For this Shoot I set up at Jardin d’olivet forest which is a small woodland area that has an old stone structure. This was perfect for using my Projector to project the brands into the landscape. I organised to borrow a generator to have power for the generator which was perfect for making the projector portable. For the shoot I waited till it was dark so that the images would have lots of contrast when projecting the light.
The Screenshots bellow show my selection process that i have done reducing the images to the most successful ones which have a white flag and the ones that didn’t work as well with a black crossed flag.
William Eggleston born in Memphis in 1939 and is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston used color photographs to describe the cultural transformations in Tennessee and the rural South. He registers these changes in scenes of everyday life, such as portraits of family and friends, as well as gasoline stations, cars, things that wee see everyday but never top to apreacte the beauty in these things. Switching from black and white to color in 1956 which then colour transparency became his dominant medium.
William Eggleston, At Zenith I (from Wedgwood Blue), 1979
The book ‘William Eggleston At Zenith’ was created in 2013. He describes his book as“my childhood and adulthood escapes unexpectedly met each other.”
In an interview by Shahrzad Kamel from ASX magazine William Eggleston describes the book in a lot of detail and goes into the meaning behind it. Within the interview he talks about how he use to lie on the grass as a child and stare up at the sky while forgetting everything. He describes how he watched them move for hours while raising his hands to the sky. He says, “I wished I could touch them, I would dream of riding away on one; imaginary transportation to another universe.” The book contains abstract images of the sky and moving clouds. Although the concept is relatively simple, the meaning and spiritual connotations behind the idea is very powerful. Eggleston wanted his images to be artistic, and to resemble paintings and well as photographic images.
At first I didn’t like this project as I thought that the concept was very simple and the images would be very similar to each other and therefore boring. But I actually really like the simplicity of the images. The contrasting with the white is very eye catching for the viewer, which is something that I want to focus on doing throughout my project. The images are abstract but yet anybody even if they aren’t used to abstract work in photography they will be able to understand and appreciate the images. When he presented this project the environment was plain white which made the images stand out a lot more as the blue is contrasting to the white.
My response to ‘William Eggleston At Zenith’
I took these images whilst I was doing a separate shoot, as I wasn’t focusing that much on getting these image, this is why I don’t really like these images. What I don’t like about the images is that all are very similar to each other, I took these image at mid day so I think that if I took them sunrise or sunset, I think that this would some colour and variety in the images. Or if I took images f the clouds throughout the day there would be more variety in the pattern of the clouds this would make the images more interesting
Shoot 1: My first shoot will be In the style of Keld-Helmer Peterson. I will look for interesting colouful objects around Jersey I will select my strongest images that supports the theme and style of variation and similarity.
Shoot 2: My second shoot will be City based. I will take a variety of images in London during the day. Some being abstract and others not. This is to create a subtle link to a supporting image using the same colour combinations.
Shoot 3: My third shoot will be in Hyde Park in london. The plan for this shoot is to capture the natural elements in Londons Hyde park. I thought it would be very interesting to visit the area as it visualizes what the area around London would have looked like before mans existence. This will be an experimentation shoot. I want to capture the nature
Shoot 4: My final shoot will be during the night. I decided that i should take images of colour under a dark influence to contrast with daytime images of the othershoots. This would give the images a different feel to them with the new contrasts and tones.
My idea is to photograph colours and shapes in objects and buildings. I am specifically going to be looking for areas, buildings and objects that have multiple colours. I will produce most of my images whilst in London. London is packed with really historical buildings and at the same time is packed with modern structures. I want to explore how colours patterns and shapes have vary and developed as new design themes were popularised. I will capture both abstract, portrait and landscape images. I drew my inspiration from Siegfried Hansen, Saul Leiter and Keld Helmer-Petersen. All pioneers of colour photography.
Colour Box Studio Disposable Camera Project First Edition 2013 installation view. Photo by Shari Trimble.
