Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer born in 1972. Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life. She studied at Seian College of Art and Design and graduated in 1993. She worked in advertising for several years after graduationg, but later became a fine art photographer. In 2001 three of her photo books were published. They were Hanako (a japanese girl’s name), Utatane (catnap), and Hanabi (fireworks). Kawauchi’s images are rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, this shows in her work because no subject is too small or mundane for her. Most of her images are in a 6×6 format.
I came across this photographer after doing my manipulation edits task. Her work is quite similar and in the same style as Laura El Tanawy. Both their work contains a bleach, bright atmosphere that I love. Her images are extremely pure and have this innocent sense to them. She is aiming to capture the world as she sees it, with a spirit in everything and everyone. Although all of her images are quite dis-similar they all contain a beauty that link to each other in someway.
Within her many series she chooses to fragment certain scenes. She sees the beauty in everyday life and captures it. Her images range from landscapes to portraits to abstract scenes. She pinpoints the beauty that she sees and displays it, closely observing it.
Within her work, she doesn’t have a set theme like most photographers who choose to focus on one thing, such as a memory, or a a certain object. Kawauchi uses the world as her subject. She fragments the beauty of every day situations and uses her photographing style to manipulate them. Kawauchi is breaking the rules of photography like the photographer Laura El Tanawy. She fragments the scene rather than framing the whole thing. This is what makes her images so unique and interesting. They all tell their own specific story. I also love the colour and aesthetic of her images.
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.
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
to own is to have something as one’s own; to posses something.
ownership – define
(noun)
1.
the act, state, or right of possessing something. possession, right of possession, holding, freehold, proprietorship, proprietary rights, title
To help me begin generating ideas surrounding the concept of ownership and how I can break this rule in relation to freedom/limitations within photography and my own work, I created, with Ben a mind map. On this large sheet of paper, we wrote the word ‘ownership’ in the centre and then drew out different ideas from this about what ownership is and how we could break it using our own photographic methods.
We can up with several ideas, as you can see from the mind map below. We though tit necessary to actually define what ownership was however and so did this first in the bottom right corner of the sheet and produced ideas from this understanding of what ownership means.
From this mood board of several ideas, I hope to be able to develop a better idea of what I could explore for my own exploration into the activity of using photography to break the rule of ownership.
freedom, to me connotes representations of one’s ability and right to be free to do what they want. it comes back to the idea that everyone in the world has a right to equal power, equal voice and equal opinion no matter what, as introduced by theorist Aleks Krotowski. freedom to me, discards any element of discrimination that may occur in this world and instead, replace it with joy and happiness among all. there should be no limitation on how one should live their life, but of course, this should be within reason. in this modern day, people can feel so isolated and dislocated form society due to the rest of the world’s population’s need to discriminate and bully. people should feel safe and as though their lives are a place of comfort and this comes from a collective effort to encourage freedom amongst all. a freedom to express ones opinions. a freedom to dress how you wish to. a freedom to be of a certain religion and for this not to matter. freedom equals joy and this concept of joy and love should prevail all aspects of limitation. however, freedom can have its downfalls and limitations, of course can be seen as beneficial as well. a freedom to access all information on the internet of the current, social media-driven world can be dangerous and can impact teenagers of society due to a lack of filters. for me, freedom is possible through clothes; fashion. freedom, for me is expression of myself and my personality and this for me is possible through the clothes I wear and how I present myself through my appearance – something I wish to explore in my exam.
breaking the word down
to be free is to be able to act or be done as one wishes; not under the control of another.
to be free means to not or no longer be confined or imprisoned.
freedom – define
(noun)
1.
the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. right to, entitlement to, privilege, prerogative, due
2.
the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. liberty, liberation, release, emancipation, deliverance, delivery, discharge, non-confinement, extrication, amnesty
quotes
freedom is the oxygen of the soul
people who do not move, do not notice their chains can you remember who you were before the world told you who you could be?
freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes
freedom is being you without anyone’s permission
education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom (George Washington)
for to be free is not merely yo cast off ones chains, but to live in a way that respects an enhances the freedom of others (Nelson Mandela
LIMITATION
what does limitation mean to me?
