Part of Baldessari’s classic Overlap Series, this piece juxtaposes an urban view of palm trees and a sleek modern building—quite probably somewhere in Los Angeles—with a jazzed up black and white photograph of Vikings, the contemporary colliding with the historical. By extending the palm trees into the space of the smaller monochrome image, the artist ingeniously links the two pictorial surfaces—a classic case of Baldessari montage. I will be responding to this photograph with primary source images I have taken on a recent trip to Orlando, Florida. I was able to gain a collection of photographs of palm trees in Florida, with clear visual similarities to Baldessari’s 2001 Palmtrees and Building. I will be editing these photographs in a similar style using Adobe Photoshop CC.
Primary source images:
Editing process:
In order to edit my photos in the style of Baldessari, I used the colour replacement tool. I added bold, vivid colours of green, pink, blue, red and orange to 4 of my own photographs. To add the colour to only the select sections I wanted, I used the rectangle marquee tool and guided it over the area of the photograph I wanted. Like Baldassari, I also added multiple sections of monochrome to my images. As a first basis for my project, I am happy with my experimentation. The subject of palm trees correspond to my project aim of photographing the natural world and the variation and sublime beauty within it.
Explain your process and where your ideas came from RE GIF –Making
the process of creating a gif: File, Script, Stack, Window- what file , add open files, Okay, Select all layers, Window, Open a timeline, Opens at the bottom, Click arrow to frame animation, Must click it, Me he box in corner, Create new make new, 0 seconds, A delay between frame, How long you want the gif, 0.2 secs, Forever as a loop like a standard gif, File, Export, Save for web legacy, Dialogue box preview, Check file size, 8mg on blog, Might need to trim, In image side bring it down.
• Include your original images to show the starting point of your experiment
• Define what a GIF is…it’s possibilities and limitations too
a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images.
“a GIF image”, a file in GIF format., plural noun: GIFs
The possibilities for a gif is to make an almost motion picture animation, and create a formation of separate images, almost forming a real life narrative. However it does have limitations of the way in which you take the image for the similarities to line up and look as though it could be real.
To make this gif, I took a series of images of different shoes as this was an object that are similar. I made sure that each shoe was the left shoe so that they were consistent. I took my images from a face on perspective to create the same type of image. My images I took are below:
To make my gif, I first of all went to file, scripts, and selected load files into stack as shown in the image below.
Next, I went to window, and chose timeline, where this made my image appear on a timeline at the bottom of my photoshop screen.
Then, chose the menu button at the top right hand corner of the timeline bar, and create new layers for each frame and then clicked the same menu button again and selected make frames for layers.
Finally, I chose each frame for each image to be 0.2 seconds (this meant there would be a 0.2 second pause in between showing the next image. I also chose to put my gif as forever, where this would play as a loop.
To export this image, I went to files, export, save for web (legacy).
For this task I looked at GIFs and Video art. I took photographs that i used to produce a Gif In Photoshop. GIFS work well with the theme as they are repeated in a continuous loop.
A GIF Standing for ‘Graphics Interchange Format’ is an image that’s been encoded using the graphics interchange format where it has multiple frames encoded into a single image file and a web browser or other software will play those images back in animated sequence automatically
The definition of ‘typology’ is “a classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences”. Essentially it is the study of types. The roots of Photographic Typologies is in August Sander’s 1929 portraits ‘Face of Our Time’ in which he documented German society between the two world wars. Sanders’ aim was to create a record of social types and classes as well as the relationships between them. Sanders was so successful in achieving this that the photographic plates were destroyed and his book was banned soon after the Nazis came into power. Typology can be used to create a visual analysis of objects and the larger environment by extracting visual elements and presenting them in a consistent series and so forcing the viewer to compare the subjects. The Becher’s and their style appeal to me because when exploring ‘variance and similarity’ I hope to create photographs that successfully show the differences and similarities in structures as the Bechers’ have done in a similar style whilst using the typology grids to emphasise the contrasts.
The term ‘Typology’ first came into use when used to describe the style of photography that Bernd and Hilla Becher were practicing. The Bechers documented dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959 – they described the buildings which they photographed as “buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style”. Each photograph in their collection of work was taken from the same angle and the same distance from the subject with the aim to capture a record of the changing landscape as these dilapidated buildings began to disappear. The Bechers influenced generations of photographic typologists, such as Jeff Brouws and John Cyr.
Bernhard Becher (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (1934-2015) were German conceptual artists and photographers who would work as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their topographic images of industrial buildings in Germany, as discussed earlier. The photographs were often organised into grids to show differences and similarities between the subjects photographed. They are the founders of the ‘Becher school’ or the ‘Dusseldorf School’. They have received multiple awards including the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award. The Bechers’ worked outside of Germany as well including photographs of buildings in Great Britain, France, Belgium and the United States in 1965.