The Disposable Camera Project was created in 2014 by the Colour Box Studio .Which is a Melbourne based pop up art space and online creative hub. The director, Amie Batalibasi, decided to do a project in which she gave nine participants a disposable camera and where asked to fill up the camera in the space of 24 hours. The project had been going on for 3 years. Each of the participants have their unique style and perceptions. What they view as a good image all varies. The project achieved a vast difference in style of images and subject. A book was created containing all the images called “The Disposable Camera Project.”
Photos by Colour Box Studio Disposable Camera Project Participants: Cara Thompson, Charlotte Wardell, Nicole Kennedy, Vanessa Lee, Suyin Lim, Emma Numan, Gareth Kaluza, Modesta Gentile and Rahima Miriam.
What this project does that can’t really be achieved with the use of digital cameras, is the sense of freedom but at the same time develops the photographic process to be thoughtful. As with a film camera you have a limited amount of images before the film runs out. But unlike digital cameras you are not able to look back and view the image, so there is one take to get the time right so each shot is thought through a lot more.But with this project id gives freedom with photography for people who might not be used to using a camera and to be able to capture scenarios and landscapes in a pure and simple way.
Behind the lens was an expedition that focused on 1960s-70s Britain. This included pop culture, counter pop culture, sexual revolution and rock documentary. The expedition was by Mike McCartney, Rupert Truman and Carinthia West. The main focus of the gallery was on street photography style images were the subject didn’t know the image was going to be taken. The images captured the raw moments of music artists such as Paul McCartney working in there natural environment. The gallery also had images which were going to used as album covers for bands such as Pink Floyd.
Public and private – Pop Icons
Exhibiting artworks by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselmann, Eduardo Paolozzi, Patrick Caulfield and Allen Jones. The gallery focused on British and American Pop artists showing there work. Emerging in the mid 1950’s in Britain and late 1950’s in America, Pop Art reached its peak in the 1960’s and went on to become the most recognisable art form of the 20th century. It began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be.
Public and private – Being Human
The final exhibition we visited focused on female artwork. Being Human is an all-female art exhibition. The gallery holding the exhibition thought an all-female showcase needed to happen locally when they read the “Tate appears to have a 30% cap on the collection of female artists, with its allocation of annual budget is even worse, with as little as 13% spent on works by female artists in recent years.”
Sir Peter Blake – Babe Rainbow
Blake was commissioned by Dodo Designs to produce an enamel plaque that was issued in an edition of 10,000 and sold for £1. Due to a fault in the enameling process the work was eventually screen printed onto tin. Babe Rainbow was a fictional lady wrestler, the reverse of the work featured her biography. This was favorite artwork from all three exhibitions as I thought it best depicted its chosen art style which in this case was pop art. The artwork reminds me somewhat of a poster the way there is central figure in the image and the bold text writing.
PHOTO-SHOOTS: If you still need to produce more images that you must complete your shoots ASAP to allow time for further post-production and editing.
EDITING: Make a rough edit of shoots (you can come into school and work on classroom computers or alternatively download a 30 day free trial of Lightroom/ Photoshop from Adobe. Click here for more details.
EVALUATE: What went well? how can you improve/ develop work from here? Describe visual/contextual links with research, artists references, exam theme. Analyse your best two images following method: TECHNICAL – VISUAL – CONTEXTUAL – CONCEPTUAL
FINAL OUTCOMES: Consider what your final outcomes will be and how to present them ie. single images or a series of images, diptych, or triptychs, grids etc.
PHOTOBOOKS: For those who wants to make a photobook – begin to make a selection of images – think about narrative and sequencing (what is the story you want to communicate and how you are going to do it in a series of images).
RESEARCH: Support book design with research and analysis of at least one other photobook by other photographers. Follow these steps here in your understanding of design, concept and narrative.
BLOG POSTS: Go through all your blog posts and make sure that you have completed them all to your best ability, e.g. good use of images/ illustrations, annotation of processes/ techniques used, analysis/ evaluation of images and experimentation. Remember to MAKE YOUR BLOG POST VISUAL andinclude relevant, links, podcasts, videos where possible.
