Monthly Archives: March 2017

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Planning

Contrasting portraits – Shoes and Legs – Planning

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I want to create a diptych image with a contrasting set of lower legs and feet wearing different shoes. One pair with hyper-feminine connotations, sparkly silver, Cinderella style heels  on a pink background and the other with contrasting masculine connotations, black docs martens on a blue background. Another key feature of the contrasting portraits is presence of and lack of leg hair. The act of shaving leg hair is something that is considering feminine and is expected of women in our society. I have chosen to continue growing out the hair on my legs for the purpose of the masculine shoot before I will have to shave them for the feminine counterpart of the diptych. I would also like to maybe experiment with creating a portrait where i have only removed the hair on one leg to get another sense of contrast. I’m not sure if this image will be particularly successful but i think it will be worth trying.

Above is a fine liner drawing which I then altered in Photoshop of what I want to aim for when creating the feminine counterpart of my diptych. In my hyper-feminine image I want to give a sense of femininity through the use of the colour pink, feminine foot wear and a more feminine pose, the typical “popped toe” I also want my pairs of feet to be facing each other to create a sense of symmetry and contrast, although i also plan to experiment with different angles and will see which works best later on. For this image I plan to use my pink backdrop which I unfortunately ordered in the wrong size, but for a more close up image I hope that this will not be a problem.

Above is a fine liner drawing which I then altered in Photoshop of what I want to aim for when creating the more masculine counterpart of my diptych. I plan to establish a sense of masculinity by not polishing my boots for a few days before the shoot to ensure that they have a few scuffs and scrapes, the “worn” look will connotes masculinity because the wearer has clearly been wearing them regularly in not so clean environments. As previously stated, I also want to include leg hair in this image to go against the expectation that women should have to remove their body hair. I also plan to use my blue backdrop for this image, but it unfortunately was shipped to me folded up rather than rolled so I will need to find a way to iron vinyl without it melting.

Analysis, Research

Clare Rae-Performance and the Body

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Clare Rae is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia but she is currently visiting Jersey as part of the Archisle International artist-in-residence program. She is here to to research the  Claude Cahun archive and shoot new photography and film in Jersey.  This week I attended a talk she gave at the museum about her photography and film. She spoke about how she explores performance and representations of the female body and her connection to physical environments. Performance photography normally involves as artist staging a performance for the camera and testing the physical and psychological limits of the body.

Rae began the talk by discussing the research areas that have influenced her work such as feminist theorists like Laura Mulvey. She also mentioned her artistic influences; photographers such as Francesca Woodman, Jill Orr and Cindy Sherman. She went on to talk about her own photographic methodologies and techniques. Her work is mostly self-portraiture which involves her exploring physical environments and challenging female representations of being passive by exploring things actively/ dangerously and using awkward poses. For example in her project ‘Desire and the Other’ she analysed the idea of passiveness of the female body by lying on the floor, often with her face concealed by furniture or her hair.

She spoke about how she carefully chooses her outfits before going on shoots, for example she described how she changed from wearing tights because these are a very fetishized garments but now she often wears the same green skirt because it is easy to move in.

Her projects are often captured and displayed within the same environments and she is interested in how the camera can act as a collaborator, rather than mute witness, to the performer. She is known for her engagement with domestic and institutional spaces and she spoke about how her work is influenced by notions of private and public and how her performance is influenced by the gaze of onlookers. For example she talked about her experiences in engaging with the environment of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in particular the photography and print store rooms. She explained that she was followed by a guard and a curator and the idea of being watched had an impact on her final  outcomes.

The environments she explores are often fascinating in themselves for example she has explored the site of the Magdalen Asylum which is a place where girls and women were housed whilst working in laundries. On her website it explains that, “These rooms are laden with history, and provided a dense and loaded environment within which to make artwork. Using this history as a starting point,I attempted to activate these spaces using my body, gently testing the physical environment”. 