limitation, to me is how one may feel when trapped, isolated and in a state of no escape. this can be both in one’s mind and physically. limitation is the result of discrimination. as shown in less well-off countries in the world where children have little access the most simple of things we take for granted. limitation is the result of little money one may have. limitation can result in a dangerous outcomes and the consequences of limitation can be very negatively impactful. a limitation to the accessibility of help for mental issues is how one may become detached from the people that should be their most dear. a limitation is what can force one to believe they cannot do something, no matter what and no one should believe this; everyone can do what they wish and it comes back to the idea of equal rights, equal power and equal access. limitation is a weapon of choice for many people when stress becomes too much, when they attempt to avoid situations. limitation can result in the belief that nothing is possible. limitation should become motivation to do what you wish without the fear of being judged or doing it wrong. limits should be conquered. however, a limit can also be a positive concept. linking back to the point I made in ‘freedom’, a limit; a filter could be seen as a positive when referring to the easy accessibility of internet and what it provides. society can be harsh and one can see social media as a way to exploit the vulnerability of users. face value is not affected when on social media and is seen as an easy way to voice an opinion that the consequences of are not witnessed directly. limitation, for me is the lack of ability to be forward in my actions. I often hide-away when something is not what it seems; my sensitivity takes over. limitation for me is letting my negative thought and emotions become the engine of my body to the point of no return.
breaking the word down
to be limited is to be restricted in size, amount or extent; few, small or short.
limitation – define
(noun)
1.
a limiting rule or circumstance; a restriction. restriction, curb, restraint, constraint, control, check, clampdown, hindrance, impediment, obstacle, obstruction, bar, barrier, block, deterrent, inhibition, damper, brake, rein
2.
law
a legally specified period beyond which an action may be defeated or a property right does not continue.
quotes
the only limitations you will ever have are the ones you put on yourself
don’t limit your challenges, challenge your limits
know your limits, but never stop trying to exceed them
in imagination, there is no limitation
the fears we don’t face become our limits
you cannot put a limitation on anything
love the life you live. live the life you love (Bob Marley)
To aid my development of ideas for what I may wan to explore for my photography exam based around the concept of freedom and limitations, we were set a task to generate our ability to take photographs creatively when thinking about ways we can represent freedom/limitations. The task revolves around breaking a particular rule of photography that is deemed vital to follow and obey in order to create meaningful and quality imagery. However, we have been told to break one of these rules as a way of creating exciting art. Using this criteria as a way to create photographs also encapsulates the idea of freedom/limitations because I will purposely be breaking a rule of photography, resulting in much more freedom in the way I create art, even though photography is a very free means of expressing yourself and some people may like to believe there are no limits in photography. Expanding this to the extent of breaking rules allows me to even more free, however, I believe I may find this task quite difficult because even through I am breaking the typical conventions of photography, I will be focusing on how to represent how I have broken one particular rule and my thought processes when planning a shoot will be based around how I can show that I am breaking this particular rule. This may in fact limit my abilities to be creative in my processes and from my primary planning, I realised this unexpected difficultly in thinking about how I can break a rule of photography because I had never really thought about the rule even when I make photographs normally.
From looking at a video on YouTube which outlines a brief history of the artist John Baldessari, I was able to retrieve some primary inspiration for this new task that had I just been introduced to; to break a rule of photography. John Baldessari was a very controversial artist because he challenged the conventions of photography and did not conform to the norms of people of the industry were used to. He’s is an American conceptual artist known for his work with found archival photography and appropriated imagery. He used painting in his early work to become established in the create industry and eventually began using old found photographs and incorporating this into his art and graphic abilities and his eye for difference and ability to differentiate himself from the others at the time allowed him to make such a name for himself as he has done today. He works with light humor, and with materials and motifs that also reflect the influence of Pop art. In the video that introduces the work and history of Baldessari, it shows him famously burning all works he has ever produced form a period of 30 years in his career. This was a never-seen-before gesture and it shocked people because of this. He also, mid-way through his career and as a contributing factor to why he burnt his work, said that “I will no longer make boring art”. This was a way for him to encourage himself to create more exciting and controversial art. He focused on using typography and different text within his art and also worked with collage to create art.
Baldessari is a great example of breaking the rules of art and creativity because although it is is seen as a very free means of expressing yourself, it is often limited by social and culturally norms and expectations of who humans should behave. Using metaphorical means of expressing opinions and views is what Baldessari did and it has influenced the creative industry ever since. Often, breaking the rules is what we need to do in order to break from the comfort of familiarity and of what has been developed over such a period of time that it becomes a comfort. This ability to erase the once known comfort of creating “boring” art can inspire a more innovative way of creating art. Baldessari also sued the most simple forms of art to produce complex meanings, such as the use of coloured dots which covered faces of subjects in found photographs.
