Mike Kelley is a well known photographer. Many of his works have become high profile and have been widely talked about. Some of his most prevalent works are; The Banana Man, More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, Pay For Your Pleasure,Ahh…Youth!, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites. The works that I want to many focus on and look at in my project are from the Ahh…Youth collection.
Ahh…Youth! is a group of eight Cibachrome prints of mug-shot photographs, seven showing stuffed and knitted animals, and the eighth a youthful, harshly lit image of Kelley himself, taken from a high school yearbook. The seemingly innocent children’s toys are framed in such a way as to impart a sense of deviousness to each, while Kelley – well turned out with a buttoned collar and his long hair brushed neatly backwards – appears at once impish and awkward.
The inclusion of his own image amongst soiled toys is, in part, an act of “self-caricature,” as the artist, critic, and friend of Kelley’s, John Miller, has suggested. At the same time, Kelley stares menacingly outwards as if to provoke the viewer. The resonance of “youth” in the work’s title is, as in many of Kelley’s works, left up to his audience to fathom. As Miller has explained, “(Kelley) considered art to be primarily a belief system in which viewers will make of artwork what they will.” But here, with the clash between infant playthings and the disaffected and awkward adolescent laid bare, “youth” becomes somehow euphemistic, conjuring everything from boyish tomfoolery to channelled aggression and teenage sexual awakening.
In 1992, the experimental rock band, Sonic Youth, used one of Kelley’s thrift-store soft-toy portraits from Ahh…Youth! for the cover of their album, Dirty. This helped to establish the work’s place in the canon of Kelley’s best-known creations, while the album’s title nudged the possibly sinister subtext of the work a little further into the light.
8 Silver Dye-Bleach Photographs – Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts
After surgery I was made to wear a back brace for 6 months post surgery this meant that it was visible over closes and I couldn’t hide it. This was very hard for me because I would get many people straining and making rude comments about what had happened to me. I decide to show the happy side of when I was in my spinal brace having my family there to support me and it didn’t stop we from enjoying myself completely. I wanted to show happiness through these images as the others are distressing and i felt there needed to be a break in that theme. I like these images of me and my sister I feel like they resonate freedom and happiness, much of the emotions I felt after surgery until all the health complications and repressions of surry came in.
Also I wanted to include some images of me as a little child before all of this was happening to me. I thought this could work really well as a start off to my book because I could arrange all the images in chronological order from the day I was born to present day. I feel like this could really benefit my book and how people who don’t know me are able to interpret it.
We are being given the task of writing a photographic essay comparing our work and an influential photographer of our choice we were given the task of coming up with our own questions so these were some of the ones I liked.
How chronic illness has inspired people to document their story through photography as a way of healing? – This could link to Joe Spences- Misbehaving Bodies
How do photographers use documentary photography as a way of healing?
How do two photographers display their responses to dealing with chronic Illness in different ways?
What motivates photographers to document their personal experiences and display them to the general public.?
How do photographers make their personal experiences relatable to so many others through visual displays and exhibitions?
How do heartbreaking experiences change the direction in which photographers chose to take their work?
Life experiences shape the way photographers decided to make there audience perceive there images. How do I do this and another artist in our works?
These were photos taken before and after surgery documented by my mum. These are the original images and I am going to put them all into lightroom classic cc to edit and sharpen some of the images.
These images are a mix of before and after i had surgery. I had spinal surgery back in 2015 and it have had such an impact on my life.
All of these images I want to use in my book to help tell the story of what happened to me visually and will give the audience some context behind everything and why it happened.
Bibliography- Adams,R. (1996) Beauty In Photography. New York: Aperture
Quote: how to incorporate a quote inside my own writing
(own text info before) critic Robert Adams says ; ‘THE POET William states succinctly what most poets believe: “Ideas are always wrong” This conviction helps account for the uneasy place of artists in the academy, the home of ideas.'(Adams 1996: 23)
I have chosen to look at her work because she uses a documentary photography style to showcase her battle with chronic illness much like what i want to do.