In the talk I attended Rae also spoke about her project ‘20+9+5′ which is a black and white series which she did whilst pregnant with her son. She explained that being pregnant is a very ‘feminine’ state and she wanted to explore the experience of her body. She said that during pregnancy women seem to lose some control over their bodies and she wasn’t prepared for the amount of people that commented on her bodily appearance on a daily basis and how people thought they had a right to touch her. Rae later returned to the same location that she took these images once her son was born and photographed them together. She explained that her use of a mirror was influenced by a previous project ‘Stages’ which was a collaborative project with Simone Hine and involved exploring the environment of the Rosina Auditorium and she was intrigued by the use of mirrors and reflections involved in this.

During the talk Rae also showed some of her stop-frame animation videos made from photographic stills such as the one below which I thought was particularly interesting. She said that when she is presenting her work she often leaves it playing on a continuous loop which makes it appear more and more exhausting and it grows more ridiculous every time. On her website is explains that this piece was inspired by her research into feminist theories of representation and how this often relies on binary opposites. The title is ‘The Good girl and the other’ which relates to the idea that the ‘Good girl’ is a recurring motif in culture and society but Rae wanted to complicate the traditional notions of femininity.

Rae also spoke about her work on the Claude Cahun archive and how she has been able to look at almost every image produced by her. She says that it was interesting to see how Cahun’s body changed and aged over time because she began photographing at a teenager and the oldest photograph of her was  from a year before her death. Cahun was born as Lucy Schwob and was from a wealthy Jewish family living in France. Her work was political as well as personal and focused on challenging traditional ideas associated with gender. This often involved  using costumes to experiment with different personalities from ultra feminine to masculine. She adopted the  gender-neutral forename Claude and by shaving her head she actively and outwardly rejected social constructions of gender and sexual identity. Her partner Suzanne Malherbe (who was also her step-sister and life-long collaborator in artistic projects)  adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore. During the rise of the Nazi party the couple fled from Paris in 1938 for Jersey.  When the Nazis invaded Jersey Claude and Moore employed avant-garde art practices as a form of resistance. For example they created anti-nationalist leaflets mocking Nazi ideology and distributed them throughout Jersey in soldier’s pockets and on their chairs. They were sentenced to death for inciting the troops to rebellion and refused to sign letters asking for mercy, perhaps believing that martyrdom would be the most fitting end to their lives of resistance. However they were saved from execution anyway because of the Liberation of the Island.

Cahun’s revolutionary examinations of gender and sexuality were well ahead of her time and inspired many artists including Clare Rae. Cahun’s work has many connections to Rae’s in that is focuses on feminism, self-portraiture and performance.

Performance photography and self-portraiture is not something I have explored greatly in previous projects although I think it is an interesting concept.  The work of Rae and Cahun have strong links to the theme of ‘Environment’ because it relates to their psychological and personal environments as well as the politcal context of the time. After attending Clare Rae’s talk I feel I have developed a better understanding of the messages behind her art which is interesting to consider in relation to the work of Claude Cahun. If I was going to respond to this style of photography in some way I might be able to bring in the idea of the mirror from my previous project and explore ideas about self-portraiture and mirrors/reflections.

Planning

The Plan

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// S P E C I F I C A T I O N //

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

ONE

The first path I have investigated plays with the idea of techniques within photography and the way digital manipulation can advance images. Taking words from my post ‘Stereoscopic’, I explored the idea of multiple exposure images as a way to ultimately explore and expand on the idea of environment.

Double exposure photography is an area which aesthetically interests me. The process of combining multiple images to create a final photo – often with colour and contrast variations – can not only be used aesthetically but also symbolically. Tying this to the theme of environment (and possibly portraiture?) could produce some graphically interesting outcomes where people can be merged with their personal landscapes. Working on this idea can involve both
digital and analogue images which I intend to take advantage of in this project. 

So this pathway would involve a set of double exposure images tying people to particular environments of significance for them, perhaps showing how the environment ultimately affects the human form and body.

TWO

The second idea I could follow and develop further is the thought of mental effects of the environment on people – in particular playing to the idea of loss and homesickness. With so many of my peer group on the edge of moving away for university – or being on the other end of the spectrum as the ones who will be left behind – this is perhaps a more unique briefing to follow. For this idea, as explored in my previous post ‘ Run Away’, I would look to shoot a series of portraits featuring a set of characters in two locations. The first would be their home setting, most likely in a bedroom or somewhere of significance to them within the house. The second portrait will feature the same person in an environment of their choice. The point of this will be to show a particular area or landscape they will miss when they leave – most of them to university in a few months time. The images for this project will feature a mixture of front facing images and backwards portraits such as the one below which will highlight the environment chosen by the subject.

