Variations and Similarities – Theme Exploration


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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

IDEA 1 DEVELOPMENT OF FINE ART: ARTIST: WILLIAM YE

The work of William Ye:

William Ye, 28-year-old multi International award winning portrait and fine art photographer based in Toronto, FAPA student and non-professional grand winner 2017/2018. His passion for fine art photography ignited 3 years ago, under the influences of famous contemporary artists and photographers of our generation, such as Annie Leibovitz, Erwin Olaf, JuliaHetta, Jennifer Thoreson (formerly Jennifer Hudson) and to name a few. Since then, he has worked hard to form his own photographic style and develop his own photographic vision, which ultimately rewarded him with several International photography awards. He has said ‘My favourite subjects are psychology, emotions and feelings. I cannot literally photograph them as they are highly abstract, non-visual and intangible concepts, so instead, I try to photograph the various imageries associated with these concepts to translate something abstract intangible visuals’ He uses photography as a medium of creation. his work is committed yet still limited due to the amount for schooling commitments e is also currently permitted too.The work seen above which I am mostly inspired by is from a collection called ‘ The Wounded’ It is a formation of the tragic events that have made international news, such as mass shootings in or lands everyday struggles that go unnoticed by most people except the sufferers themselves, such as drug addiction, STD, depression, self-loathe, etc. The LGBTQ community is often associated with parties, parades and glamour, but the reality is a lot of people are struggling. Struggle is like a wheel. It goes round and round, peeling of hope layer by layer, like trapped in a maze with no exit. Much of his other work was done by shooting though a beautiful polished glass jar, you see an incredibly distorted world.This is an abstract body of work that depicts daily personal struggle. The inspiration behind the work is Picasso’s painting Guernica, in which distorted forms are painted to stimulate the viewers’ imagination and encourage the viewers to picture together the war scene. His work is implicative and mysterious, which I admire. To create the distorted and abstract human form, I shot through several different glass jars. I found glass jars quite symbolic. It projects rainbows under the sun, but when looking through it in the dark, without too much glare on its surface, you see through it a distorted world. It reminds me of the Wounded series I previously worked on, in which my focus is on the further marginalized LGBTQ community members within the already marginalized community, who live through a lot of pains under the superficial “rainbows”.

Not only is his work a reincarnation of the principles of fine art, but the covering of the face, highlights the lack of identity and too shows an emotional neglect and abandonment. As spoken about in my previous post. I belive fine art is more then the extend to what you see, it is a arrangement of how far an artist can take their work in order to evoke a change or a substantial meaning for themselves and others. Because of this his work has such a strong inspiration of chaos and huge monumental moments in the news, this is interesting as it is a subject that applies to everyone in some matter of wanting change.  His work not only has clear definite links to my first thought of fine art, being inspired by people such as Picasso’s paintings. But this combination of artistic influences is moulded with what he sees and reads in the media, that he believes deserves more exposure and importance, due to the need to change.  His work is entitled chaos. It indefinitely links perfectly with my next influences for this project being, chaos within the media. His work as well as this link so clearly with fine art and the media of chaos, it also has a clear connection to variation and similarity. It focuses on people and spot still possess the use of showing the different ways to show DNA. The lack of individuality also shows the similarity between the outwardly presentation fo people, and the use of their actions that is what separates us as a group. Personally I chose his work as it inspired an artistic love for the effortless and grace which his images hold. The use of the a structured body combines with such a soft flowing wrap yet still make it look like one being or entity within the piece, is so successful. His other works too has such a strong abstract perception of what art is, and I believe I will definitely do shoots inspired by this work of William Ye.

