Born in 1987 in Manhattan, Itamar Freed studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design where he received his B.F.A in 2012. His work has since taken him to London where he is now studying at the Royal College of Arts on the photography program. Freed’s work conjoins reality with the artificial. Staged figures create unusual scenes often with an uncomfortable tension lying behind them. There are three main regions of his photographic work taking him from New York in America to London for his studies and the Israeli wilderness where his home studio lies. Freed’s photographic aesthetic takes much of its style from the techniques of historical painters which draws parallels from his photographs to traditional paintings within art history. His use of colour, natural light and composition blur borders between dreams and reality with open compositions. There is often more than one focus point within each image drawing the eye of the observer to range of areas within the compositions.
“Freed’s photographic ambience exists as if in a threshold zone, beyond the bounds of specific time and place. Using the photography medium to preserve, to freeze, to grasp life and seize time.”
“My photographic work draws upon a return to the classic paintings of Art History. Through the use of color, natural illumination at its extremes, open composition and multiple vanishing points that simultaneously draw the observer’s eye to different focal points of various events, the borders between dream and wakening are blurred.”
The image below has a number of focal points within its unusual composition. The woman marks a clear part of the photo and creates her own line of sight following the curvature of her body across each of her limbs. There is a sense of fragility about her with a strong sense of vulnerability at her exposed state. Her head starts in a mess of tangled grass and branches but following along her body you arrive at her feet which are immersed in red and orange flowers. There is something to be said about the inclusion of this section of colour, red itself has multiple symbolic readings from lust and passion to danger and poison. The bird in the background also creates a focal point along with a series of questions. Why is it there? What point is the artist trying to make with its inclusion? The background fades from a dark, almost blackened tone in the background to a lighter mix of greens and browns in the foreground. This image interested me in particular because of its strange combination of focal points within the strange composition. The collective metaphors and symbolism in the image add a mixture of emotions which support this image and its meaning.
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.
When looking at images from Levine’s “Queer” portraits and “Alone Time” collections, I could see that the compositions were clearly well thought out and had some inspirations from tableaux style paintings. I typed in key words into google that related to Levine’s imagery in an attempt to find some paintings with similar compositions. This proved rather successful and although it unlikely that Levine took inspiration for the specific paintings that I selected to compare them to, it is clear that Levine had a traditional thought process when composing her images and directing their models.
Above is a comparison of JJ Levine’s “Mikiki 2012” and Iosif Iser’s “Woman in Yellow Chair” produced in 1933. The image have a very similar composition with the subjects seated at an angle on a low chair, a green wall and a table with a vase to the left of the seated subject. Both subjects have intriguing features (when considering the time of their production) Iser’s woman has bright blue shoes, red lipstick and a matching headscarf. Levine’s male subject is pictured with traditionally feminine items including a handbag, vase of tulips and a matching pearl necklace and bracelet set. Both of the images have a provocative undertone, Iser’s subject has a seductive expression, has her arms and legs exposed and has her shirt unbuttoned to reveal a large portion of her decolletage. Levine’s subject is presented rather provocatively due to the flesh coloured clothing which at first glance the subject appear less dressed. The subject also has their cropped vest rolled up to show the pierced nipples, but not in a overly exposed fashion as they are partially concealed by the layered pearl necklaces.
Both images have a green based colour scheme. Levine’s image reinforces this theme with a bright green wall, warmer green chair and the stalks of the flowers which are contrasted by the warm pink and yellow undertones of the the flesh of the subject and the warm ocher tone colour of the small table the vase is placed on. The wall in Isef’s painting is also green, however unlike Levine’s solid coloured wall, Isef’s wall features both cool and warm green tones. Isef exploits the complementary colour of red in the tones of the lipstick, headscarf, table cloth and floor. The orange and yellow tones in the flesh and chair are also contrasted with the cooler green tones and the blue of the shoes.
Above I separated the two images, Levine’s “Mikiki 2012” and Iser’s “Woman in Yellow Chair” into 9 sections which shows how each composition exploits the rule of thirds. In both images the torso is places on the right vertical line and the faces seem to be cut in half by this line. In both images the foot just peeks into the bottom section. When looking at each section you can see that they have very similar contents, for example the centre segment includes part of both thighs and a hand and the top right segment contains a shoulder and half the face of the subject.
The way that the eye travels through the two images is also quite similar. The eye is immediately draw the to the face and is then directed through the image by the shape of the body, along the extended leg to the foot and then from the foot up to the vase. In the annotated versions of the images above you can see how similar the line of sight is in both compositions. Many tableaux portraits of women have a composition that exploits the form of the human body to direct the eye across the painting.
Above is a comparison of JJ Levine’s fourth of eight images from her “Alone Time” Collection and Jan Miense Molenaer’s “music making couple” Levine’s image is at first glance a portrait of a heterosexual couple seated next to each other, the female counterpart holding a banjo and the male counterpart listening. The couple in Levine’s image are actually acted out by the same person in different costumes. Molenaer’s painting also depicts a heterosexual couple where both parties are holding musical instruments, the male, a lute and the female, an early woodwind instrument. In Molenaer’s painting the male counterpart is presented as dominant, he wears a large hat, stands rather than sits, placing him physically above his partner and the line created by the fret board of the lute also makes him appear taller. In Levine’s image however, the female is presented as the dominant counterpart of the couple as she is pictured holding the banjo while the male is simply sat, listening. Similarly to Molenaer’s painting, the fret board of the lute makes the female in Levine’s photograph appear bigger than the male. Both of the images, in my opinion have a sexual undertone this is implied by the fact that the couple are pictured together, suggesting a sense of commitment. Levine’s title “Alone time” could suggest sexual as well as emotional intamacy, Molenaer’s painting has a sexual undertone due to both counterparts seemingly taking part in the “music making” which a potential metaphor for physical intimacy.
JJ Levine is a trans masculine and gender queer photographer based in Montreal who is best known for her gender bending projects such as “Alone Time” and “Switch”. “Alone Time” consists of a series of tableaux portraits that depict the same model acting out two different characters within the same scene, one character being a woman and the other, a man. “Switch” is a series of diptych images that at first glance depict two heterosexual couples in a prom style studio portrait. However, on closer inspection the images actual consist of two models rather than four. The same two models are used in both images, the couple are dressed as a man and a woman in the first image and in the second, the roles of reversed. The intriguing nature of the images is that it is unclear of what the couples actually genders are and whether or not there are a heterosexual or homosexual couple.
Levine’s work explores the concept of gender roles and strives to break these down but also questions the gender binary and questions whether gender is fluid and not as rigid as society has lead us to believe. JJ Levine’s “Queer Portraits” features many of Levine’s friends and acquaintances that are all part of the LGBT community which, if I am not mistaken can be considered under the umbrella of “queer”. I also believe that this title is significant as “Queer” generally means “strange” or odd” and generally has negative connotation. However, Levine’s subjects are present in a positive way that celebrates the differences and individuality of people. The descriptions of the portraits also do not also reveal what makes these people fit within the LGBT community, usually the image title consist of the name of the subject and the year the portrait was made. However, some images of more than on subject are titled differently, three examples being “Boyfriends in Bed 2011” , “Roommates 2013” and “Girlfriends 2012” (all pictured below) I think that these images are intriguing and beautifully composed.
I was drawn to Levine’s work because of her use of bright colours and striking subjects. Her work has a tableau feel due to the seemingly carefully selected colour schemes and the deliberate posing of the subjects which creates aesthetically pleasing compositions. This idealised controlled enviroment and subjects are themes that I want to include in my own work during this project. I also want to take direct inspiration from her use of colourful backgrounds and have ordered two backdrops to use in my response to her work as well as my own project.
Rather than physical space, the theme of Environment can also be considered within a psychological context where artists construct or imagine an environment that they respond to in creative ways using photography, performance and film.
