To what extent does Surrealism create an unconscious representation of ones inner conflicts of identity and belonging?
Claude Cahun was born in 1894 in Nantes France with the name of Lucie Renee Mathilde Schwob and died at the age of 60 in St. Helier Jersey. She was a photographer, sculptor and writer who spent most her life on the island of Jersey with her partner and stepsister. She adopted her name Claude Cahun in 1917 as it was gender ambiguous. She was best known for her self-portraits in the genre of surrealism, they explored sexuality and identity, undermining stereotypical gender roles which at the time were essential to the patriarchal society. Surrealism back then was relatively new to photography, people like Cahun were essential in establishing the movement. Her images displayed meanings which were personal to her and her sexual orientation, not in an objective manner, but rather in a mysterious and confusing manner. Cahun’s work can also be seen as post-structuralist because she doesn’t have ‘complete’ artworks, instead her photos combine to become part of an unfinished whole. An example of her work is:
Self Portrait (naked near rocks)-Claude Cahun, 1930.
I first discovered Cahun’s work at an exhibition and this photo was the most striking to me. Her work varies greatly, some involve characters such as a circus performer, others are much more simplistic when it come to the person Cahun is trying to portray. It’s this mixture and differentiation that makes the images work together as a sequence to show her inner confusion with identity. The low position she has to the ground represents the idea of her connecting to nature, it’s in her human nature to be gay, she never had free-will in the matter. Although the seaweed has the potential to suffocate her, much like her unconscious mind could fill her poison, she chooses to leave it wrapped around her as if it’s a part of her. The way she is floating in the water can be seen as a lack of control, even though she is resting on the sand she is still being moved by the water, which is something she can’t help. This emphasizes the lack of choice we have over our identity, as much as people say we can be who we want to be, we will always have pre-determined genetics, cultural background and our upbringing to affect our identity. The absence of facial details expresses the idea that gender doesn’t have a certain look. The way the shadow of the rock avoids her body creates a sense freedom; she is overcoming those dark thoughts. Overall, her work argues that Surrealism explores ideas of identity and belonging through her subjective imagery of people and nature.
Essay Question: How and why does Lauren Greenfield explore class, status, wealth and extravagance?
Introduction and context:
My area of study is an exploration of class, status, wealth and extravagance. I am exposed to varying levels of wealth accumulation living in a small island that is a tax haven, is neither part of the EU or of the United Kingdom and where there are both obvious signs of poverty and more commonly, wealth here in obvious abundance. Jersey attracts High Net Worth individuals from around the globe, and the banks here hold enormous reserves. We are influenced by this in our daily lives and both capitalism and consumerism are over-powering aspects of life in Jersey. There is often a clash between “old money” with class, education, status and influence…and “new money” with brashness, ambition and aspiration.
Jersey employs many polish, migrant workers some whom are highly skilled in other areas but are in fact working in unskilled jobs with limited rights, housing and care packages. In an island that was once occupied by Nazi forces that employed slave imported labour during World War 2 these present-day workers may feel oppressed by their employers. But Poland has a resurgent economy itself, one built largely on agriculture and so it seems ironic that Polish migrant workers are still drawn to this place.
Artist credit below to: Alicja Rogalska Written text credit to: The morning boat
An exception to this is my friend Max. He is from an affluent Polish background and feels very much “liberated”. He has grown up in very comfortable surroundings, and will no doubt become a part of his family’s growing business empire. There may be power struggles looking, and expectations, pressures and demands on his time, ambitions and way of life .I wanted to capture how Max behaves and be able compare his life to mine, but also to how this is in contrast to many migrant workers from the same part of the world.
Documentary photography, that stems from realism, can reveal and exploit stereotypes quite easily. It can be difficult to have a neutral gaze and observe without prejudice…and for this assignment I sometimes feel that I am an insider looking inwards, but at other times an outsider looking in too.
Lauren Greenfield is a renowned photographer who works in the field of photographing those of privileged backgrounds and who hold high amounts of wealth and/or fame. She is a strong benchmark of which I will be using to explore and aim to produce similar work to, following her grand theme of exploring ideas of wealth and affluence. I will respond to her work by aiming to photograph my friend Max who is of similar background to those Lauren photographs, looking to capture him in moments that demonstrate a lavish/luxury lifestyle in comparison to the average person and compare my images to Lauren’s work and to work created in a local exhibition around the below average lifestyle of migrant workers at the other end of the spectrum who have come to the island to work and are in essence still under a feeling of occupation.
Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study:
The context of which my work operates in comes along the lines of documentary, realism photography. The term ‘Realism’ can mean to depict things as they are without idealising or making abstract. It 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. Photography grew up with claims of having such a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned.
This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
However, for the most part it can be said that in photography, realism is not so much as style, but rather one of its fundamental qualities. From its beginnings in the 1830s and 40s, photographers and viewers of photography marvelled at photography’s ability to capture an imprint of nature. The fathers of photography, Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), both described it as a medium that allows nature to represent itself, seemingly without the intervention of the artist. Photography’s capacity to depict people, objects and places realistically made it suitable for trying to record and document individual likenesses, scientific discoveries and foreign places – concerns that were of particular interest for 19th-century Europeans. From the early 20th century, photographs were regularly published in newspapers as part of the representation of local and national events.
Realism in photography can be seen as a pre-cursor to documentary approaches to photography and can have many subcategories that come under its general umbrella, one of which relates to my project very well which is Social Reform Photography. The rural poor or the urban environment were not subjects for Pictorial photographers. But when a Danish immigrant, Jacob Riis published his book, How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums of Manhattan a new kind of realism was born with a socialist dimension. A number of photographers such as Lewis W Hine and Dorothea Lange began to document the effects of industrialization and urbanization on working-class Americans. Their work brought the need for housing and labour reform to the attention of legislators and the public and became the origins of what we now call photojournalism. This shows direct ties between my work and this category of realism photography due to the nature of capturing people from a certain background (albeit the other end of the spectrum to the subjects described above), and the day to day encounters these people come across which give insight into the events happening in their life and how their differ from one’s self.
Key Realism Images:
Tish Murtha,Youth Unemploymentseries, 1981
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and Tish Murtha are both celebrated photographers known for their individual documentation of the lives of communities within the North East of England.Konttinen, who originated from Finland, studied photography in London in the 1960s, moving to Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1969. There she co-founded Amber Films, a film and photography collective with an aim to reflect local lives with both respect and gritty realism. Konttinen herself spent seven years photographing her neighbours in the working-class East End of the city in which she lived, which culminated in her book Byker. The series captured a community on the brink of dispersal and drastic change, as many of the houses were about to be demolished making way for new housing developments. Her work is a window into a 1970’s life which was shared by many communities across the land during an era of great social change.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen,Byker,Young woman in Mason Street,1971
Unlike Konttinen, Murtha was raised in a Newcastle council house and aimed to reflect the community on her own doorstep. Born into a large family of Irish descent, in the impoverished West End of the city, her 1980s work captured an era incorporating the bleak effects of Thatcher’s Britain on northern communities. One of the photographer’s first exhibitions was called Youth Unemployment (1981), a series which was even used as a source of debate in the House of Commons. While often preserving a sense of both warmth and humanity, Murtha continued to use her photography to raise many social and political concerns for her hometown, as well as for the country as a whole.
Artist Study:
Lauren Greenfield Is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
She is extremely well renowned predominantly for exploring class, status, wealth and extravagance within her own work, primarily through documentary photography.
Generation Wealth:
Her main body of work surrounding this field is named “generation wealth”. This project is multi-platform and had been worked on from 2007 to 2017 through first-person interviews, with Greenfield starting in Los Angeles and spreading across America and beyond. It was based around the visual history of our growing obsession with wealth and it demonstrates a revelatory cultural documentation of wealth for viewers to explore, looking into depth at and documenting how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status to every corner of the globe. Greenfield also uses this project to put across this modernised attitude people have acquired of wanting to get rich at all costs which has boomed in recent years. Such as the stories within this project like those of some of the students, single parents and families interviewed, who are overwhelmed with debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, clothing and holidays. Some of Lauren’s most popular and influential work that relate very well to the area that I am studying within documentary photography are as seen below in her projects named, “Fast Forward” and the more popular of the two, “Generation Wealth.”This visual history of the growing obsession with wealth uses first-person interviews in Los Angeles, Moscow, Dubai, China and around the world to bear witness to the global boom-and-bust economy, and to document its complicated consequences including materialism and the desire to be wealthy at any cost.
The Los Angeles children encountered early in the book have become defined by the search for status through material acquisition. They buy multi-thousand-dollar handbags to take to class. Other kids in their grade are given BMWs when they turn sixteen. They compete over whose family can afford the best designer clothes, the most elaborate bar mitzvahs, the biggest houses. A 12-year-old whose working-class mother is bankrupting herself to finance the girl’s love of Ed Hardy designer tank tops is interviewed at one point. She explains how she knows she is putting great financial strain on her mom, and says she sort of feels bad about it, but explains: “I want the world; I want designer clothes, I want eternal happiness, the fountain of youth. I want to be able to afford ritzy private schools. I want the best of everything. Money is most definitely important for everything on my list of what I want.”
Fast Forward (Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood):
“Fast Forward” is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 colour photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving. A compelling precursor to Greenfield’s widely praised “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward” is a telling document of the direction in which today’s ultra-image-conscious culture is pointed. It also documents the experience of growing up in Los Angeles, and the ways children are influenced by the values of Hollywood. The quest for “fame,” the preoccupation with trends, the culture of materialism, and the obsession with image that characterizes Hollywood is reflected in the everyday lives and rituals of L.A. youth. A recurring theme in the project is the fleeting quality of youth. As one teenager says, “You grow up really fast when you grow up here. L.A. is so fast-moving, and kids really mature at a young age. Everyone is in a rush to be old, to be going to the clubs, going out… It’s not cool to be a kid.”
Image: Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angles. Mijanou won the title of “best physique” at Beverly Hills High.
