The aim of this exhibition was to offer a platform for workers to express their perspectives on agricultural labour in Jersey. It is also a way of showing the undocumented lives of the workers rather than the marketing representation. The project was conducted via a collaboration between migrant workers, the artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat. I really liked this exhibition because it wasn’t just one medium it used videography, imagery and typography to send out an important and personal message. The workers may not be highly qualified or a university graduate but they are grounded. Many people in Jersey who are unemployed won’t take these jobs because they think they are above it, they leave agricultural workers with no choice but to hire people from abroad. A big problem is that people say immigrants are taking their jobs but in reality they are filling jobs that people are too stubborn and lazy to take.
The agri-care prize was displayed in a box as the ‘bronze potato’ which is awarded for the best employer of migrant labour in the agricultural sector. The award is also a way of giving the workers a voice in their industry because they are essential the backbone and without them Jersey’s agricultural sector would be failing. It is important that the workers have a say in their living conditions and terms of the contracts because Jersey politicians and employers need to treat foreign workers as they would local workers, just because they can’t speak English doesn’t mean they are any less human.
The pictures featured in the exhibition were all taken by workers on their phones. Images were of the fields, their accommodation, themselves etc. The phones they used weren’t anything near an iPhone 11, this emphasizes the minimalist life they live in Jersey when working here. The photos were displayed in black frames with a thick white border and the pictures themselves were relatively small and they were symmetrically placed in two rows.
There was a video which featured the workers sculpting potatoes, the top 10 were displayed as part of the exhibition. The purpose was to create the most life like looking potato and who better to do that then the people who spend their livelihood picking them. The sculpting provided time for conversation between The Morning Boat and the labour workers through the translation of Alicja Rogalska, as the project was about giving a voice to the workers.
Essay Question- Is it possible for photography to capture moments in time objectively and truthfully?
Opening Quote- What are the differenced between reality, witness and point of view?”– Bright and Van Erp 2019:19
Introduction (250-500 words)- What is your area of study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? Will you be using photographs as a way of showing your idea? How will these aspects respond to their work and essay question?
My personal investigation looks into the development of my dance journey throughout the years from 2010. I specifically will be looking into the physical elements i still own such as objects, costumes and images in order to show my journey truthfully. This idea has come from looking into artists Diana Markosian, and Walker Evens who show a clearly their personal styles through their use in photography. Diana looks into archival imagery through her personal life to add emotion to ideas, where as Walker is a documentation photographer and uses the project ‘ let us praise famous men’ to showcase his style.
Paragraph One (500 words)- Historical/ Theoretical context within art, photog and visual culture relevant to your area of study, Make links to art movements
Realism and Straight Photography was first introduced in the 1840s and looks at producing imagery which displays life how it is. Artists who work within this area mostly focused on looking into cultural and social issues which were revenant within that time, helping to gain recognition to issues and showcase detailed images to exhibit real life. Artist Frederick Henry Evens and his project ‘A sea of a Step’ is known to distinctly present realism through the use of lighting and space. He uses symbolism of creating subjective perspectives while changing the reliability of art movement. Focusing more on documentary photography, artist Walker Evens uses portraiture to show lifestyle within an enviroment which can sometimes be shown as being accurate or inaccurate. This carries me to explore my own topic which is based on my own dance lifestyle and I left that using a small element of documentary photography within my project would be nessesary to capture my intended subject. Carrying on from this, Paul Strand took an interesting approach to photographing objects where he uses the ‘Macro Technique’ which shows clear focus on light and shadowing. This gives an idea as to how Strands work is seen and how his work causes a narrative which can illustrate how the art movement can be truthful.
Paragraph Two (500 words)- Analyse first photographer in relation to your essay question. Present/evaluate your own images and responses.
I will be analysing my chosen photographer Diana Maroksian and looking through her non-traditional way of photographing archival images. I feel as if her use of archival images adds an element of truth to her work and contrasts a stereotypical family, adding a sense of loneliness to her work. This particular emotion can be linked to the use of black and white edit which is typically used, creating more depth in the background of her work. To extend this, Maroksian had a particular project called ” Inventing my Father” which can be seen as portraying the truth behind her families upbringing, in particular how her mother left her father to move to California, not thinking on how the children would feel later on in life not being able to be brought with with a father figure. Adding to this, she cut the father out of all the images in the family album, adding separation. I feel as if this clearly shows an element of truth in her work and also shows that archival imagery is a successful way of representing how reality is.
