In the early 1970s, John Baldessari made a promise “I will not make any more boring art”. The lithograph image demonstrates his thinking at the time as his interest in Conceptual art developed. The work was created at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in conjunction with an unconventional exhibition. Baldessari was not present at the “exhibition,” nor at the workshop where the print was made. He simply sent a handwritten page to the students to be reproduced and made a videotape of himself writing the sentence. Prior to the creation of this work, Baldessari, together with friends and students from University of California at San Diego, gathered paintings he had made as a young artist and drove them to a crematorium where they were burnt.
His participation in the conceptual movement lead him to create ‘Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts)’ in 1973. The images represent Baldessari’s interest in language and games as structures following both mandatory and arbitrary rules. He attempts to fulfill a simple yet arbitrary goal, following rules in a similar manner to a game as structured by the title of his book. There are thirty-six documented attempts in the book–the typical number of exposures on a roll of 35mm film. The resultant images are documentation of Baldessari’s game, but they also border on abstract imagery and bear a resemblance to his later works.
In other works, Baldessari takes archival images, using colourful price stickers to obstruct the viewer from seeing the faces of the people in the image. The viewer is encouraged to analyse other aspects of the image, that would otherwise not catch their attention, such as the clothing of the figures, wealth, era, etc.
“I just got so tired of looking at these faces” – John Baldessari
Responses:
In response to ‘Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts)’, we took 1 larger ball and 3 tennis balls and took turns throwing them in the air to get a straight line. This was harder than it seemed. The balls were coloured bright yellow or green in order to stand out against the white/grey sky. I found that it was difficult to maintain that the moving items were in focus.
Another experiment we carried out involved dodging the camera. In many of the outcomes, the face of the subject is not clearly seen, reflecting the same ideas of Baldessari.
All images from both experiments were taken with varying shutter speeds of 1/100s to 1/200s to capture the movement of the subjects in different motions.
In a third experiment, we experimented with the use of archival imagery. We used a coin toss to determine where the circles should be cut out on the image.
In Photoshop, I edited circles of colour over the already cut out circles. I also painted lines of colour over certain areas where there was negative space.
In one image, I used the colours of the Jersey Flag, Red, White and Yellow, as the image depicts Jersey soldiers.
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.
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).
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.
To start experimenting with my images, I chose to crop out the mirror and replace it with a different image. To do this I used the magnetic lasso feature to crop out the shape of the mirror. I then moved this shape over to the image I wished to use instead. I changed the opacity so I could see both the space and new image, once I had the new image in the shape I wanted I moved it over to the original whole image. I then used shading tool to make the image look more like it was originally taken like that.
To experiment further, I used some filters on the mirror image to make it stand out more.
After conducting this photo shoot I could develop this idea further by looking at the work of Robert Smithson.
I’m videoing this everyday routine because it is something that everyone does, yet everyone does it in a similar way. I decided to take a video of a model doing her hair and make up.
In order to experiment with moving image, a concept I would like to use during my Variation and Similarity project, I have experimented making a gif. A gif is: “a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images“. I have taken 5 photos of bottles, as a category of typology. Typologies, which I will furthermore research as a form of ‘similarity’ is the study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner. Using Photoshop, I combined my images together into a timeframe motion, giving the photos movement. I used bottles as a basic experimentation though I will not be focusing on this item throughout my project. Gifs are a unique way of photo presentation, enabling photographs to come to life and show a sense of movement and variety.
Open Adobe Photoshop, go to File> Scripts> Load files into stack
Select images for the gif.
Select Timeline under the Window tab.
Select Create Frame Animation from the drop down in the timeline.
Go to the menu button on the timeline and select Make Frames From Layers.
Before commencing with various shoots and photographic inspirations I decided that I would be suitable to research various ideas that I could use as my theme for the topics of variation and similarity. Here I will be exploring five different stances I can taken regarding the given subject, and how I could go about taking images of the intended areas and their uses, these are my choices:
Empty Spaces/Full Spaces:
Here I could photograph empty/full car parks, using the lighting present there to create aesthetic and contrasted results. This can be done to more effect in enclosed parking areas such as the ones present in town, where a more cramped and urban feel is created. I could also make use of the empty car parks at night in the open, using the odd lamppost’s lighting as a means of casting an eerie feeling upon the surrounding area. A photographer who I could explore this with is Denis Felix, someone who explore the abandoned landscapes of areas in homes and buildings. Also done by photographer Johnny Joo, he capture the areas of society that have moved on, leaving natural to reclaim the land previously used. I could use monochrome photography for this as it could allow for a more unnatural feel to come across when viewing the photos.
