This project is a series of intimate portraits taken over three years, Phillip Toledano recorded the final chapter in his father’s long life – his sense of humour, his struggle with memory loss and above all his unfailing spirit. The project was entitled ‘Days With My Father’
The project was created after his mum died suddenly on the 4th of September 2006. After she died, Phillip realised how much his mother shielded him from his father’s mental state. He suffers with short-term memory and is ‘often lost.’ An example of this is when Phillip took his dad to his mothers funeral a short period after (about 15 minutes) he asked ‘Where is your mother?’ This resulted in Phillip explaining over and over again that she had died and that he had just been at her funeral.This was shocking news to him. Why had no one told him? Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral? Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital? Were all questions he would consistently ask, he had no memory of these events. After a while Phillip realised that he couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of them to constantly re-live her death. He decided to tell him that she’d gone to Paris to take care of her brother, who was sick. And that’s where she is now. “This is an ongoing record of my father and our relationship”
Words from Phillip: I’ve always been amazed at my father’s love for my mother. It’s a constant force, like sunlight or gravity. He never stops talking about her: his gratitude for her love, for the relationship they had. For the way in which she was the glue for our little family. I loved her so much, but she drove me crazy. My hair was too short, my shirt too wrinkled, I wasn’t standing straight. She called me up once and told me not to go outside because it was dangerously windy! Now that she’s gone I realise that I spent a lifetime resisting her influence and now I miss it. I think she was right about almost everything… She would have been very happy to hear me say those words.
His father has a dog called George, he never remembered her name so often called her “The mutt”. He views are just like a human being, happy to feed her his entire dinner to see her happy. He obviously felt extreme love for the dog and she was an ‘talented’ dog as she performs ‘genius tricks’ such as ‘eating, looking at us with a human expression and lying on the carpet.
Phillip finds these scraps of writing all over the house, Phillip explains them as “a glimpse of his mind” saying words like “Where is everybody? What is going on? and he he lost his feelings. He explains how his dad spends enormous amounts of time on the toilet because of his short term memory, he can be in there for hours at a time. Phillip feels this is both “Heartbreaking and Infuriating.” It’s saddening when he explains his father often tells him that he wants to die, saying its his time to go. Phillip admits that a part of him wants him to go as well as this is no life for him to live but he finds it hard to let him go. He is the only child and he is the only really close family he has left, if he goes he will not have anyone else left.
The night his father died he spent the whole night with him, holding his hand, listening to him breathe, wondering when it would be his last. He died in his bed, at home with Phillip and his wife, although he was saddened that this had finally happened as he had been waiting, terrified he’d die when they were away so would be on his own.
This project is extremely powerful and meaningful, which is what I would like my project to be like. I really like these selection of images as they all tell a story of this mans life, showing his struggles and parts of his life that are clearly within his life daily. This has certainly created a new and stronger bound with his father through the project and deepened his love for his personality. I love that this project is in the form of a photo book as the sum of the parts ends up being significantly more than the individual pieces taken on their own as this takes us through a collective story. It shows that the roles are reversed and the child is taking care of the parent after years of his father looking after him. Most of the images are portraits, capturing the subtleties in the father’s range of emotions, on both the good days and bad. There are parallels here to similar family projects by Larry Sultan, Doug DuBois, and Mitch Epstein (among many others I’m sure), but with an even more taut resonance and delicate intimacy.
Toledano’s accompanying text is nearly as good as the pictures. It is unadorned and honest, eloquent in its openness and revealing in its common truths. While the pictures would have successfully stood on their own, the addition of the narrative makes the images even more moving and poignant, without becoming melodramatic or overdone. This is something that I would like to do when I plan my photo book on my grandfather. The sequencing adds highs and lows to the personal story, the emotional rollercoaster of discovering long hidden details, of moments of genuine laughter, and of the intense sorrow and helpless emptiness of seeing the parent slowly deteriorate and finally die.
ANALYSIS:
This image shows this man gripping onto a woman’s head, his hand is slightly blurred, which indicates he hand is moving up and down her head. He has a distort look on his face as his eyebrows are pushed down, his nostrils flared and his teeth clenched. The lighting is dim as it is coming from some sort of side light from the right of the photograph. The background is blurred, which is clear from the photo frame in the background, directly behind the man. All the colours within the photographs are neutral and earthy colours, which makes the photo feel pure and simple, showing the image is showing real life people, expressing real life stories. One of the factors that attracted me to the photograph is the raw emotion within this man, it shows how frustrated he is that he finds it difficult to remember events and facts about his own life. It is also showing his love for his wife as he grips onto her tightly, almost in fear of letting her go. It provokes emotion inside me as I see my granddad within him. I feel this image has a significant theme, that being emotion and loss. The loss is seen through the memory loss of this man and how he feels like he is losing a part of himself and his life. He can remember details about his life or events happening within it, by his facial expression, I feel he finds this loss extremely painful and frustrating making it hard for him to enjoy his life. The main focus is the two people sharing a hug, this brings the viewers attention to this, it is a documentary style image as it is taken in the moment, capturing a event or a particular emotion being portrayed, this particular image is taken to show his emotion and tell his story through this powerful image. This is something I would like to explore in my own photography, featuring my granddad.
Liz Steketee- s/t Sketetee
She uses her own life as a material for her work. By doing this she is able to explore the conflicts that exist within the everyday and the richness that is found in the mundane. She feels strongly that life and art belong together, intertwined in everyday experiences. She began with creating painting that defined her vision of an experience in her life, this was through the use of montage, collage and purposeful juxtaposition of images, it is her intention to present the “truth of life.” She crops, merges and recomposes photographic elements, which then represents a moment, a memory or a life’s reality as she sees it. She disrupts linear structures and confuse elements of time and space to convey her notion of how life truly exists; a combination of independent moments that converge to leave us with a unique experience. This process is intended to jar the viewer and call into question our history through memory and as photographic document.
Liz Steketee has many different ways in which she manipulates her photographs as we are able to see when looking at her work. However, Liz Steketee doesn’t really, if ever, manipulate her photographs digitally. The photographs that she works with are all printed out and just then, she begins to manipulate them the way she feels appropriate for each of her photographs. I have found her more recent images are all manipulated through sewing or trades.The practice she uses is called Sewn is a mixed media body of work that combines photographs from my extensive archive with collage and sewing techniques. Sewing disparate elements together establishes tension that asks the viewer to questions traditions.In Sewn, she uses digital photomontage, physical collage, and sewing processes to create unique object-based artworks. This body of work does not adhere to the purity of one process or material over another. Her subject matter explores the notions of photography’s impact on memory and history, human interactions as we navigate “family”, and examining the traditions of vernacular and portrait photography.
Personally, I enjoy manipulating my images by embroidery and this is something I would like to for my Personal Investigation, as I would like to use Archive images, manipulating them in this way to create a new image. I would also like to combine archive images and new images together to create a story and a comparison of the old and new. I also like the way she has removed people within the image by sewing onto of them, making the it the main focus of the image, making viewers wonder what was originally there, which is not anymore.
ANALYSIS:
This image contains two images, which have been put together to create a completely new image. The first image, which acts as a background appears to be a older man who appears to be standing in a relaxed stance, with his hands in his pockets. The image appears to be in a home as you can see furniture in the background and a stone like wall at the back of the image, making it seem homely. You can not see the man’s face as it is covered with a different image of an elderly couple, the man in this image might of been the man behind the image. It has been attached by fine zig zag stitching with white thread to put the two images together, making this image. I feel the man behind the small image is the same man in the image covering his face, I feel like the image is about memory and everyday life. The small image could be him and his wife, I feel like his wife mat have died or no longer in his life anymore so lives in his memory. The image behind shows the elderly man in his everyday environment, living his life without her, this shows how he lives now without her. The image is showing how she will always be in his life, but now in his memories and his thoughts and no longer in his everyday life. He may feel lost without his wife, as she would have been a huge part of his life and so he would feel like a part of his has been taken from him. The man seems lonely so he might not have any other family to look after him and keep him company as he stands on his own. I would like to use the ‘Sewn’ technique in my own personal investigation by using new and archival images together by stitching.
Laia Abril- The Epilogue
Laia Abril is an inspiring artist, She is no stranger to themes of distress. Bulimia, coping with the death of a child, the asexual community, virtual sex-performer couples – these are all topics that the Barcelona-based photographer has explored and attempted to demystify with her multi-layered, story-based practice.The subjects she tackles are complex and provocative, but ones she is able to connect with by way of female empathy, “where I can be involved emotionally”, she says. Her most extensive work to date explores the struggle of eating disorders and is divided into chapters, starting with a short film titled A Bad Day. Next came Thinspiration, a self-published fanzine exploring and critiquing the selfie culture used by the pro-ana community; and finally The Epilogue, which follows an American family in the aftermath of losing their daughter to bulimia. Separating the work into sections allowed her to approach different aspects through different platforms, not only in the multiplicity of perspectives but also in a constantly evolving visual stimulation.
This is the project, which inspired me the most especially the book project ‘The Epilogue’, this particularly inspired me when it came to my book project I am going to produce on my granddad. This project is a story about the Robinson family and particularly the aftermath suffered in losing their 26 year old daughter to bulimia. Each image is accompanied by some text to explain the feelings within the photo and often a quote from the person in the photograph. Laia seemed to be working closely with the family as she reconstructs Cammy’s life telling her story through flashbacks, memories, testimonies, objects, letters, places and images. The Epilogue gives voice to the suffering of the family, the indirect victims of ‘eating disorders’, the unwilling eyewitnesses of a very painful degeneration. Laia Abril shows us the dilemmas and struggles confronted by many young girls; the problems families face in dealing with guilt and the grieving process; the frustration of close friends and the dark ghosts of this deadliest of illnesses; all blended together in the bittersweet act of remembering a loved one through photos and then made into a photo book, which was made public for others to see to make the population aware of these types of illnesses and how this affects people around them as well as themselves.