The point of both of these idea concepts is to design a project that will allow me to explore environment within a field of portraiture. One is probably more studio focused with the second idea taking me to a variety of locations which is why ultimately I have chosen to focus on this project. To start this idea, I intend to shoot one of the sets planned out in my previous blog posts as a way to test the stability of the project. This will involve a single character with photos centred around their personal fears related to leaving home. 

 

Inspiration, Research

Clare Rae Artist Reference

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Clare Rae is an Australian artist who is currently (as of March 2017) working as an artist in residence in Jersey. She is however, based in Melbourne and has produced most of her work in Australia. On the 22nd March I attended a talk directed by Rae, explaining her previous work, her interest in the research of Claude Cahun with the Jersey Archive and a brief overview of her intentions to produce some work inspired by her research. Her work explores ideas such as performance, movement and the representation of the female body. Her work is predominantly self portraiture where she is in motion or a clear, strong pose as a reaction to the environment she is producing work in. Rae has played with the idea of public and private spaces and how one uses their body and acts in different way according to whether or not they are in a public space. Rae has also spoken about how her work is affected by the gaze of onlookers, she generally produces her work in private, performing only for the camera. However, in a project produced in the National Gallery of Victoria in 2013, Rae was followed and watched by both a curator and a security guard which she admits, affected the  way the she performed and the movements and poses that she decided to use. Despite this Rae still produced the intriguing video art piece (still pictured below) where she climbs up and down a decanted rack, admitting that the climb was very painful.

Rae’s work is influenced and produced with an understanding of feminist theory, she explores the representation of the female body within the medium of art and photography, describing them as “objectifying” in the simplest way as a photo or piece of artwork is an object, if it depicts the form of a woman then she is, in turn, “objectified”. In Clare Rae’s earlier work from her undergraduate degree including “Desire and  the Other” (2007) displays the female body in a passive and acquiescent way, often lying on the floor with the face concealed in one way or another, either out of shot or obstructed by clothing or objects. In slightly later works such as “Climbing the walls and other actions” (2009) and “Testing” (2010) present the female body is a more active provocative way, although still often concealing the face with her notable short, dark bob. In these works Rae plays with the idea of suggested nudity through her use of tights and stockings which are translucent garments that cover but do not conceal what is under them. Tights and stockings are also garments with sexual connotations and Rae mentioned during this talk that she wanted to step away from her use of (however subtle) provocative clothing so that the focus was on the performance and movement, adding that her use of pantyhose could become a “slippery slope”.

Rae mentioned in the talk that during her research of Claude Cahun’s she was able to looks at almost every photograph she had produced that there was record of in the archive. She stated that it was fascinating to see her body age and her work develop from the work she produced as a young woman to the year before her death. Rae also spoke of how she felt that the bodies of older and aging women are not presented or explored enough in art and photography. A project that related to this belief is “20+9+5” produced during the months between October 2014 and May 2015 where Rae was pregnant. All of the images in the project where created and displayed in the Sutton Project Space in Fitzroy, Victoria. She explored how the pregnant female form is presented as well as her won feelings of being objectified during her pregnancy as she felt that she lost full ownership of her body due to the amount of people, often strangers, feeling as though they had a right to touch her. After her pregnancy, Rae went back to the space and created more using her son which show a sense of development. When the photos were displayed however, Rae positioned them in a way that made the images appear as if they were not in a chronological timeline.

I found the work of Clare Rae very visually intriguing but also incredibly interesting once I attended her talk and was able to understand her thinking behind her images and work in general. It was interesting to hear another artist talk about their work in a critical way, as Rae stated that some projects were more successful than others and also spoke of what she would do differently if she was to reproduce the work. I want to take some inspiration from Clare Rae’s work and as in my own project I am having to be myself or a version of myself in front of the camera which is something that I struggle with.