“An invigorating – if ultimately heartbreaking – experience.-The Guardian
Influential photographer Jo Spence’s (1934–92) work documents her diagnosis of breast cancer and subsequent healthcare regime throughout the 1980s. Her raw and confrontational photography is shown alongside Oreet Ashery’s (b. 1966) award-winning miniseries ‘Revisiting Genesis’, 2016. Ashery’s politically engaged work explores loss and the lived experience of chronic illness in the digital era. In October 2019, a new commission by Ashery, exploring the recent death of her father, will be added.
Follow your own path through this exhibition, challenge your understanding of ‘misbehaving’ or ‘untypical’ bodies, and reflect on how illness shapes identity”
Currently exhibiting her work. 30 May 2019—26 January 2020
Undoubtedly, her most heroic work was The Picture of Health, in 1982, which she began after being diagnosed with breast cancer. This series of self-portraits is both alternative therapy and a critical response to modern medicine, with Spence regaining ownership of her body by documenting her treatment.
In all of her work, Spence confronted us with the things society tries to conceal – not least women’s unconventional physiques. In The Picture of Health she upped the ante, bringing disease into the frame. In one bare-chested photo, she stands before a mammogram, her breast laid out between its slabs like a separate entity. Later, she poses in a biker’s helmet, holding up her arms to reveal battle scars.
Spence survived breast cancer, preferring Chinese medicine to more aggressive treatment. It’s incredibly sad that she then died of leukaemia in 1992, though she continued creating her playful, defiant photos until the end
For my personal study I am to going to explore the theme of liberation more in depth. Focusing on on critical illness and how cover coming it can be liberation but the scars and side effects still remain. I am going to be focusing my scoliosis spinal correction surgery and what like was like before and after. How i was given the chance a proper life with no limitation but how there actually are limitations side effects both psychological and physical. In 2014 I underwent spinal surgery to correct a curvature within my spine which was diagnosed as scoliosis. My spine was at a 70 degree curve meaning that my rib cage and internal organs were becoming severely affected by the curve. So, the doctors gave me the diagnosis that I was to have spinal correction surgery. This meant that I was to have two metal rods placed either side of my spine and twelve metal screws drilled into the spine so that it would not be able to go back to its original position. Unfortunately, as a result of this is that my spine is completely fused from T1 – L5 resulting in me having limited movement in my spine. So, all my movement comes from the top of my spine at Cervical vertebrae C1-C7 and the rest of the movement comes from the bottom of my spine at sacral vertebrae S1-S5. As you can see this serious limit the main areas for bending and twisting of my spine. After the operation I have been left with extreme pain as a result of extensive nerve damage in the lower portion as my spine causing me to rely on painkillers, physiotherapy. I don’t have a single day where i am not in pain. I want to document my hole experience to inspire others and so they know it not all bad. I have achieved many things after my spinal surgery despite my physical disadvantage. I am part of the island swim team and have gained national records and titles. Also I became a lifeguard and am currently training to be a swimming instructor. I want to show from this project how it dramatically affected my life but how i still got through it all.
I was to try speak to other people other people who have been through this same experience and trauma as me and get there personal recollections. I want to have casual interviews with them and tape the whole experience and uses some of the things they say in my photographs if that is writing over the images or incorporating in a photo montage. I don’t want it just to be about my experience I can to explore more how it effects people of all ages and how it impacts there life’s and how it is different and similar to mine.
Photo Shoot Ideas: 1. Body shoots looking at the damage to the body- Trying to do torso shots and then full body standing shots. I am going to do these of myself to start off with and then if i feel like it needs other people i will ask others but to start off i just want it to be about me.
2. Photographing medications and drugs that i have to take daily. I want to do it like a documentary kind of style. Almost like a day in the life of what i have to go through. Certain pills timings, pain relief jells that i have to put on my back.