Those who loved Cammy guide the narrative, and the author allows their memories to drive the story forward with sincere purpose, while Abril’s own understated photography underpins Cammy’s absence in their lives today. The Epilogue’s chronology dances between what was and what now is, and between the two states lies anger, frustration, pain and a futile search for clues and answers – the inevitable why and what if, lingering over every spread of the book. The people closest to the Cammy have a two page spread, one page containing a photograph of that particular person and then some writing about how they feel about the situation. This is broken up by archival images of Cammy herself and objects, which belonged to Cammy.
The Epilogue- Laia Abril Video- Youtube
Each and every image is extremely powerful because it all meant something to Cammy, showing the devastation of the members she left behind and how they are dealing with it, I find extremely interesting. I also like the fact she had photographed objects, which contribute to the story in some way or were a part of Cammy’s life, this gives you a better insight to her life before she died and when she was ill and what triggered this. The objects break up the portrait anf archival photographs but I feel they are just as powerful. This is something I want to incorporate into my own personal investigation as I will be photographing objects such as my granddad’s glass eye, his walking stick, his bedroom, his house, his slippers, his magnifying glass and other significant objects in his life as well as photographing people who are in his life, which have been affected as well as images of my granddad himself.
ANALYSIS:
I personally think this specific image is immensely powerful for a photograph of an object but this is because this object could be seen as the reason for her death as she would have never been satisfied with the number on the scales, leading to her neglect food and this resulted her to become Bulimic, which meant she would binge eat in a short amount of time and then through it up. This was a in efforts to lose weight to be “slim.” The scales in the photograph would have been a huge part of her daily life as she would have probably used these to track how much weight she had lost and would continue until she was happy with her weight, the sad thing about Bulimia is that it’s extremely difficult to stop when you have started. To think that her being unhappy with her body image, led to that is saddening. The lighting is clearly artificial as it has a white tone to it, which empathises the white scales, making them the viewers eyes attracted to them. It is taken in a bird line view to show the scales how Cammy would have seen them as she stepped on them when weighing herself. This would be a object of Cammy’s, which the people who loved her would have hated and therefore does not provide a good memory of Cammy like other objects might have. This photograph represents her pain.
Another Artist who has inspired me, who I have already looked at is Carole Benitah.
Here are the final images from my shoot in response to Lauren Marek. I did the shoot at school during break time because I needed a few people to get images of. I choose three people who are all very different in terms of looks. I also made sure I used females as well as males to get a contrast. For the shoot I took close up images of the important features of the face and the body. For example, I made sure I had images of the eye, ear, mouth and also any scars that were unique to the subject.
I choose to focus on the most important features because they are unique to every person, and are what makes them who they are. When laying the images, I used photoshop because I could easily place the images were I wanted them to be.
EXPERIMENTATION
When editing the images I decided to edit them into black and white because it made the edits much more interesting and appealing. The colours and tones varied a lot, so making them into black and white also made it more appealing. I also found that the black and white versions also revealed much more of the details.
“July 1st, 2009, birth of Joséphine. Doubt and fear mingle with joy and pride. Having a child can be the simplest thing in the world. For us, it was long, unlikely, unique. In maternity, they call it a “precious pregnancy”. It is also an imbalance announced to our life as a couple, a love story for two to rebuild to three.”
This series by French artist, Arno Brignon looks at the fragility of birth and being a mother and how carefully you need to transform your life in order to mold this new introduction into your being as human – what you lived for before pregnancy all of a sudden changes and this explored through a very diverse range of portraits and landscapes delicately addressing the topic of birth and the fear of your family crumbling.
I believe the concept and content of this very moving series is relatable to my thoughts for my project where I will look at the fragility of family life through divorce and the events that come after this. I love the colours in this series and the textures that are achieved from using film as opposed to digital. The graininess is very nostalgic and suitable.
Paul Gaffney - We Make The Path By Walking
The British Journal Of Photography writes “Nothing much is happening in the images and there are no people in sight, yet everything is happening; knotted, overgrown roots catch the light and weave in and out to form complex networks; a craggy cliff-side reveals an intricate patterned texture; windswept vegetation exposes an inviting pathway. Gaffney’s sensitive handling of the landscape allows his subjects to breathe, and through their very subtlety the images sing.”
It is Gaffney’s first self-publishes book and contains photographs taken in rural Spain, Portugal and France. The idea he explains was to explore long-distance walking as “a form of meditation and personal transformation.”
Although this project does not include any people whatsoever and focuses solely on landscapes and the environment around us, the images included in the series I hope will influence the style of imagery I capture for the images I produce of the environmental/location aspect of my project. What I like about the images are the very surrealist sense about them, as in some examples, it looks very overgrown with greenery and this often juxtaposes against an urban background. My images will not be as dramatic as this but will adapt the effect of looking hazy.
Heikki Kaski - Tranquility
https://vimeo.com/125994256
Heikki Kaski (born in Kantvik, Finland, 1987) lives and works in Finland and throughout Scandinavia.
In the series, ‘Tranquillity’, there is a tension, a beat-down quality, that is beautifully conveyed in the barely balanced framing and dusty, drained palette of the photographs.
Heikki Kaski’s pictures of the town in California with a now population of 799 people and its inhabitants. It is a fractured series of reflections on a landscape that seems to have outlived its own history. He tells the story of the very quiet and isolated town and the people within through smart and sleek images of objects, portraits and landscapes. The images are very aesthetically pleasing and it something I am hoping to show in my project consisting of similar style images. Although a completely different context, the look and meaning behind the project will be similar to that of Kaski; I will look to the show the people that have a particular relation to environments and how this affects the lifestyle of these people. Although focusing on divorce, I am focusing on memories and the thoughts of my mum and dad that take them back to “good times” as such which will be displayed through very simple images of environments and portraits.
What I like about the project is the physical book which showcases the work so very elegantly. The set-out of the images on the pages, the colours involved and the overall look is very representative of the thoughts I have in mind to be minimalist in my presentation.
Rita Puig-Serra Costa - Where Mimosa Bloom
Rita Puig-Serra Costa’s work is very captivating and speaks lots about family and the relatives within shown through the thoughtful use of showing a family tree through the archival portraits of her family members.
Dealing with the grief that the photographer suffered following the death of her mother, ‘Where Mimosa Bloom’ by Rita Puig Serra Costatakes the form of an extended farewell letter; with photography skilfully used to present a visual dedication through speech and imagery to her deceased mother. This grief memoir about the loss of her mother is part meditative photo essay, part family biography and part personal message to her mother. These elements combine to form a fascinating and intriguing discourse on love, loss and sorrow. “Where Mimosa Bloom” is the result of over two years work spent collecting and curating materials and taking photographs of places, objects and people that played a significant role in her relationship to her mother, writes the site’s statement in which the book is available of purchase.
The concept is something similar to what I hope to follow through with in my own memoir to my mum and dad and myself and the lives we have since followed after the division of the family. I will be focusing on the relatives from then and from now who have played significant role in shaping my life to what it is now and who I am now because I feel using the technique of including myself and revolving the project around myself will make it easier for me to tell a better story.
I have already looked at the work of Serra-Costa and really enjoyed producing something so contemporary which revolves around the close collaboration with my subjects to produce the end result – I look forward to doing so again in my current project but on a much larger scale.
My Idea
I am going to focus my study on my mum and dad and the event that changed my own experiences as well their own and the events we would come to experience together, as a collective throughout my upbringing as a child into a teenager and into a young adult to who I am now – their divorce. When I was at the tender age of 4 – when I was aware of my surroundings and what went on in my life – who my most closest relatives were and who I could put my trust into to develop as human to who I am now. At 4, however, you don’t know the concept of love and what the event of you being born can do to a couple who were once unconditionally in love with each other. It causes stress, friction and unwanted distancing from one another – love has the potential to eventually break the people involved.
I have therefore chosen to explore this very fragile and mildly taboo subject of divorce further in my own personal investigation for the year to come. The final result of this very in-depth and rigorous investigation about the relationship which was once there between my mother and father and to what it is now will be a photobook consisting of the images I aim to produce for the remainder of my A2 year.
When handed the task to collate several ideas about what you wish to hone in on for your own personal study at the beginning of the week, it is an understatement to say that I struggled to find something I had the passion and motivation to do. I wanted to focus on the concept of family because I feel like more of a narrative can be told through this concept and I was very eager to start exploring own family. Hover, I did not know what this “special” thing was that I actually wanted to look into because I couldn’t think of anything that would generate some exciting thoughts in my mind. I had the idea to use my sister – to show the contrast between my childhood and hers through t use of my own personal archival imagery, or maybe the use of my girlfriend and her own family and the juxtaposition of her own and my now family and idea of “family”, however, this did not excite me enough and I finally came to the conclusion to investigate the divorce if my mum and ad when I was at the tender age of 4. This very influential event has affected my life since the very day I found out the spit of my parents and even though I d not fully understand this very complex subject and concept when told at the time, it has followed me throughout my life and it has moulded how I am, as well the rest of my family, including my now 4 year old sister herself and my relationship with her.
I will be focusing predominantly on the work of Japanese photographer,Yoshikatsu Fujii. In particular, I will be using her book, Red String as my inspiration for my project based around my parents and myself and my relationship with both of them.
Yoshikatsu Fujii was born and raised in Hiroshima City. He graduated from Tokyo Zokei University of Arts with BA in Art Film. He began photography work in Tokyo in 2006. His photographic works often deal with historical themes and memory lingering on in contemporary events.
What I love about Fujii’s work is the very diverse range of materials and resources used in the book. Not only is the actual book handmade very carefully with fabric and actual red-string used as decoration throughout, but he has used archival imagery from his personal archive about his mother and father, but also inserts of texts and transcribed discourse from his parents and contemporary imagery to balance out the theme of looking back at the past but also living in the moment and exploring more about his present day family.
The reasoning behind the title ‘Red String’ is because of a legend that use to exist in Japan. In Japan, legend has it that a man and woman who are predestined to meet have been tied at the little finger by an invisible red string since the time they were born.
