When experimenting in my previous shoot I started to focus on the faces on these record covers. Due to them being in black and white and also in poor quality gave them a ghostly edge when I decided to bring the camera close and blur their faces. I made their faces look less human and eerie. It removed any detail from their faces and in a way removed there identity. This doesn’t really follow the previous theme of color. However, it has inspired me to think of abstraction as more than just color. Maybe I will focus on color photos as well as black and white.
After my brief shoot on breaking the photographic rule of audience, I really wanted to explore abstraction and color. I did this by taking close up shots of front covers of LP records I had in my bedroom. Many of these were records from the 70’s this meant bright colors. I also took close ups of other colorful objects I found in my bedroom. Having these photos out of focus turned them into solid colors and in most cases showing no texture. It resembles another form of color field painting I studied previously. I selected colors carefully as I wanted them to complement each other. The helpful thing with using records is that the artist or record company probably would already chosen those colors as they work together. This meant all I had to do was to take these photos at the right angle capturing the right colors in the frame. This is just a small start to what I want to do in my project.
After researching a lot about Rinko Kawauhi’s previous work and photo series I wanted to do my own photo shoot using her images as inspiration. The main aim of the shoot was to capture things with little significance and to portray them in a unique way that shows their pure beauty.
This shoot was done on the 7th of March at Queens Valley Reservoir. I used a Canon camera to capture the images. The shoot was inspired by the many images by Rinko Kawauchi. Her images contain a spiritual feeling to them and this is what I wanted to create in my own edits. The shoot was just a simple experimental shoot because I wanted to see what different abstract images I could capture in an environment I’ve seen many times. When searching for more particular objects and scenes you become more aware of the environment and you take in much more. I am very happy with the images I managed to collect.
EDITS
When editing the images, I knew I wanted them to be simple and pure. I aimed to keep the natural colours and not manipulate the originals too much. I simply made the images brighter and turned up the vibrancy of the images so that the colour’s were stronger which in turn made the image more appealing.
Many leading surrealists were brought over to New York in 1930 due to the political instability. Surrealism was a massive influence for the abstract expressionism movement. It’s biggest influence was the focus on the mining of the subconscious, this encouraged artists to focus on symbols and shapes. Focusing on the struggle between self-expression and the chaos of the subconscious. Most Abstract Expressionism artists matured in the 1930s. They were influenced by the era’s leftist politics, and came to value an art grounded in personal experience. Many artists took inspiration from the posture of outspoken avant-gardists. These artists matured when america was going through a economic crisis and felt culturally isolated. Abstract Expressionists were seen as the first authentically American avant-garde.
Willem de Kooning Excavation (1950)
Post-Painterly Abstraction- Early 1950s- Mid 1970s
This was the reaction to Abstract Expressionism. This labeled a number of artists who used techniques such as color field painting, hard-edge abstraction and the Washington color school. Critic Clement Greenberg believed that, during the early 1950s, Abstract Expressionism had become a weak school, and, in the hands of less talented painters. But he also believed that many artists were advancing in some of Abstract Expressionism’s more fruitful directions – principally those allied to color field painting – and these were yielding to a range of new tendencies that he described as “post-painterly.” Greenberg characterized post-painterly abstraction as linear in design, bright in color, lacking in detail and incident, and open in composition. It reflected the artists’ desire to leave behind the grandiose drama and spirituality of Abstract Expressionism.
Sam Francis Blue Balls VII (1962)
American Color Field painting
The term color field painting is applied to the work of abstract painters working in the 1950s and 1960s characterized by large areas of a more or less flat single color. From the 1960s a more purely abstract form of color field painting emerged in the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam and others. It was different from previous work such as the abstract expressionism movement as it eliminated any spiritual, emotional. religious aspects to the work and the highly personal and painterly or gestural application associated with it.
The Disposable Camera Project was done by Colour Box Studio based in Merlbourne. The Colour Box Studio is a pop up art space and online creative hub. The director, Amie Batalibasi, decided to do a project using a disposable camera. There were nine participants who took part in the project. They get asked to fill a disposable camera with images over a period of 24 hours. The project had been going on for 3 years. Each of the participants have their unique style and perceptions. What they view as a good image all varies. The project achieved a vast difference in style of images and subject. A book was created containing all the images called “The Disposable Camera Project.”
