Topic Focus

Belonging – Tying in with family archival imagery, finding a sense of belonging in myself and my family setting

Environment – Exploring how environment effects your personal health and mental well being

Purpose – discovering the big question ever left unanswered as to why we are here

Essay questions

In what way does Carole Benitah explore childhood memories through her work as a method of understanding identity and self expression?

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

How chronic illness has inspired people to document their story through photography as a way of healing?

Does a portrait tell us more about the person portrayed or the photographer?

Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?

Jersey seen from the perspective of migrant workers. The labor of seasonal farm workers in Jersey has been an important part of the local economy for more than 150 years, yet their presence on the Island remains largely undocumented. Archival representation is usually limited to marketing material created by industry representatives, or staged photo opportunities with local media. ‘Invisible Hands’ aims to offer another perspective on agricultural labor in Jersey – that of the workers themselves. A collaboration between migrant workers, the artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat, with support from: Art House Jersey, One Foundation, the Polish Cultural Institute and the Polish Embassy.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall is a Canadian born, Vancouver based photographer who specializes in back lit tableaux photographs of the city of Vancouver itself. Wall studied at the University of British Colombia and graduated with a masters degree in photography in 1970. In the same year he relocated to London to study for a post graduate degree at the courtyard institute, studying with Manet expert T.J Clark. He then went on to become the Assistant professor at Nova Scotia college of Art and Design from 1974-1975 and he then became the associate professor at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia from 1976-1987 whilst also teaching at The University of British Columbia.

Wall is renowned for his tableaux reconstructions of scenarios he had witnessed himself that were representative of the political environment at the time. His photos are always back lit and in a cinematographic style, Depicting more of a story through this means. Due to his tableaux style, His shoots often consisted of many people such as cast, crew as well as digital post production workers. Almost all of his shoots are centered around suburban Vancouver, world renowned for the relationship between the suburban environment and the rural environment. Many of the suburban areas have mountainous backdrops and are bordered by forests as well as having a substantial amount of urban architecture, which Wall finds to be a great way of providing contrast within an image.

Image Analysis

The lighting in this image is warm and dull which is diffused throughout the bright-walled room. All the colours within the room are neutrals apart from what the people are wearing; this contrast is showing the difference in interest during this candid conversation. Also, reflected within the images is the photographers decision to stand in the middle to make an emphasis on the split of connection. The overall composition of the image is an uncomfortable feeling of divide and the conflict of interest reflected in the lines and colours that oppose to the human figures.

Art Movements & Isms

PICTORIALISM

Time period : 1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions

From the 1880s and onwards photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings e.g. manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus, blurred and fuzzy imagery based on allegorical and spiritual subject matter, including religious scenes.

Pictorialism reacted against mechanization and industrialisation. They abhorred the snapshot and were also dismayed at the increasing industrial exploitation of photography and practices that pandered to a commercial and professional establishment. The Pictorialists championed evocative photographs and individual expression and they constructed their images looking for harmony of matter, mind and spirit; the first was addressed through objective technique and process, the second in a considered application of the principles of composition and design, and the last by the development of a subjective and spiritual motive.

Artists associated

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Julia Margaret Cameron (one of the first socially accepted photographers during this period) – Peter Henry Emerson ‘naturalistic photography’ – book he wrote on the romanticism of photography with rural landscapes and figures within landscapes – The Vienna camera club (Austria) – The brotherhood of the linked ring (London) – Photo secession (New York)

Key works

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Julia Margaret Cameron was a photographer in the Victorian era. The bulk of Cameron’s photographs fit into two categories – closely framed portraits and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works. In the allegorical works in particular, her artistic influence was clearly Pre-Raphaelite, with far-away looks and limp poses and soft lighting. Cameron’s photographs were unconventional in their intimacy and their particular visual habit of created blur through both long exposures, where the subject moved and by leaving the lens intentionally out of focus. – Peter Henry Emerson – In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) expounded his theory of Naturalistic Photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art rather than science. Their handcrafted prints were in visual opposition to the sharp b/w contrast of the commercial print.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions

Went back to photography origins, with detail and purpose not recreating paintings. (closely associated with ‘straight photography’) photography grew up with claims of having 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.

Artists associated

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Paul Strand – Walker Evans

Key works

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Dorothea Lange – Lewis W Hine

Postmodernism can be seen as a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of the period that followed modernism’s dominance in cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. The term is associated with skepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality.

The time period that post-modernism boomed was 1970 to present day. As an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition – as there is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged. It embraces many different approaches to art making, and may be said to begin with pop art in the 1960s and to embrace much of what followed including conceptual art, neo-expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990s, for example, the infamous Andy Warhol.

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

Characteristics of Post-modernism

Post-modernism is used to express references from outside of the artwork, including the ideas of politics, culture, social and underlying historical issues within society.

Post-Modernism artists and influences

Damien Hirst

Away from the Flock is a floor-based sculpture consisting of a glass-walled tank filled with formaldehyde solution in which a dead sheep is fixed so that it appears to be alive and caught in movement. Thick white frames surround and support the tank, setting in brilliant relief the transparent turquoise of the solution in which the sheep is immersed. Away from the Flock is unusual for a Hirst sculpture in that it exists in three versions, all created the same year, of which ARTIST ROOM’s is the third.

Andy Warhol

Jeff Koon

Shrinking Violet stemmed from a short film that she created as part of her project about her mother. She made a film based around an interview that she did with her mum and made it up of archival images as well as documenting her everyday life. Part of the interview sparked her interest when her mother said ‘I’m not one of those shrinking violets in the work place’. This caught her attention as her role as simply doing what is expected of her, something that she want to challenge through her photographic work. This brought on the idea for creating a parody shoot as a dress as a persona, similar to her mum, and pose around the house mimicking the role of her mum portray. Shannon wanted this photo book to embody the traditional role of women our society perceives and for spectators to view the images she created to recognize themselves, their mothers, their sisters and their wives. Gender defines everyone and, at times, can be limiting. It makes us feel that we need to belong and conform to the expectations placed on us at birth solely on whether we were born male or female.

Throughout this personal study, I intend to explore the idea of hiding in plain and my sense of belonging in the environments around me. Through previous experiments last year exploring portraiture I covered the topic of concealment and following an unwanted path, so I wish to recycle these images due to their relevance in narrating my current story. These images are revealing a completely different side that’s never reflected in a normal every day setting. I will also continue this theme and expand on how I think and express myself now compared to how I historically thought.

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