy’s dictionary definition is ‘the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially thing that are impossible or improbable.’ Fantasy is a trans media genre and its narratives are essentially fictional.  For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fantasy, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent.Fantasy is something that is produced by the imagination on an idea of something that is far from the norms of reality. Fantasy in a psychological sense is broadly used to cover two different senses, conscious and unconscious.Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. Fantasy is a category of fiction that uses magic and supernatural elements to create something unique. With fantasy, you are able to venture off into your own little world, enabling you to create very unusual pictures that others might not get, however they might mean a lot to you. It is much easier to identify typical elements of fantasy. than is it to understand the category of fantasy itself. There can be little doubt that, in practice, the genre of fantasy is pretty well defined, concretely manifesting itself in the shelves reserved for it in video shops and bookstores. Fantasy is a trans media genre and its narratives are essentially fictional.  For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fantasy, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent. Some photographers and artists that I firstly came across when researching the topic of fantasy in photography are people like Paula Rego which worked on looking at psychological dramas, which for many, specially people with mental disorders could view some of these as their own fantasy; Moira Sprunt which looked at merging a person’s face with another person’s face through the use of a projector, to make the person standing in front of it look like someone they can  only dream of looking like, aiding them visually with their fantasy of looking like their idol. ; Ana Schuleit, who looked at creating the outside world inside of buildings by paving the floors of different buildings with flowers. ; JerryUlesmann, who looked at surrealism and alternate realities by manipulating landscapes in various different manners for various fantasies of his own.; Erwin Blumenfeld who plays with perception ad our imagination through the use of human faces.; Duane Michals, who looks at different perceptions someone can have of themselves when looking in the mirror, with the use of a distorting mirrors to create unrealistic and distorted images of a human face.; Jon Von Holleben , who was interested in looking into something which pretty much every human on earth has thought about which is flying. He brings this fantasy of ours to life by using the floor as it’s main prop.

Truth:

What is the truth? is a very simple question, however the answer itself is not simple at all. One of many definitions of truth that ‘it conforms to reality, fact or actuality’. But this basic definition is not complete because its definition is open to interpretation and a wide variety of applications.  For example, just from reading that one definition we can start bringing up other questions which are very similar to what is the truth, however carry along with them a heavy answer such as what is reality? what is fact? what is actuality? One main thing to keep in mind when talking about the idea of defining the truth, is that every human being has a different perception of what the truth is; My perception of the truth could be nothing alike what someone else’s perception of the truth is, and actually they my think that my perception is wrong, weird or could be the complete opposite and I could be thinking exactly the same thing. A great example of this is documentary photography. Now, we are all generally told throughout our lives what is true, what could be true and what isn’t true, and documentary photography is something that we often see in places where a lot of people are very influenced by what they see , and one of these places being the tv and the internet. However, when we are looking at these types of photographs and being expose to them, we are actually only looking at what the photographer wants us to look at, in other words we are only looking at the photographer’s perception of the truth, which could be different to ours if we were to photograph the same event / scenario that they were photographing. Generally things that are true are fact to reality or committed to an original standard. The word turret it self conveys the power of honesty and the opposite of fake / false. The truth is very powerful. By telling someone our  truth or someone else’s truth we are exposing ourselves and others to everyone and anyone.The topic of truth is often debated, particularly is areas of philosophy, religion and art. Now, when looking at how some photographers interpret truth, there was a lot of variation between a lot to different topics in which the truth can be told and exposed truth the media of photography , and it was also fascinating to actually look at visuals of someone’s perception and perspective of what the truth about a certain thing is.  Some names that came up that stood out to me when first researching the topic of truth in the media of photography were photographer’s such as; Richard Avedon with the complex truths beneath the beautiful facade; Jill Greenberg with portraying real emotions; Richard Billingham with the truth about some very close to him and their struggles to keep a family together; Nan Golding with looking at the truth  behind different dark sides of life through the consumption of drugs and alcohol; Martin Parr with the obsessive pursuit of a ‘truthful’ representation of British culture; Xuchen which looks at what is someone’s truth about living in two different cultures and societies at the same time.

To carry on my personal investigations, I wanted to capture one of my friends, Emma, who is a regular Tinder user herself. I wanted to capture Emma just like I did with Freddie; for instance, her as her usual self, what she would usually dress in, and what she would make more of an effort for.