contextual/critical references mentioned as inspiration for William Ye’s work ie. Leibovitz, Erwin Olaf, Picasso: In comparison to the artist Picasso, his work is very much structured in order to create a more mathematical presence of composition. Even the sheet and is an object meant to be fluid, he forms a more secure structure to the piece itself. Everything about this piece is almost mathematically measure out to fit together in a perfect manner. Ye clearly has a vivid influence in the way he too wishes to connote primary colours, in order to inflict and have the persons themselves posses a deemed amount of power. Also seen within his strong juxtapositions of lights and shadows within his other pieces. His demonstration of clear influences is also seen within the similar narrative of his work to that of Olaf, both of them find it important to present that narrative emotions and character of someone. Ye within the vast majority of his work never reveals the identity of  the persons, it is hidden within the fine art aspect of his work, Whereas Olaf is much more of a fashion iconography work. So capturing the emotions, and hidden persona of people within the same mysterious circumstances. Ye has a far reaching understanding of artists and how to combine aspects of chaos and mass media into his work. I believe If I too use many artists to inspire and form my own photography techniques that this will relay be highly beneficial to my own work.

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.

VARIATION AND SIMILARITY INITAL IDEA DEVELOPMENT

My first initial thoughts for Variation and similarity could all fall under a possible three categories, that I could further expand and apply into one project as whole.

  • The first premises I have, consists under the inspiration of fine art. Fine art is the basis of how the beauty of life has evolved throughout time in many different forms and expressions. The work of artists such as Van Gogh and Monet represent a more romantic presentation of fine art however more modern innovators such as Damien Hirest and Marc Quinn, show a more possessive inventive exploration of humanness through their work. The common denominator of these artists illustrate a celebration of the wonder of natural diversity. Artists use their expression of form of work in order to create a significance and meaning to each object and person, inflicting their own personal emotions through their canvas. The large amount of monotony and self proclaimed metaphors through their work leads to form new social conventions and not just images of fine art. It shows how something which was once mundane, can now be used to express meaning and value.  This diversity within fine art and culture, led me to run off and see the connections between art and diversity based off individual DNA. As spoken about previously DNA is one of the defining factors which is both a variation and a similarity within everything living on the planet. This combination of formality and uniformity, could be used to define the formality or standards of what could and should be seen as art. This could be asked on an individual subject premises, or more of a formal experimentation to the meaning behind the DNA and why a piece of art was created, and for what purpose does it inflict and show social conventions. For this project I could either look into how far art has and can go for what reason, what the importance is individual and the relations people experience from an art piece due tot theirDNA, or the formality of myself photographing fine art piece and creating my own fine art piece. The study of fine art in photography, is usually categorised into bodily, landscape or more innovative pieces, which are piece of constructed fine art. Below I have separates some piece that I believe could really help with the further route of my images. The fine art piece themselves, this is a reaction to real art.

  • This development of my first ideas, revolve around work which has such a significance meaning  is no longer an image but is more contemporary piece of art. This means unlike more concept based photography, this work is so much more subjective and and shows attitudes of artistic fluidity and line throughout all of the pieces. One of the pieces that struck me the most is the first piece. It too was inspired by a Picasso cubism stylistic form, and the mould of the bodily from. The pattern and form is suggestive throughout the piece, it flows in and out creating a dynamic presentation of the human DNA. I started off looking into fine art by the influences of to what extent is art art. I believe expressing studies of photography in an arrangment of more abstract images which show shapes, almost mimics the way art has progressed to be more then just pretty pictures, but an intellectual statement from a point of view. Further research into the development of fine art and photography: My idea for the using artists such as Monet and van Gogh in order to show and explore how are has evolved. Is perhaps re creating some of their most influential paintings into photography, and perhaps moulding their techniques into mine. This first idea is developing a similarity to the fine art pieces, this being a  a sense of mimicry of the artistic piece themselves. I believe I could then use the style of the artist chosen and either paint or edit the image into that stylistic manner. For example If I was using van Gogh, I could take images of beautiful night skys, and sun flowers. Then further edit the piece to be light and use small strokes observing the artist. I could animate videos inspired by each artists, or even animate the images I have chosen to move in the same way as the painting look as though they would move if they could. I chose to move just parts of the photos, in the same manner, just in order to create a flowing necessity to the pieces themselves. I belive if I both mimic the feeling and then the style I could really develop feeling of the artists work. 
  • I was too inspired by these pieces. It too shows a further possible development in order to express a certain style to the images. I believe it would be very hard to edit these images, but it shows  the expression of how an art piece is painted, and changes the connotations and meaning behind the paintings. Overall with the following notions of developing both the concept of what fine art is, the conceptual meaning behind it, and turning and re creating my own work into such influential pieces, by developing their own stye and movement, will really achieve a sense of variation and similarity, being similar to the artists but still using my own imagery.
  • Use a tilt-shift effect to make paintings or drawings appear real, as in these photographs of Vincent van Gogh artworks by Serena Malyon: https://www.studentartguide.com/articles/creative-photography-ideas

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.

