Photography comparison essay
Lewis bush,claude cahun and clare rae.
I have recently attended the exhibitions of three highly influential artist whose works are all based from a political side of jersey landscape. However each artist presented such abstract and diverse conceptual thoughts and ideas different from each other and I want to analysis ,why, what and they have all successful connoted their political ideas throughout their work. Lewis bush is a curator and educator of British photography. His attention forms invisible power that influences and helps to operate the world, he is said to be ‘arbitrary and transparent’ his belief that power if problematic is clearly highlighted through account of his ‘politics in jersey’ exhibition. To my mind this exhibition was not to demonstrate one political ideal and being right and the other wrong ,nor was it to shine a negative amount of attention upon the reality of jersey being so absorbed within its finance sector. But it was an ability of self expression for the viewer to demonstrate their own personal views upon the project. This challenging the misconception held by many that every in jersey holds the same idea about the finance sector. And yet this project highlights the enormous variety of attitudes and opinions. Lewis’ intentions within his work was to document and portray a sense of reality or even perhaps ‘documentary photography’ approach to how the finance sector is truly like within Jersey. However Within his work it is clear he has manipulated many of the images, this separates the dependancy and the reality to which his work can be taken. I think it would be a hard assumption to belive all his work is a direct reflection of the sector due to the amount of people consumed within the industry, and how can one photographer tell a true reality of so many.
Personally I believe his most influential work was the incorporation of crafted individuals and who their identities and similarly constructed and orchestrated to broadcast the same characteristic of someone who works in finance. I believe this allowed people to question their own identity and if they are who they are due to their passions or because they surround themselves within an industry which demands a certain presentation of character and being. This self reflection of people is then contrasted within the different part of the community demonstrating what they believe finance is saying things such as ‘awful’ ‘freud’ ‘bullshit’. lewis said he had ‘ a great interest when distributing the cards’. This to me demonstrates bushs’ curiosity rather than and ambition to create a project on politics to inflict his own personal views as being the only right and correct view.
Consequently the matter of opinion is a personal biases of who has been exposed to the exhibition which is the younger generation. The majority of negativity shows how money is viewed as a sense of governmental oppression to many, and not a necessity to keep jersey going as this is the main source of income,I think this is fascinating. The rest of his photography is a clear demonstration of natural landscape of some a simplicity of final infrastructure. His work to me connotes a clear message of accumulations of infrastructure designed to further power final go. This set of images is vibrant within its colour and has a considerable influence from an architectural point of view. These aspects of modernisation show the current necessity and pressure put upon jersey to keep finance its main factor of income. The images themselves denote aspects of abstraction , their form is structured but very segregated to only focus on a small areas. This cropping shows small scenes of jerseys necessities. He then focused on ‘the direction point of looking into another finance sector or where lot of money is said to be held’ these series of locations is to present a different approach and address people not in jersey and how they appeal and recognise finance form where they are. Lewis said this will form a connection of international finance. To me this is a clear demonstration of the structure that is the primary support for the finance sector, it deals with a clear denotation of physicality of the buildings that hold most fo the money movement within jersey, this being within the airport and such.
In comparison to lewis bush’s more conceptual and modern view of political landscapes, claude cahun and clare rae demonstrate a currently innovative way at the time to expose gender normative and through body composition express the way a person’s emotional stability is. Cahun was a pivotal point of photography in 1954. She successfully presented a conversation between two performative practices some 70 years apart. Her avant garde style and surrealistic body movements formed a subversive self portrait photographs, that dealt with the representation of the female body when considering the demonstration of gender. Claude was a subservient and surreal artist who was at the very core of the surliest movement. Cahun was not the typical jersey citizen and still would still be classed within this frame, She was gay, living with her half sister, jewish and a activist who spoke out against the german revolution. Her politically engaged and charged strength allowed herself the capability to make this iconic pieces of work challenging gender stereotypes, which would of been hugely monumental at the time. I belive personally her influence on photography is massive and has enabled many to take up photography such as Claire Rae. 