3.Hobbies and occupations- swimming how it has been effected. Adaptions that have been put in place and how i have learned to overcome my disability. How other people judge me in a competitive scenario, being over looked.
4. Rehabilitation after my operation could be interesting to document. Looking at physiotherapy and pain management, how I have to go through abnormal processes to live day to day life as a normal person.
5. Archive photos- Images from before and after my surgery that help to document and tell my full story. I am going to as family and friends to see what images they have then I am going to take these edit them and with no doubt use them in my project.
Looking at archives medical records from the hospital. My first take is to contact the hospital where i had my surgery and try get all of the photos available like x-rays, documents, family shots e.g pics that my mum has of me before and after surgery.
I want to get family and friend to give there recollections of my operation what it was like from an outside perspective. Also looking at any images they have and seeing if i want to use them as archive material in my project.
1.modern character or quality of thought, expression, or technique.”a strange mix of nostalgia and modernism”
2.a style or movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms.”by the post-war period, modernism had become part of art history”
3.a movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Time period : The first half of the 20th century
Key characteristics/connections: Published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917, the photographic journal Camera Work featured some of the most important modernist photographers of the early twentieth century. Stating that he wanted to create ‘the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications’, Stieglitz published the journal with the aim of promoting photography as an art form in its own right. The final issue celebrated photography as the ‘first and only important contribution thus far of science to the arts’.
The effects of the First World War saw a dramatic change in attitudes towards the human body. Previously depictions of the human body were largely either for academic study, used as reference points for painters and draughtsmen, or in pictorialist compositions in which the female body was typically highly aestheticised.
This was reflected in artists’ and photographers’ depictions of the human form. Modernist photographers experimented with cropping and framing a single body part, distorting and accentuating its curves and angles. In 1936, the philosopher Walter Benjamin compared the camera to a surgeon’s knife, able to permeate the body by splicing it into fragments. As a result the body was often depersonalised, instead appearing as something unfamiliar, often almost plant or landscape-like
Modernist photographers enjoyed bringing together objects to reveal or create relationships between them. This can be seen in Tina Modotti’s Bandolier, Corn and Sickle 1927 or Margaret de Patta’s Ice Cube Tray with Marbles and Rice 1939. The result creates jarring or stricking compositions and heightens the texture and surface of each object.
Artists associated: Photographer, art dealer and publisher, Alfred Stieglitz is credited as one of the leaders of American modern photography in the early twentieth century. Revolutionary in his portrayal of still life and technical mastery of tone, Stieglitz called for photography’s acceptance as an art form, as well as introducing Avant-garde. European artists such as Pablo Picasso, constantin Brancusi and Francis Picabia to America’s art scene. Influenced by new developments in art, Stieglitz moved away from a more decorative, soft-edged ‘pictorialist’ style. His work The Steerage 1907, with its sharp focus and striking angles is often considered as a benchmark for the beginnings of modernist photography.
The 1920s and 1930s saw a close relationship between celebrity portraits and fashion. Modernist photographers including Irving Penn, Man Ray, George Platt Lynes and Edward Steichen, photographed artists, writers, musicians and Hollywood stars including Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Jean Cocteau. Featuring in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, these portraits were instrumental in shaping the celebrity’s public image. Rather than focusing on the sitter’s occupation and status, the images were innovative in their pose, composition and cropping, as seen with Penn’s corner portraits. Presenting well-known figures in unexpected or even abstract ways created iconic images rather than mere likenesses
Man Ray’s artistic career spanned painting, sculpture, film, prints and poetry, working in styles influenced by cubism, futurism, dada and surrealism. In 1930 he said that ‘painting is dead, finished’, and moved towards photography. He is perhaps most recognised for his use of the photographic method, solarisation and using photograms (developing directly onto photographic paper rather than onto film) which he dubbed as ‘rayographs’. Creating surreal and experimental work, often of famous figures such as Lee Miller and Dora Maar, Man Ray became a key figure within modernist photography.
