My first Variation and Similarity photo-shoot will be based around the typology of trees. I will experiment with presenting my images in a grid format in the style of Bernd and Hilla Becher. As I am looking at the variations and similarities within the landscapes around me, and zooming in close on the environment, trees are a good subject as they show diversity within their origin, patterns of bark, size, form etc.
Shoot 2: Flowers / Leaves
My second shoot will aim to capture the variety of leaves and flowers within nature’s woodland and coastline. This shoot will focus on the variation aspect of my project and highlight the range of natural objects and the sublime beauty they hold. I will photograph the vibrant, summer leaves and flowers and the contrasting duller autumnal leaves to highlight the different products of seasons.
Shoot 3: Clouds
Clouds are an interesting topic of the natural world as they show such diversity depending on the given weather. I will hope to capture images of the sky during storm, rainy weather and juxtapose these photographs with ones taken at calmer, serene times.
Shoot 4: Water
For my 4th shoot, I will look at water; the forms, patterns and colours. I will edit a number of my photographs in the style of Hiroshi Sugimoto in black and white, exploring a deeper conceptual meaning behind water and the spiritual notions behind his work. Places I will visit will include St Ouen’s bay and Plemont.
The graphics interchange format (GIF) is a bitmap image forma that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by an American computer scientist Steve Wilhite on June 15 1987. It has since come to widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and potability. Giffs are less suitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with color gradients, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.
Typology is the study of types, and a photographic typology in a set of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive way.
Bernd and Hilla Becher
The couple where conceptual artists and photographer who worked together. They were best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids.
Each series of images are capturing typologies, types of things. Each image is taken from the same perspective, angle and distance from the subject, this is an essential reason for why the series’ are so effective. All the images in each series have something in common which links them together, for example the images below the darkest part of the image is always in the middle of the building.
John Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist living and working in Santa Monica and Venice. Baldessari was initially a painter with his early major works being canvas paintings that were empty but for painted statements coming from contemporary art theory. Baldessari’s work ‘Painting for Kubler’ presented the viewer with theoretical intructions on how to view it as well as the importance of the context within his previous works. referenced art historian George Kubler’s book ‘The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things’.
In 1970 Baldessari and some friends burnt all of his paintings created over 13 years to create a new piece, titled ‘The Cremation Project’ and baked the ashes from the paintings into cookies then placed them into an urn leading to an art installation consisting of a bronze commemorative plaque with the destroyed paintings’ birth and death dates, as well as a recipe for making the cookies. Through this project Baldessari drew a connection between atistic practice and the human life cycle.
Baldessari began to experiment with bringing texts and photo into his canvases and then later began to work in printmaking, film, video, sculpture and photography in the 1970’s. His work shows the narrative potential of images and often incorporates language within his art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the US and Europe and has influenced artists such as Cindy Sherman.
Many of Baldessari’s works are sequences showing attempts to accomplish an arbitrary goal – an example of this is Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (1973) in which Baldessari attempts to do exactly as the title describes and then photographed the results. This project is an early-example of post-conceptual art. Another example of Baldessari’s work that links to post-conceptual art is when he used circular adhesive dots to cover up the faces of subjects which led to him being known as ‘the guy who puts dots over peoples faces’ – the inspiration for this work came from the brightly coloured price-stickers seen on sale items. As part of an experiment coming under the title ‘Play’ I responded to Baldessari’s post-conceptual work; this experiment drew inspiration from both ‘Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line’ and his work with brightly coloured dots as I attempted to capture three balls in a straight line as Baldessari did. I used the idea of throwing balls in the air to bring in inspiration from Baldessari’s work with brightly coloured dots by throwing a bright yellow dodgeball into the air to contrast with the dark grey sky in the background – this created the same effect as Baldessari’s work by creating an abstract composition that has high contrast between colours and backgrounds.
“Cutting Ribbon, Man In Wheelchair, Paintings (Version
On his work with placing colourful retail stickers over photographs, Baldessari says “I just got so tired of looking at these faces… If you can’t see their face, you’re going to look at how they’re dressed, maybe their stance, their surroundings” which supports the view that Baldessari’s motivations behind this work was to force the viewer to view the photograph or subject in an unconventional way, a feature often attributed with post-conceptualism. When asked why Baldessari only leaves the mundane parts of the photograph, as the face is the most interesting part, Baldessari responds “I think you really sort of dig beneath the surface and you can see what that photograph is really about, what’s going on”
Post conceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concepts involved take a bit more priority over the traditional concern for aesthetics. The term first came into art through the influence of Baldessari in the 1970’s through his work Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line. The movement focused on the idea behind the art and questioned the traditional role of the object.