Here is the link to the article, entitled ‘Eight ‘rules’ of photography that are worth breaking’written by photographer and writer Lewis Bush which outlines the different rules of photography and examples of photographers who break them.
I have chosen to produce a mini response to the theme of breaking the rules of ‘ownership’. On Lewis Hine’s article on breaking the rules of rules photography, when he talks about the rule of ownership he says:
“Our world is a raging storm of images. Photo uploads to Facebook exceed 300 million per day, with Instagram seeing around 90 million.
As a photographer, it can feel futile to keep adding to this visual blizzard, when so much can be said with those that already exist. The solution, for some, lies in a creative attitude to the old-fashioned idea of ownership and copyright.
For seven years the French collector Thomas Sauvin harvested film negatives from Beijing’s vast dump, buying them from specialist scavengers who recycle the negatives for the valuable silver they contain.
In his hunt, Sauvin has created an archive of a million images that offers a unique insight into a pivotal period in modern Chinese history, from the tail end of Mao’s cultural revolution, to the economic success story of modern China.
Belgian artist Mishka Henner, meanwhile, works with images he finds online to dissect the motivations and power of their original producers.
In 51 US Military Outposts, he uses satellite imagery of US military bases around the world to probe the extent of this modern American empire. His interest in these images, he says, lies in the fact that “the people who are running the show, that’s the stuff they’re working with.”
I have chosen to produce a response to this rule as I think I could use some creative and unique ideas to produce a mini-project about ownership and what it means in relation to freedom and limitation. I already have a couple ideas about how I could present something surrounding this idea of how I can break the rule of ownership. My main idea incorporates the use of Instagram and how I can use concept of ownership relating to Instagram, the biggest photo sharing social media software in the world, to create a response to what ownership is and whether it actually matters if the image you, as a photographer uses is not yours. Photographers themselves take inspiration from all sorts of other artists round the world because without inspiration and subtle stealing of ideas, art can be boring and this essentially alludes to the idea that ownership of the work you display is not essential and showing the work of other artists to present meaning can be even more powerful.
Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photographer who was born in Woecestershire, England to Egyptian parents. She attended a high school in Saudi Arabia and started university in Cairo, Egypt. She completed her degree in the US. Since Laura has been living between the East and the West for most of her life, she has experienced both immense enlightenment and anxiety. She had to contemplate notions of home, identity, culture and her self. Laura uses photography as an artistic medium of limitless boundaries to explore these themes. She has an extremely impressionistic eye on reality, and Laura explores social and environmental issues linking to her background. Because of Laura’s multicultural lifestyle as well as using photography as an artistic expression she also uses it as an inner voice to reflect upon her own identity and how it relates to the world around her. She mostly works on self-initiated projects.
In an article by National Geographic, Laura says, “My photographic interest in a project typically stems from having some personal connection with the subject matter,” she said. “Having lived between East and West much of my life, I have often felt lost between the traditional ideologies instilled in my upbringing and the extremely liberal practices of the West. I had to find a defining balance for myself as an individual, and my work as a documentary photographer has helped me do that. Dealing with who I am as a person and my position on the critical social issues facing the world today—particularly those pertaining to my background—is at the heart of all the themes I take on in my work.”
Laura El-Tantawy did a project called Beyond here is nothing at all. This is how Laura describes the series. Beyond Here Is Nothing is a photographic meditation on the notion of home. To be home is to feel a strong connection to a land and a grounding to its roots. For much of my life home has been an abstract place far away from my reach. This body of work navigates the boundaries of being – exploring the
unsettling feeling of rootlessness, the mental burden of loneliness and the constant search for belonging in unfamiliar places. Here are some of the images from the series with a description of what the images mean and contain.
Enclosed between four walls, the sound of silence never seemed louder. ItÕs claustrophobic. I wait for the phone to ring, check for emails obsessively, eat everything out of the fridge. The hunger remains. I feel like if I dig my hand deep into my soul, I will find nothing. The awareness I am experiencing is unspeakable. Faces change when we meet. Is their solitude reflected in mine? There is an awkward silence. In it, a minute feels like an hour. An hour a day. A day can be a lifetime.
I love the whole of this series by Laura. Each of her images are so unique and creative. You can see her creative eye and the way she views things. The series has such a contrast of ideas ranging from silhouettes, reflections, blurred lights, and images of clouds. This series is very surreal and has a dream like effect to it. She uses a lot of colour and shapes to create her story like images. She has framed a particular object that she wants to fragment to reveal what she sees. The series is about Laura’s idea of home and of her surroundings. Since Laura didn’t have the benefit of feeling rooted to one particular place she tries to capture this feeling rootlessness within her images. The images do have this sense of loneliness and confusion and that is what Laura is trying to get across. I choose Laura El-Tantawy as my artist research because I love how shes uses double exposure and other forms of manipulation to create the things she wants to reveal in her process.
Another series that Laura does is called A Series of Surprises and Human Interventions.Laura admits that this series happened by accident. The series was captured in December 2015. She had traveled to the city of her birth for the first time. With the use of a Polaroid and some film she walked around the city streets of Ronkswood. She said she choose a Polaroid as her tool because she wanted to bring to life the history of her birth place without changing the way it looked in her head. Since she used a Polaroid, to Laura’ s frustration she had discovered that the images had not turned out. She says ‘ thinking an image was captured only to discover it wasn’t.’ This is how she describes the series of her home city. “The images are an imaginary landscape where the touch of man adds life in the form of chemicals – a wave of colors reminiscent of water, vibrant plantations and snowy mountains.” Here are some of the images that she created.
These images are another form of manipulation by Laura. Instead of digitally manipulating the image, she does it by hand using water and chemicals. I like both of these series by Laura and I want to use both ideas in some way for my next step. I plan to do a similar process using the concept of double exposure. I also plan to experiment with photo paper and chemicals to create some man made landscapes like Laura’s.
An article by Lewis Bush called ‘ Eight ‘rules’ of photography that are worth breaking ‘ explains how breaking the rules of photography can be extremely beneficial. He writes that breaking the rules can be a way of seeing the world in a new light, “break all the rules and pioneer a new way of seeing the world.” He also says that the real stories of our time aren’t always plain to see. He is trying to explain that sometimes the most interesting concept is not clearly visible. We as the photographer have to break the rules and push the boundaries to isolate the what we really want to see. In the article, Bush talks about a photographer called William Eugene Smith. Smith is an American Photojournalist who is extremely dedicated to his projects. In 1955 Smith traveled to Pittsburgh on what was meant to be a three week assignment, however turned into a year long ‘photographic binge.’ He came away with over 17,000 images.
He later moved to Japan to document the consequences of devastating industrial pollution. Within this process, he faced extreme violence from the people he was exposing. He was also becoming to involved with the people he was photographing. According to one writer, Smith was the man who tried to document everything. During his photographic career, Smith broke nearly every rule there was in photography. Some of these included, posing his subjects, manipulating his prints and becoming dangerously involved in his stories. When people quentioned him to why he broke the rules he said, “I didn’t write them- why should I follow them?” Smith proved that successful photographers can break the rules. Bush writes that many rules restrict the medium, “serve vested interests and prevent photographers from revealing the critical issues that are shaping our modern world.” Here are some images by Smith.
These are the eight rules that Bush talks about. The rule of Objectivity, the rule of Audience, The rule of Manipulation, The rule of Reality, The rule of Technicality, The rule of ownership, The rule of the camera and the Rule of rule breaking. The rule that I will be focusing on is the rule of manipulation.
This rule is about photographers being forbidden to use any form of digital editing to manipulate the meaning of their images. Some photographers like Steve McCurry are more interested in the professional accolades than the integrity of the stories they use. However, Bush believes that every stage of the photographic process is a manipulation. A documentary filmmaker called Errol Morries explains you don’t need to manipulate an image to mislead an audience, you just need to simply change the caption. He also says that when used in the right context, manipulation can reveal the truth. A Dutch photographer called Alice Wielinga traveled to North Korea, she found it hard to capture the truth. She says, “I felt that, with mere documenting, I wasn’t able to tell the story as I was experiencing it,” Since she was not happy with her images, she decided to digitally merge her images of official North Korea propaganda with her own images of workers and decaying factories. “I see propaganda and reality as two sides of the same coin,” she says. “Propaganda is an essential part of everyday life in North Korea, and because of that a reality in itself.” Here are some of her final edits.