Paragraph Three (500 words)- Analyse images which will help to represent your ideas and visions
This image shown above is from Markosian’s project ‘ Inventing my Father’ which explores her family history from when she was born to the time period where the project was published. The project is very emotional and focuses mostly on the images she has taken which don’t include a lot of editing, adding a raw approach to her work and showing it for how it originally was, adding an element of truth to her work. We can see in the image above that conceptually it seems as if there has been a disappearance of a family member, due to the size and build it looks like a male suggesting it is her father. The cut out also proposes that the father has either left or the mother has left him as a cut out is very drastic for precious family photographs. Carrying on from this, the cut out shows to the audience how important diana’s mother was to her, being her only adult influence throughout her life.
Paragraph Three (500 Words)- Analyse second photographer in relation to your essay question. Present/evaluate your own images and responses.
Walker Evans most recognizable work is from his project ‘ Let us Now Praise Famous Men’ a series where he explores Alabama farmers during the Great Depression from portrait using a documentation style of photography. Looking into his portraiture, it is clear to see what the families have gone through and how they don’t know any different. He has stated that he enjoys to use editing as a large part of his image as it develops an image even if you are trying to prove a realistic point. Evans imagery has been described as “You can’t sniff the stink of the quilts in the Evans pictures” showing a positive response to his work and emphasis how he is accurate with representing his work in the way he is successful at capturing raw images through simplicity. Evans uses naturalistic lighting to capture his images and does not position the models, but photographs them in their typical element adding a sense of truthfulness and reality. Capturing the subject in their naturalistic environment allows a sense of authority to the images, adding emotion and a sense of sympathy.
Looking into my key words of myths, legends and stories surrounding the idea of occupation I came across Anna Gaskell, a contemporary American artists known for exploring themes such as Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865). Using photography, video, and drawing, Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives. Born on October 22nd, 1969 Gaskell would create mostly self-portraits in the style to that of Cindy Sherman, from this she developed to taking photographs of young girls in odd or ambiguous scenes as seen in her series Wonder (1996-97). Gaskell is famous for her dream-like narrative photographs which make reference to children’s games, literature and psychology.
Gaskell’s film influences range from the Noir to French New Wave and Horror. In a series entitled Hide (1998), she sets up a narrative using the sinister Brothers’ Grimm story The Magic Donkey, which is about a young women who disguises herself under pelts to hide from a marriage proposal from her own father. The series evokes a sense of terror through the scenery of a gothic mansion and contrast of light and dark in a dimly lit space.
Gaskell explains, “Trying to combine fiction, fact and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work”, this gives me ideas and influence of how she is a good artist for me to look into and have influence and inspiration from with the ideas of taking a starting point of fiction, using the fact and not only that but my own influence I feel is something very important that I could use as I have the influence of my own personal experiences of being told the sorties and living in and around the island.
I have chosen to look at Gaskell as one of my artists as I enjoy and am finding a lot of inspiration in the way she takes her photographs and presents them with the lighting and the costumes and effects that her photographs using the lighting but also the double characters I feel is a really interesting take in some of her work. In my own work I plan on producing photoshoots in the style of tableaux photography, staging the photographs and having the models in costume and makeup.
Analysis of Anna Gaskell’s work:Wonder & Override
Gaskell’s work is produced and influenced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from larger plots such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is visible in the two series: Wonder (1996-97) and Override (1997). Gaskell’s style of ‘narrative photography” the images are planned and staged; the scenes presented are ‘artificial’ in that it exists only to be photographed. Gaskell’s process can be mentioned as similar to filming however there is an important difference; Gaskell’s photographs are not tied together by a linear thread, it is staged and created to be as though all of the events take place simultaneously, in an ever-present. In untitled #9 of the wonder series, a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor; in untitled #17 it appears again, forced into a girls mouth with no explanation of how or why. This suspension of time and causality leads to a sense of ambiguity that she uses to evoke a vivid and dream like world.
Below I have a photograph from the wonder series, it shows two girls in the frame one lent over and holding onto the other and holding her nose. Gaskell’s girls do not represent individuals, but act out the contradictions and desires of a single psyche, Gaskell uses a pair of twins for Alice for the identicalness. While their unity is subset by their identical clothing and looks, the mysterious and often cruel rituals they act out upon each other may be metaphors for disorientation and mental illness. In wonder and override, the character collectively evoked is Alice, perhaps lost in the Wonderland of her own mind, unable to determine whether the bizarre things happening to her are real or the result of her imagination.
In the photograph below we can see both of the twins in the costume of Alice, one holding onto the nose sat above the other, the photograph is taken or has been cropped quite close up into the characters, it is creating a sense of intimacy to be that close to the subjects of the photographs but the cropping also cuts out the surroundings of the girls, it removes the context of what is happening around them and leaves the onlooker to be able to use the story of Alice in Wonderland that they know to create ideas of what is happening in this photograph alongside the other photographs. The lighting of the photograph creates an eery aura of the photograph the dark shadows on the girls I feel creates a dramatic effect that I want to try to incorporate into my own work when I start to develop the tableaux images in my personal investigation. The almost chiaroscuro lighting creates that dramatic effect on the girl in the top of the photograph.
My second shoot went really well other than the fact that I was finding it hard to combat some of the shadows but in the end after editing the images I found I liked the shadows because it gaze a sinister vibe to them.
This editing took a while but was worth it. I edited the original image on Light room and then transferred it over to Photoshop. I then used the cut out tool to make a cope of the face and move it in between the hands. I then used drop shadow to give the taken off face a shadow. I then used a combination of clone tool, spot heal and content-aware fill to rub the face clean. For this edit I wanted a real close up of the Barbie’s face. I then got an image I had taken of a friend and cut the mouth, eyes and eyebrows and merged it into the dolls face.
How do Nan Goldin and David Kirscher’s photographs represent the concept of Love?
“A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’s really about relationships and feelings… It’s really hard for me to do commercial work because people kind of want me to do ‘Nan Goldin’. They don’t understand that it’s not about a style or a look or a setup. It’s about emotional obsession and empathy.” – Nan Goldin
My intention for my personal study is to show the pejorative and ameliorative sides of a romantic relationship. I am going to investigate what a ‘healthy relationship’ and an ‘unhealthy relationship’ is as I want to show the contrast of the two. I also want to investigate the intimacy of young relationships and show the difference of different relationships within my friendship group. Another idea that I want to investigate is the relationship between myself and my boyfriend, as I have never looked at myself in a project before.
This area of work interests me as I am in a relationship myself and would like to show people what my relationship is like. I would also like to show other relationships as every romantic relationship is special and different. I want to challenge the idea of teenagers thinking love is ‘weird’ or ‘strange’ as I have seen this myself in the younger generation. Especially in Britain, we do not like to talk about the subject of death, love and intimacy, but I wish to talk about this and convey this in my essay and my photographs.
I am going to experiment my camera skills by using the manual mode setting and aperture mode on my canon 1300D camera to capture my images for my photo book. I am going to be using ISO, white balance and shutter speed to experiment with how the photos are going to look. On light room, I will be experimenting with different presets such as ‘Colour’, ‘Creative’, ‘Grain’ and ‘Sharpening’. I will also be experimenting with photo shop to edit skin complexion and other things that I can edit out of the photos. Additionally, I will be experimenting with ICM (Initial Camera Movement) to achieve a blurry and distorted image and to make the image abstract and unique.
The photographers that I would like to analyse are Nan Goldin and David Kirscher. I am analysing these photographers because they both work with the ideas of love and intimacy, and that is what I am exploring in my personal study. Nan Goldin’s work portrays a more pejorative view of relationships as she tackles abuse from her boyfriend and shows the life of the LGBT community in the 80s and the prejudice they suffered. Whereas, David Kirscher’s work portrays a more ameliorative view of relationships as he follows couples around different cities and photographs their intimate moments such as cuddling in bed and lounging around the house.
Nan Goldin is a contemporary American photographer for her gritty, intimate and chaotic images of friends, lovers, and herself in the Boston queer and party scenes of the time. Goldin has helped the public to understand that universal human experiences of desire, love, violence, and death are shared between all of us, and to create understanding between mainstream and sub cultural societies. She was very influenced by cinéma verité and was no doubt aware of the work of American photographer Larry Clark. Goldin took up photography about 1971 and her first published works (1973) were black-and-white images of transsexuals and transgender individuals. In 1974, she began to study art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she embarked on an enormous portrait of her life, making hundreds of colour transparencies of herself and her friends lying or sitting in bed, engaged in sexual play, recovering from physical violence against them, or injecting themselves with drugs.
David Kirscher is a photographer based out of Paris and Madrid. His work is very diverse ranging from fashion and editorial work with models to even just photographing his friends in different situations. His passion for photography started when he was 15. Whether he is shooting with professional models and artificial light or with friends and natural light, he says the bottom line is always the same: how to tell a story with pictures. He says he likes to play with the boundary between fiction and reality. He likes to photograph travels, parties, love scenes, black and white or colour photography, mostly analog, but also digital.
Historical Context:
Realism is a 19th-century art movement, particularly strong in France, which rebelled against traditional historical, mythological and religious subjects and instead depicted scenes from life. The movement began in the 1830s and 40s and photographers and viewers of photography marvelled at photography’s ability to capture an imprint of nature. Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), both suggested that it is a medium that allows nature to represent itself, seemingly without the intervention of the artist. Photography’s ability to depict people, objects and places realistically made it suitable for trying to record and document scientific discoveries and foreign places. From the early 20th century, photographs were regularly published in newspapers as part of the representation of local and national events. The main concept that Realism photographers tried to show were taking photographs which retaliate with pictorialism, and shows real life. They moved away from trying to make photographs look like paintings and focusing on detail, shapes and images. Realism captures real life society and brings up issues of society and was made with the intent to impact and change the lives of the subject. This then influenced the movement of photojournalism and documentary photography among the genre. Calotype, also called talbotype, is an early photographic technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot of Great Britain in the 1830s. In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. The areas that were hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (Gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper. The developing process permitted much shorter exposure times in the camera, down from one hour to one minute.
Lewis Hine‘s 1908 collection of photos for the National Child Labor Committee
Nan Goldin:
Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City. 1983.
Since the 1980s Nan Goldin has changed the nature of art and documentary photography. By taking her camera everywhere she goes and shooting intimate photographs of otherwise invisible, underground moments in her community, she has turned photography of everyday people, of parties, of sexual moments, and private events into something important striking. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a deeply personal narrative which portrays the artists’ life events. This project was formed out of the artist’s own experiences around Boston, New York, Berlin, and elsewhere in the late 1970s, 1980s. Within the project, she includes photographs of herself, her friends, her lovers and other close relatives in intimate moments of love and loss. These people experience ecstasy and pain through sex and drug use. They rejoice at dance clubs and bond with their children at home and they suffer from domestic violence and the ravages of AIDS. Goldin states “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the diary I let people read. The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember.” In later work she expands her interest in desire, violence, and shows viewers that these interests have always been important to us, whilst also unsettling the languages of desire in paintings by male artists, through her own complex visions of sexuality, gender, and intimacy. The photo above depicts a dark scene of Goldin and her boyfriend after an argument. The tone of the photo shows how severe the conversation was as the image is dim and gloomy, again depicting the severity of their interaction. The fact that “Brian” is looking away from Nan shows that there is tension between the couple and that he is obviously angry or upset at Nan. Additionally, this image conveys the abusive nature and environment that Nan was in at the time. A quote that portrays her ideology of relationships, “I often fear that men and women are irrevocably strangers to each other, irreconcilably unsuited, almost as if they were from different planets. But there is an intense need for coupling in spite of it all. Even if relationships are destructive, people cling together. The tension this creates seems to be a universal problem: the struggle between autonomy and dependency.” Also, Nan looking at Brian shows that even though they had a heated argument, she was still feeling love and pejorative emotions towards him. This photo also shows the pejorative side of relationships and how dark and emotionally painful they can become.