Emma in the Morning

The one thing I find most interesting about social media sites, and in this case, Online dating apps, is the fact people not perceived ever as their usual self. Allowing me to work with Emma in a way that does so is really significant as the reader is assured that in this case its a reliable piece of information that is eventually acknowledged.  The first image that I took of her was wearing pyjamas. Emma like to wear pyjamas in her spare ‘chill time’, which is perfectly okay, but do her fellow Tinder users know this? or any of her recent ‘matches’ – the reader is drawn to seek questions about the vulnerability of her current situation. – Is what Emma is posting online projected as her true self? – this is something as an artist  needs to find out through the use of imaging.

Emma’s Usual Self 

I wanted to capture Emma’s usual self also. I felt this was a good reflection to give the reader a reliable sense that Emma is a truthful person to the overall ‘dating site community’. I composed Emma to be very natural in order for this to happen and used the setting of her room to characterise her even further. Because her room is rather messy, this could suggest that she is not what she say she is on social media, as people may pursue her as someone who is ‘neat’ by her perfectly composed / touched up photographs.

Smart Emma

To end this shoot, I dictated what would most likely be featured on Tinder, as if there was an abbreviation to its social ‘guidelines’. I composed Emma wearing her typical sixth-form uniform in order to show that she is part of the Education System, something that is may not mentioned as much on her page.

Further Ideas

In order to take this further, I plan to appropriate Emma’s character and to manipulate it by producing a Tinder profile for her. I think by having a role reversal between what was the subject  s the art  now becomes that the artist is the art whereby they narrate a false-looking story of someone else, in effect masking their individual persona.

Exam Criteria:

This has been taken from the exam paper that we have been given for this year’s photography exam. I decided to add this in as it is important to keep coming back to the specification to make sure that we are doing what they are asking of us.

The theme: Truth, Fantasy or Fiction: 

The ability to reproduce a true likeness by hand hands a magical fascination; as testified by the subconscious urge to view the work of any artist caught working ‘en plein air’. Certain artists’ candid honesty create disturbing imagery wether illustrative or political. Jenny Saville’s self – portraits and Otto Dix’s Stormtroopers Advancing Under a Gas Attack are examples. The latter painting exploits abstraction to emphasise the true reality of the horror of war.

The desire to produce a true representation of objects, people and landscapes has been one of the driving forces behind the refinement of a wide range of media available to the contemporary artist / designer. Some of he most notable advances have been oil paint, originally developed from the 15th to the 19th century, and more recently, plastic – based paints and synthetic resins. The photorealist paintings of John Baeder and Ralph Goings, along with the super – realist sculptures of Ron Mueck, demonstrate just how sophisticated these developments have become.

Baudelaire suggested that artists must be truly faithful to their own nature. Artists have often been singular in pursuing their personal vision of the world. William Blake argued that he did not want to observe the human figure because that would get in the way of his own inner vision of how people looked. ‘I will not reason and compare: my business is to create’.

Artists in many other cultures such as Aboriginal, Inca, Aztec and Polynesian seem to consciously resist trying to produce faithful likeness of their subjects. Their objectives often intend to depict spiritual qualities, perhaps in response to a fear that any accurate rendering of a living being may somehow capture its soul or spirit.

Scientific analysis and documentation has resulted in some exquisite studies of both flora and fauna. The faithful rendition of insects in William Jones and Cath’s Hodsman’s paintings, for example, demonstrate meticulous observation and sensitivity. Leonardo Da Vinci, Rodin and Michelangelo’s studies of the human form also demonstrate these qualities of analysis and discovery. Contemporary artists Danny Quirk and Gunther von Hagens continue to be driven by this fascination for human anatomy.

Written propaganda has been used to influence and steer public opinion with many political and religious movements claiming to possess the only true path or philosophy. Each movement has commissioned artists to embellish texts and illustrate their beliefs for public consumption and maximum impact. The communist and fascist posters of the early 20th century exemplify the power of this form of communication.

Here are some further suggestions related to the theme that might inspire your journey:

– life, death, interrogation, torture, war, intolerance.

– discovery, dissection, archeology, astronomy, astrology.

– magnifying glasses, microspes, binoculars, computers.

– mirrors, reflective surfaces, lights.

– love, trust, marriage, divorce, conciliations.

– synagogues, churches, mosques, cathedrals.

– conspiracy, slavery, politics, corruption, money, power.

– detectives, police, law, justice.

– science, maths, theories, measuring instruments, calculators, books.

– folk tales, myths, sagas, poems, tapestries.

