Daily Archives: November 20, 2017

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Instruction, Personal Investigation, Personal Study, Preparation, Written Task

My Artist Statement & Evaluation of Work for Exhibition

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Here is my artist statement which will go alongside my series of work at the exhibition. I have attempted to be as descriptive as possible in order for my audience to get not only a cohesive visual narrative to follow but also a text driven perspective of the project which should complement the imagery well enough to tell a strong story. I have done this by explaining my thought processes as well as my inspiration I took for the series.

3 Diptychs Representing a Childhood Memory

The brain is a magical organ of our body; it has the ability to hold limitless information, thoughts, ideas and memories from times forgotten. Taking inspiration from Rita Puig-Serra Costa, these 3 diptychs come from a series encapsulating the notion of childhood nostalgia. For most of us, our memories from childhood are a certain haze which, as we grow older, becomes more and more of a distant recollection of a time which is hard to understand the details of.

In this catalogue of works, I have explored the relationship we have with memories from our past – whether happy or upsetting, they exist and are sometimes consigned to an archive in our brain to be forgotten. Memories generate an emotion which may be difficult to describe but easier to visually portray. Using my Nan, Mum and Girlfriend, I have created a collection of juxtapositions between portraits and still-life object-imagery which represent their own childhood reminiscence.

A photograph is often a fragmentation of the truth and represents a one dimensional perspective but I have attempted to create a decryption of what is often hidden in this series. Each diptych is accompanied by a handwritten note from each subject explaining the context of their choice of memory.

Evaluation:

For the exhibition which is beginning on Monday 27th November, I will not be presenting images produced for my study into my own relationships with people around me and instead, 3 diptychs which I created for a series looking at childhood memories. I decided not to use the photographs I have made thus far for my ‘relationships’ project as I wanted to show my project used to get to the stage I am now with my coursework – being the series focusing on childhood nostalgia. As well, I wasn’t happy, after experimenting with presentations using images from my current coursework, with the images I already have because altogether when clustered as a whole, did not work poetically in the way I wanted them to and instead, found the my other photographs worked better together as it was a completed and cohesive narrative about childhood recollections. I am very happy with my selection of three diptychs and will explain why…

When I set out to produce work inspired by the tableaux vivant scene which was very prominent in theatre and art in the 1800s and 1900s, but for photographic tableaux’s, not until the late 1900s, I wanted to encapsulate the idea of tableaux but put a modern twist on it and make much more conceptual in relation to photograph techniques and styles. My intention was to present an alternative approach to tableaux work by ‘rec-crating’ a childhood memory in relation to each of my family members. To ‘recreate’ a moment which may be long forgotten from a time which is very distant, I wanted to show the memory in its physical form, and therefore asked my subjects to retrieve an object which reminded them of their childhood. I also wanted to show this relation to the owner of the object and focus on a portrait to illustrate a character which can be put with the memory. I set out to recreate the memory in a variety of ways – one was for the subjects benefit and pleasure to reminisce about a time forgotten. When they retrieved their object and brought it to me to photograph, it was a moment for them to also tell me the meaning behind it and they also were able to do this through their own articulation onto paper. As well, the discovery of the past of my family was special for me to hear because I can relate to some of the stories.

I feel like I have curated an impressive portfolio of images and I am very happy with it because it different to what I have found myself doing in previous projects – it is much more simplistic in its style and nature and does not rely on heavy post production to create a captivating image and instead, it’s much more conceptual and poetic form benefits its outcome and influence on the viewer. I feel like I have created a visual shrine for the subjects to interact with – my collaboration and inclusion of my subjects on an intimate basis has made for an emotive story about nostalgia of past times – inspired by Rita Puig-Serra Costa and her project ‘Where Mimosa Bloom’ which also uses the idea of objects from personal archives paired with portraits to tell a narrative.

Inspirations, Personal Investigation, Practical Task

My Step-Brother

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In 2010, my mother entered a relationship with another man despite my birthday wishes since I can remember consisting of the reunification of my biological parents. The new man in not only my mum’s life but mine also, was David; an accountant who I had previously met due to my mum and dad’s mutual friends. He was a reasonably calm and stable guy which was a factor that was cherished in my household as we were usually quite nomadic due to moving houses on several occasions.

When the introduction of my new father figure had settled, my mother broke the news we would be moving in as a family, which as a ten year old boy upset me as I still had hoped for my parents to come together. Although I detested the idea in theory, the practice of this new family image in the home was  beneficial for everybody. However, moving house again and having a new man in the house was not the only surprise which David had brought with him as me, as an only-child had to share all my belongings and frequently my space with two of David’s children from a previous relationship. Noah and Lukah would stay for the weekend every fortnight which cause havoc for my mother and David as having three hyperactive boys was tricky, especially as two of which suffered from A.D.H.D. Another difficulty was the fact we were also separate ages for I was ten/ eleven, Noah was three/four and Lukah was two so finding an activity to occupy us all was an awkward task. I recollect playing Mario Kart numerous times over the 2010 Christmas period as it was difficult to find a suitable activity for all of us, however, keeping me and Noah inside together was catastrophic for the household.