The photo that really launched Lauren’s career was called Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day. A picture taken in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, as part of this project. Greenfield came to make this picture circuitously through an internship at National Geographic, which was the professional experience to which Lauren’s career is also indebted. In the process of making this photograph and the project for which it became the iconic image, Greenfield explains how she found her voice as a photographer. The photograph of Mijanou ended up being the cover of the book and was published and exhibited internationally. Mijanou wasn’t rich, but she lived in a world where her friends were. She explained to Greenfield about the pressures of her world and how it was hard when you could not keep up, but she also recognized that her beauty allowed her entrée into the popular clique.
Conclusion:
Comparison to Invisible Hands:
Having compared my work to the Invisible Hands exhibition project and the resulting effect (that exposed an insight into living conditions for many Polish immigrants) a number of things can clearly be seen. However, one main idea jumps out for me which is that Max, the subject in all of the photographs can be seen in a sense as a successful migrant who is very much ‘liberated’. He is a product and an extension of a well-educated and newly successful Polish economy but stands out as an exception in Jersey amongst his fellow countrymen.
With this imagery of nice cars, expensive clothing and luxury holidays travelling to exotic locations Max fits in more naturally with the expectation of the stereotypical wealthy Jersey banker / investor / businessman.
This therefore creates a strong juxtaposition to how the migrant workers are living and means that because they are tied down to this life of manual, hard, outdoor labour. They can be seen as people who are still ‘occupied’ and are not free due to their living and working lives/conditions, which for the most part is not due to their choice and would be very hard for them to leave and/or change.
My strongest image analysis: Max and his father. Bali, December 2019.
This image could be called in some ways a fluke. It was not anticipated and by no means planned, which also adds to a rather natural, deeper, underlying context people may like to think about when viewing this image.It was captured after Max had asked me to compare the height of him and his father back to back in a photo to show who was taller.
Although it being a seemingly innocent and mundane request, it got me thinking about this idea of Max wanting to know who is taller for a reason. It gave an impression of this desire of his to, in a way, fill his father’s shoes and/or follow in his father’s footsteps. As if he was trying to size up how far he had to go before he would be able to become this man he’s looked up to and been in the wake of his whole life, following in his footsteps until one day, filling them.
Overall throughout this project, having followed the theme of documentary photography, it can leave questions challenging the truth or reality of what is being observed and sometime even the honesty behind it. For example, when a piece of documentary photography is carried out, it is following guidelines of what the photographer “sees” and how they have interpreted what they are studying over a prolonged length of time.
Representation becomes an issue at this point, and the integrity of the photographer can come into question. Both Lauren Greenfield and I have garnered the trust of our subjects and built up a level of trust. This means that there is a responsibility to show the subject in a fair way, without prejudice and hopefully with neutrality. In a sense, we have both acted as insiders looking in, but we could argue that we are outsiders looking in too. A connection, emotional or otherwise, with the subject will often open opportunities…but in turn create a new set of challenges. A sympathetic and sensitive view is always required.
This, without doubt varies between any different person due to human nature and can allow for people to come up with different approaches to the same task and give different perspectives that may shed a particular person, place or ‘thing’ in a different light. This means that due to the variation in and amongst documentary photography, it could be a possibility that biases can be introduced into documentary photography, just the same as they could be implemented into other photography genres such as for example, portraiture.
Therefore, allowing for documentary photographers to be able to create imagery or manipulate imagery in ways that create opinions by viewers in favour of what it is the photographer wants them to see. This can also mean that documentary photographer can tell you a lot about the photographer themselves due to their work being a reflection of what they choose to read or pick out as important from a person, place or situation.
When it comes to Realism, another photographer who fits into this movement is Walker Evans, a photographer who documented families during the Great Depression in America. Evans is one of the photographers who I am looking at for the theme of family, as he focused on families for most of his images. Walker Evans was a photographer who was best known for his work during the Great Depression, and how his documentary images brought light to the struggles of family life within small towns in America. Most of his images appear to be candid, although there are a few portraits here and there within his work. One of his prime influences was August Sander, a German portrait and documentary photographer, and has been described as the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.
August Sander, Circus ArtistWalker Evans, from ‘Cotton Tenants : Three Families ‘
The image above is from his series Cotton Tenants, where he photographed three families in Hale County, Alabama, America. In this black and white image you can see a family of five and a dog standing on what looks likes a front porch. By the worn down clothes they are wearing and the poor state of the building they stand by, you can assume that they are a working class family and are struggling with poverty. You are immediately drawn to the man standing in the middle of the image, in front of the rest of his family. This may have been done on purpose to represent his importance to the family as the typical ‘bread-winner’, as during this era it was the husband who worked while the wife and children stayed at home.