Using binary opposites we can think of these environments as;
exterior/ interior private/ public masculin/ feminine
physical/ psychological
Currently visiting Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme is Clare Rae from Melbourne, Australia. Clare will be researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey and contributing to the educational programme. Clare Rae produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment.
from the series Magdalen. These images engage with the site of the Magdalen Asylum, where girls and women were housed at the Abbotsford Convent, whilst working in the laundries downstairs. The asylum was in operation for approximately 100 years until it was decommissioned in the 1970’s. 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.Stages is a collaborative project by Clare Rae and Simone Hine. Both artists follow in the tradition of feminist art practices, using their own body to examine broader ideas related to the conditions of feminine representation. Stages takes the Rosina Auditorium at the Abbotsford Convent as a catalyst for the production of new work. Both artists will bring their own aesthetic and line of questioning to this very particular space. Together, Rae and Hine present works that are defined by the space, whilst also contributing to a redefinition of the space.Untitled (NGV). 2013 This project engages with the public and private spaces of the National Gallery of Victoria (International), in particular the photography and print store rooms.Monash Commission 2016. The series of 10 photographs investigate institutional spaces around the Monash University Clayton Campus, mostly engaging with buildings within the Science faculty, but also including iconic modernist architecture such as Robert Blackwood Hall, the Law Library and the former site of the Monash University Museum of Art.
Clare will give an artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare will also discuss her photographic methodologies and practices, giving an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.
All students MUST attend her public lecture on Wed 22 March at Jersey Museum 5:30-7:00 pm. Here is a link to her Talk
Saturday 18 March Clare also ran an Archisle workshop on Body & Architecture in Photography. The workshop consisted of a talk by Clare, providing insight into her photographic practice focusing on recent projects that have engaged with the body and performance.
Homework: Here is the task that she asked participants to respond to. All students must complete this task within one lesson and upload 3 images with an evaluation by Mon 27 March.
1. Produce a self-portrait, in any style you like. Consider the history of self-portraiture, and try to create an image that alludes to, (or evades?) your identity.
2. Produce a performative photograph, considering the ideas presented on liveness, performance documentation and Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. ‘Captured’ vs. pre-meditated?
3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image.
For further context lets consider some of these artists’ influences on Clare’s practice.
Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll.
In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)
Cahun was friends with many Surrealist artists and writers; André Breton once called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”2(See Guardian article below by Gavin James Bower, “Claude Cahun: Finding a Lost Great,)
While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today. She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate posts.
I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 Claude Cahun 1894-1954 Purchased 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P79319
The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. CaHun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.
For further feminist theory and context read the following essay:
Amelia Jones: The “Eternal Return”: Self-Portrait Photography as Technology of Embodiment – pdf Jones_Eternal Return
Currently the National Portrait Gallery in London brings the work of Claude Cahun and Gillian Wearing together for the first time. Slipping between genders and personae in their photographic self-images, Wearing and Cahun become others while inventing themselves. “We were born in different times, we have different concerns, and we come from different backgrounds. She didn’t know me, yet I know her,” Wearing says, paying homage to Cahun and acknowledging her presence. The bigger question the exhibition might ask is less how we construct identities for ourselves than what is this thing called presence?
Behind a mask, Wearing is being Cahun. Previously she has re-enacted photographs of Andy Warhol in drag, the young Diane Arbus with a camera, Robert Mapplethorpe with a skull-topped cane, hard-bitten New York crime photographer Weegee wreathed in cigar-smoke. Among these doubles, you know Wearing is in the frame somewhere, under the silicon mask and the prosthetics, the wigs and makeup and the lighting. Going through her own family albums, she has become her own mother and her father. It is a surprise she has never got lost in this hall of time-slipping mirrors, among her own self-images and the faces she has adopted. Wearing has got others to play her game, too – substituting their own adult voices with those of a child, putting on disguises while confessing their secrets on video.
Cahun has been described as a Cindy Sherman before her time. Wearing’s art undoubtedly owes something to Sherman – just as Sherman herself is indebted to artist Suzy Lake. Looking back at Cahun, Wearing is both tracing artistic influence, and paying homage to it, teasing out threads in a web of relationships crossing generations.
Cindy Sherman, A selection of images from her film stills
Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To create her images, she assumes the multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a blond bombshell, a fashion victim, a clown, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty-five years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture.
For an overview of Sherman’s incredible oeuvre see Museum Of Modern Art’s dedicated site made at a major survey exhibition of her work in 2012.
This exhibition surveys Sherman’s career, from her early experiments as a student in Buffalo in the mid-1970s to a recent large-scale photographic mural, presented here for the first time in the United States. Included are some of the artist’s groundbreaking works—the complete “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80) and centerfolds (1981), plus the celebrated history portraits (1988–90)—and examples from her most important series, from her fashion work of the early 1980s to the break-through sex pictures of 1992 to her monumental 2008 society portraits.