 

Analysis, Research

Matthew Lyn – Plastic pollution inspiration

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Matthew Lyn is a Canadian photographer and creative director renowned for his intuitive and textured talents in the world of fashion photography. Son of a Chinese Jamaican father and Canadian mother, his visual inspirations hail from his many different homes growing up as a child. Now days Lyn, divides his time creating in New York and Montreal, Canada. His eye for fashion photography has been described as uniquely exhilarating and fresh, while holding true to a bold classic edge. Lyn started his photography career in 2007 focusing on inspirations from Jamaica’s coastal beauty. From there, he channeled his vision through experimentation, collaboration and mentor-ship from highly acclaimed visual artists. Despite no formal training, his early photographs captured the attention of industry insiders. Andy Whalen, Executive fashion director for Vogue Nippon believes, “Matt is a young talent to keep an eye on. He has a vision that I find refreshing and inspiring”. Encouraged by many creative professionals, Lyn solidified his unique style, developing the moody, gray-scale fashion editorials that have become his signature.

Before I move on to my own studio shoot with plastic I first wanted to explore Matthew Lyn’s amazing examples that I have presented below. Although these images are fashion photography related, their undeniable beauty and talented showcase of light and shadow on the material is enough to inspire both my next two shoots. This series, entitled ‘Trapped & Wrapped’ strips away the usual elements for a raw photo shoot. Instead of the simple portraiture techniques this fashion shoot could have contained, Lyn turns the studio into a place of pure movement and form. His model Eryck Laframboise tackles the challenge, clad in plastic and wire creating striking, unusual and emotional depictions. This title, ‘Trapped & Wrapped’, fits in nicely with my project as I am wanting to represent the worlds ‘suffocation’ from this material as well as the damage it’s doing to the environment and therefore man-kind. Although this is a fashion photography project, this series is an amazing inspiration for creating dark and emotional portraits with plastic. I love this idea he shows of wrapping the model in plastic, for me it would represent the way we do this to everything else. Below are four images from this series that I have chosen as inspirations for my next two shoots.

These first two photographs from Matthew Lyn’s collection, ‘Trapped and Wrapped’, are great examples of the kind of headshots I am hoping to create in my first self portraiture shoot. I love the black and white effect in all of these photographs, as it really emphasises Lyn’s talent for controlling light in the studio. The first image on the left shows a straightforward headshot with the model posing in a modest way, carefully wrapped in plastic and wire. Although the meaning behind this image is mainly beauty and fashion, the expression from the model and piercing eye contact creates amazing emotive qualities which can really intrigue the viewer. The image on the right depicts the model holding the plastic tight around his neck, straining as the material covers his face and suffocates him. Because of the title of these images, we are to understand that there is a deeper meaning looking past just beauty and fashion. But as it is left unexplained by the photographer, we can interpret the meaning ourselves. I will be doing this personally when using this simple idea for portraiture to symbolise the global problem of plastic waste. I hope to take inspiration from his use of space shown above, his use of the material and his beautifully crafted studio lighting.

These next two images are perfect examples of full body portraits using beautiful composition and space to capture plastic waste. These images will be a great inspiration for my second shoot, using a model and the material to show this common pollution issue. The first photograph on the left is a landscape shot showing the model breathing in the material and it floats across the scene. Although I will most likely featuring more of my model in this second shoot, I chose this image because of the beautiful composition the plastic creates as it is thrown into the air. I also love the transparency of scene with a mixture of harsh and soft light gleaming from every aspect. The next photograph on the right shows the full portrait of the model using the plastic wrapped around to cover himself. The meaning behind this image is very confusing and the pose he is performing seems unsure, yet the beauty of the light on the plastic that is distorting his body takes on a fashion orientated appearance. I if were to interpret these images with no prior knowledge of the photographer or his work I would say that this is a raw look into our dependence on this man-made material. This is because of the wire symbolising being trapped as well as the essence of the photographs directly pointing towards the effect the material has on the model.

Planning

Specification for third shoot

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My third shoot will be in St Catherine’s woods and possibly the Sand Dunes if their is enough time before the sun sets. This shoot will be on Friday 24th March.

My previous shoot was unsuccessful as my practice with shutter speed and aperture in my practice shoot did not help me because all the photos which i took on that shoot are grainy. This is really disappointing as the photos do look good from afar but they appear grainy if printed or zoomed in. I will most likely redo the scenes which i think looked the best which will be in the hedges and on the rocks.

