All posts by Georgina Lutkin-Clarke

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ESA // David Prentice

David Prentice was an English artist and former art teacher. He was born 1936 in Solihull and he was educated at Moseley Road Secondaey School of Art, Birmingham between 1949 and 1952, and Birmingham School of Art between 1952 and 1957. He died in 2014. In 1964 he was one of the four founding members of Birmingham Ikon Gallery.

His work features in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicargo, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and the musuem of Modern Art in New York City.

Winter Beacon, 1998
watercolour on paper
Above Llanberis Lake,
Watercolour

The image of David Prentice “Above Llanberis Lake” uses a variety of blue and green shades. His work shows strong tone to create the shape of the lake and the valley that surrounds the area, this is supported by his use of shadows and light in his work. His uses the valley to tunnel the viewer’s eye to the horizon of the painting, this is where the main change in colour (from green to the blue, foreground to background) and the change in lighting is the strongest and most noticeable. The viewer’s eye is most drawn towards where the light emerges from the clouds as this is the lightest area of the painting which is followed through the sun rays.

  • Natural Landscapes
    • Sand dunes
    • Fields
    • Farms

ESA// Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect. He was born in 1948 in Tokyo, Japan. In 1970, Sugimoto studied politics and sociology at Rikkyō University in Tokyo. He retrained as an artist in 1974 and recived his BFA in Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California. He later settled in New York City and soon started working as a dealer of Japanese antiquities in Soho.

He has spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’ or photographs that serve as a time capsule for a series of events in time.

In 1980 he began working on an ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon, Seascapes, in locations all over the world, using an old-fashioned large-format camera to make exposures of varing duration (up to three hours).

The black-and-white pictures are all exactly the same size, bifurcated exactly in half by the horizon line. Many of his images lack any physical detail which would make the objects of his photographs easily distingushable , instead, he strongly focuses on lighting and textures in his work.

Aegean Sea, Pilion
photograph

This photo has been taken using natural lighting while being carefully positioned in order so that the horizon in the middle of the photograph. This taken rule of thirds seems to have been considered in terms of the shading differences in the background and foreground. There is a large tonal range of grey, where there is a gradual shade change, from the darkest point along the bottom of the image and the lightest being at the top. There is a very short depth of field considering that the photo is mostly blurred from the fog. However the foreground of the image is the only part to be in focus and where textures can be seen from the small ripples in the sea, although it is very still. The dark, grey/blue tones bring a cold temperature to the photograph along with the low light sensitivity where we can just about see the horizon in the middle of the image. Although the image is blurred and obscure there are no rounded or curved shapes. Everything is very straight but there are no outlines.

Sugimoto’s image brings a sense of romanticism in their evocation of landscape, related to Ansel Adam’s approaches to photography. This image shows how he sees nature. Sugimoto has said: ‘When I look at nature I see the artificiality behind it. Even though the seascape is the least changed part of nature, population and the resulting pollution have made nature into something artificial’.

Possible responses could be:

  • Seascapes
    • At dusk/sunset
    • At dawn/sun rise
    • On an overcast day to have a similar hue over the entire photograph

ESA // Typologies – Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd and Hilla Becher are both photogrpahers that look at typologies.

Bernd and Hilla Becher were both German conceptual (installation) artists and photographers. They worked as a collaborative duo and are best known for their extensive series of typographies of industrial buildings and structures.

“The husband and wife team of Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing together in 1959. Bernd and Hilla Becher documented architectural forms referred to as “anonymous sculpture” for over thirty years. Their extensive series of water towers, blast furnaces, coal mine tipples, industrial facades, and other vernacular industrial architecture comprise an in-depth study of the intricate relationship between form and function.” – Fraenkel Gallery

ESA // Typologies – August Sander

Photographic typologies are believed to have originated from August Sander’s series of portraits ‘Face of our Time’.

August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. August Sander photo series, People of the Twentieth Century is a great example of Environmental Portraiture. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.” (cited: Wikipedia [Michael Collins, Record Pictures (Thomas Telford Publishing, 2004), p. 1842] )

He used a large-format camera and long-exposure times. He created hundreds of portraits for a typology of German society during both the World Wars. Many of his photographs are environmental portraits. – sourced from artsy.net “He established a photography studio, first in Austria, then in Cologne, where he settled in 1910 and made photographs of local peasants.” – icp.org. This is what inspired his life’s work.

His work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, however, he is known best for his portraits

Sander was born in Herdorf, he was the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. He was working at a local mine when he first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. He acquired some financial support from his uncle, with which he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.

Pastrycook 1928, printed 1999 August Sander 1876-1964 ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Anthony d’Offay 2010 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/AL00033

The image of the Pastry cook is a photograph from Sander’s photo series ‘People of the Twentieth Century’. The image depicts a particular type of person, in this case, Sander shows a skilled tradesman working in his kitchen. The round shape of the bowl mirrors the shape of the Cook’s body, this suggests that the subject of the photograph is the type of person to be really involved in their work, almost as if they have become it themselves. By using a sharp focus on the foreground, the subject becomes the priority along with his body language became this is the main focus of the image, the soft focus in the background allows this to happen. Sander has positioned the subject in order to have the most likely natural light reflecting on the side of the face, bowl and shoes. He takes black and white photographs, therefore tone is a big focus when taking the photos. By using a dark background this allows the lighter foreground to stand out more effectively. This also reiterates the subject being the main focus in the photograph and the suggestion that he is a part of his work.



