CCA GALLERY

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.

Mine

Laura El Tanawy

Black and white images are authentic, they help us trace mans history step by step to his modern state. Its classical feel holds its true beauty. The first camera photography were invented in the 1820s, before that time, people relied heavily on traditional media for capturing images, for example, paintings, sketches, and drawings. However, when it emerged, it seemed to vividly capture more information or detail about an object than the traditional media.The first successful black and white image was taken by Joseph Nicephore Niepce a French developer. However, it got destroyed as the attempted to make copies of it. He was again successful in 1825, where he managed to produce a black and white image of a window

Printing is an ancient art, and colour printing has been possible in some ways from the time coloured inks were produced. In the modern era, for financial and other practical reasons, black-and-white printing has been very common through the 20th century. However, with the technology of the 21st century, home colour printers, which can produce colour photographs, are common and relatively inexpensive, a technology relatively unimaginable in the mid-20th century.Most American newspapers were black-and-white until the early 1980’s remained in black-and-white until the 1990s. Some claim that USA Today was the major impetus for the change to colour. In the UK, colour was only slowly introduced from the mid-1980s. Even today, many newspapers restrict colour photographs to the front and other prominent pages since mass-producing photographs in black-and-white is considerably less expensive than colour.

image analysis: I chose this image fo a multitude of reasons, both the composition is of a structured straight build, however, the angle of the lens creates a circular notion of growth and furthers the ideologies of a growing stark area of space. Although you are able to see the detail within the lines and the sense of narratology within the structuralism. despite there not being a choice within the fact of using colour of using black and white, It is clear this image is the most effective within the black and white tonal colours.

Black-and-white images are not usually starkly contrasted black and white. They combine black and white in a continuum producing a range of shades of gray. Further, many monochrome prints in still photography, especially those produced earlier in its development, were in sepia (mainly for archival stability), which yielded richer, subtler shading than reproductions in plain black-and-white. Despite colour being the primary conversion of photos, black-and-white photography has continued to be a popular medium for art photography, as shown in the picture by the well-known photographer Ansel Adams. This can take the form of black-and-white film or digital conversion to grayscale, with optional digital image editing manipulation to enhance the results. For amateur use certain companies such as Kodak manufactured black-and-white disposable cameras until 2009. Also, certain films are produced today which give black-and-white images using the ubiquitous C41 colour process. Colour can be a distraction; it can be dull and lifeless. One of the tasks of photographers is to simplify an image, distilling a scene down to its essence. Sometimes, that essence is colourless. Ansel Adams, discussing the differences between the two types of photography, said, “I can get a far greater sense of ‘colour’ through a well-planned and executed black and white image than I have ever achieved with colour photography.” When researching black and white photography, it is said to be something more then just a filter, as explained here ‘ There are seven essential elements of top-notch black and white photographs, which you’ll see shortly. First, though, is the most important thing to remember: You need to have a reason for shooting in black and white.Not every subject works well in monochrome. So, always ask yourself: Why are you eliminating colour from a particular photo? What makes it so important to shoot your subject that way?’ After considering this, I wondered what effect my images had upon the effect of the image itself. I decided all of the images I had edited to be in black and white were all for a purpose, and the direct effect of the colours created a more interesting effect to the final image itself, and a successful final composition.