Photo-Shoot Plans

After drawing inspiration from a range of photographers including Tim Booth, Huang Qingjun and Lewis Bush, I have come up with a few ideas for photo-shoots in response to ‘Variance and Analysis’ that will explore the topic in different aspects including repetition, personal belongings that make someone individual and personal features.

Shoot Idea 1

My first idea for a shoot is to photograph the hands of different people.  I have chosen to focus on a person’s hands as there are man features on a hand that give indication of the person that they belong to – they can have clear veins running through them, they can have calluses, different skin tones and then everyone is guaranteed to have different lines running throughout their hands due to their genes as well as individual fingerprints.  I have taken inspiration for this shoot from photography Tim Booth who did a project titled ‘A Show of Hands’.

I could approach this shoot idea by doing either close up photographs to create abstract photographs emphasising the lines in the hands or by showing the whole hand.  I could experiment with this by using different types of lighting such as natural lighting or flash as well as using inks or paints to highlight the features of the hands.  I could further experiment with this route by printing off the photographs and bringing the lines and details within the hands to life by placing a physical object such as string along the lines to create a 3D effect.

Shoot Idea 2

My second shoot idea is to photograph blocks of flats around Jersey and then photoshopping the resulting photographs to create repetition and patterns of the photographs in order to create a sense of monotony within the photographs and to show how repetitive blocks of flats can be.  The resulting photographs will be very symmetrical and will almost create illusions.  I could also approach this idea by photographing the symmetry and repetition within the blocks of flats and then presenting the photographs alongside each-other multiple times in a typographic style.  I have drawn inspiration for this shoot idea from Lewis Bush’s work on ‘Metropole’ as well as the blocks of apartments in cities such as Hong Kong

Shoot Idea 3

My third photo-shoot idea draws inspiration from Lewis Bush’s work on ‘Trading Zones’ in Jersey.  In one segment of the work he showcased cards showing what the public though of finance.  From this I believe that I could explore the unique hand-writing style of every individual through asking them to write what ‘Variance and Similarity’ means to them.  The result of this will be a range of cards showing a variety of hand-writing styles which may be messy or neat which ultimately will give a slight insight into a personality trait of the person.  Hand-writing is unique to everyone as everyone learns from a young age to write in different ways – some write quickly and messily whilst others take pride in ensuring that their hand-writing is neat and almost art-like.  The aim of this shoot would be to show the wide variance in people’s styles.

Shoot Idea 4

Image result for photographing whats in peoples backpacksMy fourth shoot idea will focus on the personal belongings of different people.  One way in which I could look at the personal belongings of individuals is by photographing the items that people carry around in their school bags on a day-to-day basis.  This could be an interesting shoot that will give an insight into the personality traits of the individual as everyone will have different variations of items, some people may have more unnecessary items in their bags whereas some may only carry the minimum.  This shoot idea takes inspiration from Huang Qingjun’s work ‘Jiading’ meaning ‘Family Stuff’ in which he photographed families along with their belongings in rural China to show the effect that modernisation is having on the population of the rural areas.  I could present this in a typology style way so that the viewer can easily see the similarities and differences between what people carry around with them.

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.

Mind Map – Research

After reading the initial brief of the project these are the artists/ art movements/ ideas that have come to mind.

  • Pop Art
  • Typologies
  • Natural vs Industrial
  • Brands
  • Advertising
  • Social media

  • Fake News

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  • Gender

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  • Culture

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  • Bernd and Hilla Becher
  • August Sander
  • Karl Blossfleft
  • Albert – Renger – Patzech
  • Michael wolf
  • Daniel shea
  • Tom hunter