My final edited image was created using Photoshop. I used the double exposure edit to layer two images on top of each other. My image has a bright exposure like Tanawy’s and also contains the use of pastel colors. This creates a feminism feel which is similar to Tanawy’s. The two images that I used where very different. I used a silhouette of branches hanging down with the sky as the background. I also used the reflection from inside a window to layer over it. Both of the images together create this interesting dimension with the use of the reflection as well as the silhouette.
Laura El Tanawy
Tanawy’s image also looks like a double exposure edit. I used this image as a comparison to mine because I think its one of the most interesting from her series. The image contains silhouettes of trees and aspects of nature that she layers to create her final edit. She combines many scenes to create this dreamlike, spiritual atmosphere. This image is very bright and full of pastel colors. This style is very similar to my edit because it is also bright and full of pastel colors. I like the contrast within the image because it contains pale yellows and also harsh reds. The image has a tropical feel because of the palm trees and the birds in the center of the frame. The colors in the image create consultations of pain and hatred with the use of the harsh reds.
For my response to breaking the rule of technicality i have been heavily influenced by documentary photographer Laura El Tantawy. She breaks the rule of technicality through her unusual colour tones which highlight the drama of the situation as well as not correctly exposing the image so that there is a blur on the images. these are aspects that i am going to try to recreate in my own image. The focus of my shoot will be on highlighting how women are politically free in the twenty-first century to express themselves in the way that they want to.
Over the weekend i will focus on taking images of adolescent females who are expressing themselves. in further blog posts i will be researching the freedoms and limitations of women and how they fought for political freedoms and won the right to vote as well as the feminist movement which shows how women continued to fight for gender equality and the right to express themselves. this will continue to be the basis of my project for the next 6 weeks were i explore feminist photography and how women in photograph and their representation has changed over the last century following the 100th anniversary of women’s rights to vote.
This shoot will act as a starting point for the rest of my project and i will also use it as a way to experiment in the way that i can break the rule of technicality throughout the project showing another element of freedom as photography is now a lot more free and we are able to capture documentary photographs in any way we want. Therefore i am going to use coloured plastic sheets to over the lens whilst making my photographs to firstly alter the natural colour of the image and secondly to create a slight blur to the images.
EVALUATION:
Overall, i am happy with the outcome of this shoot, i used the the filter paper as a way of distorting the natural image as well as leaving the exposure open for slightly longer so that you can see that the images are over exposed and have not been taken in a correct technical manner. The photographs that i made, due to the orange filter look like the outcome of images from the 70’s which is what i was hoping to capture. Although i have created images of females in a modern view they still highlight the new found freedoms that women have due to the females that protests in the feminist movement throughout the twentieth century. From this shoot i have considered breaking the rule of technicality more in my project to create this old fashioned images linking the theme to the time i am focusing on. In further shoots i will try to recreate images from the 1970’s when the movement was actually occurring and show women as they were first experiencing freedoms to express there sexuality and femininity.
I did the shoot for the manipulation task on 27th February after school. The lighting was difficult because I needed it to be sunny to be able to capture the different shadows and shapes I wanted to use to manipulate, however, the the cloud kept covering the sun so It made it a lot harder. I decided to do the shoot in my garden because I wanted to see what different abstract images I could take in a place that was familiar to me. Before doing the shoot, I knew what types of angles and images I wanted to create. I wanted to get some reflections, some sky images with the clouds and a lot of images of branches and leaves. Also a lot of shadows and unusual shapes. I am happy with the quality and type and amount of images I managed to take. Since I managed to capture a lot of different perspectives it meant I could create a lot of different edits.
EDITS
When editing the original images from the shoot, I used Laura El Tantawy a lot for inspiration. She used a lot of natural pastel colours which I also wanted to include in my final edits. I wanted most of the images to not look to manipulated and to look natural as much as possible. I uses a lot of images of reflections to use in the double exposure edits because layering a shadow over this could look like a natural non manipulated image.
I used Photoshop to edit all my images using the double exposure settings. I edited the colour and exposure of most of the images to suit the style I wanted to get. The images are very soft and bright because the nature suited this theme.
I am very happy with my final edits and I have managed to achieve a wide variation of different angles and edits. I believe I want to carry on with this concept and style for the rest of my project, experimenting with shadow, light and shapes.
I wanted to start my project by breaking the rules of photography. We have the freedom express ourselves in what way we want to, and this should be the same within art and photography. The rule I decided to break was the rule of manipulation because I wanted to be really creative it and see what unusal view points I could create.
Here are two mid maps full of different ideas for the manipulation shoot. Some of the main ideas I had was staging a scene, such as using tableaux photography. Another idea I had was to physically manipulate the final images by either burning them, painting over them, cutting them and destroying them in some way. However the idea that I choose to stick with was digitally manipulating an image using Photoshop and light room.
The main photographer that has inspired me for this shoot is the photographer Laura El Tantawy. I love her abstract images full of colour and unusual framing. I loved the images by Laura El Tantawy, with the abstract angles and colorful themes and I decided to use her ideas for my shoot. I wanted to focus on nature and the shadows and shapes it creates. This is my initial idea for the manipulation task, because I also plan to do some manipulation by hand using film photography, but again focusing on the abstract unseen angles.