St Catherine’s Woods plan:
  • My first idea was to photograph my model’s reflection in the lake of St Catherine’s with the mouth mask and the gas mask.
  • My second was to create a juxtaposition of innocent and sinister using the swing which is in the woods.
  • I am going to make sure that my ISO is not set on auto and i will make sure my shutter speed is not incredibly high as i do not need it to be like that.
  • I will use the trees to create interesting light patterns and shadows which they can sit under.
  • I want to create a juxtaposition between the beauty of the woods and how we associate them with clean air and how my gas mask is how we will breath in 100 years time.
  • I need to be careful to not choose areas in which the light is dark as i want to make the most of the natural light coming through the trees. If the light is too dark, the mask will not stand out as much as i want it too.
  • The clothes they are wearing will be normal as i do not want to dress them up but for future reference, i will ask them to wear the same outfit for the rest of the shoots to keep a consistent look throughout.
  • I think with this shoot i will create a couple of image sets in which i have both models in the shot but only wearing a mouth masks. I also want to try create a contrast image between both models, where one is wearing a gas mask and the other a mouth mask.
  • I only have one gas mask so i can only photograph one model at a time in it
  • I want to try incorporate open spaces and water into my photos as they will make them interesting and will create different appearances in my photos.

 

Analysis, Research

Idris Khan

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London-based artist Idris Khan was born in the UK in 1978. Since completing his Master’s Degree with a Distinction in Research at the Royal College of Art in London in 2004, he has received international acclaim for his minimal, yet emotionally charged photographs, videos and sculptures and is one of the most exciting British artists of his generation.

Drawing on diverse cultural sources including literature, history, art, music and religion, Khan’s work contains a unique narrative involving densely layered imagery that inhabits the space between abstraction and figuration and speaks to the themes of cumulative experience and the metaphysical collapse of time into single moments (METAPHYSICS – the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space). His work can be considered both abstract and figurative as it takes lots of singular straight shot images and layers them, creating an overall slightly abstract collage of different moments in time condensed into one.

Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien. Idris Khan’s Every… Bernd And Hilla Becher… series appropriates the Bechers’ imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still.

Khan’s work interests me because of how he completely changes how we perceive everyday structures, among other things, and turning them into more ghostly, alien compilations of multiple moments in time condensed into one.

Image Analysis –

Prison type Gasholders’ – Idris Khan

The image above (Prison Type Gasholders) shows a ghostly arrangement of some of the topographical series made focusing on gasholders by the Bechers’. The structures in the Bechers’ original photographs are almost identical, though for Khan the images’ contrast and opacity is adjusted to ensure each layer can be seen and has presence. Despite Khans work being very mechanised and of industrial subjects, their effect is of a soft ethereal energy. They have a spiritual quality in their densely compacted details and ghostly outlines. Prison Type Gasholders conveys a sense of time depicted in motion, as if transporting the old building, in its obsolete black and white format, into the extreme future.

Recording

1st Shoot (Results)

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1st Shoot Results

At the weekend I followed through with my shoot plan that I had written.  As I had expected it was too rough for the models to be able to surf, so instead they decided to go spearfishing. This limited the kind of photographs that I could take but I went out nonetheless. It was relatively rough and generally the weather was not very good so I used the ISO 400 film which would allow me to use a faster shutter speed to try and overcome some of the movement of the waves. Only having 3 different shutter speeds on the camera meant that it was a challenge in some of the rougher conditions and meant that I was nervous about capturing movement but it worked relatively well.

Out of 24 exposures that were meant to be on the roll of film I managed to get 26 images with one that was lost due to me making a mistake loading the film at the start. As this was my first time using the camera I did not expect the result to be spectacular and when I got the images back there were pretty much what I expected. They were not bad images but many of them had water spots on the lens that I did not think about, and although they are well exposed the lack of any direct sunlight does detract from the images a little.

The completely grey sky does fit well to help show how cold it was on that day, it makes the images feel very cold and chilly as it was that day. The high winds that day coupled with the cold sea temperatures made it very hard to take photographs, we could only stay in the water for about an hour and three quarters due to this and the tide so the area that we were in was limited and meant that It was difficult for me to take a range of different photos of different scenes. The contact sheet above shows 12 of the photos that came out from the shoot, they all have a similar range of relatively dull colours, the rocks did a fantastic job of breaking apart the monotony of  the sky and giving the images some more interest. Although lacking in artistic merit the shoot did give me some ideas for where I could explore next. Water. Some of the images that I have taken, although the intended subject is uninteresting, have some very nice images of the water. Capturing the reflection of the rocks and the small, choppy waves gave some very interesting textures to the images. This is definitely something that I will continue looking at.

In addition to using film I also used my digital camera to take photos of the two of them as they were getting ready in the carpark above the beach and of them walking down. These images are interesting but they are still lacking in artistic merit and although they do show a progression of the guys getting ready leading up to the other photographs many of them are uninteresting from a photographic perspective even if humorous. They are insider photographs because the pair are known to me quite well, because of this the images have more of a connection to me than they would if I did not know the two. Some of them are shown in the gallery below.

Planning, Research

Symbolism: Plastic pollution – Planning

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My next two shoots were inspired by my previous outcomes; using staged scenes and studio techniques to portray common pollution issues. These shoots will be a continuation of my symbolic style showing one of the most problematic issues that everyone in modern society unfortunately contributes to. This is the issue of common plastic waste. As well as these shoots, later in this project, I will explore this topic from a photo-journalistic point of view, showing plastics effect on our island…

The reason I want to show the problem of plastic in a strong and symbolic way is because of the devastation it causes to marine life, animals and the environment. Modern life is unthinkable without plastic and the pure fact it is low-cost, light weight and durable makes it very hard to dispose of. In the EU, instead of recycling all our plastic waste, we send a third of it straight to landfill. To make things worse, millions of tonnes of this waste end up in the oceans. Birds, turtles and sea-life get tangled in plastic bags and abandoned fishing equipment, or they die from eating plastic debris. Over time, larger pieces of plastic break down into tiny particles called micro-plastic, which can form a poisonous plastic liquid residing in our oceans. These particles can soak up chemical additives and when they are eaten by fish they enter the food chain poisoning and harming countless different species.  National Geographic estimated that globally we dump over eight million metric tons of our plastic waste into the oceans each year. This rubbish accumulates in 5 ‘ocean garbage patches’, the largest one being situated between Hawaii and California. Hopefully in my next two shoots, by using studio techniques and symbolism, I will be able to get across the gravity of this global pollution problem. Below are some images depicting what this waste looks like, as well as a few different types of plastic that accumulates into big problems. 

My plan of action for these two shoots is to use models, with different types of plastic, in a home-studio made of black fabric and an LED light. In this ‘studio’ I will be using female model’s to create striking and emotive portraits with the subject matter, plastic. The first shoot will be self portraits showing only headshots distorted by the material. To create this fragmented look I am hoping for, I will be experimenting with a few different types of plastic, including bubble wrap, cellophane and clear plastic waste. For my second shoot however, I want to use a female volunteer to create full body portraits with this waste. The aim of these shoots is to show a heavily symbolic message about our connection to this global problem. As well as this the plastic directly effecting the models will represent the worlds ‘suffocation’ from this material and the damage it’s doing to the environment and therefore man-kind. The images I am hoping to capture will be dark and emotive pieces with a clear message and eye-catching beauty. Below I have added four photographs depicting the kinds of portraits I hope to create. I love the idea of wrapping the model in plastic, as it shows clear symbolism for the way we do this to everything else, as well as the fragmented view the plastic creates…

Research

The history of the Gas Mask

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The gas mask was used to protect the user from breathing in airborne pollutants and toxic gases. It forms a sealed cover over the whole face protecting the eyes, mouth and nose. The gas mask does  not protect the skin from absorbing gas, the filers for a gas mask will usually last around 24 hours in a nuclear biological chemical situation.

In WW1, the most common gas toxins were Sulfur Mustard and Chlorine Gas or particulates such as biological agents developed for weapons such as bacteria, viruses and toxins. The traditional gas mask style was with two small circular eye windows originated when the only suitable material for these windows was glass or acrylic. Glass is notoriously brittle so the windows has to be kept small and thick. The discovery of poly carbonate allowed for the gas mask to have a large full-face window. The gas mask usually have one or two filters attached to the mouth part of the mask and some masks have the filter connected to a hose.