Unfortunately, the red string tying my parents undone, broke, or perhaps was never even tied to begin with. But if the two had never met, I would never have been born into this world. If anything, you might say that there is an unbreakable red string of fate between parent and child.
Fujii’s book about his parents divorce ‘Red String’
A Stroke occurs when the blood supply to your brain is interrupted or reduced. This deprives your brain of oxygen and nutrients, causing your brain cells to die. A stroke may be caused by a blocked artery, which would be called a Ischemic stroke or the leaking or bursting of a blood vessel, which is called a hemorrhagic stroke.
You are more likely to suffer from a stroke if the individual is overweight, aged 55 or over, have a family or personal history of strokes, doesn’t often exercise, drinks alcohol heavily, smokes or uses drugs.
The main symptoms an individual will experience would be:
Confusion- This can be trouble communicating such as with speaking and understanding.
Headaches
Numbness or inability to more parts of the face, arm or leg, particularly on one side of their body.
Trouble seeing- This can be in both or one eye
Trouble walking- Including dizziness and a lack of co-ordination
There are also some long term problems which arise from Strokes:
Bladder or bowel control problems
Depressive moods
Pain in the hands and feet, getting worse with movement and changes in temperature
Paralysis or weakness on one side of the body
Trouble controlling or expressing emotions
How is a Stroke Diagnosed?
Strokes happen fast and will often occur before an individual can be seen by a doctor for a proper diagnosis.
There are several different types of diagnostic tests that doctors can use to determine which type of stroke has occurred:
Physical examination – a doctor will ask about the patient’s symptoms and medical history. They may check blood pressure, listen to the carotid arteries in the neck, and examine the blood vessels at the back of the eyes, all to check for indications of clotting.
Blood tests – a doctor may perform blood tests to find out how quickly the patient’s blood clots, the levels of particular substances (including clotting factors) in the blood, and whether or not the patient has an infection.
CT scan – a series of X-rays that can show hemorrhages, strokes, tumors, and other conditions within the brain.
MRI scan – radio waves and magnets create an image of the brain to detect damaged brain tissue.
Carotid ultrasound – an ultrasound scan to check the blood flow in the carotid arteries and to see if there is any plaque present.
Cerebral angiogram – dyes are injected into the brain’s blood vessels to make them visible under X-ray, to give a detailed view of the brain and neck blood vessels.
Echocardiogram – a detailed image of the heart is created to check for any sources of clots that could have traveled to the brain to cause a stroke.
Ischemic strokes and hemorrhagic strokes require different kinds of treatment.
How the two types of strokes are treated:
How is ischemic stroke treated?
Ischemic strokes are caused by arteries being blocked or narrowed, and so treatment focuses on restoring an adequate flow of blood to the brain.
Treatment can begin with drugs to break down clots and prevent others from forming. Aspirin can be given, as can an injection of a tissue plasminogen activator (TPA). TPA is very effective at dissolving clots but needs to be injected within 4.5 hours of stroke symptoms starting.
Emergency procedures include administering TPA directly into an artery in the brain or using a catheter to physically remove the clot. Recent studies have questioned the effectiveness of these methods, and so research is still ongoing as to how beneficial these procedures are.
There are other procedures that can be carried out to decrease the risk of strokes or TIAs. A carotid endarterectomy involves a surgeon opening the carotid artery and removing any plaque that might be blocking it.
Alternatively, an angioplasty involves a surgeon inflating a small balloon in a narrowed artery via catheter and then inserting a stent (a mesh tube) into the opening to prevent the artery from narrowing again.
How is hemorrhagic stroke treated?
Hemorrhagic strokes are caused by bleeding into the brain, so treatment focuses on controlling the bleeding and reducing the pressure on the brain.
Treatment can begin with drugs given to reduce the pressure in the brain, control overall blood pressure, prevent seizures and prevent sudden constrictions of blood vessels. If the patient is taking blood-thinning anti-coagulants or an anti-platelet medication like Warfarin or Clopidogrel, they can be given drugs to counter the medication’s effects or blood transfusions to make up for blood loss.
Surgery can be used to repair any problems with blood vessels that have led or could lead to hemorrhagic strokes. Surgeons can place small clamps at the base of aneurysms or fill them with detachable coils to stop blood flow and prevent rupture.
If the hemorrhage was caused by arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), surgery can also be used to remove small them if they are not too big and not too deep within the brain. AVMs are tangled connections between arteries and veins that are weaker and burst more easily than other normal blood vessels.
Rehabilitation
Strokes are life-changing events that can affect a person both physically and emotionally, temporarily or permanently. After a stroke, successful recovery will often involve specific rehabilitative activities such as:
Speech therapy – to help with problems producing or understanding speech. Practice, relaxation, and changing communication style, using gestures or different tones for example, all help.
Physical therapy – to help a person relearn movement and co-ordination. It is important to get out and about, even if it is difficult at first.
Occupational therapy – to help a person to improve their ability to carry out routine daily activities, such as bathing, cooking, dressing, eating, reading, and writing.
Joining a support group – to help with common mental health problems such as depression that can occur after a stroke. Many find it useful to share common experiences and exchange information.
Support from friends and family – to provide practical support and comfort. Letting friends and family know what can be done to help is very important.
Rehabilitation is an important and long part of treatment. With the right help, rehabilitation to a normal quality of life is possible, depending on the severity of the stroke.
First-time incidence of stroke occurs almost 17 million times a year worldwide; one every two seconds. There are over 1.2 million stroke survivors in the UK. 3 in 10 stroke survivors will go on to have a recurrent stroke or TIA. 1 in 8 strokes are fatal within the first 30 days
Some Statistical facts
There are more than 100,000 strokes in the UK each year; that is around one stroke every five minutes.
There are over 1.2 million stroke survivors in the UK.
Every two seconds, someone in the world will have a stroke.
Stroke is the fourth single leading cause of death in the UK and the third in Scotland.
There are over 400 childhood strokes a year in the UK.
Black people are twice as likely to have a stroke compared to
white people.
Stroke is a leading cause of disability in the UK – almost two
thirds of stroke survivors leave hospital with a disability.
More than 8 out of 10 people in the UK who are eligible for
the emergency clot-busting treatment thrombolysis
receive it.
Only 3 out of 10 stroke survivors who need a six month
assessment of their health and social care needs receive one.
The NHS and social care costs of stroke are around £1.7 billion x2 a year in England.
My idea is to create a project about my granddad, showing how his life has changed dramatically from illness, which started from a stroke, leading to other illnesses impacting his life. He did not only change physically having his eye removed, losing control of the left side of his face, the incapability to walk and having difficulty communicating. But he also changed emotionally, his personality changing hugely, his sense of humour changed as we found he was now a more serious person than he ever was before. He often gets frustrated with himself when he can’t do tasks he once could do, such as walk long distances, driving, having a bath, read a book, fly on a plane to go on holiday and making dinner.
Now as a result of his illness, he can’t:
Walk far at all and when he does walk he has to use a walking stick and often gets heart pains, he use to love walking and exercising so this becomes frustrating and upsetting for him as he can’t do what he once enjoyed.
He can’t drive as he got his driving license taken off him as he would be incapable to drive safely on the roads, as he is only now has one eye and finds it hard to feel his feet, often they cramp up, leaving him with an extreme pain. This is hard for him to get out the house to go to various places, which stops him going out at all. He goes out once a week normally to play dominos at his local pub, he looks forward to this time of the week.
He now has to have a shower instead of a bath as he is unable to get into the bath and out of the bath, which makes him feel helpless and as if he can’t do anything for himself anymore. You can really see that this affects him.
He loved books and learning new things, he was and still is a very intelligent man. However, he now can’t read the small text in a book, so often uses a kindle, which he can change the text size or has to use a magnifying glass to make the words big enough for him to read. His reading speed is increasing getting slower, which makes it hard for him to read.
He also has been advised not to get on flights longer than an hour, which makes him anxious about travelling, this results in me and my family not seeing him as much as we would like as we would have to flight to see him all the time, which is hard for my parents to get time off work and flights become expensive.
My project will consist of archival images of my granddad before he was affected by the stroke, when he was the person everyone in his life before this remembered him, some of these will be adapted. It will also include documentary photographs of him performing his daily routine and I will also take images of images, which have great significance to his routine. Some of these images may be slightly staged but they will all be of things he would usually do on a day to day basis.
The main concept of this project is how a change biologically can affect the individual mentally and physically. The project aims to show these changes.
Now I am making the transition from set assessments based around family and environment to my own personal study and investigation where I begin to take control of what I do, I saw it necessary to felt on the work I have produced so far during the second year. I have been very archive when participating in workshops and completing tasks relating to my own personal archive and have shown a keen interest when observing the history of Jersey through it sown public archive at the Societe Jersiaise and following on from these early stages, I have really enjoyed producing my own photoshoots which encapsulates the notion of documentary and tableaux and through these processes I have had the chance to look at several new artists which have heavily influenced my artistic mind to aid my success for the rest of the year.
I have used these last couple months as a process of learning of elimination essentially; I have thrown myself into all activities to allow myself to get a full understanding as well as letting myself experience the full effects of being very much committed to my work in order for myself to understand what I personally enjoy and what I am not too keen on. This has allowed me to reject certain topics/themes that I don’t feel I can strive in as much as others – which has therefore made my decision easier now I am deciding on the outlet I want to pursue for my own personal project which will conclude in a photobook.
Being able to work with professional and world-renowned photographers such as Jonny Briggs and Tanja Deman has really expanded my horizons and matured my artistic mind as well my eye for new perspectives when using a camera because the close relationship and intimate workshops carried out with the two have been a very useful experience. As well as this, out of school, I have been actively involved in what else they had to offer and have taken full advantage of their time on the island because it is not often that you have two willing professional photographers on your doorstep to aid your own passion for photography. Through attending workshops they have held in holidays and at weekends, I have been able to work very closely with both artists and the skills learned from this has essentially been transferred into my work at school where I saw myself experimenting with new techniques and the skills learned on the workshops have benefited my confidence to be different which will play a very huge part in my own personal work in the future. Through the workshops, I had the chance to meet other likeminded people of my age and the close proximity I have had with these people has made me appreciate the creativity on the island much more.