Associations / business associated: The Bauhaus was one of the most influential art and design schools in the twentieth century, a seedbed of nearly all the art forms we now think of as modernist. The Bauhaus existed in three cities: Weimar 1919–1925, Dessau 1925–1932 and Berlin 1932–1933, where it closed due to pressure from the Nazis. Its aim was to bring art back into contact with everyday life, so design and craft were emphasised as much as fine art.
The Bauhaus embraced new technologies. This was particularly evident in the photography department, where the celebrated artists laszlo Moholy-Nagy. and Walter Peterhans encouraged students to use their cameras to imagine new worlds and focus on experimentation such as close-ups and photomontage. As Moholy-Nagy stated ‘everyone is equal before the machine … there is no tradition in technology, no class-consciousness’.
Methods/ techniques/ Proceses: Mounting a false brass lens to the side of his camera, American photographer Paul Strand would photograph his subjects using a second working lens hidden under his arm. Known as the candid camera technique, this allowed him to capture people without their knowledge. As the photographer describes, he wanted to make ‘portraits of people the way you see them in New York parks – sitting around, not posing, not conscious of being photographed’. From Jewish patriarchs to Irish washerwomen, Strand’s street photography offered a drastic alternative to posed and formal studio portraits.
Published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917, the photographic journal Camera Work featured some of the most important modernist photographers of the early twentieth century. Stating that he wanted to create ‘the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications’, Stieglitz published the journal with the aim of promoting photography as an art form in its own right. The final issue celebrated photography as the ‘first and only important contribution thus far of science to the arts’
Quotes:
Here are a few quotes by modernist photographers:
It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realise them Man Ray
The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Photography is a major force in explaining man to man Edward Steichen
PostModernism
Postmodernism is one of the most controversial movements in art and design history. Over two decades, from about 1970 to 1990, Postmodernism shattered established ideas about art and design, bringing a new self-awareness about style itself. An unstable mix of the theatrical and theoretical, Postmodernism ranges from the ludicrous to the luxurious – a visually thrilling, multifaceted style.
Postmodernism was a drastic departure from the utopian visions of modernism, which had been based on clarity and simplicity. The Modernists wanted to open a window onto a new world; Postmodernism’s key principles were complexity and contradiction. If Modernist objects suggested utopia, progress and machine-like perfection, then the Postmodern object seemed to come from a dystopian and far-from-perfect future. Postmodern designers salvaged and distressed materials to produce an aesthetic of urban apocalypse.
Postmodernism had begun as a radical fringe movement in the 1970s, but became the dominant look of the 1980s, the ‘designer decade’. Vivid colour, theatricality and exaggeration: everything was a style statement. Whether surfaces were glossy, faked or deliberately distressed, they reflected the desire to combine subversive statements with commercial appeal. Magazines and music were important mediums for disseminating this new phase of Postmodernism. The work of Italian designers – especially the groups Studio Alchymia and Memphis – was promoted across the world through publications like Domus . Meanwhile, the energy of post-punk subculture was broadcast far and wide through music videos and cutting-edge graphics. This was the moment of the New Wave: a few thrilling years when image was everything.
Modernisum VS Postmodernisum
Modernism
Postmodernism
Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till about 1945.
Postmodernism began after the Second World War, especially after 1968.
Its aim was criticism of the bourgeois social order of the 19th century and its world view. Modernist painting is considered to have begun with the French painter Édouard Manet.
The first use of the term postmodernism dates back to the 1870s. John Watkins Chapman referred to a postmodern style of painting which differed from French Impressionism. J.M. Thompson used the term to refer to changes in attitudes and beliefs in religion.
Low forms of art were a part of modernism. Simplicity and elegance in design are the characteristics of modern art.