As part of my planning, I have decided to capture a few series of short-story video clips as well as a series of portraits in order for me to get a deeper insight into love stories of people in modern day society as well as those who have been in relationships in longer periods of time. I have chosen family and friends to be apart of this topic, as I feel I can relate personally as a viewer and a director which allows me to empathise with situations taking place.

My first short-story video is of my nanny, Paula.  In this short video she describes her love life with her and her husband Joseph.

Carmen Winant opens with four rhetorical questions surrounding the truth behind art and conceptualism as Sherrie Livine’s ‘Mayhem‘ retrospective opens in the Witney Museum of American Art. Visitors are bound to contemplate these thought-provoking questions:

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

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a collective group of artists including Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Sherrie Levine at the time where considered as ones who dubbed the “Pictures” generation. This cohort began using photography to examine the strategies and codes of representation. In reshooting Marlboro advertisements, B-movie stills, and even classics of Modernist photography, these artists adopted dual roles as director and spectator. In their manipulated appropriations, these artists were not only exposing and dissembling mass-media fictions, but enacting more complicated scenarios of desire, identification, and loss.

“After Walker Evans”

 The show displays Levine’s earlier photographic work in addition to more recent sculptures, photos and collages that date back to the late 1970s. “After Walker Evans” is one of her series of photos on view. To make the works, Levine photographed Walker Evans’s famous pictures of poor Alabama sharecroppers in 1979. Evans took the photos in 1936 while he was working for the United States government.

Levine wasn’t using his images for source material, to document America’s Great Depression or the Borroughs family. Rather, her photographs of his photographs were the finished product. Appearing identical to their sources, only this time Levine had declared herself to be their author and the appropriation artist, the original ‘artist’ for that matter.

”The pictures I make are really ghosts of ghosts,”

– Levine said in an interview with Arts Magazine in 1985.

This series became a landmark of postmodernism, both praised and attacked as a “feminist hijacking of patriarchal authority“, a critique of the commodification of art, and an elegy on the death of modernism. Far from a high-concept cheap shot, Levine’s works from this series tell the story of our perpetually dashed hopes to create meaning, the inability to recapture the past, and our own lost illusions.

“It is something artists do all the time unconsciously, working in the style of someone they consider a great master, I just wanted to make that relationship literal.”

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
NOVEMBER 10, 2011 – JANUARY 29, 2012

SHERRIE LEVINE: “Mayhem”

“The Past carries a secret index with it, by which it is referred to its resurrection. Are we not touched by the same breath of air which was among that which came before?”

—Walter Benjamin

The term ‘mayhem‘ hasn’t always meant ‘disorder’. It comes from the word maim, and until the late 19th century was used to denote the “infliction of physical injury on a person, so as to impair or destroy that person’s capacity for self-defense.” The words usage changed around 1870 but it continued to refer to “violent behaviour, esp. physical assault” until quite recently; according to the Oxford English Dictionary its usage did not designate “rowdy confusion, chaos, disorder” until as late as 1976. When Levine began photographing photographs, the word mayhem was not so far removed from its association with bodily harm. And while photographing photographs means that actual bodies are nowhere in sight, the show has far more to do with destruction than may at first be evident.

In Levine’s ‘Mayhem‘ the motif of discourse has tended to focus on the problem of authorship and the subversion of the unique art object. Levine’s re-photography and her re-productions of Duchamp’s ‘ready-mades‘ have provided important critiques of artistic institutions and practices. However, by 2011, appropriation itself has became so vividly appropriated that it was difficult to view Levine’s work as critical, or even realistic. The ideas put forth by appropriation had been thoroughly diluted by time and repetition, the idea that appropriation subverts the author’s function was a questionable statement in itself.

The significance of Mayhem does not dwell on the alleged challenge to the categorised order provided by an author as well as the cultural or monetary value that the author or painter’s name can confer on or to an object. Neither is it a simple matter of order imposed on disorder—artists such as Duchamp, Evans, and Courbet are thoroughly circumscribed entities that do not need to be explained or contained by Levine. Mayhem’s function, therefore, is not so much critical as it is evidentiary: Levine’s construction whereby she uses the repetition of objects and images, – its sterile organization, provides proof of an illness particular to contemporary society—a society overwhelmed by images and reproductive technology and consequently obsessed with the preservation and organization of surrogate records.