This task involved reading through Lewis Bush’s article ‘Rule Breakers‘ which highlighted the eight ways in which the rules of documentary photography could be broken. He emphasises the key point that as documentary photography is not photojournalism and has no requirements to truthfully portray an event/environment or subject, therefore rules can be broken which are associated with documentary. Some of the rules to be broken that Bush considers are The rule of reality, the rule of the camera and the rule that i found most interesting was the rule of technicality. During the article Bush discusses that breaking the rule of technicality involves ignoring the norm to take perfecting correct,well focused and composed images. Bush states that many young photographers are being more experimental and are, ‘among a new generation express themselves lyrically, skilfully throwing technique into the wind’. i convey this to mean that elements such as using the correct amount of exposure and having in focus images are now not the focus and not a critical part of the image.
those who had chosen the same rule to break went into pairs and together we produced a mind map of ideas that we thought would be breaking the rule of technicality. we considered how we could make images that were purposely taken to be technically bad. A few of the ideas we came up with consisted of creating grainy images which may depict and change the look of an image, blur photographs through slow shutter speed in night time situations where normally photographers would try to avoid blur or fuzz. we also began to look at a few artists that we were already aware of that we considered to take technically bad images purposes and one we came up with was Francesca woodman would blurs her subject whilst they are moving.
Laura El Tantawy was a photography that Lewis Bush mentioned in his article, i had a quick initial look at some of the work that she does which can be liked to breaking the rule of technicality and was really intrigue by the night time scenes that she captures. Bush explains that her ‘long exposures express a very personal vision of a monumental event.’ and that ‘her work hints at the uncertainty engulfing the country at a time of change.’ Tantawy, a Egyptian photographer with egyptian parents grow up in England. Although starting university in Egypt she finished her degree of journalism and political science in the US. In 2006 she became a freelance photographer so that she could begin to work on her own projects and this is were her sense of breaking the documentary rules began. It was her first self published photo book which drew me to the attention of her works. In 2015 ‘the shadow of pyramids’ was published showing her interest in returning to her routes in Egypt, however she documented her view of the country she was from in a compleatly free way. Her interesting use of slow shutter speed and orange tone to her images convey the heat and fast pace life which she saw during her time in Egypt. The toughness of her vision is almost mask through the use of the bright and vibrant colours to the image and you have to look beyond the aesthetics of the images to understand the true story of the protesters which lies underneath
Creative Review described her first book as “close-up photographs of protestors and street scenes of fervent crowds in Cairo during the January revolution in Tahrir Square, are mixed in with local witness accounts, alongside old family photographs from her childhood growing up between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the US. Shot between 2005-2014, the series is a heady combination of documentary photography, portraits, and more dynamic, abstract images, jarring with the retro, candid shapshots.”
Through conceptual photographs she creates modern documentary styled images which sway from the usual path of documentors and create eye catching and meaningful narratives. The blur which is evident in most pictures highlights the first pace of life we live in as well as making the audience have to look deeper into the image to understand the meaning which lies behind them. Due to the freedom which is now acceptable she explores the limitless themes of identity, culture and notions of home which are all evident in her project ‘ the shadow o the pyramid’. This short video (The Photographer’s Gallery, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2016) Explains her reasons for starting the project and a few experiences she had during the project which enables us to understand why she takes the images which she does.
Analysis:
I chose this image to analyse as when i came across it i was the work that interested me the most. the colours and tone sin the image give it a really warm feeling. however when researching the context of her images this particular photograph comes from Tantawys photo series ‘the shadow of pyramids’ where she focuses on the riots and protests in her home country of Egypt. Therefore although the orange and red tones may convey a warm feeling this may actually be too mean heat and anger for what the people are protesting for. The way that tantawy uses colours to convey the heat and power of a situation brings such a different element to her images one which i would like to convey through my images when considering freedom and/or limitations. Tantawy breaks the rule of technicality and this can be seen in this image as there may have been a filter over the lens to create the red tone which breaks the rule of technicality through that the images aren’t conveying the correct colours and the artist has manipulated the natural colours. Furthermore there is camera shake which is considered technically wrong however i think that this was purposely done to add to the high pace of the event and adds to the realness that the protest were really going on whilst she was there and that as it was taken in the moment whilst all this was going on it is slightly blurred but this just represents the action.
initially the audience’ eye is caught by the bright yellow in the left side of the image, this is actually technically correct as she has followed the rule of thirds although this may not have been intentional. nonetheless the image can then be considered to be breaking the rule of thirds as the protagonist is directly in the center of the image, i think this fits really well with the way she breaks the rule of technicality as the subject in the center really begins to tell the story of the protests and what tantawy is trying to capture through her photo series of Egypt. furthermore the stance of the protagonist is crucial to analyse. the subject is standing tall with his arms opened out wide as if he is a symbol of the protest and he is in the centre of what is going on and he is shouting out for what he wants and fighting for what he believes in. Therefore i think that in this image especially Tantawy is almost a photojournalist as she is truly capturing what is happening in that moment in Egypt however the fact that she has then manipulated technical aspect of the images creates a documented image. She also manages to include depth of field which adds a lot to the image, the people walking on the street in the background although ma be blurred add to the depth of the meaning of the image as it is showing that there are others protesting alongside the main subject.
