Francesca Woodman’s work and my own have few similarities however these are also met with obvious differences, the first difference of which is noticeable is that Woodman’s image is of the whole length of her body where as mine is of the top half of my body. Although I was trying to recreate this image in my own way, the reason for this was because of the space that I actually had in my bedroom in order to get far enough away from the camera that I could’ve got my whole length of body in the frame. Another difference between mine and Francesca Woodman’s work is the locations that both the photographs were taken, she took hers in what appears to be a quite empty car park, where as mine was taken in my bedroom. I like Woodman’s original photograph due to the dramatic feel the location gives the image, however the aim of my series was to portray the journey of mental illness, in particular depression, and so to enable this to have a more personal feel I decided to use my own environment to create my images whist still taking inspiration from the original.

The biggest similarity between Woodman’s and I’s work is the movement that we show by spinning whilst using a slow shutter speed, I believe that this is the most important part of the image as it has the biggest impact. We are both in the center of the photograph making us the focal point, catching the viewers eyes. Another similarity when it comes to this is the fact that in order to produce this work we have both used self portraits, using ourselves as both the subject and the photographer by using the self timer setting on out cameras, which again has made this a more personal piece of work.

the beginning of life. the calm before the storm.

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sometimes our mental illness can occupy our minds. it can become somewhat debilitating.

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our minds taken over. identity stolen. we are well and truly ‘occupied’ by ‘the storm’.

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medications and hospitals. it turns clinical.

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the world carries on around us, despite what our brain tells us.

study is an escape.

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liberation is possible. recovery. we can’t always do it alone.

but the world looks bright and colourful once again. we are free.

In this image Francesca Woodman has placed herself spinning in the centre of the photograph, to draw attention to the movement. She looks like she is in a car park, which makes the image seem both mysterious, but also could be portraying her loneliness. Francesca Woodman used a slow shutter speed to give the effect of a blur by capturing more of the movement before the photograph was taken completely. The fact that the people seem anonymous makes the photo appear lifeless, possibly representing her lack of identity through her depression.

Technically this image would’ve been more difficult in the sense that it’s a self portrait, so Francesca Woodman would’ve had to have her camera on a tripod on a timer so that she was able to be both the photographer and the subject in the image. In terms of lighting, I would assume that Woodman used artificial lighting already present at the location because it looks like there is a light directly above her providing minimal light as the rest of the image is significantly darker.

‘I feel like I am floating in plasma. I need a teacher or a lover. I need someone to risk being involved with me. I am so vain and so masochistic.’

– Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was born in Denver in 1958 to two American Artists, she also had a close relationship with her brother Charles Woodman who himself was aspiring to be a video artist. Whilst they grew up their home was described as ‘the creative and social hub of the art community of the town’ as art was just ‘the way of life’ for the Woodman family.

When Woodman was 13 she attended a private boarding school where she began to find her interest in photography having taken her dads camera with her. She had a photography class where she learnt the basic skills and starting to have some faith in her own projects. Woodman relied on her teacher for reassurance in her own ability.

During Summers spent in Italy, Woodman became interested with La Specola, the Museum of Natural History in Florence, making friends with the guards so that she could be allowed in to take pictures when the museum was closed to the public. After she graduated in 1978, she went to live in Rome for a whole year, as part of the School of Design’s Rome Honours program. Francesca Woodman is known for not liking the term ‘self portrait’ and was known for being very serious and very playful at the same time, despite this being very conflicting.

Woodman explored and tested what she could do with photography. She explored the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She did this by manipulating light and movements, and used props, vintage clothing and ‘gloomy’ interiors to add a mysterious atmosphere to the her final pieces.

When Francesca Woodman was 22 she published her first art publication, but completed suicide shortly after. She did this by jumping from a loft building in New York. When she died, critic Ken Johnson said ‘hardly anyone beyond her family, friends, classmates, and teachers knew about the phenomenal body of work she had produced.’ Her mum, Betty, said ‘things were not rosy and wonderful for Francesca’ in an attempt to highlight her long standing depression as the ultimate cause of her death.

This photo is part of Mary Ellen Marks photography series ‘Ward 81’. Ward 81 is a photography project Mark undertook to capture the reality of the lives of patients living in a psychiatric ward in Oregon State Hospital where she admitted herself in order to attempt to capture the reality accurately. I think that this photo in particular was used to showcase the loneliness that being both mentally ill, and in hospital essentially locked away from the world, can actually bring.

This image captures what appears to be a young boy laying on a metal bed besides the barred windows, underneath his covers with his head on top of a scarf, he is looking at a photograph using what could either be quite a blank, or sad, facial expression. The photo is in black and white and this could be because of the time frame in which the photograph was taken due to the lack of modern technology, which is likely, however this is effective in conveying emotion to the audience as black and white is typically known as being more dramatic or upsetting due to the lack of ‘brightness’ about it. The boys bed is placed besides a window behind metal bars, although this image is ineffective in accurately representing the type of institution this is, this does effectively represent the subject was when this was taken was completely secluded and so he must have been somewhat ‘locked up’ or trapped.

Technically this photograph shouldn’t have been too difficult to create. Above the boys head is a window, which is what would’ve been causing all the shadows in the corners of the image and highlights on the subjects face as the window is just above him.

Mary Ellen Mark is an artist born on the 20th March 1940 in Pennsylvania, she died at 75 in New York, United States.

