As well as my postcard display I have decided that I would also like to make an outcome of some larger A3 sized prints. My idea behind this is that it will show some of the finer details within my photo-montages which may be harder to see in the postcard format. 6 of these prints would be a good idea as I believe threes work nicely in a layout so as a multiple of 3 I think 6 prints will be will be overall aesthetically pleasing. Therefore I also want to have 3 portrait prints and 3 landscape prints as this will balance out the composition of the display. The 6 photo-montages which I have chosen to print in the A3 format are ones which have a lot of intricate detail which I feel like will look great once scaled up. Here are the 6 which I have chosen…
In a following post I intend on planning how I will display these prints as a final outcome.
In End of an Age, British photographer Paul Graham captures the threshold moments that mark the ending of adolescence, the small slice of time between youthful indulgence and the emerging awareness of adult responsibilities. His photographs resonate between these two poles: between full-on consciousness and escape; between seeing the world with shocking clarity and the desire to hide oneself from that reality. It is a situation that each of knows and remembers all too well, a traumatic time. And it is often the threshold of a profound psychological transformation.
“It is a time when things are deeply felt, when you appear to see things very clearly, sometimes with brilliant intensity, and you believe passionately in what you can achieve, but then you also have to escape from that, to let go, to unburden yourself…The visual duality of the work reflects that duality in life – between the power of stone-cold reality and the need to escape that: get drunk, turn away, close your eyes, get stoned.” – In an interview with the author of ‘Paul Graham’ published by steidlMACK
The photographs alternate between ultra-sharp direct flash images where every detail is minutely recorded, and the opposite extreme, with loose available-light photographs, saturated with colour, blurred and sometimes poorly focused. These compelling colour images are portraits in the fullest sense – images that seek to reflect on the inner self through our material presence.
When he made the pictures for End of An Age Graham was between 39 and 42 years old, whereas the young people in his pictures were around 17 to 27. His work looks back at the pleasures and discomforts of youth now consigned to the past. Although some appear to be photographed in social situations (the lighting often suggests clubs and bars), the exact locations, individually and collectively, are deliberately withheld.
“I think it’s better that I withhold the location. Anyone can see that these are young, white, First-World westerners, but beyond that, it’s best to keep it non-specific and more universal. The minute I say that these pictures were taken in Stockholm or wherever, everyone will say “Oh, so this is how young Swedes are today,” or “It’s a portrait of young Sweden,” and that’s not the point. I want them to go far beyond any national identity. It’s not Stockholm and it’s not a documentary about young Swedes. It could be anywhere from Germany to Ireland, to the UK, to Spain, to parts of the US.” – in ‘I Blame Elvis’, an interview with Jenefer Winters.
Surprisingly, Graham did not use colour filters for the pictures: “the colour casts come from the available lighting…red or ultra-violet, yellow or green, just whatever light is there, uncorrected.” Subjects also appear to move through a gradual 360-degree turn, a dance-like spin or pirouette. This hints at the question of what is being hidden, the pressures of coming to adulthood and the feelings associated with change itself.
Image Analysis
This image depicts a young woman with her face angled, as if looking off into the distance. It is unclear if the photo is staged, or candid, yet the emotion on her face still comes through. Graham composes this image to feature negative space across the right side, this suggests the nightlife environment as she is surrounded in colour. The left side of her face becomes blurred into the background, as her youth becomes associated with this atmosphere.
The colour is not overwhelming as it is not highly saturated nor highly contrasted. This allows the viewer to recognise and relate with the subject’s facial cues.
End of an age evolved from an idea Graham had in 1995 based around a common photographic ‘mistake’, the red-eye reflection so familiar from amateur snapshots. His book opens and closes with images that embrace these ‘errors’: extreme close-ups of young peoples faces with glowing red orbs floating against rough-grained skin tones. He achieves this grain in his images by using highly sensitive ISO’s.
In a way, Graham is using a documentary approach to showcase the lifestyles of the youth, yet he does this in a more minimalistic style, choosing not to present the environment, leaving the emotional strain of growing up to be shown through the facial distinctions on his subjects faces. The relationship he has with these subjects is interesting due to the age gap, signifying the strong difference between the life of the youth and the older generations.