INSPIRATION: My inspiration for this shoot was both the combination of William ye, which is evident, And how he uses a large jar and conceptually takes images of people through it in order to extend and manipulate their faces and make a more abstract representation of people and their emotional wellbeing. However, my other inspiration is a much more abstract and once again fine art related artist, who presses faces up against jars, and then paints and manipulates the images themselves in order to create a much more worked into and unique colour and composition.
WHERE NEXT: As this artist, clearly works and edit more into their work, I believe next I should experiment with developing these images further, and possibly even doing so with the intent of creating a small representation and grid of the images similar to above. Due to these shoots being a-lot more dark and brutal to my current theme exploring the essence of beauty, I belive I should connect this shoot with the media and the relation of emotional well being linking to chaos in the news. And how we should ignore this to see the beauty within the world.
Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism. Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society and a belief in progress. It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those formulated by religion or science could be used to understand or explain reality. Modernist artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on subjects, believing they could find a way of purely reflecting the modern world. It is generally very simple and non decorative. Modern art rejected tradition so it looked very different to anything anyone had seen before.
While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning. Cultural identity was a big part of postmodernism, with people realizing that modernism was dominated by straight white men. Within post modern art, it is popular to include quotes or words on their art since it fits with the idea of questioning things. There are no rules about what postmodern art is but there tends to be a lot of contrasting and questioning. The works of post modernism are often abstract and somewhat strange. There is an objective to display that everyone has different reality and there is such thing as human nature instead of nurture.
The modernist approach links to my previous studies of Sugimoto and Monet’s Hay Stacks that focus on mainly the depiction of light and how it shapes the environment. Rather than focusing on subjects these artists use lighting and textures as a way of reflecting the modern world.
Modern Art
Time Period – From 1450 – 1960
Gender Spread – Most of the artists in the modern times were male
Mindset – Go with the ideas in every way
Influence – Political and society pressure
Postmodern Art
Time Period – From 1960 to present
Gender Spread – Mixture of both
Mindset – Question the changes and movinf towards new ones quickly
Influence – Free of any pressures
In the Modern work, whatever the meaning was given by the writer was considered to be the only meaning but in postmodern times, people tend to make their own mind and deduce the idea according to their will. In modern era people tended to enjoy the modernism but in the postmodern era, people are questioning the changes and moving towards new ones quickly. Arts in the modern times was influenced by political and society pressure while the postmodern art is free from all those factors.
EVALUATION: For this shoot I wanted to re create Williams Ye’s moulding of structure from a fluid object in order to connote themes of fine art. I wanted to use a variation of different colour, in order to create and highlight different tones on the central character himself. When setting up for the shoot I knew how pivotal it was for success that my lighting was able to capture the colour of the fabric without brightening the black background. Not only does this shoot represent a more fine art freedom sense of beauty, but I belive this shoot does too fit with my new themes of self love beauty with the everyday and a certain haiku of femininity and masculinity seen within this performance. There is an artistry of abstraction throughout this shoot. I think-it is fascinating even though how planed this shoot and how it was taken in the studio, there was still a sheer unpredictability to the formation of where the boy would be standing or how the sheet itself would fall. I choose a very quick shutter speed in order to access the clarity of the images that I wanted. My favourite image from this shoot is certainly the use of the gold being thrown and wrapped around the boy. Not only does it shoe a conceptual infraction of our own being and personality being executed as a piece of fine art, but it too is an exploration of identity and the unpredictability of life. The bright gold creates a bright contrast the the dark tonal black background, and the direct eye contact Is too fascinating. From this shoot I will now experiment with one other ye shoot, in which he uses a jar, to conceptualise the behaviours and feeling of someone and what they feel to be trapped inside. As this shoot was planned nearer the beginning of my project their are more links with fine art and the influence from the media, however it will definitely still help achieve the further experimentation to my final narrative project.
For this shoot I wanted to capture the repetition of the view that is shared by everyone all around the world should they come to the edge of their country/island. Thus view being the ocean. I wanted to travel around the island I live on capturing the repetitiveness of the view experienced when i reached the edge of the land. I think through this particular shoot I want to create a sense that, regardless of where we are, we could all go to a large body of water and see the same thing. The fact that we would share the same visual experience regardless of if we did that now, in the past or in the future. Our internal experience stimulated by the view will be more individual and vary from person to person.