Textures/Patterns:
For this idea I could explore the variation of patterns and textures within a variety of different objects present in different landscapes. By presenting everything as more abstract and aesthetic it could not just visually please the viewer but also provide an insight into the hidden world that can be portrayed by these surfaces, where you perspective can be warped depending on how you see the object. Photographers that I could use for this idea are Paul Sanders, someone who looks at the structure of objects and photographs them in an aesthetic and original way, and Edward Weston, a photographer who uses macro photography to capture textures and patterns of architectural and natural subjects, in both the environmental and man-made world.
Animals:
Regarding the idea of animals I thought the variation of species would be a great topic due to Jersey having one of the worlds most famous endangered species zoos in the world, Durrell. By photographing a large variety of different species side by side it would provide a huge insight into how evolution has occurred and the different features and characteristics of each one. Some photographers that I could study for inspiration for this idea are the photographers Martin Bailey and Tim Flach. What I liked was their style of separating the subject from the backdrop using Photoshop or a black cover which really brings out the aspects of the animal they intend to capture.
Natural Formation Of Objects:
Here I wanted to explore how the formation of natural objects found in our everyday environment. By using macro photography it could highlight the hidden patterns in things that we view all the time, by photographing a variety of different plants etc like a topography it would give symmetry and aestheticism to the viewer who could see each image in a larger picture when compared to the other images taken the same way. The photographer Karl Blosfeldt I felt was a particular inspiration for me as he used topographics to capture the tips of plants using macro photography, which he would then display side by side so that they increased the overall interpretation of how the style of photography is viewed.
Abstract Landscapes:
Finally for this topic I wanted to look at how the various landscapes in Jersey could be viewed using abstract and unique perspectives regarding the formation of the area. Here I would have to look at the vivid colours and contrast them against more stark and ugly aspects of the area like concrete and walls, using telephone boxes, lines and brightly painted areas to do so. Some photographers that I would like to study for this are Sigfried Hansen and Ricardo Cases, who both use vivid colours to portray the landscape in a vibrant and interesting way that draws the viewer in through aestheticism and symmetry.
Overall when looking over the chosen ideas I found that the abstract stance of separating the subject from its environment really appealed to me the most as it presented me with alternative methods of showing my work, leaving the viewer to purely focus on that one subject. These are most evident in the topics of animals, natural formations and texture/pattern, giving me the opportunity to explore this style the most.
With this shoot I will develop the outcomes in two manners. The first being creating surreal pieces, editing the close-ups to have people and changing the perspective to the landscapes themselves, creating character. To do so I will probably over lap the images, and also edit the images themselves, into being black and white, to capture the tonal differences, from the light and more tonal shades. The second way in which I will develop this shoot, is from printing out some of the more clear landscape images, and pouring them in paint and liquids, in order to change the composition and the colouring of the art piece itself. This second composition idea, has a much more clear influence from the fine art outlook, and I believe it will be very different from the outcomes below, and less predictable. edits- to create a more fine art creative influence:
analysis: For this shoot and small edits, I wanted to show landscapes which could be further edited in order to show surreal elemnts. My main aim for these images, was to capture an element of fluidity, and softness of structure to the images. I wanted to get the reflection and the detail within the sand, and use this in order to change perspective and make it look as though the image is not close up but expands across a large-scale. When looking closer at the reflections and movement of the sand, I discovered that it looked as though it was a path, or something which was guiding a route for someone. Because of this, I thought to create a surreal image I would repeat the images, and make it appear as a wet pathway, and put someone and a reflection within the water. I chose A politician as then this both connects my theme of media into my work. It additionally creates a uncomfortability within the image. He looks out-of-place in his suite and with his surrounding, it creates contradictions within the image however, at the same time, still forming connections to surrealism. I added the shadow in order to give the piece an elements of realism. The second image, I too thought had elements which paved out a path. I decided to add more artistic looking fine art figurative people, running along the beach. However, I do not belive this is as successful as the previous, due to the composition and light.
