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AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Identity & Place Project Evaluation (mock)

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concept
Throughout my mock exam finals I aimed to keep all of my images together whilst also making sense as individual edits. I wanted to take inspiration from Steve Rosenfield in terms of concept, as in his 'What I Be' project, people opened up about their 'secrets' and insecurities, and through my finals i told a part of my story, which was also a 'secret'. 
I wanted to tackle stigmatised issues such as emotional abuse and mental health because these are both topics that I feel extremely strongly about, and they're not usually spoken about openly, this only increases the stigma attached. I personally believe that if someone is experiencing either of these they are automatically labelled an 'attention seeker' or 'liar' and ultimately stop talking, they feel alone and this leads to the loss of identity, the feeling of not being able to get better from it, not knowing who you are, or what your purpose is.   
Through my finals I wanted to get across the message that you WILL get better, and it won't last forever. 

I personally feel like I was successful with my thoughts and ideas for what I aimed to do with this concept. I think I did this because I had 5 finals, the first was the beginning of my story, the second related to the emotional abuse and the feelings of loss of identity that came with it, the third was the 'invisible wounds' or affects that ARE suffered as a consequence, and the fourth and fifth represented the support available and recovery and moving on. This showed that although there may be a very negative beginning, there can always be a positive ending.
visual 
For the editing and visuals of my finals I took inspiration and was influenced by Barbara Krugers work. Kruger is known for her heavily cropped and contrasted black and white images, below a thick red border, with red text boxes for her bold, white writing to lay on top of. I edited my text this way, however had a few differences. 
In Krugers work she used the same font for all of her text, I did not do this, I changed my font to emphasise words, I also used fonts that I thought were more appropriate, for example, in my first image, for the word 'eight' I used the font Comic Sans, I did this because this is a font that I've always associated with primary school. 
Also, Kruger does not incorporate any colour into her images, and in my final, final piece, I used the history tool in Photoshop to bring Katie back into her original, unedited state, back into colour. I did this because this was one of the images representing getting better, and black and white photos are often associated with sadness, and this was not a sad edit. 

Overall, I'm happy with how my edits presented as finals once edited. I think that they were so eye catching whilst also getting across an important message.
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PRESENTATION PLAN OF FINALS – IDENTITY AND PLACE

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In terms of presenting my final pieces I am just going to be framing up my images, with a black border surrounding them.

I’d like to have my images printed on A4 and presented one below another in order.

I think that this will give all attention to the story being told and as my photos have a red border on the outsides of them, with red text boxes and bold text, they will stand out despite being framed in a uninteresting colour.

framing plan:

AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Identity FINAL PIECES + analysis

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This is the first image, in my somewhat series, of 5 final pieces. I chose to use this image as Katie is looking directly at the camera, however her facial expressions are not happy. I’ve chosen the phrase ‘I was only 8’ as my story started when I was 8 years old, and what I experienced shaped my identity into the person that I am today, 9 years later.

I took inspiration from Krugers editing but the ‘secrets’ told in Rosenfields ‘What I Be’ project. I personally feel this looked, visibly very effective because although the text automatically catches attention, the black and white image is also so strong and consequently very eye-catching.

In my second image I touched on how bullying/verbal/emotional abuse caused a loss of identity, and some of the questions that we ask ourselves when we do experience this.

who am i? 

what am i doing?

I broke some of the words up into separate boxes for separate letters, Kruger did this in one of her images and I thought it was interesting, I think it brings a lot of emphasis to individual ‘significant’ words.

In this image I’ve put the text ‘INVISIBLE WOUNDS’ across Katie’s eyes, I’ve done this because if something is invisible, you cannot see it, around Katie I’ve stated some of the serious effects that can be caused by these issues alongside the loss of a persons sense of self.

This final image is personally my favourite as even though it’s extremely personal to me, it does raise awareness on the issues that children and teens can involuntarily be forced to face, and all of these ‘invisible wounds’ are heavily stigmatised, causing young people to stay silent.

