In this draft I focused on only including the black and white portrait images of my family members without including any of my landscape images as I would like my book to relate to my essay as much as possible. In some of the blank spaces, I have some Polaroids of family members and important objects to me prepared to be stuck in on some of these blank spaces to fill up the pages. I’ve decided to for the title of ‘Home is where the family is’ for this book draft as it is focusing specifically on my family members.
1st idea1st idea
2nd idea :
For my second idea i’ve kept it similar to the first with keeping only portraits bases off of the photographers Walker Evans and Latoya Ruby Frazier but I rearranged the images. I started with a group image which includes multiple people but seems to only focus on my uncle to introduce my family. It then goes onto my brothers, and in the blank space next to my brothers there will be a Polaroid stuck in to go with the image. In page 6 my father is introduced into the book and the page next to his image will be kept blank. The next two pages that are left blank for a Polaroid to be placed. Towards the end of the book i’ve circled back around and included images of the family members who I included in the beginning of the book.
2nd idea2nd idea
3rd idea :
For this draft I will be playing around with the different types of layouts that Lightroom offers and will be adding some landscape images to brighten up the book. I aimed on pairing each of the places with certain people depending on how they relate to that area. For example the first place image is of the River Thames and you can faintly see London in the background, in the image on the next page is of my uncle who was originally born in London and therefore has a personal relationship with that area. On some of the blank pages I plan to stick in some Polaroids I took in preparation for the photo book. I also changed the colour of the front book and the colour of the font.
For this photo shoot, I have focused on the interior aspects of one of the andium homes which I was able to see and visit. With the imagery which I am creating, I have much less focused on the aesthetics and imagery quality but the contextual integrity, show casing the conditions of the homes as a prospect buyer visiting these homes. Another contributor to these images being rather bland and simple is again the fact that when viewing these homes, I had to pretend and put up a facade of being a possible buyer for these homes.
Andium homes, estate home, unoccupied
One of the most significant aspects of these homes is the cheap and low cost installations. Speaking to the estate agent, a lot of these fittings, such as the windows, kitchen and bathroom would have to be refitted within the next 5-7 years, a comparably short life span for these appliances. Appearing as relatively cheap housing in comparison to others, in the long term these homes require a lot of investment in order to upkeep and make them livable.
In terms of the visual aspects of these images, I feel as though the film style quality of them adds a significant point of interest as the warm light coming in through the windows creates a sort of nostalgic feel to them.The empty rooms are illuminated in a way which feels inviting and warm instead of the cubist forms of the outside, the terraced planning making them feel cramped and claustrophobic.
EXPERIMENTATION:
CONCEPT/THEMES:
Making these spread sheet type images is key to one of the concepts which I have been exploring whilst looking at Andium homes, repetition and continuity of these homes which very clearly follow the same structural plan from one home to the next. With this set of images, I am aiming to display this theme as a large repetition of previously taken images.
In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terrace house (UK) or townhouse (US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. They are also known in some areas as row houses or row homes (especially in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C.).
Terrace housing can be found throughout the world, though it is in abundance in Europe and Latin America, and extensive examples can be found in Australia and North America. The Place des Vosges in Paris (1605–1612) is one of the early examples of the style. Sometimes associated with the working class, historical and reproduction terraces have increasingly become part of the process of gentrification in certain inner-city areas.
For my personal investigation I intend to create a photo-book project around the theme of documenting the youth of today and our culture, which is rarely portrayed accurately in the media, this may also include certain subcultures that I could decide to delve into. I will try the best I can to capture and achieve a realistic portrait of each individual person. The question then arises, ‘What does a ‘real photo’ even look like: is it something you can hold? Is it something you can see on a screen and alter?’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 17.) I hope to answer this question throughout my efforts of trying to capture a ‘real’ portrait of an individual. How much can you really tell about a person through looking at a mere photograph of them?
Throughout my research I have looked at a few documentary photographers who I think have been close or have achieved an almost perfect, realistic representation of an individual. An example of this is Jim Goldberg, an accomplished photographer and creator of the renowned photo-book ‘Raised by Wolves’. Published in 1995, this was a decade long project for Goldberg, in which he documented a factual representation of the youth living on the streets of California and San Francisco; at the height of the AIDS epidemic and surrounded by drug abuse and violence.
USA. Hollywood, California. 1989. “Hollywood Freeway #1.” Napoleon plays chicken, hanging over the wire guardrail of the Hollywood freeway.
A key aspect of ‘Raised By Wolves’ was that it did not only include straight up photographs of the individuals, but it also included drawings and writings by them. Many photos in the collection have been scrawled with their own mini biography, such as Dave: an important character in ‘RBW’, in a double page spread featuring him (below), the words ‘I’m Dave, who the fuck are you? You need me to feel superior. I need you to laugh at’ are featured in his own handwriting. This has definitely impacted the authenticity of the images and made a bigger impact. This has provided another layer in which Goldberg has allowed these individuals to tell their own story through his efforts.