The disposable camera project draws in on the idea of freedom of expression because it allows people to expressive themselves and show their own unique outlook of the world thorough photography. A disposable camera allows people who may not be use to using a camera to be able to very simply capture a scene or a scenario they find beautiful or interesting. It gives them an easy way of expressing themselves.
Colour Box Studio Disposable Camera Project First Edition 2013 installation view. Photo by Shari Trimble.hotos by Colour Box Studio Disposable Camera Project Participants: Cara Thompson, Charlotte Wardell, Nicole Kennedy, Vanessa Lee, Suyin Lim, Emma Numan, Gareth Kaluza, Modesta Gentile and Rahima Miriam.
When researching more about photographers who use disposable cameras, I came across an article on the internet about a guy called Matt Blodgett. He is an American Photographer and full time construction worker. The article I came across was an interview including Matt Blodgett and the process he goes through when taking his images. He is 31 years old and grew up on the Canadian border in the Thousand Islands of upstate, New York. He recently moved to southern Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts where he was originally born. When Blodgett was asked about why he uses disposable cameras a lot he explains how they allow him to have fun with photography. He believes that some photographers take photography to seriously, which in some cases is very true. Blodgett doesn’t see him self as a photographer but when it comes to disposable cameras the implicitness of it allows any one to do it. What he aims to share with his photos is a “rolling diary of imagery that I live with and love.” He doesn’t think before he shoots, he simply takes what he views as beautiful. Here are some of Matt Blodgett’s images below.
His images are mainly of nature because this is what he views as beauty. He is similar to the photographers I have researched so far because the images that he collects are from day to day and they contain this spiritual atmosphere. I plan on collecting images in a similar process to this as a point in my project. They don’t need to have a deeper meaning, just a simple object or scene will do.
I’ve given myself the task of collecting images in the same style and process as the one done within the disposable camera project. I bought a simple disposable camera from boots and kept the camera with me throughout a couple of days. Whenever I saw something interesting that I wanted to capture I made sure I got it. However I was looking close at detail rather then just the whole scene.
Here are the Instagram pages and websites of the other, smaller artists I will be following and taking inspiration from for my project looking at fashion among young people in Jersey and the different trends people take up and the brands they where. The artists listed below are people I follow on Instagram and who I will be using as a guideline in terms of the style of their imagery. Some of the photographers listed will be part of a sole blog post where I look at their work, analyse it and discuss how it will influence my onw but some of the photographers below are smaller, less influential photographers who photograph for the magazine PUSH and these will just be shown in this blog post as a guideline for who I will be looking at for my own project.
The purpose of this blog post is to include all relevant to links to my inspirations for easy access for myself to access at any point and for readers to see, all in one lace, the photographed who I will be taking inspiration from for my work.
For my exam project, I have decided to focus my time on exploring the theme of fashion photography, and, in particular, streetwear fashion and the photography that surrounds this genre in relation to both freedom and limitations, but more so freedom. I have begun planning this idea briefly but intend to carry out much more research on the background, history and context of this type of photography because it something I have never done before but have wanted to for a long time; also a contributing factor to why I have decided to carry out a project like this.
My primary intention was to use streetwear fashion as a way to combine my interest in fashion and brands with photography and document this ever-growing and ever-changing industry with my camera. I then started developing my ideas more and began to think of other ways I could explore this. I began collating some inspirations and other artists I could use as well as thinking of what I want my final product to look like. Artists I saw I could as inspirations include modern, contemporary and young UK based photographers Vicky Grout, Ben Awin and Saskia Ivy. Furthermore, I had recently purchased a music/fashion magazine called PUSH. This a UK based company that produces monthly issues of their magazine which covers upcoming artists and their fashion and the trends they are following. The magazine is completely free and the only fee paid is the postage an packaging price. As soon as I saw this magazine, I was instantly attracted because of its heavy focus on design, graphics, typography and photographs; visuals as a whole and when the magazine arrived and began reading it, I was hooked on creating a magazine alike to this because I felt I would be able to utilise my ability to create effective design and graphics for features like the cover page and different layout styles within the magazine. I then decided that for my intended project looking at fashion and trends of youth in Jersey, my final product could be a magazine and I came across this feature to create magazines on Blurb when I was producing my book for my coursework.