Through the inspiration of Laura El Tantawy, i am going to try and break the rule of technicality in similar ways. I will consider changed the colours of the image possibly through not adjusting the white balance for different situations this may lead to the colours in the images being incorrect. I am also going to experiment with long shutterspeeds which may slightly blurr the image creating a technically wrong image. My focus will be on women and how in the 21st century they women have the FREEDOM to express themselves and be free to show who they truely are. this will then hopefully link into the rest of my project of showing the story of how women that were once the gender of limitation fought for their rights and became free.
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 using mind-maps and mood-boards based on the themes FREEDOM AND/OR LIMITATIONS 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 themes of FREEDOM AND/OR LIMITATIONS
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 2018 Exam Paper A2 on pages 24-27 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 2018 with a lot of PPTs about various genres and approaches to photography: USE IT !!
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\EXAM 2018
Here are some thoughts from me on the Exam and different artists whose work makes link and references to the theme of FREEDOM AND/OR LIMITATIONS.
Definition in dictionary (noun):
The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
SYNONYMS: liberty, liberation, release, emancipation, deliverance, delivery, discharge, non-confinement, extrication amnesty, pardoning independence, self-government, self-determination, self-legislation, self rule, home rule, sovereignty, autonomy, autarky, democracy self-sufficiency, individualism, separation, non-alignment emancipation, enfranchisement exemption, immunity, dispensation, exception, exclusion, release, relief, reprieve, absolution, exoneration impunity, informal letting off, a let-off right to, entitlement to privilege, prerogative, due scope, latitude, leeway, margin, flexibility, facility, space, breathing space, room, elbow room licence, leave, free rein, a free hand carte blanche naturalness, openness, lack of inhibition, lack of reserve, casualness, informality, lack of ceremony, spontaneity, ingenuousnes impudence familiarity, overfamiliarity, presumption, forwardness
Binary opposition
The exam themes of FREEDOM AND/OR LIMITATIONS are a binary opposite – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.
Binary opposites in relation to exam themes:
Freedom vs limitations Liberty vs captivity Independence vs dependence
Exemption vs liability Scope vs restriction
Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics (scientific study of language) According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within. You can make work about freedom by exploring limitations and vice versa.
Lets thinks about the concept of freedom in 4 ways:
Political Freedom Religious Freedom Sexual Freedom Artistic Freedom
Political freedom
Political freedom is a central concept in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies. Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action, it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action, and the exercise of social or group rights. The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state.
Throughout history artists has made work that questions political
A strong relationship between the arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power has occurs across historical epochs and cultures. Artists respond to political events uses different mediums from panting, photography, film, performance and graphic design to produce as a way of actively calling for social change.
With the upcoming election in Jersey you have a chance to respond to political events, issues and causes that you care about.
Photography and Propaganda Photography has been used as Propaganda for as long time. One of the most iconic images made during the Economic Depression in the 1930s America is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. It was used by the federal agency FSA (Farm Security Administration) to raise money and awareness has been reproduced for decades on stamps, posters etc. The controversy surrounding the image is an interesting study where the account from Lange and the woman photographed, Florence Thompson differ significantly.
Dorothea Lange ‘Migrant Mother’
Before migrant mother was made photography was entrenched in producing propaganda material for the Russian Revolution and socialist uprising. See the work of El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Kazimir Malevich. These artists and many more were part of the new European avant-garde movements such as Russian Constructivism, Dadaism and later Surrealism. See also the work by some of the pioneers of photo-montages such as John Heartfield, Raoul Hausman, Hannah Hoch.
El LissitzkyJohn Heartfield
Raoul Hausmann
Hannah Hoch
See my PPT on an extensive overview of development of photomontage here:
Peter Kennard is one Britians most productive artists using photo montage to producing propaganda style images with highly political comments and satire. All forms of advertising is a form of propaganda with material used to promote and sell a particular item, merchandise or lifestyle.
Peter Kennard
Peter Kennard
Most protest groups such as Occupy London (like to website) or even the evil ideology of ISIS uses propaganda disseminated through new media and social media in order to reach a wide audience.
Occupy-London-democracy
Isis propaganda poster
For those of you who studying Media, you should be able to link this with your module on We Media. Make links both to historical and contemporary means of propaganda, visual material produced and forms of communication and dissemination of images/ messages/ ideology/ mechandise etc.
During the Vietnam War, conceptual artist, Marta Rosler made a series of photo montages that were a critique of America’s involvement. in 1981 she wrote one of the key essay on documentary photography and its fraught relationship with its inherent truth, ethics and the politics of representation, In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography.) Read it here.
Martha Rosler collage from the war in VietnamMartha Rosler Photo-op from War in Iraq 2004
The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism.
Exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
Covering the period of artistic innovation between 1912 and 1935, A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde traces the arc of the pioneering avant-garde forms after Socialist Realism was decreed the sole sanctioned style of art. The exhibition examines key developments and new modes of abstraction, including Suprematism and Constructivism, as well as avant-garde poetry, film, and photomontage.
Varvara Stepanova, The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, 1932 (State Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow)El Lissitssky
Soviet Cinema
Sergei Eisenstein, Potemkin, 1925
Eisenstein used the events of the 1905 rebellion against czarist troops in the port of Odessa to give meaning to the Russian Revolution of 1917. One of the most memorable shots, comprising the Odessa steps sequence, for example, captures the horror of the massacre in a close-up of a woman screaming after she has been wounded by the advancing soldiers. His brilliantly percussive editing, detailed shots, repetitions, contrasts, compressions and expansions of time, and collisions of images ran counter to the trend toward a seamless illusion of reality found in other national cinemas of the 1920s. After the Revolution, young film directors searched for a cinematic style that, by destroying tradition, would help to bring about a new society. In films on revolutionary subjects, they abandoned conventional structure, experimented with new techniques, and used montage. Eisenstein, in particular, believed that juxtapositions of images would shock viewers into becoming active cinematic agents.