The Great Depression was the worst economic downfall that has happened in American history. The stock market crash in October 1929 was the beginning of the Great Depression, and due to this by 1933 unemployment was at 25% and more than 5000 banks had gone out of business. The average family income during this time was $1,500, 40% less than what families usually earned before the start of the economic downfall, in turn leaving families stressed with just under half of their usual income gone. For his series ‘Cotton Tenants : Three Families’, Walker Evans photographed three families who were struggling with poverty to capture the effects of the Great Depression in Hale County, Alabama, and to expose the effects of this to the world. The people in the image above was one of the many families in that area who were facing destitution due to the economical decline during that era. At the time Evans photographed these three families, it was the height of the Great Depression and this was the time where people were finding it the hardest to cope. You can clearly see the effects it had on this family – they wouldn’t have been able to afford clean clothes, as portrayed by the rags they wore, nutritious food or the right equipment to fix and clean their house. – unfinished
To what extent can we trust documentary photography to tell the truth about reality?
“The process of manipulation starts as soon as we frame a person, a landscape, an object, or a scene with our cameras: we choose a portrait or landscape format” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 18)
My personal investigation looks at my grandparent’s lifestyle and how it has been influenced by the time period they grew up in, the 1940’s. I have explored the influence of religion and spirituality, gender roles within the family structure and social norms during this time period which are still present in their lifestyle to this day. Holding strong connections with my grandparents led me to want to base my project on them, as I know I will be able to easily retrieve useful insight into their lifestyle, enhancing the imagery I produce, on top of forming a piece of work in which my family will cherish. In this essay I aim to discuss the extent to which documentary photography accurately portrays reality, with reference to two documentary style photographers, Latoya Ruby Frazier and Walker Evans. In this essay I will be referring to Walker Evan’s photographic series entitled ‘let us now praise famous men’ and LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographic series ‘The Notion of Family’. Analysing photographers who captured imagery in two different periods of time, contextual and contemporary comparison, allows me to illustrate whether the reliability has changed overtime or stayed consistent, providing a valid argument. These two photographers attempt to capture reality through portrait, but the validity of the imagery is reduced as the photographer is either insider looking in, or an outsider looking in which suggests a personal attachment to the subject or a vivid understanding of their situation, reducing the reliability of documentary photography. In my project I am considered a insider looking in, due to my subject being close to me both physically and emotionally, creating a more subjective view towards their reality, thus creating biased photographs.
Realism and Straight photography looks at creating imagery which showcase life how it is, this emerged in the 1840’s. Artists who work within this area look at raising social and cultural issues relevant within society at that time, in order to make the audience aware of this issue in hope something can be done to make a change. This area looks at documentary photography and photojournalism to document the events which are occurring. Artists stick to the original techniques and purpose of photography, the use of photography for science, to create detailed, sharp images showcasing real life. Henry Fox Talbot created the calotype, which is said to be the basis for how photography is practised today in documenting everyday life. The calotype was done by creating a paper negative, exposing a sheet of paper coated with silver and chloride to a light source. His photographs used a short exposure time and allowed multiple prints to be produced through one negative. He believed that photographs were the cause of light, the influence of nature, on a paper negative and is illustrated through optical and chemical means. Artist Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre, also shared this ideology behind image making and stated that photography “consists in the spontaneous reproduction of the images of nature received in the camera obscura, not with their colors, but with very fine gradation of tones.” (Daguerre Mandé, L-J. 1838). This illustrates how this art movement allows nature to present itself showing the reliability of imagery, which is then contradicted as it states its a spontaneous reproduction suggesting the accuracy of the imagery is reduced. Artist Frederick Henry Evans’ ‘A sea of a step’ clearly presents realism through the composition and use of the formal elements of light and space. Conceptually, the imagery portrays the climbing up the stairs, as if the stairs lead towards a euphoric feeling. “He drew on the Symbolist manner of using objects to directly express esoteric ideas.” ((The Art Story, n.d.)). This use of symbolism creates a subjective perspective reducing the reliability of this art movement. Paul Strand took a different approach to capturing objects, using a macro technique with clear focus on light and shadow and the contrast between the two in order for the work to “be brutally direct; devoid of all flim-flam; devoid of trickery and of any ‘ism’; devoid of any attempt to mystify an ignorant public, including the photographers themselves.” (The Art Story, n.d.). This suggests how Strand’s work produces a more objective narrative which clearly depicts reality illustrating how this art movement can be truthful. Looking closely towards documentary photography, a style of photography which places into this art movement, artist Walker Evan’s and LaToya Ruby Frazier use portraiture to showcase the lifestyle of the subjects presented in the frame in their natural environment, somewhere familiar to them that they have a relationship with, but to what extent does these photographers accurately portray the subjects lifestyle? With my topic being based in my grandparent’s lifestyle, I felt that using documentary photography would be the most appropriate to capture my subject, as well as the project looking social issues of family structure and gender roles being raised, thus drawing connections with realism and straight photography.