Any retrospective is a sort of archive, but in Levine’s work the archival impulse, the “gathering together of signs” into a “single corpus…in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration” is particularly apparent. Mayhem is not simply organized, it is mentally deranging—evidence of a deep-seated cultural anxiety of which the copy, the archive, and the list are both symptom and cause.

“Repetition itself,”

writes Derrida,

“The logic of repetition, indeed the repetition compulsion, remains…indissociable from the death drive.”

My Further Interpretations

Following on from Levine’s ‘Mayhem‘ I have learnt the significance of repetition. In this project appropriation is a major motif – reproducing acts of love and manipulating peoples way of finding the emotion is immediately deemed debatable. The destruction of a natural path can definitely succumb to the way we live in modern society and alike Mayhem, the reader see how people change when opportunities to short-cut routes arise.

What is this series all about?

‘Food’ is a photo-book by Henk Wildschut published in 2013

In this series Wildschut goes on an investigative journey, exploring the everyday happenings and occurrences of a meat processing factory. Wildschut visits every single part of the factory, ranging from the inside of the slaughter room to the staff showers and canteen.

The inspiration Wildschut took in the making of this book was to find out the truth of what goes on in a factory farm; gaining first-hand  an understanding of an industry which is so often scrutinised. Wildschut did not want to just accept the often credited view of a meat processing factory being cruel, barbaric and horrendous – he wanted to come up with this judgement himself.

On the other hand Wildschut has had himself, many concerns and preconceptions of factory farming. This process was a journey of realisation, of which he now although not completely swayed by this method of farming has become more reassured and accepting of the entire industry.

Wildschhutch summarising his experiences …

“Few subjects generate as much discussion as the subject of food. Such discussion is increasingly marked by suspicion and pessimism about how our food is produced. Two years ago, when I was asked to make an in-depth study of the subject of Food for de Rijks Museum in Amsterdam.  I was full of preconceptions about the food industry. I saw it as dishonest, unhealthy and unethical. More than that, it was contributing to the decline of our planet, unlike in the good old days, and I felt that the magic word ‘organic’ was going to solve everything. So when I embarked on this project, my first impulsive reaction was to bring to light all the misunderstandings about food once and for all.

After two years of research and photography I realized that the discourse on food production can be infinitely refined and that this often puts supposed advantages and disadvantages in a new light. Scaling-up can actually enhance animal welfare, for example, and organic production is not always better for the environment. Often, an excessively one-sided approach to the subject of food is a barrier to real solutions. Food is simply too wide-ranging and complex a subject for one-liners or to be describing in terms of black and white”.

Layout of the Book

The result of this investigation is a 143 detailed photographic study of the factory, looking not just at the side of meat processing but a general overview into the everyday happenings; how it is maintained and its extensive visual layout. All of the images are accompanied by a simple caption outlining what is going on. All of the images are then explained on the index page in the back of the book.

There is also a contents page at the start, very much giving the feeling of a structured and ordered journey. As this page outlines, the narrative is split up into three chapters, all with a similar amount of images.

1. Source
2. Protocol
3. System
4. Location
5. Product
6. Hygiene

Index Page at the end provides an interesting overview of images. It serves to Further contextualises the images, and adds to the scientific, investigative nature of the story, thus enhancing its status as ‘documentary’ work.

It is useful to include at the end because it helps the reader to know what it going on, compensating for the ‘jumpy’ narrative progression.

My impression of the narrative and images

The overall style of this book is very objective and clinical in approach. In contrast to ‘Common Sense’ by Martin Parr, the mood of the images are of a lower energy, due to the appearance of bleaker and cooler colours, such as green, grey, white and pale blue. This gives the work a more reflective feel, as there is not as much energy given off from the colours. I find that this style is appropriate given the circumstances and manner. It simply would not work in a visual sense to use bright, colourful and upbeat images looking at the entrapment and death of animals, let alone in their thousands.

This cold and sombre mood gives a sense of slight distance and hostility. My impression would be that the photographer is attempting to express/deliver a message, perhaps a symbolisation of his uneasiness/personal conflict of exploiting this place to his artistic advantage.

Structure of the Narrative: The narrative starts of very calm and measured in approach, very simple images of the facilities and equipment within the factory, a few of the animals, along with a few portraits of workers and staff. The narrative begins at about one quarter-one third of the way in to become slowly more heavy and graphic in what is being represented; gradually introducing aspects such as slaughtering equipment, chicks being de-beaked/separated and slabs of meat. The reality of the location and its happening really start to become apparent to the viewer at this point and the viewer is able to gain a very clear understanding of what is going on by about page 70.