To achieve a top marks we need to see a coherent progression of quality work from start to finish following these steps:
“Just when it seems that everything has been photographed, in every possible way, along comes a photographer whose work is so original that the medium is renewed. Such a photographer is Rinko Kawauchi, who makes simple, lyrical pictures, so fresh and unusual that they are difficult to describe or classify. Her images document everyday things, yet could not be described as documentary. They are generally light in tone, yet somehow dark in mood. They are almost hallucinatory, yet seem to capture something fundamental about the psychological mood of modern life.” Garry Badger on Rinko Kawauchi’s book “Utatane” (Siesta)
Rinko Kawauchi was born in Japan in 1972. Kawauchi became interested in photography while studying graphic design and photography at Seian University of Art and Design where she graduated in 1993. She first worked in commercial photography and advertising for several years before embarking on a career as a fine art photographer. In Japan Rinko Kawauchi has become one of the most celebrated photographers of her generation. After appearing in several museum exhibitions and festivals in Europe (among others “Rencontres de la Photographie”, Arles; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam: Photographers’ Gallery, London) the Metopolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo is preparing a major exhibition about the artist for May 2012.
In 2001 three of her photo books were published: Hanako (a Japanese girl’s name), Utatane (a Japanese word that defines a state between wakefulness and sleep ), and Hanabi (“fireworks”). In the following years she won prizes for two of the books in Japan.In 2004 Kawauchi published Aila; in 2010, Murmuration, and in 2011 Illuminance; in 2009. In the ‘Utatane’ series. Rinko demonstrates a concentrated intentness on what she calls “the little voices that have been whispering to her since childhood”. These are the source upon which she draws, the intimate origin of a world described here according to a highly personal aesthetic: Utatane re-creates a fragmentary and fleeting world in which every detail relates to notions of birth, life, death and the passage of time.
Rinko Kawauchi’s work focuses on ordinary things and everyday situations. Her photographs attain their specific quality through her use of cropping and choice of perspective as well as the subtle use of natural light in combination with often virtually transparent colours. Rinko Kawauchi works in series, which, in the form of open narratives, combine poetry and emotion with representations of mortality and occasional melancholy.
Kawauchi’s art is rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, hence no subject is too small or mundane for Kawauchi’s work; she also photographs “small events glimpsed in passing’, conveying a sense of the transient. Kawauchi sees her images as parts of series that allow the viewer to juxtapose images in the imagination, thereby making the photograph a work of art and allowing a whole to emerge at the end; she likes working in photo books because they allow the viewer to engage intimately with her images.Her photographs are mostly in 6×6 format.However, upon being invited to the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010, Kawauchi first photographed digitally and began taking photos that were not square. Kawauchi also composes haiku poems.
This experimentation, is to show how I could develop my images, into the same silver and black edits similar to ASTRES NOIRS BY KATRIN KOENNING AND SARKER PROTICK. in terms of variation and similarity, I believe the effect of using a repetitive edit system shows the similarity, yet the variation is between the slow movement of life, and the revolving from darkness, brith, life, decay and death. This evolution within my book creates a narrative construct that is able to express.
photoshop development: Turn Black and white , Flatten, Ctrl j, Circle ,Invert, Top two layer , Inward and later one, Control right merge ,Shift ,Play with other setting, Blending moulds, Darken, Final adjustments
Overview of the cca gallery: The exhibition at the CCA gallery was a variety of more documentary focused aspect of photography, with some elements so highly edited when discussing new 20th century art and photography.