‘A Sea of Steps’ (1903) – Frederick Henry Evans
‘Bowls’ (1917) – Paul Strand
Walker Evans – 1936 – ‘Allie Mae Burrough’
Walker Evan’s ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’ photographic series explores the exploitation of Tenant farmers in Alabama during the Great Depression, through the medium of documentary portraits. With close analysis to the ‘Allie Mae Burroughs’ produced in 1936, the portrayal of the narrative clearly illustrates the dire conditions to which these families are subjected to, and draws upon the ideology that they do not know life any differently to the life they live now. “The essence is done very quietly with a flash of the mind, and with a machine. I think too that photography is editing, editing after the taking. After knowing what to take, you have to do the editing.” (Evans, n.d.) – Evans suggest that although his photographs are trying to capture reality, manipulation of capturing or editing still effects the photographs and the way in which it truthfully presents the Tenant’s pejorative lifestyles. In an article, published by the Guardian, the author describes Evan’s imagery to accurately present reality, “You can’t sniff the stink of the quilts in the Evans pictures, nor itch with the lice in the pillows. The foul beds take on a Shaker dignity of form. A gasoline pump on the porch of a post office metamorphoses into sculptural permanence within the fixed focal length of Evans’s lens.” (Rule.V, 2001). His positive critique to Evans’ imagery emphasises how accurately he managed to capture the raw living environments of the tenant families, which allows viewers to sympathises for these families, as we understand that they do not know life any differently, which contradicts the viewpoint of Evan, but who are we to believe more? Simplicity in the composition allows an accurate reliable source to be illustrated. Evan’s subject is placed in the centre of the frame, and using naturalistic lighting he captures the subject gawking into the lens as if they are asking for mercy. The presentation of the subject does not put her in a position of respect, in the sense of her appearance and the tonal contrast emphasising her lower class within society. However, this it allows the subject to be elevated and placed into the limelight, presenting the conceptual elements making her more respectful in present day and towards viewers. He captures the subject in their naturalistic environment allowing the authenticity of his imagery to be upheld, and allows reinforcement for the sympathetic connection to be between the subject and viewers. Technically, he uses a large depth of field, due to the whole frame being in focus, suggesting a small aperture and slower shutter speed. It is recorded that Evan has four different variations of his ‘Allie Mae Burroughs’ which reduces the reliability of his work, due to manipulation of his subject in each image, which can lead to us not fully conforming to believe in this social implication, as it not being a reliable source due to several versions of the same image, with only one outcome being used. In my response, I captured my Grandparents outside of their homes, in locations where they spent the most time when outside, or the areas in which they felt illustrated their lifestyle. Similarly, using a small aperture and slow shutter speed, I used a tripod in order to produce detailed and well structured portraits. The natural light source from outside and naturalistic environment, allowed me to maintain the authenticity of my imagery allowing for a reliable source presenting my Grandparents lifestyle. In terms of concept, I captured my photographs mainly outside using simplistic backgrounds illustrating their lifestyle, but I also decided to explore this connection of subject and location with the interior of my Grandparents house, as they spend more time inside than out. In addition to this, archival material will allow for me to systematically show the connection between my subject and the outdoors.
My Response
Latoya Ruby Frazier – ‘The Notion of Family
LaToya Ruby Frazier photographic series ‘The Notion of Family’ aims to tell the narrative of her African-American family whom are struggling to come to terms with oppression (prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority) in Braddock, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and the negative physical and psychological effects of the city’s steel industry on their home life. Furthermore it looks at the impact of racism in the small suburb as well as the decline in the community and family, showing her personal and political viewpoint towards this topic. In this she explore three generations of her family who have lived through these issues: her grandmother, mother and herself which reinforces the personal attitudes towards her imagery, making a subjective and unreliable presentation of this issue. “I am obliged to document and counter this reality, and ultimately re-imagine and rewrite it myself.” (Campany, 2014) – Frazier refers to her imagery as a way of documenting reality literally, and re-imagines her lifestyle through the pejorative metaphors presented throughout the series, this clearly presents biases to this social situation, leading to misleading and in accurate imagery of reality. In a interview with Frazier she made the comment “We need longer sustained stories that reflect and tell us where the prejudices and blind spots are and continue to be in this culture and society,” (Campany, 2014) – the connotations implied is that Frazier views her embodiment of work as a clear way of illustrating these social issues, and suggests that the camera is a “weapon” (Campany, 2014) of exposing reality, suggesting high reliability within the imagery. In contrast, the photographic series is a personal response to an issue relevant to the her, insider looking in, which means biases of the way in which the imagery will be composed to create meaningful representations. This ideology of being an insider looking in is reinforced by critique when he says “Ms. Frazier reimagines the tradition of social documentary photography by approaching a community not as a curious or concerned outsider but as a vulnerable insider.” (Berger, 2014). In specific analysis to the imagery above we are presented with two member of Frazier family at a straight on angle, one in the foreground looking to the right of the frame with her eyes lightly closed and a female in the background looking direct into the camera, creating an emotional connection between the viewer and subject. The positioning suggests the female in the background is seeking help or obeying to the female in the foreground creating a sense of power and family structure, this implies an artificial positioning of the subjects reducing the reliability of showcasing reality. The presentation of the subjects allows cultural context to be illuminated, through the wig caps, patterned and plain clothing which also suggests low socio-economic status, which increases the emotional impact of the conceptual message on viewers. The use of a narrow depth of field and low aperture allows focus on the subjects, and allows the background to compliment the conceptual and contextual elements through the African pattern stylised curtains. The naturalistic environment contradicts the artificial composition and creates a more reliable source of reality for presenting Frazier’s family. The low ISO being utilised and artificial lighting, allows a soft ambience to be illustrated, which juxtaposes the chaos in their lifestyle, suggesting more biases from Frazier due to the lighting, reducing the reliability of this piece of documentary photograph. Critiques imply that the photographic series is “a cautionary tale and a force for educating the public and motivating reform.” (Berger, 2014) – due to these external motives connotes a reduction in reliability due to wanting social reform, she was aware that she had to create imagery which provoked emotion in order to achieve a reform. In my response to Frazier, I captured my grandparents in their home in places which suggested their ameliorative and luxurious lifestyle. Through the manipulation of the composition and positioning of my subjects, I created imagery which implied family structure and gender roles, which shows how the 1940’s has influenced my Grandparents lifestyle. Similarly, the naturalistic lighting and low ISO will allow me to create a similar soft and welcoming ambience allowing my conceptual representation of lifestyle to clearly be illustrated within my work, allowing my documentary stylised photography to be considered reliable in portraying reality.