Some of her latest images using digital montages
Sherman works in series, and each of her bodies of work is self-contained and internally coherent; yet there are themes that have recurred throughout her career. The exhibition showcases the artist’s individual series and also presents works grouped thematically around such common threads as cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tales; and gender and class identity.
Clare Rae sites other influences in her practice, particularly artists living and working in Australia such as Jill Orr and Julia Rrap.
Jill Orr is a contemporary artist based in Melbourne. She is best known for her works in performance, photography, video and installation works that often explore the body, and its positioning within social, political and environmental contexts. While Orr’s works are predominantly site-specific, the recording of her works are regarded as equally significant aspects of her working practice.
Jill Orr, Trilogy, performance & videos for Performance, Presence, Video Time, curated by Anne Marsh, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide. 2015Jill Orr: Antipodean Epic, 2015
BLEEDING TREES 1979
BETWEEN SOMEWHERE AND NOWHERE, 2011
Jill Orr’s work centres on issues of the psycho- social and environmental where she draws on land and identities as they are shaped in, on and with the environment be it country or urban locales.
Julie Rrap’s involvement with body art and performance in the mid-70s in Australia continued to influence her practice as it expanded into photography, painting, sculpture and video in an on-going project concerned with representations of the body.
Another site of influence to Clare Rae is Francesca Woodman. At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self-portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just 22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.
The very first photograph taken by Woodman, Self-portrait at Thirteen, 1972, shows the artist sitting at the end of a sofa in an un-indentified space, wearing an oversized jumper and jeans, arm loosely hanging on the armrest, her face obscured by a curtain of hair and the foreground blurred by sudden movement, one hand holding a cable linked to the camera. In this first image the main characteristics at the core of Woodman’s short career are clearly visible, her focus on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the acting subject behind the camera.
Woodman tested the boundaries of bodily experience in her work and her work often suggests a sense of self-displacement. Often nude except for individual body parts covered with props, sometimes wearing vintage clothing, the artist is typically sited in empty or sparsely furnished, dilapidated rooms, characterised by rough surfaces, shattered mirrors and old furniture. In some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or blending into the background, wallpaper or floor, revealing the lack of distinction of both – between figure and ground, self and world. In others she uses her physical body literally as a framework in which to create and alter her material identity. For instance, holding a sheet of glass against her flesh, squeezing her body parts against the glass and smashing her face, breasts, hips, buttocks and stomach onto the surface from various angles, Woodman distorts her physical features making them appear grotesque.
Through fragmenting her body by hiding behind furniture, using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself, or by simply cropping the image, she dissects the human figure emphasising isolated body parts. In her photographs Woodman reveals the body simultaneously as insistently there, yet somehow absent. This game of presence and absence argues for a kind of work that values disappearance as its very condition.
Since 1986, Woodman’s work has been exhibited widely and has been the subject of extensive critical study in the United States and Europe. Woodman is often situated alongside her contemporaries of the late 1970s such as Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke, yet her work also foreshadows artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Nan Goldin and Karen Finley in their subsequent dialogues with the self and reinterpretations of the female body.
For those interested in exploring identities, stereotypes, gender, alter-egos through self-portraiture using varies techniques such slow shutters-speeds, use of dressing up, make-up, props, masks, locations (mine-en-scene) Often these images are questioning ideas around truth, fantasy or fiction an involve artists making images in both interior and exterior environments
Juno Calypso won the recent BJP International Award 2016 and is currently exhibiting in London at TJ Boulting Gallery. It was an old picture of a lurid pink bathroom that inspired London-born photographer Juno Calypso to spend a week honeymooning solo at a Pennsylvania love hotel. “My first thought was that I’d be out of my mind to go all that way to take some pictures, but after failing to find anything similar in Europe I knew I’d be even crazier not to go,” Calypso says.
Surrounded by heart-shaped tubs, sparkling mirror lights and her signature anachronistic beauty devices, the Penn Hills Resort became the setting of The Honeymoon,Calypso’s new series of photographs exploring the absurdities of female identity and sexuality.
Read article here and also this article on artists exploring their alter-egos and inner selves in photography.