I began carrying out some brief research into other contemporary artists I could use as inspiration and as a guideline for how to go about producing my own fashion imagery. I started looking on Instagram for any new artists I could follow and began to come across recommendations for young photographers to follow when browsing the internet. I found several different websites which were advocating the work of several young, UK based photographers who are beginning to make it big in the fashion/music photography industry, in particular, an artist called Vicky Grout, 20 years-old who has already established herself as a household name in the way of grime music photography and has photographed the likes of Stormzy, Novelist and Skepta and J Hus.
Vicky GroutVicky Grout
A website I came across which was representing the work of five different young UK-based photographers can be found here and this is where I came across the work of Saskia Ivy and Ben Awin and in my PUSH magazine, Issue 3, the photography team is made up of about 10 different artist whoa re responsible for providing her visuals of the artists they are covering in the magazine and I can take inspiration from these photographers also for reference of contemporary work which will provide the main body to where my work originates from.
Furthermore, although I will be using the contemporary photographers such as the ones used above as primary influences to produce my own, it is important that I explore the history of fashion photography because it is so rich in information and visual evidence that has shaped the way fashion and art have integrated over the last 50 years as we have progressed into the 21st century and fashion is ever-changing with new trends. The line shave gradually been blurred between the combination of art/photography sand fashion and people feel it necessary now in a world driven by social media and photo sharing where people are constantly in the face of the public to be fashion-aware and document this with their camera and this why photographers such as Bill Cunningham made such a success out of his work as a street, fashion photographer and events such as London/Paris/New York Fashion Week do so well in terms of popularity, publicity and attendance because people see it as a chance to flaunt their to dress well and show their knowledge of the fashion world. I intend to produce blog posts outlining all my inspirations for this project as I continue to plan for the several shoots I hope to end up with which will contribute to my end product.
To enhance the sense of my final product being a magazine, I will be using text within also to add more structure, depth and body to the hard copy which will accompany the images also be written by me. The words will consist of interviews or statements from the models/individuals I photograph and my own words throughout to put into action my research produced throughout.
The project will consist of several shoots produced by myself looking at individuals in Jersey, and in particular young individuals and their own fashion and unique look – because everyone does have their own look and style which makes them stand out and it is these people that I will approach for the project. I have not yet decided whether I want to photograph both male and female or solely male. I came across a mini project by Saskia Ivy which looked at teenage boys in London and I feel like this could be a fascinating project if I were to also look solely at teenage boys in Jersey and photograph them both individual and in groups. However, I will explore all options further in other blog posts and alongside this, I intend to carry out practice/experiment shoots with models to get a sense of how I want to go about it.
Saskia IvySaskia Ivy
Alongside these photographers, I will be exploring the work of classic fashion photographers who pioneered the genre such as Bill Cunningham, David Bailey and Jurgen Teller as well as, briefly, the work of Terry Richardson, all of whom also pioneered the use of the street as a studio and this what I want to do throughout and don’t intend to use my camera in a studio set up at all so I can add to the feel of an urban look heightened by the fashion and clothes/brand worn by my models.
In terms of how I will retrieve models fro my project, my intention is to approach particular people with a style I feel will works – because I essentially a director in a film where I have to create shot lists (the photographs), the script (the interview questions), pick a cast (the casting director for models) and then I have to produce it all and make it all come together. Therefore, I will approach particular people I may be friends with but also may have never spoken to before but am aware of their style and look which I feel will fit the part. I already have ideas of models and these included my friends as well as people I am not too close with. However, an alternative is to distribute an advertisement on social media such as Instagram and let people come forward themselves but it nay result in me rejecting some people if I feel they will not fit the look I want to achieve.