Principles of Construction:

The word absorption is the process of being drawn into a body or substrate and the word adsorption is the process of deposition upon a surface. This ca be used to remove both particulate and gaseous hazards however some form of reaction may take place, it is not necessary but the method may work by attractive charges. If the target particles are positively charged, a negatively charged substrate may be used. Examples of substrates are activated carbon and zeolites. Using a damp cloth to cover the mouth and nose while escaping a fire can be very effective, however it does not filter out toxic gas.

Safety of old gas masks: 

Gas masks have a limited lifespan which depend on the absorbent capacity of the filter. Once the filter is filled with hazardous chemicals, it stops providing the protection needed. The filter will also degrade with age and if exposed to heat and moisture.

WWII masks contain blue asbestos in their filters, breathing in this in the gas mask factories results in the death of 10% of the employees. Modern gas masks do not use asbestos but you must be careful wearing one.

Filter Classification: 

Each filter is selected according to the toxic compound and they each protect against a particular hazard:

  • AX – Low-boiling and organic compounds
  • A – High-boiling and organic compounds
  • B – inorganic gases (hydrogen sulfide, chlorine, hydrogen cyanide)
  • E – Sulfur Dioxide and Hydrogen Chloride (acidic gases)
  • K – Ammonia and amines
  • CO – Carbon Monoxide
  • Hg – Mercury
  • Reactor – Iodine and Methyl Iodide (radioactive)
  • P – Particles, classified as P1, P2 and P3 according to removal efficiency
  • ABEK, ABEK-P3, ABEK-HgP3 or other combination filters against multiple hazards.
Use: 

Modern gas masks are constructed from an elastic polymer which come in various sizes. They are fitted with adjustable straps. The filter cartridge is fitted near the mouth either directly or via a hose. Many are connected to drinking tubes which can be fitted onto a water bottle.

The masks are rigorously tested using challenge agents such as Isoamyl acetate, a synthetic banana flavourant and camphor which is often used as innocuous challenge agents.

History and development:

The common sponge was used in ancient Greece as a gas mask. A rudimentary gas mask was created in the 9th century by the Banu Musa brothers in Baghdad, Iraq.

Primitive respirators were used by miners and were introduced by Alexander Von Humboldt in 1799. There were also plague doctor’s bird-beak-shaped mask filled with herbs originating from the 17th century.

A gas mask which was the basis of the modern gas mask was invented in 1847 by Lewis P. Haslett. It contained elements which allowed the user the breath through a nose and mouthpiece, inhalation through a bulb-shaped filter and a vent to exhale air back into the atmosphere. There were early versions of this mask which were constructed by a Scottish Chemist John Stenhouse in 1854 and a physicist John Tyndall in the 1870s.

The safety hood and smoke protector was invented by Garrett Morgan in 1912 and patented in 1914. It consisted of a cotton hood with two hoses which hung down to the door which allowed the user to breather the safer air found there. Most sponges were inserted at the end of the hoses in order to better filter the air.

Poisonous gas was first used on the Western Front on April 22 1915 by the Germans at Ypres against Canadian and french colonial troops. The first response to this was to equip the soldiers with cotton mouth pads for protection. Then the British added a long cloth which was used to tie chemical-soaked mouth pads into place, this was called The Black Veil Respirator. This was then developed into the British Hypo Helmet in June 1915.

The canister gas mask followed the hypo helmet, it was a mask connected to a tin can containing the absorbent materials by a hose.

The British Royal Society of Chemistry claims that the British scientist Edward Harrison was the one who developed the first practical gas mask for mass production, this claim was supported by a thank you note written by Winston Churchill.

An American Chemist and inventor called James Bert Garner was credited by the American sources with the invention of the gas mask in April 1915.

The modern gas mask was invented in 1944 by the US Army Chemical Warfare Service. It was made of plastic and rubber like material which greatly reduced the weight and bulk compared to the WW1 masks and it fitted the users face more snugly and comfortably.