What I believe is highly influential and successful about her work is her physical engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes. She showed repercussions of love and her work to this day still has not aged from the relevancy and beauty it holds. I believe her strongest piece lies within the influence of this piece:It demonstrates the way in which a woman’s body is cognitively hung in order to express a position of vulnerability. Her stature compressed into the small gap reduces herself to being small and weak. Her stance is stiff in the way that is she were to move she would fall and crumble. Perhaps this is similar to my themes of emotion being mimicked and found within nature. This work is hugely partial to how gender within women is seen as the weaker of the sexes. Although in time this was not a deliberate manner I do believe that the black and white tonal shades highlight and timelessness to the images and a beauty,It highlights the fact that the women too is as beautiful as the nature and too as free spirited. The way to which he work was displayed constitutes to a clear divide of work (Chaun on one side and Rae on the opposite), this indicative composition to my mind forms a political bias and serge between the times to which the photos were taken, The political influence being emphasised as both artists are highlighting the fragility of the female identity however one with and one without rights. I personally belive Rae’s use of the past archival images to from as inspiration resonates with the threads and ideas stuck within the concept of surreal art being the revolving of art means nothing is ever permanent. Raes work was developed on film, this made he work become more accurate due to the extra expensive the film cost herself, this methodology leading to the instillations is powerful as it demonstrates another influence dependent of time and the incorporation of methods ignored by many photographers today.
The photographs Rae produced in Jersey are intimate. there is a clear exploration within the idea of self and the immediate environment and were she produced many collaboration with her partner. Her performative gestures and repercussions of a women body was so hugely ahead of her time. She questioned the fluidity of genre and asked why this concept was such a defining factor of who we are. Cahun’s and Rae’s work speaks to me a-lot more than lewis, I think this is due to the way she has incorporated emotion and a relationship within the landscape and an understanding of jersey, where bush shows an observations of various opinions scattered together. Cahun has said ‘ I enact a visual dialogue between the body and these environments, and test how their photographic histories impact upon contemporary engagements. Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze in photographic depictions of the female body in the landscape’ This is clearly seen within the venerability of the positioning of the female models to almost rein-act what it was deemed to be a female back in the early 19th century.
Both exhibitions contrast on many strong levels and social impacts. they both use their divisive sources to produce such unique and unrelated work.In conclusion to my mind Clare Rae had a clear narrative and artistic influence from Claud Chaun, Because of this I think her work is so much more successful as she new exactly whats she was trying to connote through her work. The political landscape is shown through a loving atmosphere to highlight femininity and injustice further emphasised through the positing of the models. How as Lewis bush has such a wide range of a topic much of his work did not have cohesion and not as many literally studies of jersey itself. Although I do believe Lewis did connote jersey finance as being a pivotal part of the history and future of this island which is true and highly relevant to the population today
Once I had finished experimenting with a few of my previously taken images I decided to create five that I thought best reflected the overall outcome that I wanted the best. When doing this I wanted to incorporate contrasting environments or similar ones, this way each image would reflect something similar or different, rather having no link whatsoever. Here are some of my final and favorite outcomes from this experimentation:
When looking over my final pieces I found I particularly liked the ones which had a manipulated circle within the center, this was because to me it provided a contrasting perspective into the image, presenting a clearer or more distorted viewpoint. This as a result for me not only looked aesthetic but also produced a meaning behind each photograph.
On artist I found to be particularly influential was photographer Lara Zankoul. Zankoul looks at the idea of underlying representation, and how polar opposites are represented in seven parts as symbol of the fundamentally divine nature of the medium, interrelation and dynamics. Known as Taoist the focus is mainly visual in her work, while the main theme continues to be spiritual and philosophical. When exploring her works I liked the constant use of lighting and perception of the eye to create final outcomes with a surreal twist, the hidden figure of the human body seems to be one of the main focuses of her works, much like Clare Rae’s work Zankoul hides the female face to create an unseen identity.
Once after creating a mood-board including my favorite images in it, I decided I should analyse one of her most well-known photographs to see and understand what made it so effective as an overall image. To do this I would have to explore three areas: technical aspects, visual aspects and conceptual knowledge of the actual piece itself. By doing this it would allow me to create a response shoot to the artists of my choice in a surrealist style that I could relate to my own personal topic of political landscapes. The picture I chose from Lara Zankoul is called ‘The Unseen’ and is part of a solo exhibition regarding a series of photos. 
Technical: The image itself uses artificial lighting to create the scene inside the studio made room, because of this the end result makes the impression that the whole thing is subtly staged. A relatively normal shutter speed seems to have been used due to how not too much light has been let and how shadows have not become too overpowering, this as a result allows for a balanced piece where neither of the shades dominate each and instead compliment. The exposure inside the photograph in my opinion is a bit high than usual, but is done effectively to have the green/blue walls pop out against the backdrop of the two characters seated, complimenting them and filling the blank spaces with a more calming and dramatic colour.