“I was in this city on and off for two years and some of these people became good friends of mine who I know very well and remain in contact with. These people I photographed many times over, whereas others are complete strangers who happened to be standing by me, and I took a picture, and I’ve simply no idea who they are.”
Brett Weston war born 1911, Los Angeles, the second son of photographer Edward Weston. Brett was removed from school at a young age to become his father’s apprentice in Mexico, this surrounded his by revolutionary artists of the day such as Tina Modotti, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, not only did this influence his but also presented his with a striking contrast to life in Mexico but as also where he first started taking photos with a small Graflex. This introduction that Brett was shown and the work of the painters unintentionally influenced his sense of form and composition, this quality of design was evident in Brett’s early images of organic and man-made subjects. Here he started to appreciate how the camera transformed subjects close up and how the contrast of black and white altered further the recognition of the subjects. Overall it is not hard to understand his attraction to focus on abstraction dye to the characteristics he was influenced by would allow him to be uniquely identified with throughout the rest of his career.
Weston later returned to California in 1926, and Brett continued to assist him in his Glendale portrait studio whilst exhibiting and selling his own photographs at the same time. From the age of seventeen a group of his images were included in the German exhibition ‘film und Foto’, considered to be one of the most important avant-garde exhibitions held between the times of the two World Wars. Because of this his received great recognition which brought Brett international attention and inclusion in various photographic exhibitions in the following years. Although his art will always be linked with his father’s it is unfair to say that his photography is imitative of Edward’s beyond the early years as he produced an enormous body of work over the seven decades. Some examples of his work can be seen below:
After looking over some of his images I decided that I would go onto look at one specific image that I thought would best reflect my intentions for my future shoot based around abstract patterns. The image I have chosen is called ‘Mud Cracks’ and was taken 1966 highlighting the patterns found in everyday things such as mud. Here I will go onto look at things like visual, technical and contextual aspects which would allow me to further my knowledge regarding techniques used and the style of photography created.
Visual:
Visually the piece is quite simplistic in the sense that the photo is of a piece of mud, however its when upon further inspection that there are cracks which form patterns across the mud, something the every-day eye would miss unless focused upon. For me the piece is extremely aesthetic due to how the tones used across the composition are varying grays with the only real shades coming from the cracks which allow separation in the image which prevents the outcome of pure mud becoming too overpowering. To stop the mud becoming too much Weston has made sure to include smaller cracks within the cracks of mud to add variation to the photo whilst stopping a continual generic surface from occurring across the entire image.
Technical:
When looking across the image it is clear to say that a slightly lower exposure has been used so that the darkness in between the cracks is highlighted above the rest of the image which due to sunlight is a lot lighter and therefore becomes the focal point. It looks like a higher shutter speed has been used to capture crisp detail of the mud as you can clearly see the lumps and grooves present on each slab of mud whilst there being no evidence of motion blur whatsoever. Weston has made sure to include a clear fifty fifty ration between mud and cracks which stop one or the other from becoming too overpowering and stopped the effectiveness of the other.
Contextual:
The aim of the piece is meant to create the subject and present it in an unrecognizable fashion, devoid of sentimentality. There is meant to be a sense of a lack of human presence and narrative making it unclear of what the photographer is trying to express. The composition is not amazing and the angle is wrong, however this is the aim of the photographer who could argue that the aim of modern photography is so that the image is only partially aesthetic. These concentrated images share the high-contrast and graphic qualities of Weston’s panoramas while emphasizing his affinity for “significant details” and the unprecedented attention to form, texture, shadow, and light that he explored throughout his nearly-seventy-year career.
Historical Photobook- Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843–53)
English botanical artist, collector and photographer Anna Atkins was the first person to illustrate a book with photographic images. Her nineteenth-century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impressively detailed blueprints of botanical specimens.
Anna’s innovative use of new photographic technologies merged art and science, and exemplified the exceptional potential of photography in books. Andrea Hart, Library Special Collections Manager at the Museum, says, ‘With the introduction of photography, you get a whole new opening up of how natural history and science can be presented in print. Before the invention of photography, scientists relied on detailed descriptions and artistic illustrations or engravings to record the form and colour of botanical specimens. Anna’s self-published her detailed and meticulous botanical images using the cyanotype photographic process in her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. With a limited number of copies, it was the first book ever to be printed and illustrated by photography.