Anne Hardy’s photographs picture depopulated rooms that suggest surreal fictions. Working in her studio, Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour-intensive process of constructing an empty room, then developing its interior down to the most minute detail. Using the transient nature of photography, Hardy’s images withhold the actual experience of her environments, allowing our relationship with them to be in our imagination.
Hardy’s work transforms sculpture into photographic ‘paintings’. Though her scenes are built in actuality, their compositions are developed to be viewed from one vantage point only and it’s only their 2 dimensional images that are shown. Hardy uses the devices inherent within photography to heighten her work’s painterly illusion. In Cipher, aspects such as the hazy aura around the fluorescent lights, faux grotto walls, and the spatial defiance of the hanging ropes, give allusion to gesture and drawn lines.
The construction of an environment taking place in her studio
Tableaux Photography and Staged environments. Tableaux photography always have an element of performing for the camera. See artists such as, Tom Hunter, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michaels, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg
Jeff WallGregory CrewdsonSam Taylor-JohnsonTracy MoffatUntitled – May 1997 1997 Hannah Starkey born 1971 Purchased 1999 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P78246Vibeke Tandberg
Performance and Photography
For those of you who would like to explore Performance and Photography further here is a link to a project we did in 2015 when Tom Pope, was in Jersey as the Archisle Artist-in-Residence.
Study the blog posts below when we were exploring Pope’s practice and the themes of Chance, Change and Challenge . You should be able to find some starting pointshere.
For example, write a manifesto with a set of rules (6-10) that provide a framework for your performance related project. Describe in detail how you are planning on developing your work and ideas. Think about what you want to achieve, what you want to communicate, how your ideas relate to the theme ENVIRONMENT and how you are going to approach this task in terms of form, technique and subject-matter.
A list of art movements that you may use as contextual research. Many of them also produced Manifestos:
Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism, Situationism, Neo-dadaism, Land/Environmental art, Performance art/Live art, Conceptualism, Experimental filmmaking/ Avant-garde cinema (those studying Media make links with your unit on Experimental film)
Here are a list of artists/ photographers that may inspire you:
Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Yves Klein, Bas Jan Ader, Erwin Wurm, Chris Arnatt, Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Francis Alÿs, , Sophie Calle , Nikki S Lee, Claude Cahun, Dennis Oppenheim, Bruce Nauman, Allan Kaprow, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing, Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade, Andy Warhol’s film work, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Marina Abramovic, Pipilotti Rist, Luis Bunuel/ Salvatore Dali: , Le Chien Andalou, Dziga Vertov: The Man with a Movie Camera
Choose a key image from each of your chosen photographers / artists and find out as much as you can about that image and evidence the distinguishing features of the work, the concepts behind it and the context that the work is set in…
You should be on the look out for symbols, codes, conventions and metaphors that may be apparent in the work.
Always apply formal analysis to show your understanding of
Composition (rule of thirds, balance, symmetry)
Perspective (linear and atmospheric, vanishing points)
Depth (refer to aperture settings and focus points, foreground, mid-ground and back-ground, leading lines etc)
Scale (refer to proportion, but also detail influenced by medium / large format cameras)
Light ( intensity, temperature, direction)
Colour (colour harmonies / warm / cold colours and their effects)
Shadow (strength, lack of…)
Texture and surface quality
Tonal values ( contrast created by highlights, low-lights and mid-tones)
Then think, describe and explain how you can tackle the 4 Assessment Objectives below
AO1: Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding
AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops
AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress
AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements
and make an action plan that clearly shows your understanding of a specific way of exploring a type of environment…
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Make sure you discuss…
The Concept = idea, intentions and outcomes of the imagery…how has it been interpreted?
The Context = eg : An environmental portrait is a good example of a photo that can combine impact and context. The subject is shown in his or her environment, and the surroundings provide information about the subject. A standard headshot shows what someone looks like, but an environmental portrait can speak volumes about a person
Example : The Auschwitz Album is a perfect example of the importance of knowing the context in which photographs were taken. For instance, the picture below is an innocent picture of women standing together in front of a building. They stand together with their babies and children, and seem happy to look at the photographer who is taking the picture. There is no sign of stress, no hint of violence; most of the women are calm – all except one who looks like she is trying to comfort a baby.
