Old Fashioned Advertising

In the past messages about beauty ideals and perfection were obviously promoted to women in advertising for various products. To sell products companies link their brand with a desired look or lifestyle that their customer is looking to achieve, if they believe that buying this product will help them to reach their goals they are more likely to purchase it. Bold statements were used such as “this is no shape for a girl” “great look great body great lash mascara” “how attractive are you on the beach” to target the audiences insecurities directly and make a clear message about the benefits of the product. Although these are old methods of advertising that we would think are now outdated in many ways the same ideas are used in less obvious ways.

Modern Advertising

Modern advertising has a way of being incorporated into every aspect of out lives, there is almost no way to live without being impacted by the messages pushed at us through advertisements. Since the rise of the internet advertising techniques have changed drastically. whilst before they would have been printed in magazines, on posters, billboards TV and Radio they now now have ways of targeting individuals directly. Through the use of HTTP cookies, data is gathered when sent between the website and the users device. They were designed to remember information and interactions users make on the internet, recording their browsing history. this data is bought by advertising companies who use it to specialise and target products towards appropriate customers. Adverts will then appear on various websites, social media platforms and videos.

When looking on my own Instagram to see what products and services were being targeted towards me I found many adverts specific to where I live proving just how much information is collected and used. I also saw a lot of sponsored posts for clothes and beauty products such this teeth whitening kit. This style of modern advertising is more subtle, integrating it into your newsfeed often I will scroll past them without questioning the subliminal messages they are communicating about how purchasing these products is the answer.

On the other hand some commercials and campaigns have started to represent a more versatile group of people, due to the media companies are coming under more scrutiny to more on from traditional beauty ideal and show real people in their adverts.

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger, an artist from New Jersey who worked as graphic designer and art director for various magazines created a collection focusing on power struggles mainly for women. By layering photographs she found in existing magazines with aggressive slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” written in white over red boxes to stand out from the black and white backgrounds. They are deigned to imitate the deigns and messages behind real adverts that shout messages at the consumer, and question the viewer about feminism, classism and consumerism. Her work has appeared on billboards, buscards, posters and train stations to further imitate the conventions of advertisements.

Extension rebellion

I also want to look into culturally relevant issues and how they are being publicised, Extinction Rebellion, a current movement against climate change, and the extinction of life due to biodiversity loss and ecological collapse. So far the activists from all walks of life have nonviolently protested in major cities around the world in hope to disrupt daily life and gain awareness from the public and government, some have taken extreme actions to get attention for the cause with over 1,000 people arrested so far. They have a bold memorable logo which is a mix of a cross and a sand timer to symbolise how time is running out for us to change our habit and reverse the effect of climate change. The colour green has been their focus for more of their posters and signs because of its clear links will nature and sustainability along with bold black writing reminiscent of Barbara Kruger’s work and similar persuasive adverts. The middle image shows how the group is using extreme emotive method to display the seriousness of the cause.

Personal Response

After looking at these various advertising methods used to persuade audience into purchasing product or believing in an idea I want to incorporate similar concepts into my work. I have considered adding emotive and brutal phrases into the magazine that go with the idea of beauty ideals and perspectives towards achieving perfection. I also want to create a series of images in the form of modern advertising for example, sponsored ads on social media, posters and product packaging. These will go alongside the magazine to display the idea of how we see messages around this ideal all around us on a daily basis.

The imagery you can see above is based off of the historical relevancy within the book itself. so not all of these images are form her but the achieve itself. The combination of figurative and literary to my mind is interesting, as it allows myself to possibly think about something I could add into my project. Many of these images are objectivity and not a specific representation of a person themselves. I also like the way in which she chooses to have this sort of loose representation, to my mind this feeling of a scrapbook always has a clear presentation of thought about everything that the book itself contains. From the presentation purpose the huge size of the pieces themselves is something which I believe to be really effective and why I too want to show huge prints, similar to herself. I think using the turn in the wall is also effective, perhaps if I did rows of four within two on each side in the crease, it would allow a much more abstract presentation.

Every page from Sutlers book has a full sized image leaking over the ends of the pages, It both concentrates on this style of a lexicon with an overruling theme. She photographs everything which has some sort of relation through narrative. Due to the sheer size and effectiveness of her pieces, one on every page of full leak, it’s what allows myself to belive if you’re going to go and try to show this monumental representation of everything, you have to really go hard.

Biography:

Swiss-born, Amsterdam-based artist Batia Suter (b. 1967) studied at the art academies of Zürich and Arnhem (NL), and was also trained at the Werkplaats Typografie. Suter produces monumental prints of digitally manipulated images for specific locations, and works on photo-animations, image sequences and collages, often using found pictures. In 2007 she published Parallel Encyclopedia (Roma 100), followed by Parallel Encyclopedia #2 in 2016 (Roma 284), containing a large composition of images taken from books she has collected along the years. Surface Series (Roma 160), published in 2011, is an evocative montage of found images exploring the diverse resonances of geological landscape and visual surface. The underlying themes of Batia Suter’s practice are the ‘iconification’ and ‘immunogenicity’ of images, and the circumstances by which they become charged with new associative values. Her work intuitively situates old images in new contexts to provoke surprising reactions and significative possibilities. By this method, and with an attuned sensitivity to hidden harmonies and expressive accidents, Suter thus generates hypnagogic spaces where pictures can communicate by their own logic, in a force field of imaginative metamorphosis.

lexicon means a collection fo items all represent as though ti i . dictionary fo images. I felt as though ti was important to research this as my book is similar to a lexicon I the fact that it focuses on the narrative of life and death and everything that concerns it.