Their work on typology began as they first collaborated on photographing the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959 – they were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed, which is evident in their work. After collecting thousands of pictures of individual structures they noticed that the different structures shared many qualities and were intrigued by the fact that so many industrial buildings were build with a focus on the design. The Bechers would work with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and would always use a straightforward point of view. They would only shoot on overcast days in order to avoid shadows as well as only in the early morning during spring and fall. A variety of subjects were photographed throughout their work including water towers, cooling towers, coal bunkers and gas tanks. Often the Bechers would exclude any details that would detract from the central theme. By photographing these structures the Bechers’ drew attention to the need of preservation of the buildings and some of them were designated as protected landmarks as a result of their work.
The Bechers decided to exibit their single-image gelatin silver prints grouped by subject, in a grid of six, nine, or fifteen and had come to the conclusion to present the images of structures with similar functions side by side to entice viewers to compare forms and designs based on the functions of the subjects.
The work of the Bechers were strongly influenced by the Weimar movement of New Objectivity in the 1920’s which was a movement in German art arising in the 1920’s as a reaction against expressionism. The term ‘New Objectivity’ came to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art involved in it. It was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world and ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Nazis. Some artists included in the movement in which the Bechers’ took inspiration are Karl Blossfeldt, August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzch.
In the Becher school they managed to influence a number of photographers including Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff; the work of their students also minimizes human presence and explore landscapes in a documentary style. Their school and work has had an impact on both Minimalism and Conceptualism art. Their legacy can be seen through the work of Lewis Baltz who takes a similar approach with a more modern twist to it. Their legacy can also be seen in the change in attitude to vernacular architecture – the Becher’s actively campaigned for protection of the structures that they photographed which led to the protection of industrial spaces.
Analysis
In this photograph natural daylight will have been used to capture it. You can tell because of the soft tones and natural contrast within the photograph. A low ISO of 100-200 will have been used for this photograph as the Bechers’ would be trying to ensure that noise within the composition was kept to a minimum. A shutter speed of 1/60-1/150 will likely to have been used in this photograph – a shutter speed that is not too slow but not too fast to ensure that enough light could enter the camera lens from the overcast condition that the Bechers’ would shoot in. A deep depth of field has been used at the whole of the photograph is in focus. There is a warm colour cast to the photograph even though the photograph is in black and white – the warm colour cast reflects the comfort of the countryside in which the structures are based in.
There is no colour in the image as it is a black and white photograph. This shows that the viewer should be looking at the details of the subject instead of colours. There is a wide tonal range, ranging from the contrasting shadows of the structure to the over-exposed background. There is clear texture in the structures which makes the photograph more realistic to the viewer and gives it a slight 3D effect. There is pattern and repetition in the beams of the structures which makes the photograph more aesthetically pleasing for the viewer. The structures are placed in the centre of the photograph rather than using the rule of thirds as this photograph is part of a documentative-style approach in which the intentions were to show the form of the structures rather than to be aesthetically pleasing.
Bernd and Hilla Becher would document architectural structures all over Germany. They took photos of similar typologies and would make compositions of them all together. This is just one example of the work that they would do. They captured the pleasing aesthetics in the buildings deemed ugly and showed the country that there is more to it if they look closely. The Becher couple documented all sorts of structures and worked to open the countries eyes to what was right in front of them. They described the buildings which they photographed as “buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style” and aimed to capture a record of the changing landscape as these dilapidated buildings began to disappear. The photograph is part of a collection of photographs intended to compare the structural qualities of different structures and would have been presented alongside another five or eight similar photographs of similar structures to allow the viewer to compare.
Typology (in urban planning and architecture) is the classification of usually physical characteristics commonly found in buildings and urban places, according to their association with different categories, such as intensity of development (from natural or rural to highly urban), degrees of formality.. Individual characteristics form patterns. Patterns relate elements hierarchically across physical scales (from small details to large systems). The definition of ‘typology’ is “a classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences”. Essentially it is the study of types.
Bernhard Becher, and Hilla Becher, were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. As the founders of what has come to be known as the ‘Becher school’ or the ‘Düsseldorf School’ they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists.
Meeting as students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1957, Bernd and Hilla Becher first collaborated on photographing and documenting the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959. They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed and noticed many industrial buildigns shared many distinctive formal qualities.
Together, the Bechers went out with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward point of view. They shot only on overcast days to avoid shadows, and early in the morning during the seasons of spring and fall. Objects included water towers, cooling towers, coal bunkers, oil refineries, blast furnaces, gas tanks, storage silos, warehouses and much more. Their work also highlighted the need for preservation of these buildings. The end result of their work presented us with groups of photos in a grid of six, nine, or fifteen that highlighted the similarity between industrial structures. It is a very interesting concept to look at for the viewer which engages them to compare the forms and designs of the buildings.
I first wanted to explore the idea of repetition by creating a gif in Photoshop to generate ideas for my project. I chose the subject keys for my gif as everyone has them but with different variations in appearance i.e key shape, key chains. I thought by creating a gif showing different types of keys people have is a good way to represent the same object but in different variations.