My Response to LaToya Ruby Frazier
Bibliography:
Berger, M. (2014). LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Notion of Family. [online] Lens Photography, Video and Visual Journalism. Available at: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/latoya-ruby-fraziers-notion-of-family/?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=9D64C6B52E292A5A637A20017A9D54AA&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
Bright, S. and Van Erp, H.(2019), Photography Decoded. London: octopus Publishing House
Campany, D. (2014). So present, so invisible. 1st ed. Italy: Contrasto, pp.61-68.
Evans, W. (n.d.). Photography Quotes by Walker Evans. [online] Photoquotes.com. Available at: https://www.photoquotes.com/ShowQuotes.aspx?id=196&name=Evans,Walker [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
Rule, V. (2001). Review: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/18/historybooks.highereducation [Accessed 15 Jan. 2020].
The Art Story. (n.d.). Straight Photography Movement Overview. [online] Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/straight-photography [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
My third photo-shoot will be focusing on the hidden aspect of gender identity that are often not spoken about. I will be focusing on the issues of women who do not want to present as feminine, and yet are forced to by society, as well as men who struggle to show their more feminine aspects without being shamed by society and historical gender norms. In order to do this, I will be focusing on more metaphorical imagery, using portraits and images of objects to do so, as I will be exploring the problems and consequences people face when they try to express themselves in a way they don’t want to/feel forced to.
Below I have included a mind-map of some ideas for this third photo-shoot:
For my third photo-shoot, I will be focusing more on the physical objects that can be associated with gender, and will be contrasting these with each other in the photograph. As the focus of my project is on breaking gender stereotypes (liberation of gender) and showing the truth behind peoples identities and the way they express themselves through gender, I will be focusing on creating images that encapsulate stereotypical gender roles and stereotypes, with small twists within the image that allow the viewer to realise that the image is not what it seems (specifically, that the stereotypes they link to the objects may not always be accurate. For this photoshoot I will be focusing on feminine objects, such as makeup and jewellery, and will be intertwining the idea that both women and men can suffer when it comes to expressing femininity, to create a contrast. This photo-shoot will be focused more on the hints to the viewer that some people express their identity in less stereotypical way, and that there are often social consequences for those who do this.
Below are the contact-sheets for my photo-shoot, I have indicated my decision making process using the brush tool:
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
COLOUR KEY: GREEN: tick – possible final image, rectangle – final image, question mark – possible final image, RED: line – rejected image, S – subject is in the wrong pose, O – wrong orientation, E – too high/low exposure, C – camera is in the wrong position, hatched red lines – shadow/unwanted aspect
This was the original image I began with.
For my first image, I wanted to separate the image itself from the background in order to replace the background with a simple black background (as I felt this would draw maximum attention to the image and details in the foreground). To do this, I used the lasso tool to highlight the areas of the background, and deleted it from the layer. I then went around the edges of the image with a 0% hardness eraser tool in order to soften the boarders so that it would blend more realistically with the black background.
Here, I erased the background of the image, and softened the edges of the image with the eraser.
I then added a black background to the image to make the foreground image stand out more and draw maximum attention:
Once the black background was added, I erased the remaining areas which looked uneven, and I smoothed out all boarders of the image.
I decided to focus on the contrast of the shades, textures and shapes of the image, and therefore decided to make the image black and white, and raise the contrast substantially in order to emphasise these contrasting aspects:
Here, I altered the image to black and white in order to increase the contrast, and also increased the contrast of the colour itself to highlight this.
After increasing the contrast and turning the image black and white, the boarders of the image faded more into the background, allowing the image to fit more flush with the background.
