How do Rita Puig Serra Costa and Linda McCartney both share their relationships and memories with their family through the medium of photography?

Family Photos have been taken for hundreds of years as a way of capturing precious moments of people with their loved ones. in this essay i am going to look at to different photographers who have studied members of their family in their work. I will compare and contrast their work in a hope to gain a greater understanding of their photographic style and meaning  of their work.  I want to look into the relationship between the photographer and their subject to see how and if it effects the the end result. I also want to explore how this relationship is communicated to an audience, and how these private and personal photos can also be seen and read by outsiders. The two photographers I am planning on looking at have developed their work in very different ways but both manage to show great connection with their subjects and tell beautiful stories with their work. Rita Puig Serra Costa created a book surrounding her family history, the book contains a variety of images, from portraits, still life, landscapes and archival copies it creates a broad description of her family dynamic and the memories she has with them (be more specific about the book dealing with the memory of her mother). Linda McCartney on the other hand was originally a professional photographer of celebrities until she met her husband and musician Paul McCartney. As they got to know each other and build a family she captured and shared a large selection of photographs. Being in the public eye the family were regularly photographed however there is something very special about the connection they had which came across in the images. By researching this area I hope to gain a greater understanding of family, relationships and memories in photography to help me with my own project about my Grandpa. You need to provide more details here about an overview of your own project, what and how you intend to make photographic responses.

Over all there is very little evidence of any research and reading around the subject of memory and family photography. You must read the texts I gave you on Roland Barthes and his memory and philosophy around looking at an image of his mother. Include at least one direct quote from Barthes and comment on it.

After exploring a variety of paths which I could follow with this project I have decided to chose ones focused on my grandpa. He was a teacher at the Hautlieu from 1963- 2001  as well as an avid poets, and was involved with various activist movements throughput his life. I want to talk to people who had close relationships with him such as close friends and family members so I can learn more about Guardian reader which links back to the breaking the rules task.

I have found inspiration from the photographer Rita Puig-Serra Costa and her book where mimossa bloom. In the book Rita explores her family history by developing and displaying memories and personal stories which have constructed her as a person.

at the beginning of the book her family tree reveals itself as you turn each page, eventually an image of Rita is displayed and we can see an overview of her relationship with her family. this acts as a sort of introduction to the book and gives us some context for the photos. Rita uses a large variety of images in her book, archival images make a big appearance and connect her new photos with the past. There is staged portraits, still life, double page landscapes and even text and photo copies of documents. Bellow I show some of my favourite pages in the book which have given me a starting point and direction for my own work. I love the way the book is constructed and how all the images compliment each other and also have an interesting narrative.

I have met up and spoken with my gran who is going to help me pick some relevant topics to focus the project on.  We spoke about his involvement with groups such as the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and concern which was an environmental group in jersey during the 70’s. He also took part in various protests, such as the one at queens valley against the flooding on the area for a reservoir and helped at local elections. A lot of the poems he wrote also had a political story behind them, he often found inspiration from from famous photographs from wars and conflict which he came across in the newspaper. He also had a strong connection to the land, his environmental interest continued into his own home and garden where he spent a lot of time conserving the land, growing organic vegetable and plants for the wildlife. He was a big fan of Bob Dylan, a famous singer-songwriter in the late 60’s who often made political statements in his music.

I am interested in combining all these elements to construct the photo  book, I like the idea of using archival images of him that link to my chosen points interests me because it will be a flash back to his life and give a wider understanding and context to the project.

PICTORIALISM

Time period : 1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

• Pictures that resembled paintings
• Manipulating images in the darkroom
• Scratching and marking their prints
• Blurred and fuzzy imagery
• Based on allegorical and spiritual subject matter
• Pictorialism reacted against mechanization and industrialization.

Artists/Influences associated:

Allegorical Painting – Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. The underlying meaning  has moral, social, religious, or political significance

Julia Margaret Cameron was a photographer in the Victorian era. Cameron’s photographs were unconventional in their intimacy and their particular visual habit of created blur through both long exposures, where the subject moved and by leaving the lens intentionally out of focus.

Emerson’s Naturalistic Photography – In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) expounded his theory of Naturalistic Photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art rather than science. Their handcrafted prints were in visual opposition to the sharp b/w contrast of the commercial print

Examples of Pictorialsm photographs 

Key works: Sally Mann’s loss of life project.

Drawing upon her personal experiences as inspiration, Sally Mann creates a haunting series of  photographs that speaks about the one subject that affects us all, the loss of life. Dark, beautiful and revelatory, What Remains, created in 2004 is a five-part meditation on mortality, explores the ineffable divide between body and soul, life and death, spirit and earth. This body of work consist of landscape, pictures of decomposing bodies and portraits of her children which links to the pictorialism movement.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

 Using a physical method to scratch out negatives and create texture in the photographs to provide a blurred or fuzzy image. Vaseline also used to smear over the lens to provide a blurred image to replicate art of that time.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: Straight photography’s time period started towards the end of the pictorial era

Key characteristics/ conventions :

• These photographers strove to make pictures the were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’.
• They abhorred handwork and soft focus and championed crisp focus with a wide depth-of-field.
• Photographs are not manipulated
• These straight approaches to photography continue to define contemporary photographs, while being the foundation for many related movements, such as Documentary, Street photography and Photojournalism
• Special relationship to reality
• Camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears

Artists associated:

Alrfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange

Examples of Work

Key works:

Walker Evans (1903-75)

Often considered to the leading American documentary photographer of the 20th century. He rejected Pictorialism and wanted to establish a new photographic art based on a detached and disinterested look. He most celebrated work is his pictures of three Sharecropper families in the American South during the 1930s Depression.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

• Taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes
• Taking pure photos with no manipulation included

How do Birthe Piontek and Richard Billingham, express the notion of family  and relationships in their work?