Birkenau, Poland, Jewish women and children in front of Crematorium III, 05/1944
Yet, because we have the benefit of research, we know that these women are standing in front of one of the four massive extermination installations at Birkenau
In the gas chamber of this building (which is located below ground, perpendicular to where the women are standing), two thousand people at a time could be murdered. Behind the double windows of the building visible in the picture are fifteen ovens, vented through the chimney that is partly visible in the upper left-hand corner of the photo, used to turn the bodies of the unsuspecting victims (like those in the photo) into ash.
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This is a useful link to help you understand, analyse and explain photographs
Tanja Deman // juxtaposition of changing environments // environments as temples of worship and culture //utopia // dystopia
Sculptural (photograph as object, combined with objects and ephemera or photographs as a response to a building or space ie environment)
Marlo Pascual (above)
“Pascual arranges the photos into simple, lackadaisical assemblages that she calls “props,” which rely primarily on found furniture. The images are all painfully elegant, and evoke the seductiveness of old Hollywood. In one photograph (all works untitled, 2009), a nude woman stands behind steamed glass—a scene from a movie descended from Psycho? A photograph of a set of crystal glasses is laser-cut and laid on the floor to look like it was dropped—or shattered by a single delicate stroke of a hammer. A joke about the fragility of the image, it is also a decidedly atmospheric work.”
One of a number of contemporary artists who are blurring the lines between photography and other mediums, Letha Wilson makes artworks that are as much sculptures as photographs. Amalgamations of photographic images and spray paint, lumber and concrete, these hybrid objects, medium sized and mostly wall hung, occupy territory also being explored by sculptors such as Rachel Harrison and Virginia Overton. An exhibition of new pieces (all from 2012) showcased Wilson’s adventuresome way with materials.
Thomas Demand
German Photographer Thomas Demand (born 1964) deals with inanimate objects and sterile interiors. He makes models of pre-photographed locations out of styrofoam, card and paper but leaves subtle signs of imperfections, then re-produces the images on a grand scale…in doing he alters the meaning and narrative attached to the environment he is re-presenting…
Laurenz Berges
Laurenz Berges is German (Dusseldorf School) photographer. He tackles the notion of loss and removal…and often photographs both personal and shared environments. These can beintimate interiors, or extensive exteriors.
Candida Hofer
Candida Hofer was a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher in Germany in the 1970’s. Her images are a response to glorious interior environments that explore the contrast between the intention and reality of public and civic spaces…without people interacting with them.
James Casebere
James Caseberes (USA) photographs small scale models that reduce an architectural space to a fragile set of surfaces…they disrupt our belief in the solidity of man-made spaces…what happened ? what happens next ?…we are left disorientated.
Rut Blees Luxemburg
Rut Blees Luxemburg (Germany) uses amber lighting and reflections as found in 1920’s and 1930’s style flash photography…but in a thoroughly modern context.
Chris Killip
Chris Killip is a British photographer. Taken in the late 1970s and early 80s, Chris Killip‘s photographs are a study of the communities that bore the brunt of industrial decline in the North East. This was a response to the decisions of the Thatcher government at the time and explore the environments that people were integrated with in the northern working towns.
Show that you can use a range of function and techniques to create a composite image like those of Tanja Deman (below).
Many artists use cut and paste / collage techniques to change the context of their imagery…and challenge the way we look at the world and re-imagine our environment
Research cut and paste / digital collage techniques and ideas
Method
Select 2/ 3 images that you think you can combine to create a composite image and open in Ad-Ph
You may need to select one image that you use as your BACKGROUND IMAGE
Select the object / building / person from another image that you want to add to your BACKGROUND IMAGE
Click CTRL J
Use the move tool to drag your selection across, then position
CTRL T or Free Transform to adjust shape and size of selected object
Check your layers panel on both images!
Now blend the edges in…
Add a LAYER MASK and click to activate it
Select a brush, adapt the size and reduce your OPACITY to 30%
Now click on the edges of your object to blend it in smoothly
Take care with this part…zoom in if you need to
You can then merge your layers, or flatten and save the image if complete
Add to your blog
Now Look at Mishka Henner’s work…and his use of satellite imagery, digital mapping and more to create a vision of how our environment is being forced to change…