David Kirscher:
David Kirscher
David Kirscher is a photographer based in Paris and Madrid whose work is mainly surrounded by intimacy and emotions. Kirscher works on the assumption that if a picture doesn’t make him feel any emotion, it won’t to anybody. Kirscher also says to create a safe space for his models, communication is the key. David always explains what he’s doing, and tries to go step by step, and never forces anybody to do anything. When working with couples his main idea that he wants to portray is “definitely intimacy”. David states that he projects his imagery by writing every day, writing ideas, phrases, watching a lot of movies, going to the theater, gossiping on Instagram, going out, listening to music, etc. When he prepares a photo shoot, he takes that mass of information to create visual environments and images. He says that his intention is not to stimulate anyone’s sexual desire and what interests him is to provoke reactions from his viewers. A quote that hones in the ideas that David shows what I would like to present in my photographs is, “I honestly think that love is what we are here for. Not to accumulate more and more belongings, running from one meeting to another, to spend hours in a traffic jam to get to work, first to throw things away just to buy new ones, at the expense of us all, nature, people, animals, the earth. Our home. I honestly think that we are here to love. One person. Many people. The nature. The earth. Our home.” The photo above shares an intimate moment with the lovers Mateusz and Giulia. “This set is about heat, longing and trustful love…” David Kirscher. The light nature of this photo portrays a ameliorative scene and shows the love and relationship between two individuals. It also conveys a sense of trust and loyalty as the two models are holding one another and are close to each other, which also shows intimacy. Additionally, Giulia is smiling at Mateusz which shows her affection towards him and her love for him.
Conclusion:
To conclude, I think that both artists show love and intimacy differently, one pejorative and one ameliorative. The contrast between the two are very present and by showing this contrast, I can display the different types of relationships people have. Even though both artists take very different approaches at technique and the overall aesthetic of their images, they still both have the main idea of intimacy. Additionally, both artists display a level of passion in their images, which also greatly inspired me to be more passionate and personal with my own work. Nan Goldin’s eerie and ominous approach really helped me take photos that were more dark and gloomy, portraying a more negative feel to the photos. David Kirscher’s caring and loving approach helped me take more luminous and light photos, portraying a more positive feel to my images. I think I was able to successfully present the ideas I had for my photo book in this project as these artists really inspired me to go out of my comfort zone. Furthermore, by experimenting with my photo shoots I was able to figure out if I wanted to do just me and my boyfriend or other relationships, and I settled with photos of me and my boyfriend. Lastly, I am very satisfied with the outcome of this project and the overall aesthetic of the images I produced and how the layout looks for my photo book.
Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g.
What are you going to investigate.
How does this area/ work interest you?
What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument?
Whose work (artists/photographers) are you analysing and why?
What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within. Include 1 or 2 quotes for or against.
What links are there with your previous studies?
What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph?
What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?
Compare Francesca Woodman and Mary Ellen Mark’s representation/documentation of mental illness.
Bibliography:
Author’s surname (year), Title of document. Location of site: website address (URL)
For me, photography is a way to express perhaps more negative emotions in a non-judgmental medium. Perhaps people interpret the meaning in the wrong way, but the act of capturing the image gives a sense of control over the emotion behind it. That’s part of the reason that I wanted to explore mental illness via photography. After struggling with depression and anxiety in the past and at the time not really having a way to express how I was feeling, I wanted to explore and remember past emotions to educate others on mental illness, while additionally finding a new way for me to cope in the future. I am particularly fascinated by the work of Francesca Woodman. The young photographer was herself suffering from depression and her images are often seen to reflect this as a result of her suicide. Woodman’s images have a very personal feel to them. This is because she elected to photograph herself. George Woodman told The Guardian, “She was concentrating on the picture. That was why she didn’t want people around. She didn’t want any distractions.” (Cooke 2014). I find myself agreeing with this statement as I, too, prefer working alone without others getting my way. I also intent to mirror Woodman’s choice and use myself as the subject for my images. Individuality is important when it comes to mental illness; no one experiences it in quite the same way. Woodman expresses her illness in a way that is very personal to her and its interesting to gather an understanding of someone else’s experiences. However, I also wanted to see how people, who have never experienced severe mental illness, view mental illness. Mary Ellen Mark spent 36 days inside Oregon State Hospital on Ward 81. Mark was tasked with photographing the ward’s occupants along with journalist, Karen Jacobs who wrote a piece on their experience.
How can something that doesn’t physically exist be represented through photography?