Mary Ellen Mark became well known for capturing more taboo subjects accurately, some of her most well known projects are on mental health patients at an Oregon State Hospital, prostitutes, and homeless people. Mark has always been known for her documentary photography, usually producing black and white images, and began putting her work out there within magazines. Mary Ellen Mark stands out to me because she would have to create trusting relationships with her subjects in order to achieve the images she wanted due to the sensitive nature of the topics, she said on multiple occasions within interviews that because these relationships were strong, she often would stay in contact with her subjects even years post project – Melissa Harris who edited Mary Ellen Marks books said ‘ She got to know the subjects she photographed very well, and she was able to convey who they were and how they lived, as well as a sense of their interior lives. There are not that many photographers who can do that.’

In 1978 Mark produced ‘Ward 81’, this was a collection of photographs that Mary Ellen Mark took at a state psychiatric hospital in Oregon. She lived at the hospital for two months in an effort to build relationships with patients to create a series of accurate representations of mental illnesses within mental health hospitals.

Mary Ellen Mark took interest in portraying and representing issues usually ignored by the standard frontline media, such as; mental illness, homelessness, and drug dealing. When asked about why she enjoys taking on projects like this, Mark responded ‘I would die if I had to be confined, I don’t want to feel that I’m missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph.’

My personal study will focus on mental illness and the different areas that it can affect, such as; education, home life, work, whilst also capturing the different 'levels' in a sense, from somewhat mild emotional distress, to more severe issues that sometimes require hospitalisation. Throughout this project I am going to investigate how not only the effects of mental illness affect the sufferer, but also how they are portrayed to the people surrounding them. I feel that this fits the stimulus of 'Occupation v Liberation' as people can often be overtaken by these illnesses, but CAN be 'liberated' through recovery, likewise they could be occupied by the stigma of mental illness, more than the illness it self. 

The reason I chose mental illness as my personal study was based on my own journey with it. I have spent over two and a half years known to Jerseys mental health services, and hospitalised numerous times, but despite this, between age 15, and my 18th birthday, the 17th August 2019, I had gained a childcare qualification, volunteered at 6 different places, worked 5 different jobs and made it through my first a level year. Recovery was made a very real possibility. Liberation.

During this I am going to use a mixture of self portraits, both on my own and including some of the people closest to me, and old archival imagery to show the progression of time, and how long, and how hard, this 'occupation' is. In order to do this so that I too am in the image I am going to have to put my camera on to the self timer setting, adjusting the shutter speed and iso to the type of lighting i am using, and how bright it is. I am also going to try to take inspiration from Francesca Woodman and manipulate my images to try to convey emotional state.  

However, due to the subject of mental health, and mental illness being extremely sensitive subjects I am going to have to ensure that with every photoshoot, and every justification of my images, I keep to the forefront of my mind that there is an extremely thin line between representative and offensive.  

During my personal investigation I learned to do a range of different things that will benefit me during my more in depth personal study.

At the beginning of the personal investigation we learned how to use adobe lightroom efficiently after only having previously used photoshop. Learning how to use lightroom has benefited my images at it allows me to quickly select the best out of a whole photoshoot and also edit them significantly more naturally than the creative edits that can be made via photoshop, and this helps to ensure that the final outcomes look slightly more ‘professional’ especially whilst editing landscapes.

I have also learned how to photograph portraits in the studio using effective lighting and flash. Doing this means that when I take portraits they look clear and detailed. This will help me in my personal study as I would like to focus on people and so will be using this skill regularly.

The area of photography that has inspired me most has been portraiture, I found this area the most interesting as there was so many things that we could cover. I have enjoyed portraiture as I have enjoyed being able to listening to peoples stories before trying to capture what they’ve been through in images.

Throughout my personal study I want to carry on exploring portraiture but take a more contemporary approach and instead explore how sometimes people can be somewhat ‘occupied’ by their mental illness, and be ‘liberated’ through recovery.

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The most visible similarity between these photographs of Francis Foots and Michelle Sanks work is that they are both a portrait of just one person. However a difference between the subjects is that Michelle Sanks model is visibly more modern and a significantly younger age, which could well indicate and represent the eras in which the photographs were captured. In terms of the context the photographs were taken there isn’t much of a background in Foots work as it is completely plain, where as in Michelle Sanks the image has quite clearly been taken in the teenage girls bedroom, her own environment, with her own belongings and this is a significant difference between the two photographs. Technically they would have been taken with very different type cameras due to the advance in technology over recent years, so the visibly better quality portrait is Michelle Sanks work, this appears as if it would have also been taken with artificial lighting due to the very clear and bright light, and this would’ve been unlikely within Francis Foots photograph.

Technically I took this photo on manual mode with my camera, I was using a slow shutter speed of 1/125, and had my ISO also low, and my white balance on daylight mode due to using box lighting on a soft sunlight type setting.

For the concept of this image I wanted to represent that Joan has seen and experienced a lot, and so I wanted to make this photo look more dramatic than some of my other more lighthearted finals. I did this by editing the image into black and white, using Adobe Lightroom Classic, and also using the ‘Sharpening – Light’ setting. I think that this was effective in achieving the aim of the image as as well as looking more dramatic, the black and white represented Joan’s age because during that era black and white photos would’ve been all that they had. Joan is also positioned in a way where she is not looking directly at the camera with quite a numb expression on her face, this added to the ‘drama’ and showed the viewer that she could possibly be quite unhappy.