Dziga Vertov:Man with a Movie Camera, 1929
Part documentary and part cinematic art, this film follows a city in the 1920s Soviet Union throughout the day, from morning to night. Directed by Dziga Vertov, with a variety of complex and innovative camera shots, the film depicts scenes of ordinary daily life in Russia. Vertov celebrates the modernity of the city, with its vast buildings, dense population and bustling industries. While there are no titles or narration, Vertov still naturally conveys the marvels of the modern city.
For contemporary responses to communist legacy of Russian communism and Soviet empirealism see new work by Polish photographer Rafal Milach
In REFUSAL Rafal Milach’s ongoing artistic practice focuses on applied sociotechnical systems of governmental control and ideological manipulations of belief and consciousness. Focusing on post-Soviet countries such as Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Poland, Milach traces the mechanisms of propaganda and their visual representation in architecture, urban projects and objects.
Refusal brings together different material and visual layers that ultimately represent these systems of control. Among other things, Refusal showcases photographs of handmade objects found in governmental centres and chess schools that produce optical illusions and whose innocent disposition is fundamentally changed here as they exemplify how the human mind can be influenced and controlled. Furthermore Soviet television programmes about social experiments or various state-run competitions exemplify the process of formatting and shifting meanings to serve a concrete vision of government.
See Milach’s latest photobook, The March of the First Gentlemen
The First March of Gentlemen is a fictitious narration composed of authentic stories. Historical events related to the town of Września came to be the starting point for reflection on the protest and disciplinary mechanisms. In the series of collages, the reality of the 1950s Poland ruled by the communists blends with the memory of the Września children strike from the beginning of the 20th century. This shift in time is not just a coincidence, as the problems which the project touches upon are universal, and may be seen as a metaphor for the contemporary social tensions. The project includes archive photos by Września photographer Ryszard Szczepaniak. This project was made within Kolekcja Wrzesińska residency.
Rafal Milach is also a founding member of Sputnik Photos and Polich photography collective who have been working on a large project, Lost Territories Archive about former soviet republics
Matthei Asselin: Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation Asselin’s project is conceived as a cautionary tale putting the spotlight on the consequences of corporate impunity, both for people and the environment. Designed by fellow countryman Ricardo Báez, a designer, curator and photobook collector who has notably worked with the Venezuelan master Paolo Gasparini, Monsanto® submerges the reader into an exposé of the corporation’s practices, whether by showing contaminated sites and the health and ecological damage they cause, the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam, or the pressure on farmers to use patented GMO seeds.
Read article here in American Suburb X (ASX) and listen to interview below
Alice Wielinga: North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality As a photographer, how do you make insightful work about a place where media is as heavily controlled as it is in North Korea, ‘a big black hole on the world map’ where government propaganda is ubiquitous and stage managed photo opportunities are the norm? For Alice Wielinga the solution was to take that propaganda and imposed control and turn it back on itself, by creating detailed composite images that blend familiar North Korean propaganda paintings with her own photographs of the secretive state. The resulting series North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality, has been on display at the Les Rencontres d’Arles festival following Wielinga’s win in the portfolio review prize at the previous year’s festival. Wielinga’s composites, which each take weeks to produce, are richly detailed vistas which could easily be dismissed at first glance as conventional propaganda. Closer inspection however reveals incongruities between the painted elements and the new photographic ones. Alongside the stylised faces of smiling workers and bold soldiers, she inserts the tired people and emaciated landscapes she photographed …
Alice WielingaAlice Wielinga
Watch Youtube clip where Alice talks about her work from North Korea
Actions. The image of the world can be different
A new exhibition at Kettle Yard’s in Cambridge featuring work by 38 artists that seeks to reassert the potential of art as a poetic, social and political force in the world.
Artists in Actions: Basel Abbas + Ruanne Abou-Rahme. John Akomfrah, Rana Begum, Joseph Beuys, Anna Brownsted, Candoco Dance Company + Laila Diallo, Alice Channer, Nathan Coley, Edmund de Waal, Jeremy Deller, eL Seed, Jamie Fobert, Helen Frankenthaler, Naum Gabo, Regina José Galindo, Anya Gallaccio, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Barbara Hepworth, Callum Innes, Mary Kelly, Idris Khan, Issam Kourbaj, Linder, Richard Long, Melanie Manchot, Julie Mehretu, Gustav Metzger, Oscar Murillo, Ben Nicholson, Harold Offeh, Cornelia Parker, Vicken Parsons, Katie Paterson, Zoran Popović, Khadija Saye, Emma Smith, Caroline Walker, Kate Whitley
Jeremy Deller
Money rather than yachts are parked in the island tax haven of Jersey and another muralshows the capital, St Helier, going up in smoke. The conflagration is predicted for 2017, but the banners egging on the rioters have already been designed by Ed Hall, a specialist in campaign banners. The mask-like faces are based on a tax avoidance diagram and a deliberately opaque financial scheme known as the “Jersey Cashbox”.