For this final edit I have chosen to use a photo of Katie at ‘the Bridge’. The Bridge is somewhere where children & families can access support, I thought this was appropriate for this image as in my text, I have listed places that young people can approach for help and support.

I thought that this was important to have incorporated somewhere in my finals because, not only do these issues usually require help, my story involved all of these people – another personal touch to my ‘identity’.

My final, final piece represented recovery and moving on.

In this edit I’d used the history tool to bring Katie back to colour, I did this because colour is often associated with happiness, where as black and white images are usually seen as depressing and sad.

I’ve written about what recovery can bring a person, for example; happiness, confidence and self-belief or self-worth. I’ve also written ‘tackling the stigma’ larger than the rest at the bottom of the image, this is because I feel that through my images I have tackled stigma.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Identity & Place Editing (MOCK EXAM)

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first edit:

First I started by increasing the brightness of the original image to +20 and the contrast to +25. I thought this may give me more control over the darker and lighter areas when I came to adjust the threshold.

I then used the threshold option to turn the image into a heavily contrasted black and white photograph – inspired by Kruger.

A lot of parts of this image were black, and so I attempted to use the exposure settings to try and change this. I changed the gamma correction to 9.99, which was the lowest.

I then played a bit with the curves to see if I could lighten anything to bring out some detail, this was totally trial and error.

I finished by adding text, and the red border.

another edit:

I began editing this piece by using threshold, I tried to use the amount where you were still able to see detail on the wall and the trees behind Katie.

As this image was a lot happier, I did want some colour, and so I then used the ‘history tool’ which enables you to ‘colour’ things in to rewind them to their unedited, original state.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

BARBARA KRUGER RESPONSE (experiment) FINALS

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‘I was only 8’

For my first edit I used a photo that was already quite dark, this was because I took this photograph as soon as I turned the camera on, the sun was only hitting one side of Katie’s face and therefore my camera was obviously on the incorrect settings, because the image came out extremely dark and shadowed, which I then tried to adjust while editing late on using the brightness and highlights settings.

‘forced to grow up’

I personally think that this photo looks a lot better as it wasn’t so close up and so I had more room to place bigger text surrounding Katie, I also took this image whilst sunlight was surrounding her, and so therefore, even before editing, the image was brighter and lighter.

‘you can’t have a rainbow,without rain’

As this image was a lot more positive, I chose to keep and enhance the colours, and use a brighter red background, I don’t think that this image looked as effective as it could have, this is because the coulors, although bright, don’t particularly go with each other nicely.

‘robbed of innocence’

I think that this image was the most like Krugers out of all of my experiments, this is because Kruger uses extremely heavy editing and there is a lot of black contrast, I have edited this image using the ‘threshold’ tool on Photoshop and this is something that I’ll probably take into the editing of my final images.

AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

MY PLAN FOR THE STIMULUS ‘IDENTITY & PLACE’

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In the exam I want to produce my final images by taking inspiration from the artists Barbara Kruger, and Steve Rosenfield. My final images will consist of portraits alongside text, they will be edited in the style of Barbara Kruger using Photoshop, but take the same approach as Rosenfield in regards to the text.

Personally, I believe that self portraits would have been more appropriate for this concept, however I did not feel comfortable doing this and so therefore have chosen to use portraits of some of  my closest friends; Erin, Daisy, and Katie, as they influence my social identity.

I’ve chosen to tackle some extremely controversial and sensitive topics, emotional abuse and mental illness and how the stigma and after effects can lead to ones loss of identity, and the consequences that change a person, whether that be for the better or not, afterwards, I have made this personal to me by incorporating some of my story and making it more personal.

I’m aiming for my images to be in a sort of ‘series’ and tell a story whilst also being able to be separate, individual images.

I want my final pieces to represent how these negative factors, that are very stigmatised, and very frowned upon and judged, do have long term effects on a child’s identity growing up, however that is not always negative. I want to represent the ‘loss of identity’ a child can feel and experience due to a negative environment.