ESA // Eadward Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge, originally Edward James Muggeridge, adopted his new name believign it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He was born 9 April, 1830 and died 8 May, 1904. He was an English photographer, who was considered important for his pioneering work in photogrpahic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 20. He remained undiscovered until 1868, when his large photogrpahs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous.

Muybridge’s reputation as a photographer grew in the late 1800s, this led to the former California Governor Leland Stanford to contact him to help settle a bet. Speculation had continued for years over whether all four hooves of a running horse left the ground at the same time. Stanford believed they did, but the motuon was too quick for the naked eye to detect. In 1872, Muybridge began photogrpahing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. His intial findings appeared to indicate that Stanford was right, but due to imperfection in Muybridge’s methods, it could not be confirmed with certainty. With the further funding he received from Stanford, Muybridge eventually created a more complex method of photographing horse in motion and by 1879, he had proven that they do at times have all four hooved off the ground during their running stride.

Eadweard Muybridge
Galloping horse

Muybridge was invited to continue his research at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. For the following few years he produced thousands of photogrpahs of humans and animals in motion. He presented his photogrpahic methods using a projection device he had devloped called the Zoopraxiscope.

Eadweard Muybridge
Sow
photograph

ESA // School Visit to the CCA Galleries, Somerset House and the Art Centre

Work from the CCA Galleries – Behind the Lens

Guitars on Trees
Rupert Truman / Storm Studios

The reason I chose to talk about Biffy Clyro and Rupert Truman’s work is because it has a similarity to typologies. The use of repetition in both artists’ work is what drew me to research and look more closely to them and their work. I was also drawn to Biffy Clyro’s work because of the way that he has displayed his work in a triptych, similarly to how I am hoping to display my work in a diptych.

Work from Somerset House – Pop Icons

Transparency of a Dream
Alexander James Hamilton

I chose this piece of work by Alexander James Hamilton because of how unique it was in the room. The work was on the wall by itself and displayed in a Light box. This, I felt, meant that the work was viewed with focus only on this piece and the vibrancy of the art led the viewers eye to the butterfly like image.

Work from the Art Centre – Being Human

Talk – ‘TALK’ in British Sign Language

Respect – ‘RESPECT’ in British Sign Language

Clarice Greening

From the Artist:

‘TALK’ in British Sign Language

The hands can talk by themselves and can give powerful commands without physically speaking, which shows that even when you can’t speak you can explain yourself and communicate with others – that’s what I found so fascinating about the sybolism of the hands, they are used to speak in this silent sign language.

“Back at deaf school we were separated into classes where we would sign or speak …. in speaking class they didn’t let us sign … we were taught to try and speak …”

‘RESPECT’ in British Sign Language

Respect is so important; many people would assume that because being deaf is a ‘disability’ that they would look ‘different’ but most of the time, it is a hidden disability.

By learning sign language, even if it is a few words, we can communicate easier with the deaf heard. I made my pieces ‘larger-than-life’ to represent this.

“To look at a deaf person … same as a hearing … no different”.

My favourite piece of art from the gallery visits, was the drawings of the British Sign language and the hands because of how the artist has used the hands so literally and how it shows and represents such an important issue where the hands are a staple. I also felt that it was a clear representation to help show the struggles of a disability that cannot be seen and is therefore sometimes cast aside and not considered as important to someone who may be in a wheelchair and has a clear and visible disability. I liked the simplicity of the drawings and the use of minimalist materials and that it is halck and white. I feel like this has been done in order to show that the important message the art is showing is more understood through the simplicity.

ESA // Play and a brief case study of John Baldessari

Dodging the camera

My response to the task of ‘dodging the camera’ was to create a gif by taking photos in one area trying to follow one of my friends around as they attempted the dodge the camera or run away from it. I felt that these images worked best when they are presented in a looping gif, rather than seperate image as it shows the movement within the images.

Creating a line with balls

John Baldessari: Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts)

Baldessari is a conceptual artist working in photography, film, video, artists’ books, billboards, and public works. He started as a painter in his early career, Baldessari cremated all of the work he produced between 1953 and 1966 in a ceremony in 1970 to mark his transition from abstract painting to text-based art.

His artists’ book, Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts) (1973). It represents Baldessari’s interest in language and games as structurews following both mandatory and arbitory rules.

My Response to John Baldessari was to go outside a throw up three tennis balls and try and create a straight line. Some of my attempts worked out however, some attempts ended up having the balls in a triangle or only capturing two out of three tennis balls.

Throwing a dodgeball in the air

My Response was to throw a dodgeball in the air and then try to capture it in a photo, some of these attempts worked well however, like the last image sometimes the ball wouldn’t always be clearly in shot.

Coin Toss

“I just got so tired of looking at these faces” – John Baldessari

John Baldessari also made a series of images where he blanked out peoples faces.

In response to this idea we flipped a coin over a copy of an archival photograph and wherever it landed we cut out around it so that at the end of the excerise we had an image with lots of circles cut out of it and a blank piece of paper with the cut outs placed out on it.

ESA // Repetition

Repetition can be seen as an element of typologies when it is used in photography. I used the idea of typologies in order to create the gif below, I took photographs of people’s keys in my class on a plain background and then at first I was going to display the images on a grid, however, I wanted to experiment with the movement that a gif provides.

The images displayed in a grid:

The images displayed in a gif:

In order to create the gif, I used Adobe Photoshop. The images below show a step by step of how I created the gif. Experimenting with gifs and moving images is a great step into looking at tidal movements and the changes the sea makes. I am thinking of using the skills I have learnt in class when creating a gif with keys, to create a timelapse looking display of images, shows the tide at different points during the day from low tide to high tide.