“I had the idea of having people write their stories on the photographs and, although I didn’t really know what I was doing, that turned out to be something really integral to my practice for 40 years. I just saw something that I felt I needed to try and make sense of. And using text enabled me to do that. ” (Jim Goldberg, ‘Raised By Wolves’, Huck 52 – The Documentary Photography Special 3)
Key Image Analysis: Dave, nicknamed ‘Tweeky Dave’, appeared as one of the most charismatic and sympathetic characters in Raised by Wolves. His early childhood had been plagued by abuse from his parents, addiction and constant violence. At the heart of the book is his doomed ‘love story’ between two 16-year-old runaways. Tweeky Dave and Beth, known as Echo, share an appetite for heroin but not much else. He moons after her, proposing marriage and children, fueled by impossible, sweet bravado as he walks, half-starved, down Hollywood Boulevard with his bedroll. She recognizes him as worse than a bad risk and dumps him to run with other boys, who abuse her. She becomes pregnant, has her baby, then returns, broke, to her mother’s home. The photo above is in my opinion one of the most disturbing in the book, it depicts Dave, the 16 year old runaway’s malnourished body. His scar from where his father shot him in the gut at ten years old is very apparent, he almost shows it off to the camera in a model pose-esque manner. Dave is dirty from his years spent on the streets, his hands and nail permanently tarnished, as well as his teeth covered in plaque and falling apart, from years of drug abuse and lack of cleanliness or medical care. Technically the image in itself is split into two sections, one a main body shot showing his clothing, scars. The other, a white page with a note saying ‘I’m Dave who the fuck are you? You need me 2 feel superior I need you 2 laugh at.’ Like most of the images in the book, it is black and white against a white background, this allows more emphasis to the tone, texture, line, light, and the balance of the composition. Goldberg hasn’t prepared this image at all, which is obvious: natural-on the street lighting is used, the image has in no way been staged and was most likely taken in the moment.
When discussing documentary photography I think one must also mention the photography movement which was Realism/Straight Photography. This is a concept of photography in which the reliance is on the camera’s technical ability to produce an image in sharp detail and without manipulation. Straight Photography images ‘depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it.’ These approaches to photography continue to define contemporary photographs, while being the foundation for many related movements, such as Documentary, Street photography and Photojournalism. Straight photography is often described as a ‘snapshot in time’ or a moment frozen in time, as it is a process and time based approach. ‘It represents immediacy, the passing of time as in history, or the freezing of time as in a snapshot. As Henri Cartier-Bresson once stated “we work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment on the way in which life itself unfolds. But inside movement there is one moment in which the elements in motion are in balance.” This notion of the “decisive moment” defined much of the Straight photography of the mid-20th century. ‘ (The Art Story- Straight Photography Movement). This movement relates completely to my study on Goldberg’s work. There is a sense of realness and immediacy within every photo in RBW. One in particular which I find to be the most genuine and ‘in the moment’ is the image of 14 year old girl, pregnant with triplets eating out of a box of cheerios in an empty kitchen. Alongside a drawing from a notebook of her father supposedly having sex with her. If the question we are asking is: are we capturing reality? Then I think that the answer is clearly yes, however every person will always react or interpret an image differently. ‘Photography merely depicts bodily functions: sex not love, violence not hate.’ (Eric Margolis: ‘The Matter with Kids Today’:98) A person’s thoughts, feelings and experiences will most likely always manipulate their view of a photograph. At the end of the day, the girl is still just a child caught in a world where she will have to grow up quickly and Goldberg has captured this in one telling image.
Another Photographer who was criticized for his controversial career was filmmaker and photographer Larry Clark. 18 year-old Clark began his career photographing the daily lives of his friends. Over the next several years, he revisited the project that ultimately culminated in the 1971 publication of the book Tulsa. This iconic and controversial book sparked the beginning of the world-renowned photographer / filmmaker’s creative journey. These photographs launched both Clark’s career and a new style of photography ‘marked by equal parts intimacy and objectivity, treating shocking images of sex, violence, and drug use as ordinary occurrences alongside pictures of friendly parties and moments of solitary contemplation.'(Phil-brook Museum of Art: Larry Clark, Tulsa).
Similar to Goldberg, Clark seemed over his career to have a growing obsession for documenting the lives of teenagers, both photographers documented the lives of the teenagers in very similar ways, through black and white straight photography and immersing themselves in their subjects. This is an element which I tried to re-create in my own photography, although it is of course different as I am one with the group already: I know all the subjects well and my photos were in a sense planned, as in most occasions, I went out specifically to take the photos. Clark and I also have this in common, as he (in the making of Tulsa) was among those he was photographing, they were his everyday friends and it was his everyday life back then. Below are some of my own images and responses to the various photographers I have looked at throughout my personal investigation.
To conclude, Jim Goldberg and Larry Clark both effectively capture the lives and routines of teenagers living on the streets the 70s,80s and 90s in the US. Through their documentary photography showing sex, drug use, pregnancies and the abundance of drug use and poverty surrounding their lives. Their method of straight photography clearly shows this without any manipulation to the stories or images included and brings into discussion challenging aspects of the morals and ethics of representation in this genre of photography. Both photographers have been able to tell “their truth”, whilst carefully avoiding elevating the subjects to the status of folk-hero. Its seems that navigating these tricky waters can change the outcome of any photographers work, so that we end up with different versions of the same truth.