I decided that for this image, I wanted to highlight a certain area of colour in order to draw the viewers attention to the image, and to provide a small amount of contrast in the image which would draw attention to the jewellery that the subject was wearing (by highlighting the colour of the stone, the viewer can more easily focus on the jewellery itself, rather than looking at the whole image as a flat continuous image). To to this, I copied the original coloured image, and copied the stone using the lasso tool. I then pasted that over the top of the black and white image, and smoothed out the edges:
I first copied the original stone from the coloured image, and pasted it into a seperate layer.I pulled this layer to the top, above the black and white later, and layer the coloured stone over the top of the black and white stone.I then smoothed out the edges to sit the stone smoothly onto the black and white image.
The final image can be seen below:
I used the same sort of editing process for the other final images in my photo-shoot. I increased the contrast of many of my photos, (especially if the image was going to be turned monochrome in order to increase contrast between shapes).
Below are my final images for this photo-shoot:
for the below image, I used the lasso tool to cut the lip mark out of the original layer and paste it onto asseverate later. I then made the first layer monochrome and increased the colour contrast of the lips to make them stand out from the background. I also cut the mirror from the background and replaced the table background with all black to force the viewer to focus on the image in the foreground:
This was the image after I turned it monochrome, before I pulled the layer with the lip mark to the front.
These were the 2 separate layers to show the contrast between the coloured lipstick and the black and white background.
After pulling the lip print to the front, I increased the contrast of the red colour, and this was the final result.
A photo by Walker Evans, from “Cotton Tenants: Three Families.”
In this black and white image you can see a family of five and a dog standing on what looks likes a front porch. By the worn down clothes they are wearing and the poor state of the building they stand by, you can assume that they are a working class family and are struggling with poverty. You are immediately drawn to the man standing in the middle of the image, in front of the rest of his family. This may have been done on purpose to represent his importance to the family as the typical ‘bread-winner’, as during this era it was the husband who worked while the wife and children stayed at home.
The Great Depression was the worst economic downfall that has happened in American history. The stock market crash in October 1929 was the beginning of the Great Depression, and due to this by 1933 unemployment was at 25% and more than 5000 banks had gone out of business. The average family income during this time was $1,500, 40% less than what families usually earned before the start of the economic downfall, in turn leaving families stressed with just under half of their usual income gone. For his series ‘Cotton Tenants : Three Families’, Walker Evans photographed three families who were struggling with poverty to capture the effects of the Great Depression in Hale County, Alabama, and to expose the effects of this to the world. The people in the image above was one of the many families in that area who were facing destitution due to the economical decline during that era. At the time Evans photographed these three families, it was the height of the Great Depression and this was the time where people were finding it the hardest to cope. You can clearly see the effects it had on this family – they wouldn’t have been able to afford clean clothes, as portrayed by the rags they wore, nutritious food or the right equipment to fix and clean their house.
Latoya Ruby – The Notion of Family
In this image you can see two women sat on the floor in the middle of the black and white image. They both look at the camera with two different expressions, the older woman having a slight frown on her face while the younger woman looks a bit happier with a hint of a smile on her lips. They look like they’ve been interrupted from the middle of a conversation that they were having. They seem comfortable in each other’s presence, which indicated that they’ve known each other for a while and have a bond. The older woman looks to be the younger woman’s grandmother, as they both look similar to each other. The room they’re sitting in seems to be the living room, with the television and numerous other decorations, including the grandfather clock in the background. By the look of the room they don’t look like they’re struggling with money, but they don’t look like they are a middle or high class family either.
In Latoya Ruby’s series ‘ The Notion of Family’, she looks at the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, through the use of her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania which became financially depressed after the fall of the steel industry in the 1970s-1980’s. To look at these issues she focuses on three generations of her family – her grandmother, her mother and herself – and photographs them in their home. She follows the social documentary style of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to create images which were inspired by Gordon Parks, who promoted the camera as a weapon for social justice. Her images, including the one above, are raw photographs of her family and captures the authenticity of the moment. With the use of black and white images, she is able to highlight the beauty of her home town and how this place has affected her family’s life along with the other people who lived in the area.
Comparison :
Both images include family – in Walker Evans’ image you can clearly see the family of five standing together on the porch, and in Latoya Ruby’s image you can see a grandmother and her granddaughter. When it comes to the contexts of their images, they are similar in the way in which they both look at the effect of economic downfall on families. Evans was exploring the effect of the Great Depression on families within small communities, while Ruby was looking at her own family in the time of racism and economic downfall in her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. However it is different in the way which while Evans was looking at multiple different families and how they were effected by a country-wide event, Ruby was only looking at the effects of economic downfall on her small hometown, and her own family. As Latoya Ruby was looking at her own family, she had more of a connection with those who she was photographing and knew them well, so she could shape her photographs to suit their personalities, lives, ect, whereas Walker Evans didn’t know the families personally and did not have that connection, so he may not have been able to take images which truly reflect who these people are. – unfinished
“Fast Forward” is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 color photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving. A compelling precursor to Greenfield’s widely praised “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward” is a telling document of the direction in which today’s ultra image-conscious culture is pointed.