My shoots will also require a lot of planning where I outline the colours and looks/style I want my model to style. I may, if I know a particular them of clothing I want he model to wear, tell them to wear it or will likely leave the outfit they wear on the day up to them. However, once on location for the shoot, I can improvise with poses and shot styles whether they be close ups or long shots. I will also need to plan thoroughly the locations I want to shoot in and intend for these to be quite urban, for example in town or in multi-story car parks like Minden Place on the top floor which is open air and over looks the whole of St Helier. I will also need to take into consideration if I am shooting with females, whether I want them to wear makeup or not and the style I want this to be.
The only issue I have encountered this far with my plan is my actual confidence with my intentions and whether to not I can carry my intentions out and follow through with them because I never done anything like this and don’t really know how to go about it. I will need to be every proactive, confident in myself and my abilities but my people skills are good so believe this will aid the communication between myself and my models and I wish to make the whole project fun, especially when out on shoots – it should be fun and exciting.
I also need to decide what format I want to shoot with but intend to, as I did in my coursework, to shoot on all formats, including digital, analog; in particular, with my half-frame film camera and as well as on my iPhone. The shots taken on my phone with the app ‘Huji’ will likely be informal shots to contrast that of the more formal, intended posed shots. I also want to combine colour and black and white.
I am planning on looking at Gender Equality, Womens Rights and Feminism in my exam in response to the freedom and limitations title. I was initially inspired by Instagram accounts that i follow which include and regularly post images of women in a 70’s style of photography which are always tasteful and express the women which are being photographed as strong women who are embracing their sexuality and femininity. I began to consider how prior the 1900’s women were extremely restricted in their rights and ability to be in the workforce and held the stereotypical ‘House mum’ role and were expected to stay at home cook, clean and look after the children. The images which inspired me showed women expressing themselves for who they are and highlights the growing power of ‘The Woman’. For my project i want to focus on how women became more open about their femininity and artist and photographers started creating pieces of work which highlighted the positives of femininity. However there were some negatives with this as actresses in the 70’s were portrayed as only being beautiful and sexy and not intelligent. I want to link these different ideas together in my project to make photographs in the style of 1970’s photographers but put a modern spin on it by using adolescence females and showing femininity and the women in a positive way through the use of strong empowering portraits.
Before just taking these images i wanted to research the feminist movement and look at how it has progressed through time, enhancing the role of the female and improving their rights to bring about gender equality. Below is a mind map of initial ideas, research, artists and ideas for my project.
From my mind map i pinpointed key themes and dates within Feminism including the Suffragist rally and will further explore who the Suffragettes were, whilst exploring the impact they had on improving the lives of women for protesting for their rights.
History of Women
Women's rights -rights that promote a position of legal and social equality of women with men.
Women’s rights were fought for worldwide and formed the basis for the women rights movement in the 19th century and feminist movement during the 20th century. The issues which are commonly associated with womens rights are extensive varying from the right to bodily integrity and autonomy, to have equal rights in family law, too fair wages and the right to education.
Ancient History
Mesopotamia- Women’s rights have always been questionable even since the earliest times periods such as the Mesopotamia. Women in ancient Sumer could buy, own, sell, and inherit property, they could also testify in court as witnesses. However their husbands could divorce them for mild infractions, and a divorced husband could easily remarry another woman, provided that his first wife had borne him no offspring.Divorce in these times left women with little to know rights in the area and power seemed to lie with the husbands.
Ancient Sumerian bas-relief portrait depicting the poetess Enheduanna
Egypt – In ancient Egypt women enjoyed the same rights under the law as a men, however rightful entitlements depended upon social class. Landed property descended in the female line from mother to daughter, and women were entitled to administer their own property.