The area I will be exploring in my personal study revolves
around personal experiences in mental health. However this poses an intriguing question:
How can something that doesn’t physically exist be
represented through photography? I will be investigating different aspects
of how photography can represent things that cannot be explicitly photographed,
most notably Emotions. Showing an emotion through a photograph is easy;
somebody crying or looking sad is simple enough to create in an image, however
it gets much more complicated when you start trying to show those simple
emotions without a necessarily obvious subject.
Take for example the work of Leif Sandberg;
many of his images are self-portraits, which communicates the idea of
self-reflection, and despite the fact he is part of many of his images, they
are never intended for him to be ‘the subject’ the way he frames and manipulates
his images make the subject something more obscure, something that doesn’t
exist on a physical level. Ideas such as loss, aging, life, panic attacks and death
are all explored through various images made by Sandberg, with him even saying “The Ending project is not
from the outside, but from inside myself.” When talking about how
photography has helped him in various aspects of his life. This goes to show
that in order to create emotions through photography of something that doesn’t exist,
personal experience can help out with understanding how to show these emotions.
I
will be exploring these concepts using a diverse range of camera techniques
like multiple exposures, slow shutter speeds, the use of a remote trigger, as
well as exploring different lighting setups and techniques. This subject of mental health and
photographing invisible subjects links very nicely into the previously studied Occupation
Vs Liberation topic, as it explores ideas of isolation and being trapped
somewhere with no way to get out.
How do social political opinions influence Sheila Bright and Laurie Simmons into constructing reality?
How do social and political opinions influence the work of Sheila Bright and Lauri Simmons in constructing reality
Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g.
This form of work interests me
As a teenager myself who has grown up influenced through different types of medium
My personal study will focus on the construction of fantasy within society. Within my work I will explore what creates this fantasy from childhood such as the media, stereotypes and the childish mind. My project will address matters that match my views of society such as the idea of cradle to grave and unrealistic constructs such as unrealistic body images. I plan to uses images of toys and dolls that represent the childish mind and the fantasy society constructed at childhood. I will also take images of real things to represent my awakening to the bigger world and picture. You eventually realise how society is structured in a cradle to grave format and how the way we think is manipulated from a young age. I believe that now in the 21st century because of things like trends and social media it takes longer to become aware and how because of trends there is less individualism when we are supposed to be living in an age of acceptance.
I am analyzing Sheila Pree because in her series Plastic Bodies she constructs a reality that puts across her socio-political views. She believes that women are misrepresented by dolls, so to prove this she takes pictures of dolls and edits them together to highlight, the outcome being quite haunting. I am analyzing Laurie Simmons because she constructs a reality out of dolls and toys that show her opinions of society in a tableux viviant kind of way. With her work she comments on stereotypical gender roles. Both photographers believe that these conceptions of life start from when we a children that is why they use dolls in their work.
In 2003 Sheila Pree created her series of image Plastic bodies which aimed to show unrealistic body images and to challenge western ideals of whiteness and beauty. Her goal was to explore how this impacted young girls and women.
In 1972 after her work, ‘objects with legs’ Laurie Simmons found an antique doll house and was inspired with how is represented roles in society and matched how many saw the world at the times. This was during the second wave feminist movement who saw dolls as creating unrealistic body images and domestic indoctrination for young girls. Her work borders tableaux viviant in the way that in most of her pieces she has set up dolls to be carrying out stereotypical domestic roles.
What links are there with your previous studies?
What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph?
How did or will your work develop.
What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?