Lissy Elle is a self made photographer and art director living in Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California.
She grew up in rural Ontario, Canada, where her passion and interest for photography started emerging at age 12, spurred by an obsessive and uncontrollable fear that one day she would forget her entire life if as she weren’t to document it. Her body of work is often inspired by this compulsion to photograph, as well as by the vivid colours of early childhood, recurring dreams, there blurry way we see things when we are either too happy or too sad, and the soft hands of the high renaissance.
For me, Elle truly captures the idealistic perception of not wanting to grow up, and finding it hard to let go of familiar things and simply having to deal with change – regardless of wether the changes are positive or negative. Her images create compelling perceptions of nostalgia, almost as if she’s yearning for the emotions she felt in the times she’s documented. This is shown through dream like imagery she creates, using warm, muted colours mixed with pastel palettes and incorporating surrealist elements into her works.
As a further investigation into the low cost housing market in Jersey I felt as though viewing the housing estate provided by Andium homes was an important part of this as their main mission is to help struggling families in Jersey to rent and purchase homes. It was extremely import to me to shed a light on these homes as they are typically associated with the lower income classes of Jersey, bringing with it many stereotypes about the sort of people who live in these homes. I wanted to display the cookie cutter type stylistic design of these homes, their simplicity meaning they are cheap and easy to build, despite their uninspiring facade, a lot of these homes still go for upwards of £400,000. I was also able to look inside of these homes and witness how little you can get for your money when it comes to the Jersey housing market.
SUCSESSFUL OUTCOMES:
As a major aspect of my project is to retain the privacy of various people that live on these estates, I decided to only capture images of homes which were unoccupied and therefore did not posses peoples personal belongings. I was able to enter these homes and witness the bare bones of the home and the sort of conditions which they were in to begin with. The most interesting part of these photos are the continuity and pattern of the homes, all being in a continuous manner.
IMAGE ANALYSIS:
After adding a variety of post production editing to these images, I was able to produce a somewhat retro looking image which showcases a film style photo. Upon first glance, the entire estate was drab and uninviting. The streets lined with homes comparable to the mass housing style of post soviet 1990’s Russia, with the cubist style architecture and close living quarters. It was undeniable that a lot of these homes are the epitome of social housing troubles, coming with them the notion that the next generation of drug abusing, gang related youth would be spawned from them, “home sweet home” being the last description coming to my head, yet none the less it is a safe heaven for those in need. The terraced style arrangement of these homes means that there is an ever lasting repetition from the first house to the next, very little privacy is to be expected by living here. Much like the outside, there was again the cookie cutter style home on the inside, zero character or stylistic integrity to be held with it, simply the cheapest and simplest methods of building a home have been applied. Rooms have been sized to the smallest possible fraction before they could be named a cupboard, most likely leading to over crowding to any family deciding to reside here . All in all this description seems harsh and unfair for these homes which at first glance, apart from the lack of character and structural integrity, seem to have nothing wrong with them, yet taking into account the £425,000 price tag into account, the story shifts quickly. Value versus product far outweighs what money can get you, and even a public government agency is unable to truly provide affordable housing for the large variety of people that call Jersey home. As a stylistic extension from the start of my project I have continued with the film style imagery which I have produced, and even within this context it fits in well stylistically and metaphorically as these homes are comparable to housing estates from post war Britain.
ADDING GRAIN EFFECT ON DIGITAL IMAGES:
When zooming in and inspecting these images, I have added a very apparent noise filter to these images in order to get rid of the crisp and sharp nature of the digital images. Film images are also typically very warm toned, being saturated with reds, oranges and yellows and therefore I did the same with my imagery. Adding a gradient map which encompasses these colors. It was also important to add relevant contrast and highlight within these photos as film images typically look fairly washed in brighter weather conditions, and extremely dramatic in darker ones. The combination of these two factors means that these images are fairly similar to the results of normal film images.
How do Nan Goldin and David Kirscher’s photographs represent the concept of Love?
“A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’s really about relationships and feelings… It’s really hard for me to do commercial work because people kind of want me to do ‘Nan Goldin’. They don’t understand that it’s not about a style or a look or a setup. It’s about emotional obsession and empathy.” – Nan Goldin (1)
My intention for my personal study is to show the pejorative and ameliorative sides of a romantic relationship. I am going to investigate what a ‘healthy relationship’ and an ‘unhealthy relationship’ is as I want to show the contrast of the two. I also want to investigate the intimacy of young love and show the difference of different relationships within my friendship group. Another idea that I want to investigate is the relationship between myself and my boyfriend, as I have never looked at myself and used me as a subject
This area of work interests me as I am in a relationship myself and would like to show people what my relationship is like. I would also like to show other relationships as every romantic relationship is special and different. I want to challenge the idea of teenagers thinking love is ‘weird’ or ‘strange’ as I have seen this myself amongst my peer group. Especially in Britain, we do not like to talk about the subject of death, love and intimacy, but I wish to talk about this and convey this in my essay and my photographs.
I am going to experiment my camera skills by using the manual mode setting and aperture mode on my canon 1300D camera to capture my images for my photo book. I am going to be using ISO, white balance and shutter speed to experiment with how the photos are going to look. In light room, I will be experimenting with different presets such as ‘Colour’, ‘Creative’, ‘Grain’ and ‘Sharpening’. I will also be experimenting with photo shop to edit skin complexion and other things that I can edit out of the photos. Additionally, I will be experimenting with ICM (Initial Camera Movement) to achieve a blurry and distorted image and to make the image abstract and unique.
The photographers that I would like to analyse are Nan Goldin and David Kirscher. I am analysing these photographers because they both work with the ideas of love and intimacy Goldin’s work portrays a more pejorative view of relationships as she tackles abuse from her boyfriend and shows the life of the LGBT community in the 80s and the prejudice they suffered. Whereas, Kirscher’s work portrays a more ameliorative view of relationships as he follows couples around different cities and photographs their intimate moments such as cuddling in bed and lounging around the house.
Goldin is a contemporary American photographer known for her gritty, intimate and chaotic images of friends, lovers, and herself in the Boston queer and party scenes of the time. Goldin has helped the public to understand that universal human experiences of desire, love, violence, and death are shared between all of us, and to create understanding between mainstream and sub cultural societies. She was very influenced by cinéma verité and was no doubt aware of the work of American photographer Larry Clark.
Larry Clark
Goldin took up photography about 1971 and her first published works (1973) were black-and-white images of transsexuals and transgender individuals. In 1974, she began to study art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she embarked on an enormous portrait of her life, making hundreds of colour transparencies of herself and her friends lying or sitting in bed, engaged in sexual play, recovering from physical violence against them, or injecting themselves with drugs.
Kirscher is a photographer based out of Paris and Madrid. His work is very diverse ranging from fashion and editorial work with models to even just photographing his friends in different situations. His passion for photography started when he was 15. Whether he is shooting with professional models and artificial light or with friends and natural light, he says “the bottom line is always the same: how to tell a story with pictures”. Kircher (2) He says he likes to play with the boundary between fiction and reality. He likes to photograph travels, parties, love scenes, black and white or colour photography, mostly analog, but also digital.
Realism 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. The movement began in the 1830s and 40s and photographers and viewers of photography marvelled at photography’s ability to capture an imprint of nature. Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), both suggested that it is a medium that allows nature to represent itself, seemingly without the intervention of the artist. Photography’s ability to depict people, objects and places realistically made it suitable for trying to record and document scientific discoveries and foreign places. From the early 20th century, photographs were regularly published in newspapers as part of the representation of local and national events. The main concept that Realism photographers tried to show were taking photographs which in stark contrast with Pictorialism, and shows real life. They moved away from trying to make photographs look like paintings and focusing on detail, shapes and images. Realism captures real life society and changes the public’s opinion. This then influenced the movement of photojournalism and documentary establishing them as recognised genres.
Lewis Hine‘s 1908 collection of photos for the National Child Labor Committee
Nan Goldin:
Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City. 1983.
Since the 1980s Goldin has changed the nature of art and documentary photography. By taking her camera everywhere she goes and shooting intimate photographs of otherwise invisible, underground moments in her community, she has turned photography of everyday people, of parties, of sexual moments, and private events into something important to explore as an artist. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a deeply personal narrative which portrays the artists’ life events. This project was formed out of the artist’s own experiences around Boston, New York, Berlin, and elsewhere in the late 1970s, 1980s. Within the project, she includes photographs of herself, her friends, her lovers and other close relatives in intimate moments of love and loss. These people experience ecstasy and pain through sex and drug use. They rejoice at dance clubs and bond with their children at home and they suffer from domestic violence and the ravages of AIDS. Goldin states “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the diary I let people read. The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember.” Goldin (3) In later work she expands her interest in desire, violence, and shows viewers that these interests have always been important to us, whilst also unsettling the languages of desire in paintings by male artists, through her own complex visions of sexuality, gender, and intimacy. The photo above depicts a dark scene of Goldin and her boyfriend after an argument. The tone of the photo shows how severe the conversation was as the image is dim and gloomy, again depicting the severity of their interaction. The fact that “Brian” is looking away from Goldin shows that there is tension between the couple and that he is obviously angry or upset at Nan. Additionally, this image conveys the abusive nature and environment that Nan was in at the time. A quote that portrays her ideology of relationships, ” I often fear that men and women are irrevocably strangers to each other, irreconcilably unsuited, almost as if they were from different planets. But there is an intense need for coupling in spite of it all. Even if relationships are destructive, people cling together. It’s a biochemical reaction … love can be an addiction. I have a strong desire to be independent, but at the same time a craving for the intensity that comes from independence. The tension this creates seems to be a universal problem: the struggle between autonomy and dependency. ” Goldin (4). Also, Goldin looking at Brian shows that even though they had a heated argument, she was still feeling love and fearful emotions towards him. This photo also shows the negative side of relationships and how dark and emotionally painful they can become.
David Kirscher is a photographer based in Paris and Madrid whose work is mainly surrounded by intimacy and emotions. Kirscher works on the assumption that if a picture doesn’t make him feel any emotion, it won’t to anybody. Kirscher also says to create a safe space for his models, communication is the key. Kirscher always explains what he’s doing, and tries to go step by step, and never forces anybody to do anything. When working with couples his main idea that he wants to portray is “definitely intimacy”. Kirscher (5). Kirscher states that he projects his imagery by writing every day, writing ideas, phrases, watching a lot of movies, going to the theater, gossiping on Instagram, going out, listening to music, etc. When he prepares a photo shoot, he takes that mass of information to create visual environments and images. He says that his intention is not to stimulate anyone’s sexual desire and what interests him is to provoke reactions from his viewers. A quote that hones in the ideas that David shows what I would like to present in my photographs is, “I honestly think that love is what we are here for. Not to accumulate more and more belongings, running from one meeting to another, to spend hours in a traffic jam to get to work, first to throw things away just to buy new ones, at the expense of us all, nature, people, animals, the earth. Our home. I honestly think that we are here to love. One person. Many people. The nature. The earth. Our home.” Kirscher (6). The photo above shares an intimate moment with the lovers Mateusz and Giulia. “This set is about heat, longing and trustful love…” Kirscher (7). The light nature of this photo portrays a positive scene and shows the love and relationship between two individuals. It also conveys a sense of trust and loyalty as the two models are holding one another and are close to each other, which also shows intimacy. Additionally, Giulia is smiling at Mateusz which shows her affection towards him and her love for him.
To conclude, I think that both artists show love and intimacy differently, one pejorative and one ameliorative. The contrast between the two are very present and by showing this contrast, I can display the different types of relationships people have. Even though both artists take very different approaches at technique and the overall aesthetic of their images, they still both have the main idea of intimacy. Additionally, both artists display a level of passion in their images, which also greatly inspired me to be more passionate and personal with my own work. Nan Goldin’s eerie and ominous approach really helped me take photos that were more dark and gloomy, portraying a more negative feel to the photos. David Kirscher’s caring and loving approach helped me take more luminous and light photos, portraying a more positive feel to my images. I think I was able to successfully present the ideas I had for my photo book in this project as these artists really inspired me to go out of my comfort zone. Furthermore, by experimenting with my photo shoots I was able to figure out if I wanted to do just me and my boyfriend or other relationships, and I settled with photos of me and my boyfriend. Lastly, I am very satisfied with the outcome of this project and the overall aesthetic of the images I produced and how the layout looks for my photo book.
This is one of my favourite images from my first photo shoot as I think it captures the idea of young love and intimacy perfectly. I think by having Jack and I staring at the camera, it makes the photo more intense and personal as it is including the viewer of the photo as well as me and Jack. Moreover, I think this photo portrays an ominous feeling, similar to Goldin’s photos. This image is quite dark and melancholy as neither of us are smiling, just staring straight at the camera with a blank expression. This could be interpreted in many ways by the viewers of the image, which makes them think more about the idea behind the photo. Furthermore, I am placing my head on Jack’s shoulder, which shows my trust towards him. Both of us are also in our underwear, which further conveys our comfortableness around each other as we are not afraid of how we look to the other person. This photo is at the end of my photo book as I think for the narrative, it looked aesthetically the best. Additionally, I have interpreted the concept of love by showing both sides of ‘love’, good and bad. Not every relationship is perfect and there won’t always be happy times, but, as a couple there must be trust and you should communicate with each other. I wanted this ideology to be shown in my images and I think I have successfully illustrated this in my work. I think my work was quite similar to both Goldin’s and Kirscher’s work as they were my main inspirations for this project. I really enjoyed their very intense and passionate work and that really aided me with experimenting with self portrait and work including my boyfriend.
While Francesca Woodman’s career may have been short lived, her work has become increasingly more popular since her death. At age 22, Woodman committed suicide. This has cast a darker shadow over her photographs and its difficult to view her work without relating it back to her mental illness.
Woodman’s images are mostly self-portraits. George Woodman, her father, told The Guardian, “She was concentrating on the picture. That was why she didn’t want people around. She didn’t want any distractions.” Woodman produced over 800 images, focusing on a surrealist approach and using long exposure to create a burred image that merges the subject with its background.
Image analysis:
Context/Concept:
Like most of Woodman’s images, this one plays on the idea of identity and a freedom from gravity. However, taken the year previous to her first suicide attempt, this image may also look at Woodman’s possible consideration of hanging as a means of taking one’s own life.
Visual:
This image shows Woodman dangling from a door frame. She wears only a shirt. In front of her is a chair. Woodman herself could be considered almost Christ-like as her pose is close to that forced upon Jesus during his crucifixion. Similar to her other works, the levitation suggests a further exploration of Woodman’s need for weightlessness. This need may have stemmed from Woodman’s metal illness and desire to escape her negative feelings.
The placement of the chair in the image suggests a further darker tone. A common form of suicide is by handing. When one hangs themselves they often kick a chair from under themselves. While the chair is this image has clearly not been kicked over, it does suggest that Woodman may have been considering the idea.
However, since this image was taken in 1978, two years before Woodman’s first and unsuccessful suicide attempt, it is unlikely that the image relates to suicide at all.
This is a series of images from my second photo shoot, which I have re-edited in a drastically different way. They have kept the visual noise and black bars, however they have now had black & white filters applied, with gradient overlays in the center points of the images, which was designed to look like a heat map/infrared camera.
How do Diana Markosian and Rita Puig-Serra Costa express the notion of family history and relationships in their work?
“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)
The notion of family is a subject that has been thoroughly explored by photographers such as Rita Puig-serra Costa and Diana Markosian. However, “when it comes to interpreting internal family dynamics, perspective is everything” (Hawarth,S. and Mclaney, S, 2016, 8). I believe each photographer portrays an either positive or negative view in regards to their personal relations, making it important to consider their point of view when deciding how much weight their narrative bears when showing the truth behind family dynamics. My personal study is focused on my family’s history; more specifically the story of both my parents and important events in their life which lead to me being where I am today. I have chosen to analyze Markosian because her project “Inventing My Father” contrasts directly with Costa’s study “Where Mimosa Bloom” which I will also be referring to throughout this essay. I like the way Markosian explores the absence of her father in her life in such a personal and raw way, which eventually leads to a reunion which she captured through images. The photographs along with the context she provides into her life, makes this project very interesting. Equally, I think the way Costa explores her family through the use of archival images and objects was effective as it really conveyed a sense of love and importance of family. I specifically loved how her entire project was an homage to her mother since carefully photographed objects paired with thoughtfully taken portraits further shows how fond she is of her family. These two photographers were particularly interesting to me as I felt I could personally relate to both bodies of work. Due to my portuguese heritage, family is a of great importance to me and is valued highly in my family’s culture. However, my parents choosing to separate also led to the lack of a parental figure in my life which will be included in the narrative I intend to tell. In this essay I will be discussing the notion of family and relationships, loss and hope in the works of both these artists.
Realism is the concept of capturing things in their natural element. This genre of photography is most useful when trying to capture something such as family history, as documentary photography allows us to be able to see someone’s real life situation through a photograph. Photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Paul Strand focused on documenting the effects of urbanization and industrialization on working class Americans. This was something very prominent at the time of this movement, as the great depression in 1929 left a lot of people struggling. We now see this type of photography as realism. I feel as if this movement fits in well with my personal study as it recognizes the importance of capturing raw, documentary style images which I think is necessary when exploring something as personal as a family’s history, especially involving immigration and the struggle surrounding that journey. Images of this sort are characterized by having a wide depth of field and having sharp focus which contradicts the pictorialist style. The move away from creating a painterly aesthetic ultimately opened the door to a more forensic approach but also one that is open to distortion, manipulation and the notion of narrative. This will ultimately depend on the agenda of the artist, their integrity and skill in delivering a message, story or sequence of events.
In the words of Martin Parr, “most family albums are a form of propaganda, where the family looks perfect and everyone is smiling” (Hawarth, s and Mclaney 2016, 7). Although to certain extent I believe this is true, Markosian goes against this idea as she uses a non-traditional method of exploring the family concept. Instead of portraying a sense of happiness and love, which is typically associated with family relationships, Markosian chooses a more raw and honest approach highlighting how she grew up without her father figure and turning that into the foundation that her project is built upon. In this context, I believe the words of John Tagg are appropriate as the view that “the camera is an instrument of evidence” (John Tagg:1988) perfectly demonstrates how Markosian’s work stands out amongst other artists exploring the same themes, since a certain truthfulness radiates from her images which goes against the dominating stereotype that every family is perfect, leading to a more contemporary output which appeals to modern day people.This view is put across quite skillfully and subtly through the use of black and white images which puts forward a sense of emptiness since the monotone theme is often associated with despair. This means that the audience will be able to feel a certain coldness and the lack of emotion, while also simultaneously feeling a surge of emotion through the scenes and objects depicted in the images leading to an interesting contrast that is highly effective throughout her work. The use of archival imagery is complementary to Markosian’s photography since by itself it would usually portray a sense of happiness, however with the context, it is instead replaced with a slight sense of resentment, especially the archival image showing her dad cut out of an image.
I believe the image above to be one of Markosian’s best not just due to its impeccable technicality, but also because it is rich in context. This image shows a suitcase belonging to her father containing things such as undelivered letters, newspaper clippings, and a shirt he was saving for her brother’s wedding. This image is in black and white making it more emotionally detached yet since the objects are sentimental it creates an interesting juxtaposition, as it shows the photographer is conflicted over her feelings.I believe Diana Markosian represents a modern wave of photography where beauty can be found in imperfections, and appreciated.
“where mimosa bloom” by Costa takes the completely opposite approach into the exploration of family culture. It becomes obvious that the entire project is very thoughtful and the audience can almost feel an overpowering sense of the love Costa has for her family. Although Costa focuses on the positiveness of relationships with family, I believe it is the underlying theme of her mother’s death which makes her work particularly stand out since it reinforces the view that “real families aren’t often idyllic” (Hawarth,S. and Mclaney, S, 2016, 7) , even though on the surface, her family circumstances appear favourable. While exploring important people, objects and places that play a significant role in her relationship with her mum, she alludes to her death in an ennobling way. This notion is put across carefully through many aspects throughout the book such as a light colour scheme which conveys a sense of delicacy through pastel shades and also the metaphorical link to mimosa, a tree that blooms bright, yellow flowers in Spring, in Barcelona, where Costa is from.
This image is one which perhaps conducts the most emotion. In this double page spread we see Costa clutching a premature bird in her hand. Costa said, “When she died, I felt like a bird whose mother had abandoned the nest. I had to learn how to fly on my own,”. The context in combination with the image depicts a real sense of vulnerability, conveyed through the bird, that Costa is feeling in relation to not having her mother anymore. I think that using the bird as a medium for her own feelings, further shows how much thought and care was taken into each image as this has deep metaphorical value. I think that Rita’s work is a more traditional way of portraying family as she utilises portraiture and archival objects in a positive way, while also showing feelings and emotions through metaphors. I believe Rita Puig-Serra’s work represents positive sentiments towards relationships giving an almost romantic representation of a typical family unit.This book exudes closeness and sentimentality, by showing a kind of poetic bond between her relatives. However, with the view that “photography is a system of visual editing” (John Szarkowski:1976), the possibility of work being refined and changed to reflect perfectionism could be high.
To conclude, both Markosian and Costa have created very emotional pieces of work based on their own personal family stories and journeys. Although we do get a sense of love from Markosian’s work, I believe this sentiment is often fighting against a feeling of hatred and resentment towards her father, whereas we purely get the feeling of love and closeness from Costa’s photo book with hint of sadness due to the loss of her mother. Costa’s photo book contains a very unique color palette containing light, delicate, pastel colors which is expected as her images are delicately framed and excrete fondness towards her family. On the other hand, Markosian’s body of work contains a lot of black and white images which shows that there is a lot of distance between her and the subject, yet all the things she photographs are of rich sentimental meaning to her. Both photographers also make use of archival images and objects, Costa utilises this to show a deep connection to her mother whereas due to the nature of Markosian’s work, her archival objects are used to show her father as being someone she is detached from.
Bibliography:
Bright, S. and Van Erp, H.(2019). Photography Decoded. London: octopus Publishing House
Howarth, S. and McLaney, S. (2016). Family photography now. London: …….
Szarkowski, John (1976), William Eggleston’s Guide. New York & Cambridge, MA: The Museum of Modern Art & The MIT Press
Tagg, John (1988). The Burden of Representation. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan
What are the differences between reality, witness and point of view?
“What are the differences between reality, witness and point of view?”– Bright and Van Erp 2019:19
My personal investigation includes documentation of my own dance training and how it has developed over time. I first started dance training in 2010. My memories and experiences are often supported by images from the time, but can often be in contradicted too. In the essay I will aim to discuss the extent to which documentary photography and the notion of narrative actually portrays reality.
Walker Evans photographic series ‘Let us now praise famous men’ and Diana Markosian’s photographic series entitled ‘Inventing my father’ both explore reality, witness and point of view in quite different ways. Photographers may attempt to capture or create reality through the making of imagery, but it is the transference of this information to the audience which gives the work “life”. This is shown within Evans photographic series where he uses portraiture to represent raw emotions in farmers during the Great Depression. Looking into these photographs they are very simple and the topic of ‘reality’ is significant in his work, further showing that he is a witness in emotional times within the family photographed. Continuing, Marosians archival project can additionally be seen as showcasing as exploring reality within her family life, presenting a personal feel to the project without witnessing the early stages of her life.
Realism and Straight Photography was a responseto and rejection of, pictorialism in the early 20th Century, and presents life “how it is”. This area mostly focused on looking into cultural and social issues of the time, this was done through creating high quality images which are illusionistic. Additionally, this is a documentary style which focuses on real people in their natural situations. This genre was most useful when trying to capture family history as it allows us to be able to see someones real life situation through a photograph. Photographer Diana Markosian focused on this element within her work when documenting the effects her father not being in the family had on her. This was a prominent aspect during her life and I feel as if it fits well into my personal study as it recognises the importance of capturing moments in time. Evans is also a great example of this subject as he can be seen to use the documentation style within his projects such as ‘Let us now praise famous men’. Images within this area of study can be seen as contradicting the pictoralist style while using sharp focus to capture emotion and effects clearly.
Walker Evans is known as being one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. His sharp photographs of the harsh realities of life for specific groups and communities shows us clearly what we “need” to see, without being biased. We can also see he has authenticity within his work. Walker Evans most recognizable work is from his project ‘ Let us Now Praise Famous Men’ a series where he explores Alabama farmers during the Great Depression from portrait using a documentation style of photography. It is clear to see what the families have gone through and how they don’t know any different. He is accurate with representing his work in the way he is successful at capturing raw images through simplicity. Evans uses natural lighting to capture his images and does not position the models, but photographs them in their typical element adding a sense of truthfulness and reality.
This image above is one of Evans most well known images, an image representing family lives and a sense of reality while showing truth during that time. We can see that the main subject of the image is a young boy who is sat on a what seems like old bed. Due to the black and white edit and contrast working together, it appears he is dirty while sitting in an also filthy and worn bed which can be seen from the thin mattress, also representing it was cheap. The bags under his eyes can be sign of tiredness or malnutrition, adding to the idea that the boy is in an unhygienic environment, causing stress. Looking into more detail, there is an old style of clothing which is worn which again can be seen as grubby. We do not know why his clothing is like this, but judging on the background of the image we can guess that is belongs to a working class family, further proposing that his family may work as farmers, a typical working class job in those days. The boy in the image is looking into the camera, suggesting that he may not know what the camera is, again repressing his class as he hasn’t seen luxury items like a camera. Furthermore, by looking at the boys face, it is noticeable that quite white in relation to other aspects of the image, this leads me to believe that a flash has been used to take the picture. Evans typical use of natural lighting can be seen as being used in this image from the deep shadowing on the right hand side of the image with an also brightly lit face.
Diana Markosian focuses on a non-traditional method in order to explore family concept as a way of showing personal exploration. Markosian can be seen to focus on emotion in her images where she focuses on the honest approach to her family instead of the. happiness and love which is what is typically seen in this type of photography. Her raw approach highlights how she grew up without her father which she uses as a basis towards her work. This is created through her use of archival images which are manipulated uniquely which I believe makes her work stand out. Due to using archival images in her work, this adds an element of truth to her work, helping to contrast to the stereotypical perfect family which puts a sense of emptiness into her work. Furthermore, this emotion can also be seen through the typical black and white effect which is associated with despair and creates a cold feeling within the audience. Markosian’s most well known project ‘Inventing my Father’, a project based on her mother leaving her father to move to California when Diana was seven years old. Diana had quoted “had no pictures of him, and over time forgot what he looked like”, inspiring her to later travelled back to Armenia to reconnect with the man she hadn’t’t had contact with for so long. For her mothers coping mechanism after moving away was cutting his image out of every photograph in the family album in order to forget about the life she had before California. She looked at these images as a way of coping with never knowing her father and decided to photograph and manipulate them to represent her documentation with finding her father one day. The images she took can be seen to be very raw and both truthful and untruthful at the same time. This allows for the audience to create their own interpretation of what the photos may convey. Carrying on from this, the truthfulness behind her images helps to show that archival imagery is a creative and efficient way of showing the past with black and white editing making it more emotionally detached. This represents that archival images can be a way to show the past truthfully and accurately at that point in time, concluding the investigation if this type of photograph can be seen as showing truth. Diana Markosian’s work clearly relates to my own because of the relation between archival imagery and us having our own idea behind the photographs.
Diana Markosian: “Inventing my Father”
This image shown above is from Markosian’s project ‘ Inventing my Father’ which explores her family history from when she was born to the time period where the project was published. The project is emotional and focuses mostly on the images she has taken. There is a raw approach to her work with a sense of truth to her work. We can see in the image above that conceptually it seems as if there has been a disappearance of a family member. The size and build appears to be a male; suggesting it is her father. The cut out also proposes that the father has either left or the mother has left him. Cutting something out is very drastic for precious family photographs, quite definite in fact. Carrying on from this, the cut out shows how important Diana’s mother was to her, being her only adult influence throughout her life. Furthermore, the edit also carries a lot of emotion through it which is obvious to the audience, these emotions include emptiness, loneliness and pain. To contrast, the contextual approach to this particular image is said that this particular image shows Diana’s mothers heavy emotion which can be seen as being in pain. She cut out her husbands image from the family photograph after she left him to move to California after he had been dissappearing for weeks on end and then showing up one day. The cut up also shows the loss of a family member and how he isnt ‘family’ anymore because of his unhealthy habits towards his loved ones.
“Inventing my Father”
“Inventing my Father”
“Inventing my Father”
In my response to still-life photography, I captured fully focused images of memorable objects used in my dance performances/ sentimental objects which had an influence in my career. Through positioning and composition of my objects, I created imagery which showcased the important awards/ hair pieces which were a part of typical performances. The positioning of these objects added a sense of authority towards my background as I was able to use lighting and camera settings to create realistic images which showcased the truth. The artificial lighting with the high shutter speed allowed me to create sharp focused images which could be been clearly, showcasing the ‘still-life look’.
To conclude, both Markosian and Evans have created emotionally charged bodies of work based on their own point of view on personal family stories. I believe that within Markosians work she is fighting mixed emotions towards her father; although there is also a sense of love, where as we don’t see these elements within Evans work as it is not based on him or his family, but other families. Evans’ projects contains mainly black and white image, helping to add to the emotional context behind it, possibly representing depression and negativity. Drama is created with high contrast, striking lines, shapes and clear cropping techniques. Similarly, Markosian uses the same technique to show distance between the family. Both photographers also make use of using portraiture as their main way of representing emotion and force us to confront our own sensibilities, emotions and level of compassion.
Bibiography
Bright, S. and Van Erp, H.(2019). Photography Decoded. London: octopus Publishing House