As I started secondary school, my A.D.H.D began to level out somehow. I’m often curious over how it did so with puberty being my only reasonable solution, but either way I was grateful as I was able to focus more without the aid of my medication, I no longer felt different to those who didn’t have to take any pills to alter their behaviour, although A.D.H.D. was never a socially limiting factor for me. With the start of secondary school, I also founded my new sense of independence which combined with my birth of my little sister meant I was rarely home. Reaching twelve years old before I had a sibling came as a bit of surprise as I had always been my mother’s one and only and I liked it that way, however, now I had to share her and although Noah and Lukah were around before, I always knew and felt like the boss. As my social life consumed more of my time along with my increasing independence, I spent less and less time at home until I got a serious girlfriend at sixteen. We often go to each other’s house which would mean half of the time I would have to host, exposing her to the three other children in the household and the busy regime the children have my parents on.

By spending more time at home, I redeveloped and reconciled a relationship with Noah, who despite his disorder, wanted to play more mature games that adults played. So on the weekends he and Lukah were over, Noah would play board and card games with us and we’d often team up as the young guns against the parents, bringing us closer. However, it is important to mention my parents really struggle amusing and catering for Noah in terms of his disorder which frequently means the incorporation of me in order to find solutions to amuse him as I obviously have a first-hand account of what it is like to be in his ten year-old situation. I’ve instructed my parents to enroll Noah into something mentally stimulating and physically tiring, whilst also developing the crucial social skills that helped me overcome my disorder.

In this edit, I wanted to brighten the face of Noah in order to exploit this angelic expression to demonstrate how despite his disorder, he is an innocent and misunderstood boy. The chains which surround Noah is a representation of how his A.D.H.D. is trapping him, which combined with the tall tower implies his identity is overpowered by his disorder.

For my piece within the exhibition, I wish to show my display like so.

Going forward, I look to photograph and capture moments in which Noah is hyperactive as well as our solutions of amusing him. Another factor to consider is how demanding Noah reacts when he doesn’t get what he wants and the other children do so that’ll also be interesting to capture.

Contextual Study

Standards in photography

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Kshitij Nagar’s blog makes it clear to me that the recent criticism of the photographer Steve McCurry is not undeserved; but also it became apparent to me that he has been unfairly singled out due to his platform. Previously people criticised McCurry for displaying his manipulated photographs in the context of photo journalism as many of his photographs were published in The National Geographic magazine. However, further research has made me realise that he is not the only photographer who claims to document the truth and have their images featured on the cover of National Geographic, which have been manipulated. Another example is the cover image from the 1982s where the Pyramids of Giza are edited to appear closer together to fit the portrait orientation of the publication. It is believed that the editors of the magazine are often the ones who conduct most of the editing to the images that feature on the cover, as many photos provided by photojournalists do not conform to the exact composition of the cover. This raises questions with the authenticity of the images and perhaps even stories featured in the National Geographic, if the editors and producers are only concerned with providing the public with beautiful images and stories of the world today.

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I think the line between documentary photography and photojournalism is often blurred, Steve McCurry was often considered a photojournalist as his work was featured in non-fiction publications. I believe this is why there was so much controversy when his unedited photos were presented to the public online. In an interview with Time, McCurry claimed that he is a “visual story teller, not a photojournalist” which would make more sense if what he is doing is making beautiful images that tell a story of foreign lands rather than accurately documenting life in other countries, which is what he previously stated to do. In a Ted Talks interview, McCurry talks in detail about the context and rawness of each photo and claims to document things as they are. A direct quote being ” I believe that the picture should reflect exactly what you saw and experienced when you took the picture.” It is hard to form a for or against opinion on McCurry’s work and the man as a photographer, despite his seemingly contradicting public statements; because there is no right or wrong way to be a photojournalist or a photographic story teller and there is no one who decides who is and who isn’t either of these things.
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Personal Investigation

Archival Images- Experimenting and Developing

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I photographed the archival images I have of my grandad and the box I keep them in. These will be used as a comparison to what he used to be like, to what he’s like now. These images are extremely important to me as it shows him how I remember him. This was the man that inspired me to do many things and it makes me emotional to compare these to how he is now after his illnesses. I want my personal investigation to be a celebration of his life as well as documenting how the illness has changed his life and the lives of people around him.

Edits on Photoshop:

I edited these images on photoshop, I however decided that I don’t want to go down the root of editing by drawing on top of the photographs with the pen tool on photoshop. The main reason I don’t want to use these images is I don’t feel they suit the theme of my Personal Investigation as it a serious subject to explore, which I feel could be lost in these sort of edits as they could be seen as a type of animation, which is associated with children. I don’t feel this is appropriate with the theme I have taken on. Therefore I will edit these images in more of a mature way, still using shapes to show absents and presence of current things within the photograph. I will show this through shading specific parts of the image using photoshop, which is what I will be focusing on over the course of this month. I will do this subtly.