To create the gif in Photoshop I chose >File>Load Files into a Stack> and chose all the images of the keys i had taken. I then selected all the layers and chose the speed i wanted the images to change.
GIF
Stands for “Graphics Interchange Format.” GIF is an image file format commonly used for images on the internet for sending images, especially moving images
I think that the limitations of creating is that you cannot see the movement in the image and only still objects if the timing of the images is slow, like the one I created above. Creating stop motion animations, if the timings were fast enough would create the appearance of movement which is something I could explore in my project. Another limitation when creating gifs is that it’s hard to create the same lighting in all the images which could make the gif look disorderly. I could also display gifs of different objects with more images than the one i may above to create more variation with a faster changes.
Early Works of Repetition
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol has redeployed repetition as a device to alter our perception of a different type of society portrait – a portrait of celebrity. Warhol used an assembly line of silk-screened images of Marilyn Monroe as a metaphor for the loss of ‘self’ in the vicarious world of celebrity. Using silk-screening meant he could directly reproduce images already in the public eye, such as publicity shots or tabloid photographs. The technique also allowed him to easily produce multiple versions and variations of the prints.
He is known for his bright, colourful paintings and prints of subjects ranging from celebrities, to everyday products such as cans of soup. Marilyn Monroe 1962 is perhaps one of Warhol’s most iconic works. The work is made up of two canvases, each featuring 25 Marilyns printed in a grid pattern. The rows of repetitive heads suggest postage stamps, billboard posters or, perhaps more fittingly, film strips.
Warhol’s life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and celebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol’s focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in celebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized.
My Interpretation of his Work
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Hiroshi Sugimoto
In 1980, Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto began working on an ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon. From the English Channel to the Arctic Ocean, from the Norwegian Sea to the Black Sea, Tokyo-born artist has travelled the world to capture marine landscapes and create abstract canvas. Each black and white photograph is of the same size and cut directly through the center by the horizon line.
“Every time I see the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.” says Sugimoto who describes his vision of sky and water as a form of time travel.
Sugimoto refers to his signature photographic style as “time exposure” experiments – playing with shutter speeds other photographers could never master. His goal through these “experiments” is to capture time through his images – creating time capsules that will last for eternity. Eternity is a constant focus of Sugimoto, who also worked on series that dealt with the issues of life and death – intrigued by the transience of human life.
Sugimoto has said that he draws much of his inspiration from sculpture artist Marcel Duchamp – famous for his sculpture of a urinal in the 1950s. Duchamp’s art dealt heavily with the Dadist movement of art. Sugimoto’s works are a unique combination of the Dadist movement as well as the Surrealist movement.
William Christenberry
William Christenberry was an American photographer and artist who was known for simple, richly coloured photographs of decaying buildings in Alabama’s rural Hale county. Christenberry was considered a pioneer of fine colour photography, and his work carries a strong sense of both place and the passage of time.
Christenberry showed Walker Evans some of his photographs, taken with a Brownie camera that Christenberry had been given when he was a child. He used the photographs at the time as guides for his paintings and sculptures, but Evans told him that the photographs were worthy of consideration as art.
Christenberry explores the effects of time on his boyhood home by choosing subjects such as buildings, signs, and found objects. Christenberry believes that all objects leave their individual mark on the landscape as time passes, even when the object is destroyed in reality.
Typology- Bernd and Hilla Becher
The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, who began working together in 1959 and married in 1961, are best known for their “typologies”—grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure. The seemingly objective and scientific character of their project was in part a polemical return to the ‘straight’ aesthetics and social themes of the 1920s and 1930s in response to the sentimental subjectivist photographic aesthetics that arose in the early post-war period. They overlooked beauty and the relationship between form and function. Both subjects addressed the effect of industry on economy and the environment.
“I became aware that these buildings [blast furnaces] were a kind of nomadic architecture which had a comparatively short life—maybe 100 years, often less, then they disappear,” the artists said of their work. “It seemed important to keep them in some way and photography seemed the most appropriate way to do that.”
I think that Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work links to making gifs as they created series of images of the same objects in different areas. When making a gif I used different variation of the same obejct ‘keys’ aswell. Instead of displaying my work in a grid format though, i created a gif to only show image for a set amount of time.
Their work on typology began as they first collaborated on photographing the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959 – they were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed, which is evident in their work. After collecting thousands of pictures of individual structures they noticed that the different structures shared many qualities and were intrigued by the fact that so many industrial buildings were build with a focus on the design. The Bechers would work with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and would always use a straightforward point of view. They would only shoot on overcast days in order to avoid shadows as well as only in the early morning during spring and fall. A variety of subjects were photographed throughout their work including water towers, cooling towers, coal bunkers and gas tanks. Often the Bechers would exclude any details that would detract from the central theme. By photographing these structures the Bechers’ drew attention to the need of preservation of the buildings and some of them were designated as protected landmarks as a result of their work.