From series: North Korea – A Life between Propaganda and Reality. It is April 2013. While the Western media follows Kim Jong-Un’s steps during his missile test launches, I travel 2,500 kilometres through the North Korean interior. Once arrived, the images I know from my advance research correspond with the scenes my guides proudly show me during their propaganda tour. But seeing these scenes with my own eyes, I gradually discover that behind everything they present to me, a different reality is hidden. While I listen to my guides talking about what invaluable contributions the greatly admired leaders made to their country, I drive through a landscape that looks haggard and desolate. During my journey I collect propaganda material and take photographs of the reality I encounter. This material is the basis for my multimedia project ‘North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality’. With the found propaganda images and my own photographs I compose a story that deconstructs the North Korean propaganda.
For my exam project I want to experiment with shadow, and life as a whole. I want to research more about the spiritual concepts within photography and how everyday situations can by a thing of beauty. Rather then capturing whole scenes and objects I plan to fragment certain things to capture an abstract view. These mood boards below are different ideas of the style and type of images I want to obtain throughout the project. I also want to challenge myself by doing something I’ve never done before, which is creating a cinematic film based on light and the shapes and shadows it creates.
My main aim is to represent the world in a way of how I personally view it. We all have a freedom of expression and the freedom to see things how we want. I’m using my project to expressive my personal outlook of the world. I also want to look at the spiritual context of images and how insignificant things that happen day to day should be represented in a more extraordinary way.
On my return to school after half-term, we swiftly moved onto looking at the exam criteria and how we can build and generate ideas relating to the exam theme of Freedom and/or Limitations. The first task I completed in order to aid my development of ideas for I may wish to carry out for the exam, I gathered with a couple of other members of my class to create a brainstorm which outlined different keywords surrounding the concept of freedom/limitations. During the lesson we collectively came up with several; ideas in which we could possibly explore over the next few months. Considering freedom and limitation is such a broad criteria, it was relatively simple to come up with many ideas but also quite a challenge because it was difficult to transfer out ideas into how we would produce a series of photographic work surrounding it.
After out group task and then discussing our ideas a class afterwards, I decided to create an online mind map of what we had started thinking of. Below is the image if the online version of my mind map. I created this on a program called WordItOut which allowed me to insert specific works into the software and afterwards, it would generate a colourful and creative bundle of words of different sizes and colours to replicate the look of a mind map. This was a quick task I thought would benefit me as it allowed me to re-write what I had already written in the group task and it is presented in a creative way. This task was intended to allow me to pick a handful of keywords from the long list already created and create a more detailed mind map outlining the key words in more detail where I talk about what I could explore in each idea.
Freedom and limitation is very broad and so I have decided to quickly group together several keywords from each binary opposition. In my more detailed mind map I will divide the page into freedom and limitations and talk about a few possibilities for each. I am still unsure on what I actually want to explore for my project because it is so early on in the process but these tasks are intended to allow me opportunities to weigh up my most preferred options and discard the ideas I dislike to allow me the chance to understand more so what it is I want to carry out for my exam project.
As well a using my own knowledge of what freedom and limitations mean to me already, I will also utilise the exam booklet which I have been handed and this covers different starting points students cab use when they are exploring the subject of Photography. This mentions different artists and their works at which we can look at for inspiration as well as introduction to what freedom and limitation can entail and the history of art and visual communication in relation to freedom and limitation.
Below is a Word Docuemnt version of a more detailed look at different possibilities for what I could explore in my project. However these are pony starting ideas and it was an opportunity for me to quickly get my thoughts down about each category. When I progress further into the exam work, I will be required to think more carefully about what exactly it is I want to work on. The concept of looking at fashion as a means of freedom is something I am most attracted to and this was the first potential idea I thought of when the exam criteria was revealed because of my own passion for fashion and expressing myself through clothes, following trends and being unique in my own physical look. I already have an envision of what the final product could look like but still need to plan and research until the point at which I have several thoughts for different paths I can take.
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.
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Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photographer who was born in Woecestershire, England to Egyptian parents. She attended a high school in Saudi Arabia and started university in Cairo, Egypt. She completed her degree in the US. Since Laura has been living between the East and the West for most of her life, she has experienced both immense enlightenment and anxiety. She had to contemplate notions of home, identity, culture and her self. Laura uses photography as an artistic medium of limitless boundaries to explore these themes. She has an extremely impressionistic eye on reality, and Laura explores social and environmental issues linking to her background. Because of Laura’s multicultural lifestyle as well as using photography as an artistic expression she also uses it as an inner voice to reflect upon her own identity and how it relates to the world around her. She mostly works on self-initiated projects.