Around the period of page 70-110 is when the narrative is at its peak in terms of liveliness, and goriness. A prime example in this is the image ‘Semi-finished’ on page 105, showing around about 50 chicks looking distressed and they are swept to the ground via a conveyor belt, ready to be sorted for their short life in a factory farm. It is this image which in my view summarises the main drawback of a factory farm – the mechanical way in which hundreds of young animals will die, simply as mere statistics. Such images are one which the viewer remembers the most, and are often inclined to make them angry or upset.

The ‘Product’ Chapter is the peak chapter in terms of context and activity. It is the chapter which in my opinion would have the most effect on the viewer.

Captions

The captions which are featured throughout the course of the narrative are helpful in guiding the story along. They provide a brief degree of context without directly influencing the viewer. The captions also help to create some degree of narrative flow by linking the two images together, sometimes through similarity and other times through difference.

Overall

This photo-book is extremely interesting. It gives a balance view of factory farming and the images are interesting and revealing.

First Statement 

The notion to explore love scientifically falls beside love as an emotion caused by chemical reactions in the body. I would like to explore some material associated with the production and development of how humans respond to these reactions, and then move on to connect with other people whether it is a relative, friend or acquaintance.  This notion also explores the truth behind love against the perceptions explored by human beings. Love thats described as a ‘feeling’ or an ’emotion’ is juxtaposed against what it can initially be seen as a more enticing beauty of life; a mentality everyone wishes to experience within their lifetimes.

The Biology of Love 

Love can be explained as ‘biological‘ by many different factors. Love biologically can be maternal, romantic, etc. A few examples can be:

• A mutual parental support of children for an extended time period.
• The human language has been selected during evolution as a type of “mating signal” that allows potential mates to judge reproductive fitness.
• The conventional view in biology is that there are three major drives in love – sex drive, attachment, and partner preference. The primary neurochemicals (neurotransmitters, sex hormones, and neuropeptides) that govern these drives are testosterone, oestrogen, dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin.

The Association of  Psychological Science 

In an article lead by The Association of Psychological Science, “The Evolution of the Human Brain: Whats love got to do with it?”  the human is described as an ‘evolutionary puzzle‘. Victoria University’s researchers Garth Fletcher of Wellington, New Zealand and collaborators Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nickola C argue that the adaptation of romantic love may have played a key role in the evolution of our  sophisticated brains and social aptitude during the ageing process: “Evolutionary adaptations typically have a jury-rigged nature, and romantic love is no exception” adds Fletcher.
Nevertheless, the researchers posit that romantic love allowed our early ancestors to form long-term, monogamous pair-bonds, which in turn created more available resources for raising children. This perception contradicts that with the absence of love counteracts the  stereotypes within a ‘perfect’ family lifestyle. The authors subject the means of love to produce valuable offspring with the ability to attain happiness, purity and quality of life: “These shared cooperative efforts to raise offspring and support others would have enabled hominins to evolve larger brains and stretch child development from birth to early adulthood…beyond the levels apes could attain.”  

Examined Existence

In an article explored by the Brain science segment Examined Existence suppress the scientific emotion of love in an article called: “Why We Fall in Love: The Science of Love”. Love is described as a ‘devoted‘ and ‘passionate‘ feeling

Study lead by Arthur Anum: Psychopharmacology (2012)

Definition of Psychopharmacology:

 “The study of the effect of drugs on the mind and behaviour” 

An article in Psychopharmacology (2012) concluded when compared to behavioral addiction, social attachment is similar—individuals become addicted to other because of the returned reward. In this essence, Arun subjects love as a sort of ‘drug-like’ emotions, concluding its vulnerability for people to latch onto in an addicting way. There is a chemical chain of reaction triggered in our bodies ultimately instigating the feeling of love to strike our minds. Arguably, falling in love is getting into what can be described as a “beautiful trap set up by nature, a natural occurrence we cannot fight”. According to a science-based study by Arun, on average, the mind of a person takes between 90 seconds to 4 minutes to determine whether it is struck by love or not.

Some of the highlighted points of the study –
• 55% of the role is played by body language; this means a brain detects the activities of body movement and decides whether it has received the signals of love or not
• 38% of the decision to be in love is contributed by the voice—its tone and change in frequency
• 7% is the reaction to a lover’s statement or choice of words