Read more hereabout Jeremy Deller‘s show at the Venice Bienale and watch video
Here is a video clip from Deller re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreaves
John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986) explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London through a charged combination of archive footage, still photos and newsreel.
His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, socialphilosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his “extended definition of art” and the idea of social sculptureas a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping societyand politics. His career was characterized by open public debates on a very wide range of subjects including political, environmental, social and long term cultural trends. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century.
Joseph Beuys was a German-born artist active in Europe and the United States from the 1950s through the early 1980s, who came to be loosely associated with that era’s international, proto-Conceptual art movement, Fluxus. Beuys’s diverse body of work ranges from traditional media of drawing, painting, and sculpture, to process-oriented, or time-based “action” art, the performance of which suggested how art may exercise a healing effect (on both the artist and the audience) when it takes up psychological, social, and/or political subjects. Beuys is especially famous for works incorporating animal fat and felt, two common materials – one organic, the other fabricated, or industrial – that had profound personal meaning to the artist. They were also recurring motifs in works suggesting that art, common materials, and one’s “everyday life” were ultimately inseparable.
Lewis Bush: Archisle Photographer-in-Residence 2018 is a Photographer, Writer, Curator and Educator based in London. After studying History and working as a researcher for the United Nations Taskforce on HIV/AIDS he completed a MA in Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication in 2012. Since then he has developed a multifaceted practice encompassing photography, writing and curation to explore ideas about the way power is created and exercised in the world. In The Memory of History (2012) he travelled through ten European countries documenting the way the past was being manipulated in the context of the economic crisis and recession. This project was widely published and was exhibited at the European Union’s permanent representation in London in 2014. More recent works include Metropole (2015) which critiques the architectural transformation of London and the city’s growing inequality by subverting the imagery of London’s luxury and corporate developments. Bush’s new book Shadows of the State (2018) uses open source research to reveal numbers stations, cold war intelligence communications which remain in use today. Bush is a Lecturer on the MA and BA(hons) Documentary Photography Programmes at London College of Communication.
British documentary photograph projects in response to political times, for example 1980s Thatcher era
Chris Killip: In Flagrante
Poetic, penetrating, and often heartbreaking, Chris Killip’s In Flagrante remains the most important photobook to document the devastating impact of deindustrialization on working-class communities in northern England in the 1970s and 1980s.
Taken in the late 1970s and early 80s, Chris Killip‘s photographs are a study of the communities that bore the brunt of industrial decline in the North East. They evoke both the social tensions and the economic upheaval that defined the era. “You didn’t have to be a genius to realise how important it was to get in and photograph it before it all fell apart,” he says. “The strange thing is, I didn’t realise how quickly it would go.”
Paul Graham: Beyond Caring Paul Graham’s Beyond Caring published in 1986 is now considered one of the key works from Britain’s wave of “New Color” photography that was gaining momentum in the 1980s. While commissioned to present his view of “Britain in 1984,” Graham turned his attention towards the waiting rooms, queues and poor conditions of overburdened Social Security and Unemployment offices across the United Kingdom.
Read essay here on Graham and Beyond Caring by critic David Chandler
Martin Parr: The Cost of Living
Austerity vs capitalism
Jim Goldberg: Rich and Poor
The photographs in this book constitute a shocking and gripping portrait of contemporary America. Jim Goldberg’s photographs of rich and poor people, with the subjects’ own handwritten comments about themselves on the prints, give us an inside look at the American dream at both ends of the social scale.His pictures reveal his subjects’ innermost fears and aspirations, their perceptions and illusions about themselves, with a frankness that makes the portraits as engrossing as they are disturbing.
Linda Benko, 1979.
USA. San Francisco, California. 1982. “I keep thinking where we went wrong. We have no one to talk to now, however, I will not allow this loneliness to destroy me – I STILL HAVE MY DREAMS. I would like an elegant home, a loving husband and the wealth I am used to.”
Often considered Goldberg’s seminal project, Raised by Wolves combines ten years of original photographs, text, and other illustrative elements (home movie stills, snapshots, drawings, diary entries, and images of discarded belongings) to document the lives of runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The book quickly became a classic in the photobook canon and, thus, the original is essentially unavailable.
Read article here in the Guardian and a thorough insight here on Magnum Photos. For more Theory and Practice, read here
Shooting the rich – an article in the BJP Carlos Sporttono: Wealth Management Dougie Wallace: Harrodsburg Paolo Woods and Gabriele Galimberti:The Heavens
Jim Mortram: Small Town Inertia Jim Mortram lives near Dereham, a small town in Norfolk. Dereham is no different from thousands of other communities throughout Britain, where increasing numbers of people struggle to survive at a time of welfare cuts and failing health services.
For the last seven years, Jim has been photographing the lives of people in his community who, through physical and mental problems and a failing social security system, face isolation and loneliness in their daily lives. His work covers difficult subjects such as disability, addiction and self-harm, but is always with hope and dignity, focusing upon the strength and resilience of the people he photographs.