Contact Sheet
Edits
Overall, I am very happy with how this shoot went and even more so with the edits. Through the editing process, which I undertook in Adobe Lightroom I have increased the saturation of the blues and made the images pop by increasing highlights, whites, clarity and contrast. Also, I cropped each image to ensure that the horizon splits the image in half directly through the center like Sugimoto has done within his project. I took this series of images across a whole day which allowed for a change in weather and lighting, altering the aesthetics of the images slightly. This links to my previous study of Sugimoto and Monet’s hay stacks paintings in the way they focus on the depiction of light.
I wanted to experiment with something similar to the Bechers, where I would photograph similar objects to create a repeated effect. I thought that photographing different windows and doors around the area I live would create an interesting effect as they all the same objects as they all do the same thing, yet they are all completely different in terms of colour, size, shape, texture and tones. My experimentation with typologies is shown in the 2 shoots below.
Shoot 1: Doors
Contact sheet of various doors
For this shoot, I made sure I captured each door I wanted to photograph from a face on perspective, so that they all had a similar viewpoint. I did this as I was inspired by the Becher’s to create multiple photos of the same object from the same camera angle. I edited all my images in lightroom, where I adjusted the brightness and contrast, as well as the exposure to make the photo colours more vivid and bright. I kept my images in colour because I felt that this was more appropriate for the shoot I was doing; I wanted to show the variance of different colours and textures in all the doors I photographed – a black and white effect would’t have made this same effect. Although the Becher’s did this, I wanted to differ from their typologies because their work was carried out in the 1900s, whereas my interpretation is more modern, with more modern and bright doors.
Additionally, I adjusted the lens correction for most of my images so that they all had a face on perspective. For instance, the screen-shots below is a valid example of how I used the lens correction to straighten up my images:
Image without lens correction
Image after using the lens correction and selecting ‘auto’
Shoot 2: Windows
Contact sheet 1 of various windowsContact sheet 2 of various windows
For this shoot, I took the same approach as with my first shoot of doors, but used windows as my main focused object instead. Again, I took all my images from a straight on perspective and edited them all in lightroom.
I cropped every image that appeared less straight on than others, so that they all were cropped to show an even photo. For example, I cropped this image here as I realised I wanted to create a consistency between my series of images of doors and windows, and so only showing one window an image would work best to create a repetition effect.
For my first photoshoot I went to St Catherines woods to explore repetition within nature, focusing on the fragility and rounded shapes that are created. I also wanted to focus on light and reflections, starting to take inspiration from the photographer Rinko Kawauchi .
I narrowed down the 250 images i photographed to 63 and displayed them in a contact sheet below. I found that I liked the images that were close up of detailed patterns.
Reflection and Water
I particularly like these two images from my shoot because of the use of light in the reflections on the water. In the first image I emphasised the yellow tones of the landscape by photographing the reflection of a tree in muddy water. I tried to highlight the fragility and beauty of the tree and nature, even though it’s photographed through something that isn’t normally considered aesthetically pleasing. The mud in the water makes the reflection of the tree a yellow/brown tone which emphases the shape more. I decided to have my point of focus in the center of the image with the edges out of focus, this causes all the attention on the reflection rather than the floor around it. I also increased the exposure when taking the photo to emphasise the brightness of the sky and to interpret the work of Rinko Kawauchi. I think that this is a interesting image as instead of a straight forward photo of a tree, it uses another aspect created by nature to portray it. I also like how the tree trunk goes diagonally across, creating an interesting composition, with the detailed branches coming off the sides. I also displayed my other image below it as I think these two images work well together, both using light to emphasise the beauty of nature, both having increased exposure.