With he two photographers immersing themselves into two very different concepts of genres of photography, it has allowed me to see the direct contrasts of two styles of photography and allowed me to realise, in my work at school as well, the format for my personal study I want to pursue. I have always had an eager interests in photographing people since I started using photography as an outlet for being creative and this has followed me through my whole experience with photography at school, however had not had the confidence to use people as focal subjects of my work until recently. This concept will be the main focus point of my work this year and I look to interlink the ideas of documentary and very “raw life” images of the actuality of our lives themselves and the use of portraiture and people who are very present in my life currently.
One of my aims for the year is to experiment and explore much more than what I have done thus far. I want to be much more contemporary in my work – evident from the work I have recently produced where I made a link between family members and their childhood memories trough objects they treasure. This contemporary approach was influenced by the likes of Alfonso Almendros and Rita Puig-Serra Costa. As opposed to last year and recent times where I have relied heavily on editing to manipulate an image heavily and produce very overpowering photo montages where the meaning and raw visual concept of the images is often ignored, this year I wish to be much more simplistic and delicate with my editing process where in portraits I will only look to enhance certain colours if needed or make a few touch ups etc.
Certain themes I enjoyed were mostly based around family and the idea of photographing the faces of the people around toy to tell a story – another idea I wish to experiment with in my work this year – to tell a visual story and this is vital in a photobook. I hope to use other various concepts such as dairy entries, notes and drawings etc. to insert into series of works to tell a narrative. As well, I hope to be much more elegant and thoughtful in the work I produce and one of my goals is to not rush things and make sure I am taking time with my processes in order to get the best outcome.
Personal Target: to be experimental and concise with my work - make sure I taking my time with my thought processes to benefit the outcome and to tell a narrative with my images - be different to what I done already.
PERSONAL INVESTIGATION
You must produce a coherent body of work that demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of both practical and theoretical issues in contemporary photography and lens-based media. You can explore your ideas across different media from stills-photography, moving image to installation adopting an interdisciplinary approach to image-making by making references to other subjects that you may study or have an interest in, such as English Literature, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Media, Art or Science.
The aim of your Personal Investigation is to critically investigate, question and challenge a particular style, area or work by artists/ photographer(s) which will inform and develop your own visual language and emerging practice as a student of photography. The unit is designed for you to expand your interest, knowledge, skills and understanding of photography, and consider what makes your work special and personal to you!
We began exploring the themes of FAMILY or ENVIRONMENT in June when Tanja Deman and Jonny Briggs delivered a series of workshops to inspire you with new ways of thinking and making.
There is 7 weeks to complete your Personal Investigation and produce a number of quality final outcomes, prints, video, installations that will be submitted for the exhibition, Constructed Narratives at the Jersey Arts Centre 27 Nov. Tanja, Jonny and Gareth Syvret will be curating and making the final selection of work to be exhibited.
Now it is time for you to consider which theme you want to explore in depth, how you will do it and why?
DEADLINE WED 22 NOV
The options are for you to continue to explore FAMILY or decide to focus on ENVIRONMENT, or a combination of both – if possible.
– The focus this academic year is to develop your skills as Visual Storytellers across different genres such as documentary photographyand tableaux photography examining ways that photographers use a variety of narrative and reflective techniques associated with photojournalism and contemporary photographic practice. See here for inspirations from previous students Personal Study where subjects such as Family and Environment were explored.
If you choose ENVIRONMENT we want you to use this past exam paper as starting point for your creative journey. In addition, we have put together other exciting and creative starting points for you to choose as inspirations for your continued work. You should approach this as a MOCK exam where you now have 7 weeks to complete a project.
HOW TO BEGIN: Read the Exam Paper and Contextual References booklet thoroughly, especially pages 2-4 and page 7 which details specific starting points and approaches to the exam theme – make notes! Brainstorm your idea and research artists listed – look also at starting points in other disciplines e.g. Fine Art and Graphic Communication etc. Begin to gather further information, collect images, make a mood-board and mind-map, make plans and write a specification, start to take pictures and make a response to initial research. You must show evidence of the above on your blog– complete at least 4-5 blog posts.
PLANNER – TRACKING: This unit requires you to produce an appropriate number of blog posts that charts charts you project from from conception to completion and must show evidence of:
Research and exploration of your ideas
Recorded your experiences and observations
Analysis and interpretation of things seen, imagined or remembered
Experimentation with materials, processes and techniques
Select, evaluate and develop ideas further through sustained investigation
Show connections between your work and that of other artists/ photographers
Each week you are required to make a photographic response (still-images and/or moving image) that relates to the research and work that you explored in that week. Sustained investigations means taking a lot of time and effort to produce the best you can possibly do – reviewing, modifying and refining your idea and taking more pictures to build up a strong body of work with a clear sense of purpose and direction
Fill in the above 8 Week Planner by Fri 13 Oct.
Use PLANNING-TRACKING-PERSONAL INVESTIGATION-AUTUMN-TERMfor a full overview of what you are required to do in the next 8 weeks. You are required to self-monitor your progress and will be asked to upload Tracking-Sheet with an update on a weekly basis to your blog.
To achieve a top marks we need to see a coherent progression of quality work from start to finish following these steps:
TASKS: Make blog posts with evidence of the following:
REVIEW > REFLECTION
1. Produce a blog post that reflects on your work you have produced so far, including workshops by Tanja and Jonny. Describe which themes, artists, approaches, skills and photographic processes inspired you the most and why. Provide an overview of what you learned and include examples of previous work to illustrate your thinking.
RESEARCH > ANALYSIS 2. Gather as many visual inspirations as possible that may help you to develop your response to your chosen theme. Look at a range of visual material – photographs, films, paintings, drawings, design etc that provide some inspiration for you in the way you want to develop your idea. Make a mood-board and a mind-map and produce at least 4-5 blog posts that illustrate your thinking and understanding. Use pictures and annotation and make a photographic response to initial research!
3. Artists references: Select at least two new photographers and write a thoughtful analysis of each artists and consider how their work is referencing your chosen theme(s) and ideas. Discuss the subject-matter, content, concept, context, construction, composition, camera, then compare, contrast and critique.
Ask yourself: What? Why? How?
Produce a mood board with a selection of images.
Provide analysis of their work and explain why you have chosen them and how it relates to your idea and the theme of FAMILY
Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth, FORM (describe what you see, composition, use of light etc), MEANING (interpretation, subject-matter, what is the photographer trying to communicate), JUDGEMENT (evaluation, how good is it?), CONTEXT (history and theory of art/ photography/ visual culture,link to other’s work/ideas/concept)
Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc.
reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post
Make a photographic response to your research into the work of others.
Remember to MAKE YOUR BLOG POST VISUAL and include relevant links, podcasts, videos where possible.
Use this model of critical analysis for looking at images
PLANNING > RECORDING 4. Write a Specification: Finding your voice and unique way to tell a story. As a photographer you are always looking for photo-opportunities and for stories that only you can tell. Try and find a personal angle on a story which will make it unique and choose a subject you have access to and can photograph in depth. Write a specification with 2-3 ideas about what you are planning to do; how, who, when, where and why – based around the theme of Family or Environment and Illustrate with images/ examples.
5. In the next 3-4 weeks you need to plan and record at least 4-5 shoots and make around 250-400 photographs. If you need access to a place, visit family members or a group of people you may need to arrange appointments/ organise dates/times etc. Try and complete one photo-shoot per week. See below for more inspiration and guidelines.
mini-DEADLINE: 1st Photoshoot or photographic response to your project MUST be completed by Mon 16 Oct.
We will have a Masterclass on Mon 16 Octon how to use Lightroom and you must have unedited images ready for processing
Think about lighting, are you going to shoot outside in natural light or inside using studio lights? If portraiture, shoot both inside and outside to make informed choices and experimentation. Remember to try out a variety of shot sizes and angles, pay attention to composition, focusing, scale, perspective, rule of 1/3rds, foreground/ background and creative control of aperture (depth of field) and shutter speed (movement). Process images using Lightroom and select from these 15-20 work prints for further experimentation. Produce 2-3 blog posts from each shoot and analyse and evaluate your photos through annotation showing understanding of basic visual language using specialist terminology.
Half-term: You have one week off school and this is an ideal opportunity to make your final set of pictures, experiment, and make a final edit. Don’t waste this time!
DEVELOPING > EXPERIMENTING 6. Show development of your idea by reviewing, modifying and analysing your images and go out and take more pictures in the same or different location. Experiment with different processes and methods using Photoshop/ Lightroom appropriate to your intentions e.g. cropping, adjusting levels/ exposure, colour correction/ b/w, sepia/ monochrome, blending/ blurring, HDR, panoramic/ joiner, montage/ collage, text/ typology, borders/ frames. Produce at least 3-4 blog posts with pictures and use annotation to explain what you did and how you developed your idea further in a thoughtful and considered manner.
7. Be critical and selective when you edit your photographs. Do they benefit being part of a series or are they best if presented as a single photo? Think about sequence and relationship between images – does your series of images convey a sense of narrative (story) or are they repetitious. Annotate! Make sure you have tested and tried out different ways of presenting photographs e.g. window mounts, foam-boards, frames etc. Finish and refine studies and produce 2-3 blog posts with your final outcomes, including thoughts on how to present them and a final evaluation.
PRESENTING > EVALUATING 8. FINAL PRINTS: final outcomes must be ready for printing no later then end of your MOCK Exam .
Make sure you save your final images in a high-resolution, min 4000 pixles on the long edge and save them in your name into the relevant print folders here:
Show evidence of how you intend to present and display your final prints in the exhibition – make mock up in Photoshop. You should be aiming for about 5-7 images that needs to be displayed as a cluster; for example, 2 x A3, 3 x A4 and 2 x A5. For some of you it might be better to display images as a set of diptychs (2 images) or a triptych (3 images). We will help you making this decision.