This image has been edited  in photoshop, only half of the image has been manipulated to show the loss of feeling in one side of his body due to the stroke. He finds it difficult to move this part of his body and this is represented in the photograph by a darken the right side of the body/photograph. Also when you cover one half of the photograph each part looks like a different person to show how he has changed as a person both physically and mentally.

Similarly, I picked a section of the photo to overlay with a black filter, this is over my grandad who has sadly pasted away due to him being an alcoholic for years of his life. The death of my granddad is a sensitive subject to me as for years I had never seen him sober, exactly a month before his death he promised to stop letting alcohol take over his life… but he didn’t. This shows he is gone, I chose the colour black to show he died of something immoral or sinful. I feel hurt and betrayed by him but have learnt to forgive him.

This is a photograph from the 60’s of my granddad and his friends, in this photograph is he 21. The red overlay over half the photo is to show separation between the boys as the two underneath the overlay are not here anymore as they passed away over the last 5 years, which brought a lot of emotional to my granddad as he felt this was a part of his childhood disappearing. He currently still has his brother with him but doesn’t see him due to him too being ill, he also had a stroke, which could link to my granddad as an heredity factor. These 3 photographs were made to be grouped together to show a pattern of loss, shown though overlays.

Again this is showing loss but this time it is showing a loss of sight, my granddad lost his sight as a result of his second stroke. He found this particularly hard as he enjoyed reading in his space time and felt like everything he loved to do, was taken away from him. He now reads the newspaper with a magnifying glass but can not read a book due to the pain he feels if he is straining his eye to much. He only has one working eye as one was removed to see if it would take away the pain… but it didn’t, leaving him with one glass eye and one eye, which is partially blind.

This is a photograph when my granddad was about 19 years of age. The image is of his brother, his dad and my granddad himself (on the viewers right) the middle figure, which has been removed with an overlay, 100 opacity is his father, who they lost at a fairly young age. In this photo he is painted black to show loss but is painted as a silhouette figure to show he is still there but just not present in our world. He is still spoken about by my granddad as he looked up to his father and always says this is why hes the man he is today.

These are my granddad’s childhood friends, most of his friends are now dead, he only has 2 of them who are still alive today. They are both in this picture. The two people, which are covered by a black overlay to make an almost silhouette effect to show the absence of these people in my granddad’s life as they have both sadly passed away. The other two men in the photograph, which are either side of my granddad in the image are still alive, they are both fairly ill themselves so have not seen my granddad in a long time. But are hopefully going to make an appearance for my granddad’s 80th birthday in December. This photograph is to again empathises the absence and presence in my Granddad’s life.

Overall my theme for this selection of work is showing absence and presence and in particular loss. This will be a key theme when working through this project.

Practical Task

Exhibition

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We are involved in a gallery exhibition linked with Archisle called ‘ constructive narratives’. i have selected a few of my images which i think relates family and environment the most. The 6 images below that i have picked show a selection of child environmental portraits which i have captured. The images all link together showing the sense of community in third world countries and emphasise the maturity of these young people. Most of the images where taken on the building site we were working on having the meaning that they were all willing to get stuck into the project that was taking place and how they, no matter what there age wanted to be a part of developing their community and learning how to build and cook so they can transfer these skills to supporting there family and community as a whole. i refined my choice of images specifically down to images where and the subjects show strong stances and a straight facial expression and highlighting a way in which they are mature fore their age. In the top image the young girl is wearing shoes which are far too big for her, this is symbolic of how she is having to grow up quickly and step into the shoes of responsibility and look out for herself and possibly her family. In the second image we see a boy of 13 years old, he stands with his arms crossed and the low angle looking up at him implies he has become a grown up and could possibly be the man of the household if the dad is not around. This idea runs throughout all the images linking them all together to be a series of powerful portraits

Experimenting with layout:

I printed out a few different images and experimented with different sizes and different image combinations however none of the photos seemed to fit together to tell a powerful story. I decided that instead of trying to show one photo from all the different shoots i did, id just focus on one shoot and then save and the others for when i make a book which will combine all the series of photograph i have captured together. I therefore looked at my environmental portraiture shoot to experiment with layouts and combinations which worked, my final choices are shown below.

Below is how i am going to have my images layed out in the exhibition. They will all be in colour and in A3 so that you can see the images clearly. The way they have been placed has been thought through as the outer images all contain a subject which is facing slightly inwards, this has the impact that it is grouping the images together emphasising the link between the images and highlighting the community atmosphere. Although they are portraits of them standing alone looking independent the grouping of the images shows that they are not alone and that they are a community and one big family and working together to help each other out.

A State of Contentment  – Zoe Pannenborg

A State of Contentment is a series of portraits captured in Burkina Faso. In October I participated in a foreign aid project to Burkina Faso where I was surrounded by the local’s culture, natural beauty and sense of community. After spending 2 weeks photographing the children and that surrounded us on the building site every day, it was noticeable that even though they had so little every single one of them was full of energy and beaming with happiness, as if they were in a state of contentment. Inspired by the works of Gideon Mendel and Steve McCurry I have created my own photojournalistic style of capturing the community spirit the environment offered. This series of conceptual portraits show the maturity that the local children possess and that with so little they can be so content.