• Opening quote

• Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?

• Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian. Link to power points about isms and movements  M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Personal Study

• Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.

• Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.

• Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced

• Bibliography: List all relevant sources used

Previous essay Questions 

• How does the work of Phillip Toledano and Yoshikatsu Fujii show childhood and family breakups?
• How does Diana Markosian and Rita Puig-Serra Costa, express the notion of family history and relationships in their work
• How have concepts of family, separation and memory  been explored in the photo books of Sarello Casanova a

Possible Essay Questions 

• How has the breakdown of family relationships effected photographic nature of  Phillip Toledano and Yoshikatsu Fujii
• How can a person’s identity be shown through their possessions and the condition of these possessions
• an you show a person experience though life in photographs ?
• In what way does Carole Bénitah explore childhood memories through her work as a method of understanding identity and self expression?

Compare How Phillip Toledano’s  and Nancy Borowick’s photography represent the concept of loss?

How have concepts of family, separation and memory been explored in the photo books of Sarello, Casanova and Germain?

In what way is identity and autobiography expressed in the work of Chino Otsuka and Tom Hunter?

In what way does Carole Bénitah explore childhood memories through her work as a method of understanding identity?

How do Sam Harris and Richard Billingham, express the notion of family  and relationships in their work?

http://blowphoto.com/interview-birthe-piontek/

// was there ever a point where you thought, ‘i can’t share these pictures, they’re too personal’? // yes, i had to work on finding the right tone, like turning the volume up and down. in order to test this out, at certain moments i documented a lot of really powerful images, but it took me a while to figure out the right tone. there were some more visually explicit images of my fresh scars straight after surgery, at the time i was feeling a lot of anger and the tone was a lot louder. then later, i decided those pictures were for me and nobody else.

// what are you working on at the moment? // i have been working for a long time on a long-term project with my family in germany. they are all portraits revolving around the people and things i grew up with. over time it has become quite a substantial project dealing with, amongst other things, my mother’s dementia, and my parents are moving out of the family home and it’s all about the house and their things. this was originally about my need to capture a moment; when you live abroad and visit home you notice the changes more.

http://thehiddenphoto.pl/birthe-piontek/

Straight Photography Movement and Pictorial Photography Movement 

The Pictorial Movement 

Pictorialism, an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality, they  tried to make their they made images look similar to romanticism painted which tended to be very fantasy/ dream like. To create this effect pictorial photographers would often smear Vaseline around the lens of the camera to make the image distorted, the height of pictorialism was around the 1800s – 1910.

Characteristic of the Pictorialism 

• Pictures that look similar to paintings in  the same era
• Many images featuring the female body as the many subject matter
• The use of shadows and darkness to obscure some of the frame
• Out of focus images
• Blurry and fuzzy images

Pictorial Photographers 

Emerson’s Naturalistic Photography – In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) expounded his theory of Naturalistic Photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art rather than science. Their handcrafted prints were in visual opposition to the sharp b/w contrast of the commercial print

Examples of Pictorial photography 

Straight Photography 

Pure photography or straight photography is a photography movement which began in reaction to the Pictorial photography movement. Straight photography emphasizes and engages with the camera’s own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail. The term generally refers to photographs that are not manipulated, either in the taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes, but sharply depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it. The movement began around the same time that pictoralism began to die out, so around 1910.

Straight Photographers 

Paul Strand – born 1890 New York City.The iconic photographer Strand redifined the medium through his portraits, city scenes, and abstract compositions that helped define modernist photography in the twentieth century.

Ansel Adams –  His signature style was characterized by a sharp, high-resolution focus and stark contrasts of light and shadow. Adams co-founded Group f/64, a collective of Western-American photographers.

László Moholy-Nagy. He was influential in promoting the Bauhaus’s multi- and mixed-media approaches to art, advocating for the integration of technological and industrial design elements.

Examples of straight Photography 

Modernism

'A general term used to encompass trends in photography from roughly 1910-1950 when photographers began to produce works with a sharp focus and an emphasis on formal qualities, exploiting, rather than obscuring, the camera as an essentially mechanical and technological tool.'

Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society and a belief in progress. It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those formulated by religion or science could be used to understand or explain reality. Modernist artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on subjects, believing they could find a way of purely reflecting the modern world.

Post-modernism

'Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism.'

The term was first used around 1970. As an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition – as there is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged. It embraces many different approaches to art making, and may be said to begin with pop art in the 1960s and to embrace much of what followed including conceptual art, neo-expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990s.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/modernism

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism