Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. (2019). Photography Decoded London: Octopus publishing house
Is it Real?
“The question arises: If manipulation is the first thing someone thinks of in connection to photography, what does that say about the value of the photograph as a reflection of reality?” (Bright and Van Erp 2019:17)
“under what circumstances are these images to be trusted as real?” (Bright and Van Erp 2019:17)
“The daguerreotype has aspirations to both the realistic and the theatrical, as well as to the commercial. The ‘mirror’ can serve as a metaphor for reality, whereas the red velvet evokes theatre curtains, within which the beautiful drama would unfold.”(Bright and Van Erp 2019:17)
“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. What often follows is the addition of non realistic filters, editing, altering or cropping.” (Bright and Van Erp 2019:18)
What do I remember?
“For most people, looking at a snapshot does not only make one sad for the time or person gone but can also trigger memories of the past, bringing them right back into the present in the mind of the viewer.” (Bright and Van Erp 2019:37)
“In terms of memory, photographs are not just visual records but are concerned with human emotions.” (Bright and Van Erp 2019:38)
Annegret Soltau is a German visual artist. Photomontages of her own body and face sewn over or collaged with black thread are her most well known works. She uses the technique of black thread to portray the idea of identity and disguise. Her work questions personal identity on an abstract scale. For example, ‘Selbst’ is a chapter where she ties her face up with black thread in geometric patterns, this distorts and intensifies the beauty of her face. Through these self harming self-portraits, she demonstrates her story as a woman and the forced place women have had in society for many centuries. It was the first project where Soltau used a needle and thread to draw over a photograph and this style has become her hallmark. Annegret Soltau writes her story as a woman on the blank page of her face; it is a history of conflict, impulsive reactions to the family environment and the marginal position of women in the social context.
Her first project using thread in photography is titled ‘Selbst’. Using black thread, she stitched over self portraits into geometric patterns which joins the features of her face and enhance her beauty, or physically wraps the thread into a cocoon form which acts as a binding force, distorting her appearance through cutting into the flesh and removing freedom of movement. Her work with black thread seems to have a lot of symbolism behind it. At the same time, she is presenting herself as a women pushing against the role her sex has had in society for centuries through using the thread as a cocoon suggesting she will emerge as a new woman. However, one could argue that the cocoon signifies the oppression she has experienced as a woman. Furthermore, the thread cutting into her flesh and obscuring her features could be recalling her abusive childhood and the scars it left.
I have chosen Annegret Soltau as one of my references because the concept through her use of thread is intriguing. Like Soltau, I want to collage my images with thread to form geometric patterns which joins features on my face. The thread could act as a metaphor for the uncertainty and instability in my life. This could showcase that movement doesn’t necessarily mean freedom. Although constant movement can be exciting it doesn’t allow you to settle down in one place. It’s restricting in the way that you feel out of place, a sense of not feeling like you belong at “home”. This would be an interesting technique to carry out in my own work because of the symbolism behind it.
French photographer Carolle Benitah uses beads, coloured thread and scissors in order to alter her family photo albums to explore her memories during childhood as a way to understand her current identity. Benitah became interested in her family pictures when she looked through a family album and found herself “overwhelmed by an emotion”. She explains that the photographs represented “me, spoke about me and my family, told things about my identity, my place in the world, my family history and its secrets, the fears that constructed me, and many other things that contributed to who I am today”.
The artist says that she “excavated” images in which she appears from family albums and chose snapshots that relate to memories and loss. Benitah carried out a process of order, classification, scanning and then printing. She never manipulates the original photo. Once the images are chosen, she starts to tell her version of the story. Benitah explains that “The past of a human being, is neither permanent or finished, but reconstructed in the present time”. I find it interesting how Benitah doesn’t do anything directly on the original image. If you manipulate the original then it would be changed forever. However, there is some sort of dedication that comes when adjusting the original since you are essentially rewriting your past and making a statement.
For the last step she adds needlework. Embroidery is strongly linked to the environment in which she grew up in. She uses embroidery with a purpose, a decorative function to re-interpret her own history. “With each stitch I make a hole with a needle. Each hole is putting a death of my demons. It’s like an exorcism. I make holes in paper untilI am not hurting any more.”
I selected Benitah as one of my references because of the visual aspects portrayed in her work. For my own personal investigation, I would like to manipulate and physically edit my archival imagery through artistic techniques, whether that may be sewing, drawing or cutting.
She demonstrates her feelings towards her childhood from her current perspective, which is what I intend to do in my own project. Through artistic techniques, I want to portray how grateful I am to have lived in various countries. It has allowed me to gain cultural knowledge, new experiences and memories.
By manipulating my archival images, I want to demonstrate how memories slowly fade away in the passage of time. Revisiting my childhood images will help me to recall the moments in which the photographs were taken. The red illustrations will be symbolic of me leaving behind my traces in each country.
Carolle Benitah has embroidered red thread where both children have linked hands together. This area is the main visual element of the image since it is the only colour feature in the entire frame. As viewers, we know they are related because of the red string bounding their hands together. Their connection cannot be broken. The children are surrounded by large embroidered cockroaches leaving the viewer puzzled since we do not understand the context behind this piece. What I like about this image is that it’s completely up to the viewer’s interpretation. It doesn’t really make any sense because the concept is not personal to us but is for the artist. She has simply illustrated her ideas and how she views the moment that has been captured.
This is one of Benitah’s photography works where she has physically cut out and removed 2 figures. What intrigues me is that she hasn’t abandoned the figures, she has included them outside of the frame. Perhaps it is a metaphor for their lost connection with Benitah in present day. This is another piece where we as viewer’s don’t fully understand the context behind the photograph. The child on the left hand side has been covered in red thread, leaving only an outline of who was once there. This element contrasts with the remaining black and white subjects, highlighting its significance. Perhaps the missing figures are symbolic of her childhood memories slowly being erased.
For my Personal Investigation, I want to focus on my mobile family life and how this lifestyle has effected me as an individual. I will explore how living in different countries has allowed me to gain cultural knowledge, new experiences and memories. It has ultimately shaped who I am and how I perceive the world. Through childhood images, I want to highlight how grateful I am for the adventures I have had with my family and how they have encouraged me to continue traveling and exploring. The reason for this constant movement is because of my dad. His job as a teacher doesn’t involve travelling, however his boredom has urged him to live in different places with me and my mum.
For my photo-book to have a narrative, I will tell the story of how my mother and father met and fell in love in Peru. Since my father is a geography teacher, he takes the opportunity to go travelling whenever he can. Through applying to jobs in different countries, he ended up in Peru which is where he met my mother Isabel. I will present their love story through archival images and display highlights such as first moments together, the wedding day and when I was born. Afterwards, I want to explore my mixed identity and the different cultures I have been exposed to during childhood.
As the plan above explains, the narrative will start with archival images of my father and mother and their first encounters together as a couple. The middle section will contain archival images after I was born. It will be in chronological order and show how we moved from one country to another: Peru, Singapore, Austria, Thailand, Germany, Gran Canaria, England and Jersey. The final section could include digital photo-montages of self portraits to explore my current identity.
Simon Morley says ‘The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space.” (Morley 2010:12)
The exhibition The Invisible Hands is devoted to the migrant workforce employed in Jersey farming industry, their lives, living and working conditions in Jersey. The labour 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 is largely undocumented.
Invisible Hands offers another perspective on agricultural labour in Jersey from the workers themselves. It is a collaboration between migrant workers, the artist Alicia Rogalska and The Morning Boat.
‘I work as an artist to explore relationship and frameworks for others to respond to,’ Ms Rogalska explains. ‘I wanted the workers to have their own voice. It’s about acting as a support structure and providing the space for the workers to speak. They are often spoken about but rarely invited to speak themselves.’
The project includes a robot programmed to write a list of eight requests to improve working conditions for Polish migrants. Those eight points include reforms to the health and social security system that currently mean workers are not eligible for benefits until they have been in the Island for six months, and improvements in living conditions and wages for those undertaking the most difficult work. The robot demonstrates the increase in machinery and technology in the farming industry. This highlights that in the future, there may be no need for human labour.
Modernism was a broad movement of the first half of the 20th century. The movement rejected the dominance of older movements such as Naturalism and was in favour of new experimental ways of producing art.
DADAISM
In Europe during WWI the Dadaists wanted to break down the traditional definitions of art with the aim to merge art with everyday life. They embraced advanced production, developed mix media practices and engaged with social and political issues. Their photomontages was used to challenge the authority of mass cultural representations used in advertising in the press and magazines
Herbert Bayer – Lonesome City Dweller
SURREALISM
Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by Andre Breton and continued Dadaism’ exploration of everything irrational in art. It aimed to create art which had emerged directly from the unconscious without being shaped by reason, morality or aesthetic judgements. The surrealist explored dream imagery and they were an important art movement within Modernism involving anything from paintings, poetry, sculpture and photography.
Salvatore Dali (1904-1989)Maurice Tabard, 1928
LANDSCAPE
The machine age arrived and Modernism had a profound effect on photography. Landscape photographers moved away from “painting effects” and they began to exploit the medium’s ability to render fine detail. Ansel Adam’s landscape photographs came from his fascination with the natural environment. He would photograph at different times and seasons to explore the effects of changing patterns and intensities of light.
Ansel Adams (1902-84)
POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism explores power and the way economic and social forces exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures. Postmodernists have little or no faith in the unconscious as a source of creativity. Postmodernism has been criticised for its pessimism as it often critiques but fails to provide a positive vision of what it attacks.
Postmodernism was the name given to the shattering of modernism. In photography this was the direct challenge to the ideal of fine art photography. At the end of 1970s artists began to use codes and conventions of commercial photography against itself. It was also a sign of the of the collapsing of an opposition that had tainted men as artists. The arrival of female artists in 1980s Postmodernism had a huge impact on photography. New aspects of the social and private worlds of women made their way into galleries.
From the 1880s and onwards, photographers wanted photography to be art by trying to capture images that are similar to paintings. For example, manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas using blurred and fuzzy images including imagery based on spiritual subject matter and religious scenes. Pictorialism reacted against mechanisation and industrialisation.
ALLEGORICAL PAINTING
Allegory convey meaning which are not literal. It communicates its message by symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representations. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious or political significance and the figures are often personifications of ideas such as greed, charity or envy.
Paolo Veronese (1556)
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON
Julia Margaret Cameron was a photographer in the Victorian era. Her work can fit into two categories such as closely framed portraits and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works. Her photographs were out of the ordinary since she created blur through long exposures, where the subject moved and sometimes by leaving the lens out of focus.
PETER HENRY EMERSON: NATURALISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY
In 1889 he presented his theory of Naturalistic photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art form.
SALLY MANN
From her personal experiences she has created a haunting series of photographs about the loss of life. What Remains is a body of work that depicts landscapes, decomposing bodies and portraits of her children. She explores the divide between body and soul, life and death, spirit and earth through her photography.
Various photography groups and associations were involved in pictorialism such as: The Vienna Camera Club, The brotherhood of the Linked ring and Photo-Secession
Heinrich KuhnAlfred Horlsey Hinton Fleeting and Far (1903)
STRAIGHT
Photographers who believed in the photographic medium to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers wanted to create images that were only photographic rather than artistic. They focused on capturing clear images with great detail and sharpness.
REALISM
Associated with straight photography, it claims that photography has a special relationship to reality and the camera’s ability to record objectively was unquestioned. The media relies on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
Paul Strand
WALKER EVANS
He was the leading American documentary photographer of the 20th century. He rejected Pictorialism and focused on serious subject matters such as photographs of three Sharecropper families in the American South during the 1930s Depression.
SOCIAL REFORM PHOTOGRAPHY
A number of photographer’s such as Lewis W Wine and Dorothea Lange began to document the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on working class Americans. Their work brought the need for housing and labour reform to the attention of legislators and is what we now call photojournalism.
To begin my research for my personal investigation, I will take inspiration from examples of personal studies from the last couple of years from students very personal and mature subjects. I looked through photo-books from previous year 13 students to gain ideas.
Matthew Knapman: Is that My Blue Butterfly?
His project focuses on the life of his mother, diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The photo-book contains archival images that have been drawn, scratched and edited in order to illustrate his emotions and what his mother was going through. To convey his emotions through the photos he has used destructive methods such as using chemicals to showcase his anger and grief. What I like about this photo-book is that he uses art as a visual guide to tell the audience his mother’s story regarding the illness. He includes personal items into the photo-book such as his mothers hospital bracelet and a note which explains the reason behind the title. When creating my own photo-book, I would also like to add personal items, such as documents, in order to create a personal connection between the photographer and viewer.
Jude Luce: All my love
His photo-book gives insight into his family life. He displays this constant theme through photos of landscapes and objects in order to convey a deep, poetic meaning. Portraits have also been included to showcase the relationships he has with others and to display these individuals emotions. There is juxtaposition in his photo-book where he presents his mum and dad’s relationship when they were together with his own relationship. Through his photo-book he aims to showcase his development through his parents divorce and how that has shaped his life. He wanted to display an obvious them of attachment but also an underlying theme of detachment. Like Matthew Knapman’s photo-book, he has also included sentimental items in order to help convey his narrative. The concept of presenting his life as stable, depicted through his relationship with his girlfriend, as well as unstable, through the divorce of his parents, displays contrast since the viewer gets to see two sides.