Since the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, photography has allowed the photographer to present concepts, ideas and remarks on society through a single visual image. The context and concept behind photographs has become increasingly more important as the public’s understanding of political, social and environmental struggles has improved, and photography helps to portray a deeper meaning and understanding of society’s problems. The presentation of gender roles and stereotypes has been a popular concept within art and photography throughout the history of both art forms, but it is only recently that artists have begun to directly challenge these stereotypes in their work. The deeply ingrained gender stereotypes found in society, some more subtle than others, have been present throughout history, and society’s views throughout history have developed and changed. In my personal study I wish to be able to show these changes and developments in gender stereotypes through the 20th and 21st century, and show how as we have progressed as a society into the modern world, our ideas about having strict and rigid gender stereotypes, roles and ideals has changes, and having these clear roles has become less important, yet evidence for stereotyping still remains. Out of the many artists who study gender stereotypes in their work, I have chosen to focus on photographers Cindy Sherman and Phoebe Jane Barrett, who both present gender roles in the 21st century, but with very different takes and approaches. I have chosen to study these artists, because I believe both Barrett and Sherman convey strong context and meaning through their images, while at the same time producing work that really engages the viewer, and allows for a dialogue to be opened about the way that society and the media portrays versions of both men and women, that are not true to real life, thus forcing people to adopt stereotypical behaviour in order to fit in to a social norm. Sherman specifically comments on the fact that her work is meant to represent the issues with the presentation of women in media as a whole, and therefore attempts to mask her own identity in order to allow the concept to be generalised to women more widely. Although she uses self-portraits to present her work, she believes “It’s about obscuring my identity, erasing or obliterating myself. It’s not fantasy or pretending or narcissism. It’s not about me.” (O’Hagan, S. 2019). In order to compare these two artists, I will need to find both similarities, such as the concept of drawing attention to gender stereotypes and their presentation, and differences, such as their different visual portrayals of these stereotypes and the way in which they approach their work. Both artists approach towards challenging historically rigid and strict gender roles and stereotypes can be seen as an attempt to redefine what society sees as acceptable for each gender, and bending the rules in order to allow individuals to express themselves freely without being judged. Phoebe Jane Barrett acknowledges the consequences of these strict barriers to individual expression, and her quote, “I wish that gender created less of a divide between people“…
To what extent can we trust documentary photography to tell the truth about reality?
"Reality, witness and point of view can actually blend into one onother." (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019:18)
The quote above displays how all of these factors can be completely seperate from eachother, a point of view from one side of a story can alter the true reality of an event, however can alighn aswell. The reality is that I have younger twin sisters, they were born premature and were in intensive care for a month, I have then been a witness into them growing up, from baby to toddler, from toddler to child and now they are transitioning from child to teenager. They are still young, a thirteen year old is often viewed as still being a child, but as they're growing up they're being more and more exposed to the realities of the world and beginning to have a cusp of adulthood. As a witness of their development I have my own point of view, their collective identity as twins, the younger they were the more similar they looked and behaved. As babies if one threw up the other would in sympathy, however the further they deveoped the more individual they have become, one is an introvert one is an extrovert, one loves makeup and one is too lazy to do it so prefers a naturalistic look. As being part of a large family there are multiple points of views, my parents my sister Poppy and the twin sisters themselves. All of our points of views can be merged into one, a collective family identity which further melts into our reality and being witnesses to our development in life.
For my personal project I will explore the lives of my twin sisters and although they're seen to be very similar looks wise and personality wise, they're also drastically different. This interests me because the world percieves my sisters as a collective, as one but I want to present them as individuals, they have an exceptionally strong bond but are so different to eachother.
Artists that I am interested in are Sian Davey, in particular, her project on her step-daughter 'Martha'. Davey's is able to capture the lives of both Martha and her friends who are transitioning from child to adult. Davey's also captures a set of twins who are Martha's friends. Davey tends to use a documentative approach to her photography, capturing the natural essence of Martha's development in life. ALthough they look very similar due to them being identical, the audience is able to distinguish that they do have some different characteristics e.g. their different hairstyles and clothing choices. I want to study Davey's work in particular because of her approach to photographing the teenagers, she isn't trying to sugar coat or emphasize their actions, but just want to capture what they do together and how they interact with eachother.
Another artist I will study is Ariko Inaoka. During his travels in Iceland, he came across Erna and Hrefna, identical twin sisters. They have an ethereal bond and are incredible close to eachother. They are very similar and in Inaoka's photographs tend to wear the same outfits. I want to study Inaoka's work because he is able to portray how twins live in their own world. His pictorialistic approach is able to display this. However, I also want to have my own approach to Inaoka's photography, using his pictorialistic approach whilst displaying both the similarities and differences between the twins.
Straight photography and realism emerged in the 1840's and its intent was to showcase the realities of life, not to sugarcoat or maniplulate how the world should be percieved. I want to showcase the lives of my sisters how both they and I view their world, meaning I will use a documentative approach. However, I also want to use a pictorialistic approach to demonstrate how my sisters live in their own world, they see it through a different set of eyes.