Mock Exam: One whole day in class Mon 20 Nov: 13A Tue: 21 Nov: 13E Wed 22 Nov: 13D
9. BLOG:Go through all your blog posts and make sure that you have completed them all to your best ability, e.g. good use of images/ illustrations, annotation of processes/ techniques used, analysis/ evaluation of images and experimentation. Remember to MAKE YOUR BLOG POST VISUAL andinclude relevant, links, podcasts, videos where possible.
Write a final evaluation (250-500 words) that explain in some detail the following:
how successfully you explored your idea and realised your intentions.
links and inspiration between your final images and chosen theme(s) including artists references
analysis of final prints/presentation in terms of composition, lighting, meaning, concept, subject, symbolism etc.
10. Statement: You must choose one image, a title and write a paragraph about your project and final set of images. We need these for the Gallery guide for the exhibition. You should be able to use some of what you wrote in your evaluation above.
See here for previous examples of artist statements gallery booklet
11. Mounting. Once the exhibition is finished (in January 2018) you will need to mount and present your final prints.
Your final outcomes must be presented in a thoughtful, careful and professional manner demonstrating skills in presenting work in either window mounts, picture frames, foam-board, and/ or submit moving image and video based production and upload as Youtube clip to the blog.
Make sure you label with name, candidate number, attach velcro and put in a BLACK folder.
AO1 – Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
To achieve an A or A*-grade you must demonstrate an Exceptional ability (Level 6) through sustained and focused investigations achieving 16-18 marks out of 18.
Get yourself familiar with the assessment grid here:
To develop your ideas further from initial research of mind-maps and mood-boards on the themes ENVIRONMENT you need to be looking at the work of others (artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, historians etc) and write a specification with 2-3 unique ideas that you want to explore further.
Follow these steps to success!
Research and analyse the work of at least 2-3 (or more) photographers/ artists. Produce at least 2-3 blog posts for each artist reference that illustrate your thinking and understanding using pictures and annotation and make a photographic response to your research into the work of others
Produce a mood board with a selection of images.
Provide analysis of their work and explain why you have chosen them and how it relates to your idea and the exam theme of ENVIRONMENT
Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth, FORM (composition, use of light etc), MEANING (interpretation, subject-matter, what is the photographer trying to communicate), JUDGEMENT (evaluation, how good is it?), CONTEXT (history and theory of art/ photography/ visual culture,link to other’s work/ideas/concept)
Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc.
Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post
Plan at least 2-3 shoots as a response to the above where you explore your ideas in-depth.
Edit shoots and show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop
Reflect and evaluate each shoot afterwards with thoughts on how to refine and modify your ideas i.e. experiment with images in Lightroom/Photoshop, re-visit idea, produce a new shoot, what are you going to do differently next time? How are you going to develop your ideas?
To help you get started look at the starting points in the Exam paper on pages 22-25 under Photography. Look also at other disciplines such as, Fine Art, Graphic Communication, Textile Design, Three-dimensional design – often you will find some interesting ideas here.
However don’t just rely on these pages and starting points in the exam paper. Often those students that achieve the highest marks are those that think outside the box and find their own unique starting points.
Photography Agencies and Collectives World Press Photo – the best news photography and photojournalism Magnum Photos – photo agency, picture stories from all over the world. Panos Picture – photo agency Agency VU – photo agency INSTITUTE– photo agency Sputnik Photos – photo collective made of Polish and East European photographers A Fine Beginning – photo collective in Wales Document Scotland – photo collective in Scotland NOOR – a collective uniting a select group of highly accomplished photojournalists and documentary storytellers focusing on contemporary global issues.
Here is a folder EXAM 2017 with a lot of PPTs about various genres and approaches to photography: USE IT !!
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\EXAM 2017
Here are some thoughts from me on different artists whose work makes link and references to the theme of ENVIRONMENT.
Chris Jordan: Midway Message from the Gyre
Definition in dictionary (noun):
1. the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates.
2. the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity.
synonyms:
the natural world, nature, the living world, the world, the earth, the ecosystem, the biosphere, Mother Nature, Gaia;
wildlife, flora and fauna, the countryside, the landscape
This broad definition encompass almost everything and the obvious approach to thinking about the environment is a place. However the concept of an environment can be interpreted in different ways.
Physical – observed and recorded environment Psychological – constructed and imagined environment
Using binary opposites we can divide these environment into;
nature/ culture light/ darkness east/ west
exterior/ interior private/ public masculin/ feminine
During AS Landscape project we explored exactly this is we began by looking at Romanticism in landscape photography as exemplified by Ansel Adams and his contemporaries in Group f/64 and ended up with questioning this overtly idealised monochrome aesthetics with the advent of New Topographics in the mind 1970s – a group of photographers questioning the prevailing monochrome and romanticised aesthetic of depicting nature at it most sublime and beautiful by making images of the urban man-made world.
As A-Level students we want you to develop the binary concepts of natural vs man-altered environments and combine this with what you have learned during A2 in terms of documentary and narrative and incorporate your understanding of storytelling and use of archives to enrich your photographic study.
See old blog posts here:
Sea / Coast / Marine Environment In the Photographic Archive at the Society Jersiaise there are significant works by early Jersey landscape and architectural photographers such as Thomas Sutton
Remains of ruined coastal defence tower, Tour du Sud, La Carrière, St Ouen’s Bay, Jersey. Plate from Souvenir de Jersey, published 1854.
Other photographesr in the Photo-Archive who explored Jersey landscapes, topographical views, town, countryside, build-environments etc . Samuel Poulton, Ernest Baudoux, Albert Smith , Edwin Dale, AK Lawson, Paul Martin, Godfray, Frith (put in surnames first for searching online catalogue here.
Baudoux, Ernest. View of Victoria College, St Saviour, with boys standing informally outside
Gustave Le Gray (French 1820 –1884) was an early pioneer of seascapes.
Combination printing, creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky at a time where it was impossible to have at the same time the sky and the sea on a picture due to the too extreme luminosity range. Combination printing was an early experiment of HDR photography where you expose for bright and dark areas of a landscape scene.
Contemporary approaches to views of horizons between sky and sea, see inspiration from Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto whose monochrome images are minimalist and spiritual in their expression.
If you intend to explore sea landscapes you must do contextual research in relation to the art movement of Romanticism – see below. Technically you must make images exploring diverse quality of light, expansive views and weather patterns at different times of the day. Make sure to use a tripod, cable release and apply exposure bracketing and experiment with HDR techniques in post-production. Other techniques such as panoramic images and Hockney ‘joiners’ and Typology studies are also appropriate.
Jersey west coast has unique identity and geography. For many it is place of refuse from work, school and where they go for relaxation, leisure, beach, surfing, walking. If we think about Jersey and an island surrounded by water and with a one of the fastest tidal moments in the world you can look at photographers who has explored the notion of sea or water in interesting ways.
Michael Marten: Sea Change Excellent use of diptych and triptych and exploring low vs high tides to see how it changes a landscape scene
Mark Power: The Shipping Forecats Intangible and mysterious, familiar yet obscure, the shipping forecast is broadcast four times daily on BBC Radio 4. For those at, or about to put to sea, the forecast may mean the difference between life and death. InThe Shipping Forecast, Mark Power documents the 31 sea areas covered by the forecast,
Subject of water – both studies done on the Thames River in London
Roni Horn: Dictionary of Water
Water is a series of photographs of the surface of the Thames. It is ever-changing: now swirling, now scrunched like black tin foil, now in Turneresque lemon and flame colours, now plucked up into dune shapes. Each is annotated with tiny numbers, which refer to footnotes. The footnotes, hundreds in total, worry away in small type under the images – they happen, in other words, under the surface, and concern what the water suggests and conceals. (“Black water is sexy. / What is water? / What do you know about water? Only that it’s everywhere differently. / Disappearance: that’s why suicides are attracted to it. / You can’t talk about water without talking about oneself. / Down at the river I shot my baby.”)
[no title] 1999 Roni Horn born 1955
Mark Dion:Archeaology
Archaeological excavations aren’t limited to ancient Egypt or Stone Age villages. In 1999 during the Tate Thames Dig artist Mark Dion and volunteers collected found objects from the river bed and displayed in the cabinets.
Tate Thames Dig 1999 Mark Dion born 1961 Purchased with assistance from private benefactors 2000 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T07669
Nature as Environment: In their most recent collection of work, The Meadow, photographers Barbara Bosworth and Margot Anne Kelleyexplore the connections and relationships formed between humans and the natural world. Over the course of a decade, the two have taken numerous photographs of an area of land in Carlisle, Massachusetts. Combined with Kelley’s writing, the collaborative project resulted in this uniquely-crafted work. The land they have chosen serves as an ideal subject, composed of paths and abandoned farmland reclaimed by the vibrant foliage.
The Meadow Barbara Bosworth
Embodying a diaristic style, the final product has the feeling of a handcrafted scrapbook recollected from someone’s bookshelf. Tucked as if by accident between the pages are small booklets bearing the photographers’ experiences, and the occasional fold-out triptych which embellishes the arts-and-crafts vibe. A detailed appendix documents the numerous foliage, fungi, and pebbles found during the exploration of the meadow. They even transcribe the logs of the previous property owner, who chronicled day-to-day the teeming life he discovered on a series of wooden doors.
Finn Larsen, Tracks
Walking 50 km of a train track from one end to another over a 5 year period in different seasons and light recorded the landscape along a track that you ordinary only would see in fleeting glimpses travelling at high speed.
Other who has explored nature vs man-made environments within a confined parameters albeit on a much larger scale is Richard Misrach who for decades have photographed the border and desert like terrain between the USA and Mexico. See books Violent Legacies and his latest installment Border Cantos – a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it in a unique collaboration with composer and performer Guillermo Galindo.
The Wall, Jacumba, California an image Misrach captured in 2009.
Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach’s photographs as points of departure. A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book will include several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series, or Cantos―some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone.
Culture as Environments
Within the history of landscape photography the wild west hold a particular fascination in the minds of early explorers, settlers, scientist and artists. Early landscape photographers include Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton E. Watkins and William Henry Jackson whose work was a major influence on people like Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White
Timothy Taylor
In American cinema the advent of the genre, Westerns where frontiers people battle native American indians against a backdrop of sublime Grand Canyon. Another more serene rendition of the American West can be seen in the road movie Paris, Texas by filmmaker Wim Wenders – who also uses photography for location shoots and photographic books.
Wim Wenders
Others who has explored the unique landscape of the wild west or America’s deep South is John Divola, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Richard Misrach, Ron Jude, William Eggleston
Richard Misrach
John Divola
Ron Jude
Robert Adams
William Eggleston
Lewis Baltz
Narrative as Environment
We looked at Alec Soth during the Documentary module as a poetic lyrical story-teller who combines landscapes, portraits, still-lives and other visual material in his photo books.
By way of a follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi (reveals the unique characters and landscapes Soth encountered during a series of road trips along the Mississippi River) Alec Soth turns his eye to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. And as with his photographs of the Mississippi, these images are less about natural wonder than human desire. “I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers,” says Soth, “the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion.”
Alec Soth: Niagara
Alec Soth Niagara
Using a large-format 8×10 camera like Ansel Adams Soth worked over the course of two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls. He depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots, pawnshop wedding rings and love letters from the subjects he photographed. We read about teenage crushes, workplace affairs, heartbreak and suicide.
Theo Gosselin goes on roadtrip with his friends and make a set of images evoking a cinematic quality
Theo Goselin Sans Limites
Ron Jude: Lick Creek Line
Lick Creek Line extends and amplifies Ron Jude’s ongoing fascination with the vagaries of photographic empiricism, and the gray area between documentation and fiction. In a sequential narrative punctuated by contrasting moments of violence and
beauty, Jude follows the rambling journey of a fur trapper, methodically checking his trap line in a remote area of Idaho in the Western United States. Through converging pictures of
landscapes, architecture, an encroaching resort community, and the solitary, secretive process of trapping pine marten for their pelts, Lick Creek Line underscores the murky and culturally arbitrary nature of moral critique.
Ron Jude
Typology means the study and interpretation of types and became associated with photography through the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs taken over the course of 50 years of industrial structures; water towers, grain elevators, blast furnaces etc can be considered conceptual art. They were interested in the basic forms of these architectural structures and referred to them as ‘Anonyme Skulpturen’ (Anonymous Sculptures.)
The Becher’s were influenced by the work of earlier German photographers linked to the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s such as August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt and Albert-Renger-Patzsch.
August SanderKarl BlosfeldtAlbert-Renger-Patzsch
See also the work by Americans, William Christenberry and Ed Ruscha’s photographic works on types e.g. Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1964). Every building on the Sunset Strip (1966). Or Idris Khan‘s appropriation of Bechers’ images.
Ed Ruscha, 26 Gasoline Stations
William ChristenberryIdris Khan
See previous blog post for more guidelines and a photo-assignment.
Not least of the Bechers’ legacy is their lasting influence on subsequent generations of artists who use the photographic medium today, most notably the students taught by Bernd Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy between 1976 and 1996. Among his most renowned students are Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth.
Andreas GurkstThomas Struth born 1954 Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau 1991 1991Thomas RuffCandia Hofer
From Germany, apart form the legacy of the Dusseldorf Kunst Akademie headed by the Becher’s another school of photography, the Werkstatt für Fotografie (Workshop for Photography) was founded in Berlin by Michael Schmidt who invited several leading American photographers, including William Eggleston and John Gossage, to teach there.
Michael Schmidt Waffenrufe
Responding to the wall between East and West in Berlin Schmidt produced a seminal work, Waffenrufe. Another body of work Berlin Nach 45 show empty streets of East Berlin made in the early hours as a quite testament to post war German architecture and urban city planning
Conceptual approaches to natural/ man-made environments
Tanja Deman is a Croation artists who will be Archisle’s International Photographer-in-Residence in 2017.
Her art is inspired by her interest in the perception of space, physical and emotional connection to a place and her relationship to nature. Her works, incorporating photography, collage, video and public art, are evocative meditations on urban space and landscape. Observing recently built legacy or natural sites her work investigates the sociology of space and reflects dynamics hidden under the surface of both the built and natural environment.
Tanja Deman Fernweh
Fernweh series explores the concept of a modernist city through its extreme relations to the landscape. The images are placed on a blurred line between a past which reminds us of a future and a future which looks like a past. Scenes are referring to the modernist ideas and aspiration of a man conquering the natural wild land and subordinating it to the rational order, and the consequences of those aspirations, which switched into the longing for an escape from urban environments.
Tanja Deman Collected Narratives
Collective Narratives is a series staging a moment of contemplation of nature and built environment. Natural spectacles, framed in theatrical space are contemplated by an audience. These constructed images consolidate: geological formations; a projection of an urban environment; an arena; a deep chasm; a theatre and a crumbling slag-heap through a very active kind of watching.
While making the series ‘Collective Narratives’ I was interested in different types of spectatorship and architectural settings in which they are taking place. Moreover, the notion of a ritual in which a large group of people gathers and participates in order to experience something together by observing, intrigued me. I see these spaces for cultural and sports spectacles, as zones of pure potential, where the world must be rebuilt or re-imagined every time they are in use. Having liberated them from their utilitarian, commercial restrains, and the environments in which they were created, I allow them to cross the boundary of reality.
Together these scenes examine time and the strange modes of spectatorship attached to the inanimate world. A collective witnessing of phenomena that are usually experienced in private atmospheres.
Staged / Constructed Environments Land art is art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs
Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty
Land art was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous land art work is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty of 1970, an earthwork built out into the Great Salt Lake in the USA. Though some artists such as Smithson used mechanical earth-moving equipment to make their artworks, other artists made minimal and temporary interventions in the landscape such as Richard Long who simply walked up and down until he had made a mark in the earth.
A Line in the Himalayas 1975, printed 2004 Richard Long born 1945 Presented by the artist (Building the Tate Collection) 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T12035
Land art, which is also known as earth art, was usually documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit in a gallery. Land artists also made land art in the gallery by bringing in material from the landscape and using it to create installations.
Parallel Stress 1970 Dennis Oppenheim
As well as Richard Long and Robert Smithson, key land artists include Hamish Fulton, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Hamish Fulton(born 1946) is a British walking artist. Since 1972 he has only made works based on the experience of walks.
Wind through the Pines 1985, 1991 Hamish Fulton born 1946
William Christenberry making typological studies of vernacular architecture traditional to the deep American South.
Christenberry also made little sculptures or 3D models of some of the buildings he had photographed
Photography and sculpture
Photographic installations which are site specific and 3-dimensional is very in vogue right now. In the exam paper starting point 4 is about artists exploring the material nature of a photographic image and the idea that photographs can be sculptural. Here are a few artists to explore
Felicity Hammond is an emerging artist who works across photography and installation. Fascinated by political contradictions within the urban landscape her work explores construction sites and obsolete built environments.
The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017
The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017
In specific works Hammond photographs digitally manipulated images from property developers’ billboards and brochures and prints them directly onto acrylic sheets which are then manipulated into unique sculptural objects. http://www.felicityhammond.com/
Lorenzo Venturi: Dalston Anatomy
Lorenzo Vitturi’s vibrant still lifes capture the threatened spirit of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market. Vitturi – who lives locally – feels compelled to capture its distinctive nature before it is gentrified beyond recognition. Vitturi arranges found objects and photographs them against backdrops of discarded market materials, in dynamic compositions. These are combined with street scenes and portraits of local characters to create a unique portrait of a soon to be extinct way of life.
His installation at the Gallery draws on the temporary structures of the market using raw materials, sculptural forms and photographs to explore ideas about creation, consumption and preservation.
Watch our exclusive interview with Lorenzo.
Boyd Webb (born 1947) is a New Zealand-born visual artist who works in the United Kingdom, mainly using the medium of photography although he has also produced sculpture and film. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1988. He has had solo shows at venues including the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
Boyd Webb Abyssogramme, 1983
Initially he worked as a sculptor, making life casts of people in fibreglass and arranging them into scenes. He eventually turned to photography and his early work played with ideas of the real and the imagined. Through mysterious and elaborate compositions created using actors and complex sets built by the artist in his studio. In later years his focus shifted to a cool observational style, his work less theatrical and technique less elaborate.
James Casebere pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For the last thirty years, Casebere has devised increasingly complex models that are subsequently photographed in his studio. Based on architectural, art historical and cinematic sources, his table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms. Casebere’s abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative and oftentimes suggestive of prior events, encouraging the viewer to reconstitute a narrative or symbolic reading of his work.
Caspar David FriedrichJames Casebere
While earlier bodies of work focused on American mythologies such as the genre of the western and suburban home, in the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to institutional buildings. In more recent years, his subject matter focused on various institutional spaces and the relationship between social control, social structure and the mythologies that surround particular institutions, as well as the broader implications of dominant systems such as commerce, labor, religion and law.
Thomas Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.
Christian Boltanski(born 1944) is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker, most well known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual style. Boltanski’s subject matters are history and life duration. Vulnerability is his strength, and reflecting upon absence is his way to express his passion for what is real. And so Boltanski builds his own archives, moves shadows around the gallery space, or brings forgotten memories back to the surface through the eyes and faces of strangers that emerge from found photographs; he synchronizes the sound of the human heartbeat to the rhythm of history; he creates settings with old clothing so that individual stories may not be dispersed; he investigates fate and challenges, through irony, the transience of things to propose the art of time.
The Reserve of Dead Swiss 1990 Christian Boltanski born 1944 Presented by the Fondation Cartier 1992 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T06605
Documentary vs Staged Photography
If we examine documentary truth (camera as witness) versus a staged photograph (tableaux photography) all sorts of questions arise that are pertinent to consider as an image maker. Remember our discussion we had at the beginning of September when we began module of Documentary and Narrative. We discussed a set of images submitted at the World Press Photo competition on 2015.