I decided through looking into how this artist presents her work, usually, having a continuous over-flowing page, I decided I should create a narrative which too allows my theme of black and yet too has these large strong images. I believe this presentation is the best and possibly the final,. I might start developing some new photo possibly with over ruling images and creating a new possibly more interesting composition, and possibly adding in more chaos photos of the pressed jar shoot.

Guillaume Amat

Born in 1980, based in Paris.  He is dedicated to long-term projects which produce photographic narratives. Aiming to adapt the camera to the subject and the way in which to narrate a story by using different types of cameras, formats and sensible surfaces. With his images he build stories which navigate between documentary and poetry.

Robert Smithson: Time Crystals

Robert Smithson: Time Crystals is the first exhibition in Australia dedicated to the work of American artist Robert Smithson (1938-73). Best known for his radical land art of the 1960s and early 1970s, Smithson is now widely recognised as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Inspired by ideas of crystalline geometry and non-biological time, he redefined abstraction and challenged art history, declaring that ‘Nature gives way to the incalculable cycles of non duration.

Modernism

Modernism is a general term used to describe trends in photography from around 1910-1950 when photographers began to produce works with a sharp focus and an emphasis on formal qualities, exploiting, rather than obscuring, the camera as an essentially mechanical and technological tool.

Paul strand was an American photographer born in 1890 in New York, who was one of the pioneers of photography in the 20th century. From the 1950-1960 he travelled around producing different photo books. One of Strands most well recognised photos is “wall street” which was taken in 1915. It shows a moment in time where workers are walking past the J.P. Morgan and Co. building in new York on Wall Street, where the image takes its name. The photograph is most famous for its reliance on the sharpness and contrast of the shapes and angles that lead to its abstraction. This photograph is considered to be one of Strand’s most famous works and an example of his change from pictorialism to straight photography. Strand moved from the posed to portraying the purity of the subjects. It is one of several images that stand as marks of the turn to modernism in photography.

Post-Modernism

Postmodernism is defined as a late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a postmodernism photographer born in japan in 1948 his most famous work is his seascapes work which has a minimalistic approach. One image from this work is the Aegean sea, pillion image, which shows an image of an ocean taken from a spot around japan which many of his images were like in this project.

TECHNICAL:

The image uses artificial lighting from the lights in the store which gives a cold feel to the light in the image. The use of the store lighting gives a more natural feel to the photograph but has slight over exposure which is nice as it creates perfect reflections on the roof in the background of the image reflecting the products bellow. The overall image has a large tonal range in both colour and shadow having a very high contrast. This image was most likely taken using a wide angle lens as the image has a very wide view but would have also had a higher number of F-stops as all of the image is in focus and has a large depth of field. The image most likely was taken using a tripod as the image is perfectly upright and the shutter speed would have been a reasonably high speed but low enough to give it a slight over exposure. The ISO would have been very low as the image is very sharp and crisp without any grain or blur.

VISUAL:

The image has a very large tonal range as well as range in colour. The image has a very wide range in vibrant colours seen in the bright packaging of the products ranging from bold red and orange colours to poping blues and pink colours. The image also has very soft neutral colours which are seen on the walls of the shop with cream colours and in the shop logo. In the image there is very clear lines which give strong compositional structure to the image from the lines in the rows dividing the products to the lines in the beams of the building which create a very interesting aesthetic to the image. The reflection on the roof almost is almost unrecognisable as it could almost be mistaken for more rows of products with its almost perfect reflections giving an aesthetic which is particularly interesting to the image.

CONTEXTUAL:

The image was produced by Andreas Gursky in 1999 as a part of a two-part photograph. The image was printed into a single large-scale image which is a digital montage from multiple images taken in a 99 Cents Only store in Los Angeles, the seemingly endless rows of stuff, with shoppers’ heads floating ­anonymously above the products, more closely resemble abstract or Impressionist painting than contemporary photography. Gursky who is a German Architect and photographer is known for using digital manipulation to create scenes that turn almost everyday experiences into art. In 2006, in the in the days just before the Great Recession, 99 Cent sold for $2.3 million at auction. At the time this broke the record for a contemporary photograph but this also moved contemporary photography into the auctions alongside paintings and other highly expensive artworks.

CONCEPTUAL:

The image is a very clear reflection consumer culture which we live in, where their is almost an infinite choice in what to buy and a constant demand for different and fighting for brands to be on the top choice. The image is almost like a criticism on how we live our lives with the rows and rows of products that are all consumed in different ways and almost questions the viewer of the image to say is all of this consumption needed and are we thinking about what we are actually buying.

To juxtapose with my previous shoot, i returned to the same location to capture a variety of similar images but this time at sunset. Returning at sunset would give me golden lighting that would illuminate the cliffs in a completely different way to my first shoot on a stormy day. I ensured that it was a clear day to allow for the suns rays to create the most interesting colors upon the surroundings and therefore give a direct contrast between the two shoots in this location. I find it really interesting how much impact the lighting and weather have on a location and this is why i keep returning to the same locations at different times and at different days to see how the change in these external factors convey a completely different story/mood.

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