It also documents the experience of growing up in Los Angeles, and the ways children are influenced by the values of Hollywood. The quest for “fame,” the preoccupation with trends, the culture of materialism, and the obsession with image that characterizes Hollywood is reflected in the everyday lives and rituals of L.A. youth. A recurring theme in the project is the fleeting quality of youth. As one teenager says, “You grow up really fast when you grow up here. L.A. is so fast-moving, and kids really mature at a young age. Everyone is in a rush to be old, to be going to the clubs, going out… It’s not cool to be a kid.”
Who?
The photographer who created this book is Lauren Greenfield, an american artist, documentary photographer and documentary film maker, who has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four travelling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
Lauren made this book as a result of her being interested into how kids in Los Angles seem to grow up quicker under the influence of Hollywood, and how they are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of image.
Single Image Analysis:
Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angles. Mijanou won the title of “best phisique” at Beverly Hills High.
The photo that really launched Lauren’s career was called Mijanou and friends from Beverly Hills High School on Senior Beach Day. A picture taken in 1993 in Santa Monica, California, as part of her project Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood.
Greenfield came to make this picture circuitously through an internship at National Geographic, which was the professional experience to which Lauren’s career is also indebted. In the process of making this photograph and the project for which it became the iconic image, Greenfield explains how she found her voice as a photographer.
The photograph of Mijanou ended up being the cover of the book and was published and exhibited internationally. Mijanou wasn’t rich, but she lived in a world where her friends were. She explained to Greenfield about the pressures of her world and how it was hard when you could not keep up, but she also recognized that her beauty allowed her entrée into the popular clique.
3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book such as:
Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, sniff the paper.
In hand the book feel rigid, it smells like plain plastic with no real scent to it other than that other than plastic and plain card/paper.
Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.
The books opens with a card page and then is followed by glossy plastic pages with the images and text on until the final page. which is again, card.
Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.
The book is landscape and is around an A4 size however is not exactly A4 and is probably a custom size. There area 127 pages.
The book is a hard cover with a dust jacket and uses saddle stitching.
Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.
The title is very direct about what the project Is focusing on, it dictates exactly what the projects main theme Is without giving too much away. The choice to have ‘Fast Forward’ in large text is a smart idea because it makes the book seem more youthful and erratic, similar to life lives of the teenagers she isn’t photographing which is one of the main themes Greenfield is exploring in the book.
Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
The story is as described above about how Greenfield documents the life of teenagers growing up in Hollywood and how its faster and more full-on than other areas of the world. Therefore Lauren presents quite a fast paced approach to looking into all of the youths she is studying, quickly moving from one to another in order to keep up this fast paced theme.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
Most of the images follow the theme of 1 page, 1 image, however throughout the book there are interludes where text is positioned on the side of a page and an image will take up about 2/3 of a double page spread. The normal image size would take up most of the page, leaving a small border around the edges which is usually white. There are no grids, fold outs or inserts.
Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
The sequencing of images follows quite a logical pattern of putting images created in the same shoots or trying to present the same principles together on single pages one after another with slight variations here and there.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others. Use of captions (if any.)
The book has a preface written by the photographer Lauren Greenfield and a quote next to an image on the 11th page before the main part of the book begins. Then throughout the book for the majority of images there are small bits of text either dictating the event, situation, people and ages. Then as she pics out singular images to talk about she uses 1/3 of a double page spread to write text and the other 2/3 for the image.
A sentence – Witnessing my parents lives after their divorce and comparing it to when I was a child.
A paragraph – This book is about my parents and their lives after their divorce. My mum has re-married and lives in the UK now, whereas my dad still lives in Jersey with me. For me, I found the divorce and my mum moving away very hard, so I decided for this project to capture my parents lives and tell and honest truth about what a separated family is like. I also want to include own images of my childhood to show the juxtaposing lives of both my parents and the past and present.
Design: Consider the following
How you want your book to look and feel – I want my book to feel like a photo album. I want it to be plain black and simple.
Paper and ink – Id like the paper to be matte so the glossy images i take out of the photo albums will contrast it.
Format, size and orientation – Just a standard portrait sized book.
Binding and cover – hard cover, plain black.
Title – 7916 – parents marriage and divorce dates
Structure and architecture – just like a normal photobook but I want to insert images out of family photo albums as I feel like this will give the book an interesting tactile feel.
Design and layout – images of my mum will be on the left and the right way up, but then images of my dad will be upside down. This is a way to show their split and also made the reader engage with the book as to view the images of my dad they’ll have to turn the book upside down.
Editing and sequencing – I’m going to put any images I take into black and white but leave the archive images untouched.
Images and text – I want the images to be candid and of my parents daily lives, almost as a documentary. I feel that if my images are staged it would take the meaning away. no text.
These are my second set of finished images for my photo-book. They follow the same process of capturing and editing as my first set of photos, this can be read on my blog post of the same title. The only difference from this time is that I have chosen to use red as an accent colour in my editing as it contrasts against the black and white and when the book is actually created I plan on including it in other areas also, such as book title or page cover etc, therefore in the end it will match as a complementary colour. I have also taken an image from my last set and re-edited again as I wasn’t sure if it fitted or not. Again I am very satisfied with these images and will be using them all.