Karen Knorr: Belgravia
The Belgravia series, images and texts describe class and power amongst the international and wealthy during the beginning of Thatcherism in London during 1979. Belgravia is still a cosmopolitan and rich neighbourhood in London near Harrods in Knightsbridge with many non-domiciled residents. My parents lived in Belgravia and the first image of the series is a photograph of my mother and grandmother in the front room of our “maisonette” on Lowndes Square. Yet the photographs are not about individuals but about a group of people and their ideas during a particular time in history. They are “non-potrtraits” in that they do not aim to flatter or to show the “truth” of these people. People are not named and remain anonymous.
Politics and elections
Mark Duffy: Vote No 1 Across the world, we are experiencing a severe disillusionment with our nations’ political class. This series takes a humorous, if dark, look at this issue by focusing on the unintended disfigurements that electoral candidates’ faces suffer when advertising themselves to the public.
The Irish landscape was littered with electoral campaign advertising during the recent European, local and national by-elections. ‘Vote No. 1′ documents this and examines the culture of election advertising in Ireland. The series focuses on the accidental, and often gruesome, disfigurements the electoral candidates’ faces suffer – an unintended consequence of their posters’ erection.
Mark Duffy
80 Lilford rd.
se5 9hr
Tel:07794111878
markduffyphotographer@gmail.com
Christopher Anderson: STUMP
Stump collects his color and black-and-white photographs from recent campaign trails-particularly from the 2012 Obama/Romney contest-that scrutinize the highly rehearsed rhetorical masks of, among others, Barack and Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton and others (including audience members at rallies). Removed from the context of reportage and sequenced here, these images accumulate a mesmerizing quality that is both frightening and hilarious.
Read review here on Joerg Colberg blog Conscentious
Identity and citizenship
Shirin Neshat Ahmed Mammoud – Shanamanesh Sam Irwin
Use of Archive and Found images Right now in contemporary photography and in particularly in photographers making photo books the use of archival material is dominating ways that photographers tell stories. We have discussed this earlier during Personal Study and many of you incorporated family archives and photo albums into the narrative and making of your photo book. There is no reason why you can’t explore archives again, both public (Photographic Archive Society Jersiaise, Archive of Modern Conflict) and private (mobile phones, social media, family albums etc.)
Here is a selection of photographers using archives in making new work: Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (Divine Violence/Holy Bible, War Primer 2, People in Trouble, Spirit is a Bone etc) Christian Patterson (Redhead Peckerwood, Bottom of the Lake), Tommasi Tanini (H. said he loved us), David Fahti (Anecdotal, Wolfgang), Dragana Jurisic (YU: The Lost Country), Anouk Kruithof,Ed Templeton (Adventures in the nearby far way), John Stezaker
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin Divine Violence/Holy BibleChristian Patterson Redhead PeckerwoodDavid Fathi ‘Wolfgang’Dragon JurisicAnouk KruithofEd TempletonJohn Stezaker
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 asGoogle Street Viewand 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
Religios Freedom
Khadija Saye who had been invited to contribute to the exhibition before her death in the Grenfell Tower fire. Read article here in the Guardian.
Dwelling: in this space we breathe is a series of wet plate collodion tintypes that explores the migration of traditional Gambian spiritual practices and the deep rooted urge to find solace within a higher power. This series of tintypes were produced with artist, Almudena Romero.
Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins
At a time of significant national and global uncertainty, the season in 2018 at the Barbican Art Gallery in London explore how artists respond to, reflect and potentially effect change in the social and political landscape.
Reflecting a diverse, complex and authentic view of the world, the exhibition touches on themes of countercultures, subcultures and minorities of all kinds, the show features the work of 20 photographers from the 1950s to the present day. Diane Arbus, Casa Susanna, Philippe Chancel, Larry Clark, Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Paz Errázuriz, Jim Goldberg, Katy Grannan, Pieter Hugo, Seiji Kurata, Danny Lyon, Teresa Margolles, Boris Mikhailov, Daido Moriyama, Igor Palmin, Walter Pfeiffer, Dayanita Singh Alec Soth and Chris Steele-Perkins
Paz Errázuriz The beautifully arresting series of photographs, Adam’s Apple (1982-87), by Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz are of a community of transgender sex-workers working in an underground brothel in Chile in the 1980s. Taken during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet when gender non-conforming people were regularly subjected to curfews, persecutions and police brutality, the photographs are a collaborative and defiant act of political resistance.
Read review here in Dazed and Confused and a gallery page in the Guardian
Alec Both:Broken Manual
In Alec Soth’s Broken Manual (2006–10) he documents men living off the grid. His atmospheric images, both colour and black and white, are of monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways who all have in common the need to disappear in America.
Yto Barrada: AgadirFor her first major London commission, artist Yto Barrada weaves together personal narratives and political ideals to create a complex portrait of a city and its people in a state of transition.
Set in an apocalyptic post-industrial landscape of Southern Russia, on a site of an archaeological expedition, the little known work of Russian photographer Igor Palmin, The Enchanted Wanderer (1977) and TheDisquiet (1977), features Soviet Hippies in their bell-bottoms and flower power hair bands, playing guitars in opium filled trailers or standing alone on desolate lands.
Dayanita Singh formed a deeply profound and meaningful friendship over 30 years with Mona Ahmed, a eunuch from New Delhi who was both feared and revered, an outcast amongst outcasts, living much of her life in a cemetery. As well as the groundbreaking photo book, with profoundly honest and frank words by Mona, the exhibition includes a poignant film, shot in one take, of a very still Mona listening to her favourite song Rasik Balma from the 1956 romantic comedy Chori Chori.