‘Before Atkins’s book on British algae and the photographic process, botanical images would have been restricted to the traditional printing processes of engraving or woodcuts, although the art of nature printing was also in its early stages around Atkins’s time’.
Because there are limited copies of this book in the world i couldn’t physically hold this book to analyse the whole inside, but I wanted to use this book as inspiration for my photobook and especially the ways Atkins displayed her cyanotypes very simplistically on each page. This links to my 6th photoshoot where I produced my own photograms responding to my research into Anna Atkins and the history behind how they were first created.
Contemporary Photobook- Rinko Kawachi: Illuminance
I also chose Rinko Kawauchi photobook ‘Illuminance’ to take inspiration from when creating my photobook as I explored her work at the start of my project and think that the concepts of my project now were built from researching her photography and why she takes photos.
” In Illuminance, Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns. Gorgeously produced as a clothbound volume with Japanese binding, this impressive compilation of previously unpublished images is proof of Kawauchi’s unique sensibility and her ongoing appeal to lovers of photography.
How does the book to look and feel, Cover The book is A4 with a hard cover which is clothbound with Japanese binding, displaying square debossed image printed onto a linen material on the front and another image in the same place/size on the back. I think that these two images are good representations of what is inside the book and interests the reader.
Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both. The title ‘Illuminance’ is a different material to the front cover of the book where is spelt in shiny dots spelling title and her name underneath, linking to the title Illumininace. The colours of these dots link to the colours seen in the image above the writing. The colour of the front and back colour is a dark blue/purple, which complement the glowing pink colour of the plant in the image in the centre of the cover. I think that both these images link together, the image of the back displays a beam of light against a structure, the image in the front as it looks as though light is directly shining on the flower. These links together as through the emphasis of light and making it seem as though the beam of light on the back is on the flower on the front.
Title: Illuminance I think that this title intrigues the reader as it indicates how the images in her book emphasise light.
Narrative,Structure and architecture:: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told? The images in her book, Illuminance, span 15 years of work, both commissioned and personal projects, and have the ability to make the mundane extraordinary, leaving poetry in the viewer’s mind. A distinctive trait of her work and the book lies in the sequence and the juxtaposition of her images. This editing, she says, “differentiates between a photograph and an artwork. Seeing two images next to each other opens up the imagination and gives birth to something else. Flipping through the pages of the book, it can arouse feelings of excitement, sadness, or happiness—things that are hard [for me] to do with words.” At first glance, her photographs seem simple. But her talent lies in the way she is able to evoke the primal in all of us: a depth of raw human emotion. “It’s not enough that [the photograph] is beautiful,” says Kawauchi. “If it doesn’t move my heart, it won’t move anyone else’s heart.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts. Most of her pages display a square image, starting at the top of the page and leaving white space at the bottom. This occurs on every page on the book, except for a few double page spreads where theres only one out of the two pages that has an image. Kawauchi probably did this to emphasise those particular images and to create a few breaks in the sequence of the book.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ statement / use of captions (if any.) At the end of the book there is a body of text called Weightless Light – David Chandler at end of book which talks about some of her other photo books and and the concepts and meaning behind her images. “Her dramatic twists of subject matter and mood, , leave an overall impression of a first person narrative.” “From page to page ‘Illuminance’ builds into a sustained meditation on light’s miraculous qualities and revelatory power, at the heart of which is a reminder that light is the source of all seeing, and the fundamental property of photography.”
“In the rendering of light in Kawauchi’s work, in the continual sense of matter dissolving or evaporating into air and space, the idea behind to settle of the elemental state where the interconnection between things is also a merging, a form of immanence that suggests the possible terms of the sublime, sensory integration of our being with the natural world. “
I think that by taking inspiration from both Anna Atkins and Rinko Kawauchi when designing my photo book I will produce a body of work that will link together. I will try to interpret the way Kawauchi has connections between her images in her double page spreads. She says that “Seeing two images next to each other opens up the imagination”. This is why I will try to display combinations of images that connect e.g. through colours, patterns or texture. Taking inspiration from Anna Atkins cyanotypes will also add a different aspect to my photo book that will interest the readers and will complement my landscape image.