Tableaux Photography and the Staged photograph
Tableaux photography is a style of photography in which a pictorial narrative is conveyed through a single image as opposed to a series of images which tell a story such as in photojournalism and documentary photography. This style is sometimes also referred to as ‘staged’ or ‘constructed photography’ and tableaux photographs makes references to fables, fairy tales, myths and unreal and real events from a variety of sources such as paintings, film, theatre, literature and the media. Tableaux photographs offer a much more ambiguous and open-ended description of something that are subjective to interpretation by the viewer. Tableaux photographs are mainly exhibited in fine art galleries and museums where they are considered alongside other works of art.
Tom Hunter, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michaels, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg, William Wegman.
Tom Hunter, Eviction order after VermeerJeff Wall Invisible ManGregory Crewdson Twilight
Watch video behind the scenes of Gregory Crewdson shoot
See my PPT om Tableaux Photography for more details
Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Doug Rickard, Daniel Mayrit all use found images from the internet, Google earth and other satellites images as a way to ask questions and raise awareness about our environment, state operated security facilities, social and urban neighbour hoods, prostitution, and London’s business leaders of major international financial institutions.
Mishka Henner, Levelland Oil Field- Texas
US oil fields photographed by satellites orbiting Earth.
Mishka Henner Dutch Landscapes
Mishka Henner: I’m not the only one, 2015
Single channel video, 4:34 mins
Photographer Trevor Paglen has long made the advanced technology of global surveillance and military weaponry his subject. This year he has been nominated for the prestigious The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize which aims to reward a contemporary photographer of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to the medium of photography in Europe in the previous year. The Prize showcases new talents and highlights the best of international photography practice. It is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography. Read more here
Trevor Paglen
Doug Rickard is a north American artist / photographer. He uses technologies such as Google Street View and YouTube to find images, which he then photographs on his monitor, to create series of work that have been published in books, exhibited in galleries.
Months after the London Riots in 2008 (at the beginning of the economical crash) the Metropolitan Police handed out leaflets depicting youngsters that presumably took part in riots. Images of very low quality, almost amateur, were embedded with unquestioned authority due both to the device used for taking the photographs and to the institution distributing those images. But in reality, what do we actually know about these people? We have no context or explanation of the facts, but we almost inadvertently assume their guilt because they have been ‘caught on CCTV’.
In his awarding book: You Haven’s Seen the Faces.. Daniel Mayrit appropriated the characteristics of surveillance technology using Facebook and Google to collect images of the 100 most powerful people in the City of London (according to the annual report by Square Mile magazine in 2013). The people here featured represent a sector which is arguably regarded in the collective perception as highly responsible for the current economic situation, but nevertheless still live in a comfortable anonymity, away from public scrutiny.
See also this book Looters by Tiane Doan Na Champassak
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PERFORMANCE
Tableaux photography always have an element of performing for the camera and the exam themes lend themselves really well to revisit Performance in Photography and explore fantasy, fiction, parody, alter-ego, identity etc.
See blog post here for more creative starting points
Read my blog post from last Summer when we were exploring Tom Pope’s practice in Photography and Performance and the themes of Chance, Change and Challenge . You should be able to find some starting points.
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 themes of Truth, Fantasy or Fiction 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
images
Photography and Sculpture:
Images produced through transformation of materials and making things to be photographed. See work by: Lorenzo Vitturi (Dalton Anatomy), Thomas Demand, James Casebere (see Emily Reynolds work), Vik Muniz, Chris Jordan (Midway Atoll), Stephen Gill.
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.
Francesco Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun, Yasumasa Morimura, Gillian Wearing, Sean Lee (Shauna) Juno Calypso
Stranger than Fiction: Should documentary photographers add fiction to reality?
Documentary photography belongs to the realm of truth, yet some photographers are testing the boundaries between reality and fiction in a bid to reach a public that is accustomed to these narrative forms in the literary and cinematic worlds. In contemporary photography today your have what some people call Fictional Documentary (similar to TV genre such as doc-drama) where you interpret real or historical events through fiction. This is often expressed through a personal and artistic vision which are operating somewhere between fiction and fantasy with some elements of truth or historical data that has been re-imagined.
See the work of: Cristina de Middel (Afronauts, Sharkification, This is What Hatred Did), Max Pinckers (Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty), Vasantha Yogananthan (A Myth of Two Souls), Ron Jude (Lick Creek Line), Eamonn Doyle ( i ) Paul Graham (Does Yellow Run Forever), Yury Toroptsov (Fairyland, House of Baba Yaga, Divine Retribution), Gareth McConnell (Close Your Eyes), Joan Fontcuberta
Cristina de Middel AfronautsMax_Pinckers_from_the_series_Will_They_Sing_Like_Raindrops_or_Leave_Me_ThirstyVasantha Yogananthan ‘A Myth of Two Souls’Ron Jude Lick Creek LinePaul Graham Does Yellow Run ForeverYury Toroptsov House of Baba Yaga
Environment and Street Photography
Classical approaches between the flaneur (Cartier-Bresson) and confrontational (William Klein) see – previous blog post and ppt here.
Within the context of environment lets look at: Eamon Doyle – Dublin Trilogy Richard Wentworth vs Eugene Agtet Michael Wolf Peter Bialobrzeski: Cairo Diaries Kyler Zeleny: Out West John MaClean: Two and Two, Hometown, New Colour Guide Lee Friedlander: America by Car Antonio Olmos: The Landscape of Murder Jason Larkin: Waiting
Christopher Anderson: Capitolio Capitolio is New York documentary photographer Christopher Anderson’s cinematic journey through the upheavals of contemporary Caracas, Venezuela, in the tradition of such earlier projects as William Klein’s New York (1954-55) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958). It presents a poetic and politicized vision, by one of today’s finest documentary photographers, of a city and a country that is ripping apart at the seams under the stress of popular unrest, and whose turmoil remains largely unreported by Western media.
Abstraction with a city environment: Saul Leiter Ernst Haas Nagoya Hatakoeyama: River Series Stephen Gill: Talking to Ants, other projects Siegfried Hansen: Hold the Line Antonio M. Xoubanova: A Small Universe
A Small Universe is my imagining of the universe in 2.5 seconds and 10 linear metres of street.” “The project is a 2.5-second-long feature film comprised of images and sequences which reference the beginning of things – technology, religion, the universe, the street, love, matter and its different forms, the basics of the human condition, contemporaneity, advertising and the end of existence.” “The images in the book represent a space according to their size; they are containers of time. An image captured at 1/40 second shutter speed is physically 10 times larger than another shot at 1/400 second. The size of each image is determined by the amount of time it contains. The book is therefore an attempt to materialize something as minimal, abstract and complex as 2.5 seconds of existence – a fragment of matter, or a small space.” “If the universe is defined as the total sum of all matter, time and space, this book of “street photography” is the attempt to address a controlled universe and the elements it contains, which in the end reveal themselves to be complex and uncontrollable.”
Focusing on people, faces and private space Satoshi Fujiwara: Code Unknown
City or nature at twilight/ night
Awoiska van der Molen: Sequester Christen Lebas: Blue Hour Todd Hido Rut Blees Luzembourg Bill Henson Maciej Dakowicz: Cardiff After Night Richard Renaldi: Tales of a City Ken Schles: Night Walk Chris Shaw: Life as a Night Porter (link to Sophie Calle) Oscar Monzón: Karma – takes a voyeuristic look through the car window.
Case-study: Environment as one site
Anders Petersen: Cafe Lehmitz Krass Clement: DRUM Klaus Pichler: Golden Days before they End Andrew Miksys: Disko Ciaran Og Arnold: I went to the worst of bars…
Environment as a Personal or Psychological space
Cindy Sherman: film-stills
– image hanging of door – girl who committed suicide Claude Cahun Elina Brothers Patrick Willocq
Anne Hardy Robert Frank – recent work such as his trilogy: You Would, Park/Sleep and Ta UF, Tal AB
staged environments (tableaux)
Tom Hunter, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michaels, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg
Environments for animals:
Raymond Meeks: Animal Shelter Nico Baumgarten: How the Other half lives Christopher Nunn: Ukranian Street Dogs Gary Winograd: The Animals
AO1 – Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
To achieve an A or A*-grade you must demonstrate an Exceptional ability (Level 6) through sustained and focused investigations achieving 16-18 marks out of 18.
Get yourself familiar with the assessment grid here:
To develop your ideas further from initial research of mind-maps and mood-boards on the themes FAMILY you need to be looking at the work of others (artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, historians etc) and write a specification with 2-3 unique ideas that you want to explore further.
Follow these steps to success!
Research and analyse the work of at least 2-3 (or more) photographers/ artists. Produce at least 2-3 blog posts for each artist reference that illustrate your thinking and understanding using pictures and annotation and make a photographic response to your research into the work of others
Produce a mood board with a selection of images.
Provide analysis of their work and explain why you have chosen them and how it relates to your idea and the exam theme of FAMILY
Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth, FORM (composition, use of light etc), MEANING (interpretation, subject-matter, what is the photographer trying to communicate), JUDGEMENT (evaluation, how good is it?), CONTEXT (history and theory of art/ photography/ visual culture,link to other’s work/ideas/concept)
Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc.
Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post
Plan at least 2-3 shoots as a response to the above where you explore your ideas in-depth.
Edit shoots and show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop
Reflect and evaluate each shoot afterwards with thoughts on how to refine and modify your ideas i.e. experiment with images in Lightroom/Photoshop, re-visit idea, produce a new shoot, what are you going to do differently next time? How are you going to develop your ideas?
Often those students that achieve the highest marks are those that think outside the box and find their own unique starting points.
Photography Agencies and Collectives World Press Photo – the best news photography and photojournalism Magnum Photos – photo agency, picture stories from all over the world. Panos Picture – photo agency Agency VU – photo agency INSTITUTE– photo agency Sputnik Photos – photo collective made of Polish and East European photographers A Fine Beginning – photo collective in Wales Document Scotland – photo collective in Scotland NOOR – a collective uniting a select group of highly accomplished photojournalists and documentary storytellers focusing on contemporary global issues.