To finish, I’d like to frame my final images together so that they can be seen as a whole story.

experiments:
 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Response to Barbara Kruger

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Barbara Kruger generally uses black and white photographs with heavy contrast as her background layer underneath bold red text boxes usually stating strong, somewhat controversial lines.

As I knew beforehand that I was going to be editing these images more than I usually would, I wanted to use natural lighting portraits as my background to even that out.

Although Kruger doesn’t use her photos as a ‘series’ I did want to use mine this way, whilst also addressing some topics that I’m extremely passionate about – the effects of mental illness, abuse, and the stigma that inevitably follows. 

Editing

first edit: when i recover; i won’t blame myself anymore

The first thing I did to this image was increase the canvas size so that I could then create the thick red border around the image – I increased the height and width to 1.5cm after a bit of trial and error to see which thickness I thought appeared best.

I created a ‘colour fill’ layer and dragged that underneath ‘layer 0’ in the layers column. I used the rectangle tool to create some rectangles, filled with the same shade red as the border, where I wanted the text to go.

I used the horizontal text tool to then place the text where I wanted it – I opened the ‘properties’ panel to adjust the font, size and colour of the text.

I then started to edit my photograph. I decreased the brightness to -20 and increased the contrast to +20. This made the whole image a bit darker but the colours a bit brighter – I did this so that when I put the image into black and white, I’d know which parts of the image were going to be darker and which were going to be lighter.

I put the photo into black and white, but I played around with some of the colour settings until the photo looked how I wanted it to look, this resulted in;

reds -2%

blues 143%

magentas -42%

I added some grain ((noise)) to this image to make it look more dramatic and give it some harsher editing, I increased the noise to 5.5% .

To finish this edit I added some dust and scratches, I left radius at 1 pixel and increased threshold to 35 levels.

second edit; you can’t have a rainbow, without a little pain

I started this edit by doing the same as the previous with the red border and text, however I used a brighter, more vibrant red as this was a more positive photo.

I started editing this image by decreasing the brightness to -40 and increasing the contrast to +40, I wanted the background to appear brighter, and as the subjects skin tone was slightly washed out, I decreased the brightness.

I kept adjusting the exposure settings until I was happy with how the photo was looking, the final settings were:

exposure +0.5

offset -0.002

gamma correction 0.83

I changed some of the settings in shadows/highlights:

shadows

amount 18%

tone 23%

radius 28

highlights

amount 49%

radius 13

adjustments 

colour -93%

midtones +1

To finish this edit I added noise at 10%, uniform.

AO2 Explore Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

BARBARA KRUGER & ANALYSIS (MOCK)

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Barbara Kruger was born in New Jersey, 1945. She attended a School of Visual Arts and went on to study Art and Design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She went on to get a job with Conde Nast Publications as a graphic designer, she was quickly promoted to head designer and carried on getting jobs such as; graphic designer, art director and picture editor.

Barbara Kruger is now a very conceptual artist, most of her work is made up from black and white photographs with strong text overlaid.

“I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.”

– barbara kruger
barbara kruger

 

Analysis

 

barbara kruger – ‘dont tread on me, dont tempt me’

 

This image is titled ‘Don’t tread on me. Don’t tempt me’ and is a good example of Barbara Kruger’s quickly recognisable aesthetic.  Krugers aesthetic generally includes phrases layered against a black and white photograph.

In this print Barbara Kruger presents an image of a snake, surrounded by a thick, bold red border, with text boxes splitting the phrase at both the top and bottom of the image. The font used is typically used in advertising, specifically, the well known, popular brand, supreme. Using a familiar and bold design catches peoples attention immediately, therefore reaching a greater amount of people.

Kruger uses red text boxes against black and white photographs producing a contrast between the text and the background, personally I think this is also highly effective as it keeps the two elements separate, rather than merging the whole image into one ‘layer’.