In the second image i focused on what was underneath the water and the colour of the plants, as well as the reflections of the surrounding plants. I like this image as the water moving in the stream makes the reflections of the plants blurred, creating interesting shapes. The slight reflections at the top of the image, frame the photo and create depth between the plants underneath the water. I also like how these plants are all growing in the same direction from the way the water is travelling down the stream, which is them contrasted to the reflection going vertically down at the top of the image. To me , the main focus point of the image is the darker reflection of the plant that off center. This is because its the closest aspect to the camera, and is the darkest point so is the first thing the audiences eyes are drawn to. Also because it is the only reflection that the audience can tell is a pant, as it closer and more of it is shown. I think that the nature in this image is emphasised as there isn’t anything man made, and portrays the plants how they have naturally grown. Another aspect i like is the drop of water that has created a ripple on the plant shadow as it also creates a blurred effect. In later photo shoots i could experiment with creating ripples like this on water. I think that both images take inspiration from Rinko Kawauchi but still look like my own style and interpretation. For further photo shoots I could look more into how Kawauchi takes her photos to interpret her style more.
I also like this image because of how I used the negative space to make the plants and reflections stand out. When photographing, I tried to zoom in on just the plants in the water and to take out anything else. I chose this image to display as i like the reflections combined with the plants that make interesting shapes. I wanted to emphasise a feeling of calm by using the over cast weather that day to my advantage through the reflection from the sky on the water being grey/white. I like how the water goes from white at the top of the image, to darker grey/brown tones towards the bottom starting to show the ground underneath. This creates depth in the image emphasising another aspect of nature. The bright green colour of the plants is contrasted to the colour of the water, making it the first point the audience looks . To edit this image i could crop it so the space above and below the image is the same, creating a more aesthetically pleasing image. I could also experiment by changing the tones in the water to see if any other colours would go well with the green on the plants, as well as edit the water to all be the same tone so that there weren’t any darker areas. This would further emphasise my use of negative space.
Repetition
I also wanted to explore repetition and round shapes in nature as well as reflection. I think these images are completely different to the images of the first half of my shoot as i wanted to experiment by photographing in different ways to see if I prefer one technique over another, and to generate new ideas for my project.
I found i was focusing on close up patterns of different textures as they look interesting when there’s more to look at. The first image is of a tree trunk on its side as I thought that the different sections of patterns create an interesting photo. The top part of the image is the pattern created from the bark on the tree. The detail is emphasised by the ranging dark to light colour, highlighting the curved lines. The center part of the image is of ” naturally grown, this section adds even more texture to the image and is a completely different pattern to the other parts of the image. These shapes interested me as they were different to any other shapes I found, the light to dark brown colours contrasting against the green on the bark adding more emphasis to them. The bottom section of the image is green and brown textured pattern which again contrast to the other sections. I like how in this image the pattern are diagonal across the image, emphasising on how the tree has naturally grown until it fell over. Overall I like this image and think that it would go well paired with another image if I were to use it in a photo book or display as the green/brown tones will complement or contrast well to other colours in nature.
The second image I took of the bubbles creates by the stream where the circle pattern is repeated. I photographed the image so that this pattern took up just over half, which is then contrasted to the water with a different rippled pattern. I also tried to emphasise the white in the image, that is the white sky reflected on the water as I think this emphasises the shadows as there is more contrast. I like how theres a division between the bubbles and the rippled water from the shadows as it makes the patterns looks more textured and noticeable. In also like how the darkest point of the image is the right side, where the darker rock is beneath the water, which is then contrasted to the white bubbles in the center of the image, which is contrasted to the brown/white tones on the right side. This splits the image into three different sections and creates an interesting composition. I think that this image would work best displayed with another image, rather than by itself as I think that if it was contrasted to another pattern it would be more powerful.
In the third image I focused on the patterns on the bark of a tree and the different tones that are portrayed . I particularly like the composition in this image as the two parts where a branch has been cut off are on the top and left corners, not showing the whole circle. I like this as it fills up the whole image with interesting patterns and create a symmetrical image. The image is not completely symmetrical as the branches have grown naturally as different sizes and in different places, emphasisng how nature is unpredictable. I think that the colour of the two cut off branch dark brown/green contrasts well with the colour of the light green bark. I focused the camera on the center section of the image as I wanted to emphasise the texture and shadows that the bark had created and the beauty within it.
Conclusion
Overall, I think this photo shoot went well and gave me more ideas the I can experiment with in future shoots. For my photo shoot where i look at the movement of water, i want to try and add more ripples to flat water, like in one of the image in this shoot to see the outcome. I also want to interpret the work of Rinko Kawauchi further by focusing more on light and perhaps focusing on fragility more in a feminine way. I think that the final outcomes from this shoot were good but i want to develop the concept of my project further and find the meaning behind the images other than my own personal appreciation fro nature. To do this I will research more artists and find inspiration from them.