Statue of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1920 – The beginning of the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States, which predates Jeannette Rankin’s entry into Congress by nearly 70 years, grew out of a larger women’s rights movement. That reform effort evolved during the 19th century, initially emphasizing a broad spectrum of goals before focusing solely on securing the franchise for women. Women’s suffrage leaders, moreover, often disagreed about the tactics and whether to prioritize federal or state reforms. Ultimately, the suffrage movement provided political training for some of the early women pioneers in Congress, but its internal divisions foreshadowed the persistent disagreements among women in Congress and among women’s rights activists after the passage of the 19th Amendment. The sometimes-fractious suffrage movement that grew out of the Seneca Falls meeting proceeded in successive waves. Initially, women reformers addressed social and institutional barriers that limited women’s rights, including family responsibilities, a lack of educational and economic opportunities, and the absence of a voice in political debates. During the 1880s, the two wings of the women’s rights movement struggled to maintain momentum. The AWSA was better funded and the larger of the two groups, but it had only a regional reach. The NWSA, which was based in New York, relied on its statewide network, but also drew recruits from around the nation largely on the basis of the extensive speaking circuits of Stanton and Anthony. Neither group attracted broad support from women or persuaded male politicians or voters to adopt its cause. The turning point came in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the nation experienced a surge of volunteerism among middle-class women—activists in progressive causes, members of women’s clubs and professional societies, temperance advocates, and participants in local civic and charity organizations. The determination of these women to expand their sphere of activities further outside the home helped legitimize the suffrage movement and provided new momentum for the NWSA and the AWSA. state legislature granted women the right to vote in 1913. This marked the first such victory for women in a state east of the Mississippi River. Women in the NWSA continued to fight for rights in political terms. After this period the Suffragists movement began to be more reguarly photographed with worldwide photographers beginning to photograph their local areas, but not on the protests which the suffragettes carried out but also the evergrowing role of the woman aswell and capturing the feminimity of women became more widely excepted as photographers where pushing the boundaries of photography.
Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst campaigning for women’s suffrage
Women’s Suffrage
Women’s suffrage was the right for women to vote in election as limited voting rights were gained by women in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and some Australian colonies and western U.S. states in the late 19th century. Some of the more independent countries such as Canada and Britain interacted in the interwar era. The women’s contribution to the war effort challenged the notion of women’s physical and mental inferiority and made it more difficult to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. Nonetheless the right to vote was to the women a lot more than because of them contributing in war efforts
Womens Suffrage in the UK – Through protests for the right to vote by mass participation of women in great britain, women secured the right to vote through 2 laws which were in 1918 and 1928. The Suffragette campaigns erose when WW1 broke out and political tensions were ever growing. Along with these suffragist movements and protests came the Feminist movement where women and men thought to establish political, social, and economic equality for women. For my project i want to more narrowly focus on the feminist movement and the rights that were gained for women due to this movement as well as explore the works of artists and photographers throughout the time period and how they portrayed women and the feminist movement through their art. Feminism has been a huge part of every females history and through this project i want to enhance my knowledge and understanding of my history and i thought there was no better time to do it than on the 100th anniversary of women receiving the right to vote.
This video is an experiment that I did to create a starting point for my project. I want to create a cinematic film using scenes similar to Rinko Kawauchi’s images. By fragmenting a particular object you capture an abstract version of the real thing. Its this concept that I want to draw in on. As well as taking still images, I also want to eventually create a film using short clips of different scenarios, still based on an abstract vision. Here are some screen shots of different aspects within the film.
The video focuses on the movement within nature. Its a short video because its just an experiment. I tried to include different angles, shapes and close ups compared to long shots. I’ve never made film before so I wanted to start on a simple theme.
Sheets attempts to retrace Rinko Kawauchi’s steps in this world through a reassembly and re-editing of her filmstrips as a reinvented whole. Cinematographic at heart, the sequences of randomly selected contact sheets offer a real-life time lapse, a resurrection of moments in the personal history of the artist and immortalised in some of her more significant publications. The book’s gatefolds mark intervals in this rhythmic crescendo. They contribute, as if under a magnifying glass, to new spontaneous pairings of images. It is all here, fragment by fragment, the elements and patterns of a primal cosmogony of varied affective nuances with their connotations of transcendental immanence—a palimpsest of the everyday that Kawauchi brings together with such astounding ease as if the flow of juxtaposing images were as natural to her as her own biological path in life.
This book contains a selection of contact sheets that spans more than a decade of works.
Within the book Sheets, Kawauchi has a section were she closely looks at the body and particular features such as the eyes and mouth. I really like how she strips back the original ways of looking at the human form and decides to create her own representation by embracing her own viewpoint and style. Her work is very raw and pure which I really like. I want to also embrace this idea of capturing things in a way that they’ve never been capture before.
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