Going to CCA gallery I found two pieces which I belive could benefit my work and really influence the angle of my project. So far my work has been about the creation of beauty, However I have considered adding both beauty and chaos to form a disrupted narrative contrast, and I belive these two pieces perfectly fit into this possible expenditure of my theme. There is such a raw exposure of emotional expression, the sense of solitude and isolation coupled with the movement of the faces coming from within the centre of the composition, creating a new disposition of character. I also belive the use of red and black and white, creates not only a contrast between the pieces themselves, but both colours have strong connotations to strength of emotion. Red is a substantial denotation for that of suffering, pain and elements of blood. However, the black and white creates an element of exposure, as in you are looking into someone. This x-ray type of site shows an area well with-the aspect of your own chaotic image. My own work surrounding chaos could be produced more similarly to this work, but showing more of a movement instead of layered images, I will experiment with these effects, and possibly done with photos of different plants and mediums.
the artist: why they did this:
I chose this image also, as to my mind, there are clear connections to my shoot idea of self portraiture, there is a clear connection of emotional vulnerability, and almost a mocking or finding of personality. The character is presented as a form of mimicry, and done in such a way to show a vulnerability and a sense of false acts and emotions. I find it very interesting using objects such as a mirror to show a whole three dimensional view and performance of a person. I have spoken previously about the media within photography, and to my mind, this is a free flowing performance and an act of character, used in order to presented a certain display of masculinity or femininity, the use of the fist is only really visible to the viewer on the non reflected side, this sight of a tight fist accompanied with gritting teeth, perhaps is a warning or a clear dispute of women feeling anger and aggression as her posture and pose is very different from the femininity of the plait and jacket. I could link this to my project again finding what people find to be sad or happy and perhaps how unpredictable this could be due to someones appearance.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
The public and private was a very different exhibition than that of the CCA gallery. The exhibition was much more concentrated on the idea of pop art and pop culture. Much of the work was highly colourful, edited and abstract, made at the time of hugely monumental periods of popular culture. With many artists work such as, Andy warhol. Warhol was the artist who created the mediated expression, everyone one day will have 15 minutes of fame. I believe this is relevant to this exhibition as many of the works, were not created to from or create something seen but was to from and create a more controversial forming of elements. The exhibition itself was named ‘ pop icons of the 20th century, Britain and American pop art’ this work was emerging in the 1950’s in Britain and late 1950’s within America, the peak of pop art was in the 1960’s and went on to become the most recognisable art form of the 20th century. it was the revolt against the dominate approaches to art and culture and the traditional views on what art should be.
This piece I decided early on, was my least favourite piece I saw out of all three of the exhibitions. It is not to my taste, due to the wholly abstract lack of composition, showing three key areas, arranged with no intentional form scattered around the piece. Too, I belive the deep tonal red contrasting the the lighter abstract triangle, not only creates an uneasy element, but too contributes to the contrasting of red at the top of the piece. The lines are not straight, yet not so un-even to be considered an intentional element. I do not see the intention as to why this piece was formed, And this is my initial problem with the piece, It is definitely not conventional of art, yet does not, to my mind symbolise the revolution and refusal to show conformability of fine art previously seen. Additionally the contrasting of all the triangular shapes, to that of the rainbow and rectangular shapes , does not work well as an overall successful composition.
Lastly, I chose this piece as I found the use of the three primary colours, to be really successful. The piece itself, has such a strong centred composition with the primary attention being drawn into the female sitting down, the amount of levels within the piece allows your eye slowly to be drawn out and see everyone surrounding them. This piece was one of two from the artist Allen jones called table talk. I belive due to pop art being a more informal connection people are able to have and form a condition with art, this piece shows a demonstration of a real life scenario which too seems to mimic the everyday actions we all have. Not only within this piece is their a a clear element of seduction, but also a clear illusion of mystery within the piece, and perhaps a new form of seeing the male gaze. Their is also a clear juxtaposition of the women not wearing clothes and the male figure watching being dressed as a detective type of man. Because of this I believe it is changes form an unipersonal imagery, to emphasis a personal feeling and symbolism characterised into abstract expressionism of our own lives. Due to this piece being clearly a fine art piece and so not a photography image like my two previous inspirations, My intention of influence would be the way he so effortlessly captures an emotional connection shown through the sense of reality of the piece itself. The colours too are very bright and abstract which too is a pivotal element of seeing beauty within the world.