This shoot draws inspiration from Lewis Bush’s ‘Metropole’ as well as Michael Wolf’s ‘Architecture of Density’ and aims to show some of the repetition and symmetry in blocks of flats and offices whilst at the same time showing the difference in designs between buildings. Going into this shoot I had the vision of photoshopping the photographs that result to create compositions that are full of patterns and are illusion-like. Lewis Bush’s ‘Metropole’ came to me as an inspiration because it explores the fact that there are an increasing amount of large buildings for offices or flats taking away from green land and so the landscape in which we live is turning into a repetitive view of similar flats and offices leaving citizens with a feeling of monotony as everything is being redeveloped to serve the same purpose. Bush’s work on ‘Metropole’ shows a lot of emphasis on the repetition between buildings and I have tried to replicate this in this shoot. Wolf’s work has inspired me as he essentially does what I am attempting to do in this shoot but on a much larger scale by photographing the density of high-riser apartments in Hong Kong.
One way in which I could develop on this shoot in the future is by looking at typology, which would involve me researching Bernd and Hilla Bechers, of high rise buildings in Jersey. I could approach this by finding the 14 high rise apartment blocks in Jersey and photographing these in a similar style to this shoot and then creating a typology page of these different buildings.
Contact Sheet
Edited Photographs
After going through all of the photographs that I produced on this shoot I selected some of the best that I could edit. I edited these photographs by putting a black and white filter on in order to allow the viewer to focus on the shapes within the photographs rather than the colour. I then used a perspective crop on the majority of the photographs in order to make the photograph completely straight on in order to further emphasise the symmetry and patterns within the photographs. As well as the black and white filter I increased the contrast, used high highlights and whites, used low shadows and blacks and adjusted the exposure accordingly to create a composition that is mostly over exposed but the features such as the windows are emphasised to help the shapes within the buildings to come forward.
Edits
After editing the individual photographs I brought the photographs into a blank photoshop document and duplicated it. After the duplication I then messed around with the layout of the multiple photographs to create illusions that show lots of repetition and some symmetry. The result is montages that emphasise in blocky shapes and use a black and white filter to bring contrast into the photographs.
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Analysis
I captured this photograph in a natural lighting in order to bring out the natural shadows and shapes within the building that I was photographing. There is a wide tonal range due to both the nature of the building and my editing to the photograph. The bright whiteness in the walls of the photograph contrasts greatly with the dark black shadows on the balconies. I took this photograph on a bright day where there was plenty of sunlight so only needed to use a low ISO of 100 along with a shutter speed of 1/60 to capture this photograph. The low ISO paired with the quick shutter speed allowed for the photograph to be as high in quality as possible as well as not being overexposed (even though I edited the photograph to increase the exposure. I edited this photograph by using a black and white filter to bring out the shapes in the windows as well as the shadows and then I increased the contrast, highlights and whites whilst reducing blacks and shadows to create a composition that had high contrast between the black and whites. A depth of field of f/16 was used to capture the photograph which can be seen as the whole of the photograph is in focus. The photograph has a slightly cold colour cast to it due the bright whiteness throughout it.
I opted for a black and white filter over a colour photograph as it helped to bring out the details within the buildings, especially the contrasts as well as a wide tonal range to create a more dramatic composition. Due to the deep shadows and edges within the photograph as well as the editing of the photograph the composition has a 3D effect as it appears to have different layers which bring the photograph to life. There is also a lot of patterns and repetition within the photograph, which I aimed to create when setting out on this shoot. I have placed the balconies on the two horizontal lines of the rule of thirds as I feel that they are the most interesting parts of the photograph so placing them along these lines creates a more interesting composition as well as helping with symmetry.
The aim of this shoot was to create a set of photographs that showed the repetition of shapes within blocks of flats and offices and how this repetition can be aesthetically pleasing. The overall results shows how even though there is a lot of repetition within individual buildings, each building has its own unique characteristics and shapes and therefore have variance. The inspiration for this shoot came from photographs of tall tower blocks in cities such as Hong Kong where each floor and flat are almost identical, which is perfectly demonstrated in Michael Wolf’s work as well as inspiration from Lewis Bush’s ‘Metropole’ in which he looks at the development of buildings through a double exposure technique to create a similar outcome to what I have done.
The concept behind this is that there are an increasing amount of these large and repetitive buildings that make way for office buildings or flats due to the ever rising population and urban migration. The photographs resulting from my shoot show just how repetitive these buildings that are taking space from nature really are and reflect the idea that some residents may believe that the landscape of cities including Jersey is becoming repetitive and monotonous as lots of land is being taken to serve the same purpose of housing or offices.