Driven by motivations both personal and political, many of the photographers in Another Kind of Life sought to provide an authentic representation of disenfranchised communities often conspiring with them to construct their own identity through the camera lens.
Sexual freedom
Rights and women and is a current
Sufragette movement and Femen
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
Rather than physical space, the theme of Environment can also be considered within a psychological context where artists construct or imagine an environment that they respond to in creative ways using photography, performance and film.
Using binary opposites we can think of freedom as;
exterior/ interior private/ public masculin/ feminine
physical/ psychological
Clare Rae from Melbourne, Australia visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme last year. Clare has been researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey and contributing to the educational programme. Clare Rae produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment.
from the series Magdalen. These images engage with the site of the Magdalen Asylum, where girls and women were housed at the Abbotsford Convent, whilst working in the laundries downstairs. The asylum was in operation for approximately 100 years until it was decommissioned in the 1970’s. These rooms are laden with history, and provided a dense and loaded environment within which to make artwork. Using this history as a starting point, I attempted to activate these spaces using my body, gently testing the physical environment.Stages is a collaborative project by Clare Rae and Simone Hine. Both artists follow in the tradition of feminist art practices, using their own body to examine broader ideas related to the conditions of feminine representation. Stages takes the Rosina Auditorium at the Abbotsford Convent as a catalyst for the production of new work. Both artists will bring their own aesthetic and line of questioning to this very particular space. Together, Rae and Hine present works that are defined by the space, whilst also contributing to a redefinition of the space.Untitled (NGV). 2013 This project engages with the public and private spaces of the National Gallery of Victoria (International), in particular the photography and print store rooms.Monash Commission 2016. The series of 10 photographs investigate institutional spaces around the Monash University Clayton Campus, mostly engaging with buildings within the Science faculty, but also including iconic modernist architecture such as Robert Blackwood Hall, the Law Library and the former site of the Monash University Museum of Art.
Clare gave a artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare will also discuss her photographic methodologies and practices, giving an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.
Homework: Here is the task that she asked participants to respond to in a workshop. This could be a good starting point to for photographic exploration.
1. Produce a self-portrait, in any style you like. Consider the history of self-portraiture, and try to create an image that alludes to, (or evades?) your identity.
2. Produce a performative photograph, considering the ideas presented on liveness, performance documentation and Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. ‘Captured’ vs. pre-meditated?
3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image.
For further context lets consider some of these artists’ influences on Clare’s practice.
Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll.
In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)
Cahun was friends with many Surrealist artists and writers; André Breton once called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”2(See Guardian article below by Gavin James Bower, “Claude Cahun: Finding a Lost Great,)
While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today. She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate posts.
I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 Claude Cahun 1894-1954 Purchased 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P79319
The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. CaHun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.
For further feminist theory and context read the following essay:
Amelia Jones: The “Eternal Return”: Self-Portrait Photography as Technology of Embodiment – pdf Jones_Eternal Return
Last year the National Portrait Gallery in London brings the work of Claude Cahun and Gillian Wearing together for the first time. Slipping between genders and personae in their photographic self-images, Wearing and Cahun become others while inventing themselves. “We were born in different times, we have different concerns, and we come from different backgrounds. She didn’t know me, yet I know her,” Wearing says, paying homage to Cahun and acknowledging her presence. The bigger question the exhibition might ask is less how we construct identities for ourselves than what is this thing called presence?
Behind a mask, Wearing is being Cahun. Previously she has re-enacted photographs of Andy Warhol in drag, the young Diane Arbus with a camera, Robert Mapplethorpe with a skull-topped cane, hard-bitten New York crime photographer Weegee wreathed in cigar-smoke. Among these doubles, you know Wearing is in the frame somewhere, under the silicon mask and the prosthetics, the wigs and makeup and the lighting. Going through her own family albums, she has become her own mother and her father. It is a surprise she has never got lost in this hall of time-slipping mirrors, among her own self-images and the faces she has adopted. Wearing has got others to play her game, too – substituting their own adult voices with those of a child, putting on disguises while confessing their secrets on video.
Cahun has been described as a Cindy Sherman before her time. Wearing’s art undoubtedly owes something to Sherman – just as Sherman herself is indebted to artist Suzy Lake. Looking back at Cahun, Wearing is both tracing artistic influence, and paying homage to it, teasing out threads in a web of relationships crossing generations.
Cindy Sherman, A selection of images from her film stills
Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To create her images, she assumes the multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a blond bombshell, a fashion victim, a clown, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty-five years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture.
For an overview of Sherman’s incredible oeuvre see Museum Of Modern Art’s dedicated sitemade at a major survey exhibition of her work in 2012.
This exhibition surveys Sherman’s career, from her early experiments as a student in Buffalo in the mid-1970s to a recent large-scale photographic mural, presented here for the first time in the United States. Included are some of the artist’s groundbreaking works—the complete “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80) and centerfolds (1981), plus the celebrated history portraits (1988–90)—and examples from her most important series, from her fashion work of the early 1980s to the break-through sex pictures of 1992 to her monumental 2008 society portraits.
Some of her latest images using digital montages
Sherman works in series, and each of her bodies of work is self-contained and internally coherent; yet there are themes that have recurred throughout her career. The exhibition showcases the artist’s individual series and also presents works grouped thematically around such common threads as cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tales; and gender and class identity.
Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations
Watch her film below about feminism, her mother and her role in the family. This film was the starting point for her photographs above by re-staging herself as a domisticated female
Another site of influence to Clare Rae is Francesca Woodman. At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self-portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just 22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.
The very first photograph taken by Woodman, Self-portrait at Thirteen, 1972, shows the artist sitting at the end of a sofa in an un-indentified space, wearing an oversized jumper and jeans, arm loosely hanging on the armrest, her face obscured by a curtain of hair and the foreground blurred by sudden movement, one hand holding a cable linked to the camera. In this first image the main characteristics at the core of Woodman’s short career are clearly visible, her focus on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the acting subject behind the camera.
Woodman tested the boundaries of bodily experience in her work and her work often suggests a sense of self-displacement. Often nude except for individual body parts covered with props, sometimes wearing vintage clothing, the artist is typically sited in empty or sparsely furnished, dilapidated rooms, characterised by rough surfaces, shattered mirrors and old furniture. In some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or blending into the background, wallpaper or floor, revealing the lack of distinction of both – between figure and ground, self and world. In others she uses her physical body literally as a framework in which to create and alter her material identity. For instance, holding a sheet of glass against her flesh, squeezing her body parts against the glass and smashing her face, breasts, hips, buttocks and stomach onto the surface from various angles, Woodman distorts her physical features making them appear grotesque.
Through fragmenting her body by hiding behind furniture, using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself, or by simply cropping the image, she dissects the human figure emphasising isolated body parts. In her photographs Woodman reveals the body simultaneously as insistently there, yet somehow absent. This game of presence and absence argues for a kind of work that values disappearance as its very condition.
Since 1986, Woodman’s work has been exhibited widely and has been the subject of extensive critical study in the United States and Europe. Woodman is often situated alongside her contemporaries of the late 1970s such as Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke, yet her work also foreshadows artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Nan Goldin and Karen Finley in their subsequent dialogues with the self and reinterpretations of the female body.
For those interested in exploring identities, stereotypes, gender, alter-egos through self-portraiture using varies techniques such slow shutters-speeds, use of dressing up, make-up, props, masks, locations (mine-en-scene) Often these images are questioning ideas around truth, fantasy or fiction an involve artists making images in both interior and exterior environments
Juno Calypso won the recent BJP International Award 2016 and is currently exhibiting in London at TJ Boulting Gallery. It was an old picture of a lurid pink bathroom that inspired London-born photographerJuno Calypso to spend a week honeymooning solo at a Pennsylvania love hotel. “My first thought was that I’d be out of my mind to go all that way to take some pictures, but after failing to find anything similar in Europe I knew I’d be even crazier not to go,” Calypso says.
Surrounded by heart-shaped tubs, sparkling mirror lights and her signature anachronistic beauty devices, the Penn Hills Resort became the setting of The Honeymoon,Calypso’s new series of photographs exploring the absurdities of female identity and sexuality.
Read article here and also this article on artists exploring their alter-egos and inner selves in photography.
Anne Hardy’s photographs picture depopulated rooms that suggest surreal fictions. Working in her studio, Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour-intensive process of constructing an empty room, then developing its interior down to the most minute detail. Using the transient nature of photography, Hardy’s images withhold the actual experience of her environments, allowing our relationship with them to be in our imagination.
Hardy’s work transforms sculpture into photographic ‘paintings’. Though her scenes are built in actuality, their compositions are developed to be viewed from one vantage point only and it’s only their 2 dimensional images that are shown. Hardy uses the devices inherent within photography to heighten her work’s painterly illusion. In Cipher, aspects such as the hazy aura around the fluorescent lights, faux grotto walls, and the spatial defiance of the hanging ropes, give allusion to gesture and drawn lines.
The construction of an environment taking place in her studio
Tableaux Photography and Staged environments. Tableaux photography always have an element of performing for the camera. See artists such as, Tom Hunter, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michaels, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg
Jeff WallGregory CrewdsonSam Taylor-JohnsonTracy MoffatUntitled – May 1997 1997 Hannah Starkey born 1971 Purchased 1999 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P78246Vibeke Tandberg
Performance and Photography
For those of you who would like to explore Performance and Photography further here is a link to a project we did in 2015 when Tom Pope, was in Jersey as the Archisle Artist-in-Residence.
Study the blog posts below when we were exploring Pope’s practice and the themes of Chance, Change and Challenge . You should be able to find some starting pointshere.
Here are some of the key concepts that underpin Pope’s work and practice:
Performance, Photography, Chance, Humour/Fun, Repetition, Play Psychogeography, dérive(drifting), Situationism (link to a ppt: Situationism), Dadaism, Public/Private, Challenging authority, Failure, DIY/Ad-hoc approach, Collaboration, Audience participation
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 FREEDOM and/or LIMITATIONS 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.
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
Laura El Tanawy
The main photographer that has inspired me for this shoot is the photographer Laura El Tantawy. I love her abstract images full of colour and unusual framing. I loved the images by Laura El Tantawy, with the abstract angles and colorful themes and I decided to use her ideas for my shoot. I wanted to focus on nature and the shadows and shapes it creates. This is my initial idea for the manipulation task, because I also plan to do some manipulation by hand using film photography, but again focusing on the abstract unseen angles.
Politics and elections
Read 