Here is a folder EXAM 2017 with a lot of PPTs about various genres and approaches to photography: USE IT !! M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\EXAM 2017
Here are some thoughts from me on different artists whose work makes link and references to the theme of FAMILY.
This is the closet thing I had to an image of my father. A cut out of him in my mother’s photo album.
Diana Markosian ‘Inventing My Father’
Junpei Ueda:Pictures of My life
I have this desire to sum up my life in the form of a story.
My parents killed themselves, one after the other, in the winter of 1998.
My mother’s depression led her to take her own life, and my father followed her nine days later. Having suddenly a closer relationship with death at just 21 years of age, I decided to write down the things I saw around me, as they were, and to capture in photographs the emotions I would only be able to feel then and there.
I was alone in the house we had all lived in as a family. I had almost completely lost sight of the point in living. But even so, I kept on living. Though my parents weren’t there, I had the many paintings my father left me and the family pictures my mother loved taking. They spoke to me and consoled me.
Happiness is “living alongside the people you love”.
Matt Eich:I Love You, I’m leaving Love You, I’m Leaving is my meditation on familial bonds, longing, and memory. The series borrows from personal experience and the visual language of the everyday in order to create a fictional account that mirrors my reality. Made during a time of personal domestic unease, I photographed as my parents separated, and my family moved to a new city.
https://vimeo.com/102344549
Yoshikatsu Fujii:Red Strings
I received a text message. “Today, our divorce was finalized.” The message from my mother was written simply, even though she usually sends me messages with many pictures and symbols.
I remember that I didn’t feel any particular emotion, except that the time had come. Because my parents continued to live apart in the same house for a long time, their relationship gently came to an end over the years. It was no wonder that a draft blowing between the two could completely break the family at any time.
In Japan, legend has it that a man and woman who are predestined to meet have been tied at the little finger by an invisible red string since the time they were born. Unfortunately, the red string tying my parents undone, broke, or perhaps was never even tied to begin with. But if the two had never met, I would never have been born into this world. If anything, you might say that there is an unbreakable red string of fate between parent and child.
Daniel W Coburn, The Hereditary Estate
Daniel W Coburn, The Hereditary Estate
Colin Pantall ‘All Quiet on the Homefront’
Tim Roda ‘Family Albums’
Colin Gray ‘The Parents’
28_05_05.tif
Colin Gray ‘The Parents’
Denis Dailleux, Egypt, Mother and Son
Denis Dailleux, ‘Egypt, Mother and Son’
Mariela Sancari (Moises is not Dead)
Yury Toroptsov ‘Deleted Scene’
Philip Toledano ‘Days with my Father’Mitch Epstein ‘Family Business’Jason Wilde ‘Vera & John’
Sill Arse Broke It
Jason Wilde ‘Silly Arse Broke It’
See also photographers such as: Nick Waplington (Living Room), Nan Goldin (The Ballad of Sexual Dependency), Corinne Day, (Dairy), Martin Parr (Signs of the Time, Common Sense, The Cost of Living), Chris Killip (Isle of Man: A book about the Manx), Wendy Evald (This is where we live), Inaki Domingo (Ser Sangre), Lauren Greenfield (Fast Forward, Girl Culture), Nicholas Nixon (the Brown Sisters), Robert Clayton (Estate), Tom Hunter (Le Crowbar), Valerio Spada (Gomorrah Girl), Martin Gregg (Midlands), Alain Laboile, (At the Edge of the World, Sian Davey (Looking for Alice, Martha), Laia Abril (The Epilogue), Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom), Pete Pin, Carole Benitah, (Photo Souvenirs), Richard Billingham (Ray’s a Laugh), Larry Sultan (Pictures from Home), Matt Eich: I Love You, I’m leaving,Yoshikatsu Fujii: Red Strings, Junpei Ueda: Pictures of My life,Sam Harris (The Middle of Somewhere), Dana Lixenberg (Imperial Courts), Philip Toledano (Days with my Father, When I was Six), Mariela Sancari (Moises is not Dead), Yury Toroptsov (Deleted Scene, The House of Baba Yaga), Colin Gray (The Parents), Daniel W. Coburn (The Hereditary Estate), Tim Roda (Family Albums), Denis Dailleux (Egypt, Mother andSon), Diana Markosian (Inventing My Father), Amak Mahmoodian (Shenasnameh), Colin Pantall, (All Quite on the Homefront), Mitch Epstein (Family Business), Jason Wilde (Vear & John, Silly Arse Broke It), LaToya Ruby Frazier (The Notion of Family),
Family can be interpreted in different ways, one is to consider it in relation to the concept of HOME – which can be interpreted as both family or community. Home is also more than just the four walls of your house where you live with your family. Jersey, the island where you perhaps are born or where you grew up can be considered a home too. Home can be interpreted as a community. If you are away from home you often think about your home with a sense of nostalgia. Home can be associated with memories, feelings, hopes, fears etc.
Or Laura El-Tantawy and her project the uprising and protests in her homeland of Egypt ,In The Shadow of Pyramids
Safeya Sayed Shedeed, the mother of a protester who died after being shot by police officers on January 28, 2011 (a day locals dubbed the “Friday of Rage”), cries as she waits to hear the result of a sentencing trial for former president Hosni Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly who are being tried on charges of corruption and giving orders to kill protesters. ÒI want to avenge my son,Ó she said. ÒWho will get my sonÕs rights back?Ó
Members of Egypt’s central security forces take position on the rooftop of a building on a street near Tahrir (Liberation) Square, where clashes erupted with demonstrators and police fired tear gas on Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013.
A young boy emerges from the water after taking a dip in the River Nile as day turns into night in the Egyptian capital.
View from a rooftop overlooking Tahrir (Liberation) Square as hundreds of thousands took the streets of the Egyptian capital and across the country to support a call by Egypt’s Defense Minister, General Abdelfattah al-Sisi to take to the streets for a popular mandate to fight terrorism and violence on Friday, July 26, 2013.
Consider the issue of being inside or outside of the situation. You can explore your own home as an insiders point of view, or you can choose to photograph someone else’s home as an outsider. This could include extended family such as grandparents, uncle & aunties etc. Your photographs can show an everyday family event e.g. breakfast, dinner, watching TV, playing games, private moments, social interaction etc. You can also choose to follow one person and record their life in private including your own.
Have a look through this PPT
Shots: Think about making a number of different shots, portraits (formal/informal, environmental), still-life (interiors, personal objects, family photos/albums), landscape (house, garden, Jersey etc) Explore different ways of framing shots using wide-angle and standard lens, explore different angles and points of view (low, high, canted, dead-pan). Remember to adjust camera settings and exposure for different lighting conditions.
A few inspirations: Have a look at this five-day workshop in a small village in Greece. Under the guidance of Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol, 21 emerging photographers interrogated their ideas of what ‘Home’ looks and feels like.
Here is one participant’s thoughts
Most of us, we believe that HOME is a place that we sleep at nights, that we have our personal belongings, a place that protect us. Now I believe that HOME is my memories, my feelings, my fears and my hopes but also the place inside my mind that makes me feel nice, secure and warm, the place where my friends are, the place where I can make new friends.
Welcome to my HOME
Read this article about Wendy Evald’s collaborative project, where we live where she worked with different communities in Israel and the West Bank, giving out cameras so people could photograph their families and surroundings from an insider’s point of view.
Bert TeunissenDomestic Landscapes : A Portrait of Europeans at Home
Visit Guernsey Photography Festival 2014 where one of the themes was Family. Also, check out the GPF 2016 edition which begins on Thursday 8 September until 30 September. If you happen to be in Guernsey during this period you must visit some of the exhibitions.
For my Tableaux shoot I was heavily inspired by Martin Parr’s shoot: Life’s a beach. Despite Martin Parr who uses documentary photography to convey the general feeling of the beach among how it is felt among the public. I decided to use this as a way off showing Tableaux photography to express the difference between the general public’s view of the fun possibilities at the beach and focusing on my most personal and intimate feelings of the beach that are specifically constructed.I believe in my shoot, without including people in my photographs, I can construct the camera’s viewpoint as my own as I am seeing it through my own eyes. Martin Parr however by focusing on how other people respond and interact with the beach in an environment where lots of people are doing the same thing, it appears to describe the general attitude to what the beach is associated with. However with my shoot I wanted to not include anyone else so I chose more of an isolated beach to construct more of my own pure reconstruction of memories.
This photograph particularly strikes me because it is somewhat likened to my own shoot in the sense the little girl portrayed is away from a lot of the large crowds and hustle and bustle. This re-enforces my view of showing mine or someone else’s personal relationship with the beach. However the fact we can’t see the girl’s facial expression, how she is looking away towards the larger crowds and the focus on the Union Jack, is suggestive that this girl is somewhat institutionalized with the rest of society. She may be enjoying herself which is most evident by the warm, bright lighting which the photograph is shot in, but it shows that she is still somewhat influenced by society. My photographs aimed to contrast with this in the sense I wanted to depict a very uninfluenced view of from society of my childhood memories on the beach.
I like this photograph, as again it shows the common belief of the sea being associated with the beach. I on my shoot decided to take photographs of only my kayak and boat incorporating them with the sea as most of my time I spent on them rather than swimming as that is most personal to me. However Martin Parr chose swimming as more people do that when at the beach and so he could document this. My form of Tableaux photography in a sense is somewhat like documentary photography because I am essentially documenting my own feelings towards the beach by constructing certain childhood memories that are personal to me. I find it interesting how like in the previous photograph despite the warm lighting and playful nature of the people involved in the photograph showing they’re clearly enjoying themselves, we still can’t see anyone’s face – emphasizing the idea of how most people when it comes to the beach, are all the same.
Rita Puig-Serra Costa’s work is very captivating and speaks lots about family and the relatives within shown through the thoughtful use of showing a family tree through the archival portraits of her family members.