Postmodern art brought high and low culture together by using industrial materials and pop culture imagery. Postmodern art is decorative.
Modernism was based on using rational and logical means to gain knowledge. It rejected realism. A hierarchical, organized, and determinate nature of knowledge characterized modernism.
Postmodernism denied the application of logical thinking. Rather, the thinking during the postmodern era was based on an unscientific, irrational thought process, as a reaction to modernism.
Modernism is based on European and Western thought.
Postmodernists believe in multiculturalism.
Modernist approach was objective, theoretical, and analytical.
Postmodernism was based on an anarchical, non-totalized, and indeterminate state of knowledge.
Modernist thinking is about the search of an abstract truth of life.
Postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no universal truth, abstract or otherwise.
Modernism attempts to construct a coherent world-view.
Postmodernism attempts to remove the difference between high and low.
Modernist thinking asserts that mankind progresses by using science and reason. It believes in learning from past experiences and trusts the texts that narrate the past.
Postmodernists believe that progress is the only way to justify the European domination on culture. They defy any truth in the text narrating the past and render it of no use in the present times.
Modernist historians believe in depth. They believe in going deep into a subject to fully analyze it.
Postmodernist thinkers believe in going by superficial appearances, they believe in playing on surfaces and show less or no concern towards the depth of subjects.
Modernism considers the original works as authentic.
Postmodernist thinkers base their views on hyper-reality; they get highly influenced by things propagated through media.
Modernists believe that morality can be defined.
Postmodernists believe that morality is relative.
The year 1939 is considered to have marked the end of modernism. In the 1970s, postmodern movement entered music. In art and architecture, it began to establish itself in the early 1980s. The exact year when modernism ended, and whether it ended in the real sense is debatable.
It is considered that postmodernism started going out of fashion around the late 1990s, and was replaced by post-postmodernism which has developed from and is a reaction to postmodernism. Metamodernism is a related term that was first used by Zavarzadeh in 1975 to describe aesthetics and attitudes emerging in the American literature in the mid-1950s.
During the modernist era, art and literary works were considered as unique creations of the artists. People were serious about the purpose of producing art and literary works. These works were believed to have a deep meaning, and novels and books predominated society. During the postmodernist era, with the onset of computers, media, and advancements in technology, television and computers became dominant in society. Art and literary works began to be copied and preserved by means of digital media. People no longer believed in art and literary works bearing one unique meaning; they rather believed in deriving their own meanings from works of art and literature. Interactive media and the Internet led to distribution of knowledge. Music by those like Mozart and Beethoven, which was appreciated during modernism, became less popular in the postmodern era. World music, Djs, and remixes characterized postmodernism. The architectural forms that were popular during modernism were replaced by a mix of different architectural styles in the postmodern times.
These are some ideas that i came up with with the stimulus we have been given of occupation vs Liberation. I have highlighted ideas that resonated with me and i felt I could work with.
MOUNTING LAYOUT IDEAS FOR FINAL OCCUPATION AND PERSONAL STUDY IMAGES:
Here are some proposals for ways in which I could exhibit and present my final images:
EVALUATION:
To evaluate my occupation project overall I believe it was a success and that I have been able to produce strong imagery and responses to tasks along with detailed image analysis’s that have explored the technical, contextual and conceptual elements of those images. I believe my strongest work in the occupation project was the bunker photography. This is because I found it the most interesting and therefore was able to give a lot more thought into it and produce some high quality images such as the ones portrayed alongside my still-life images that are mounted up in my portfolio folder. These images I feel could have been improved further by having carried out a second photoshoot on the bunkers or others similar, that I could’ve experimented on and captured further images which would have had been a lot more revised and contained a greater attention to detail and complexity. Having said this I still believe my work in this area was very strong and inputs significantly into the overall outcomes of the project.
To evaluate my personal study, overall I believe that it was highly successful in what I was trying to capture and the message I was trying to portray along with that. I believe the quality of my images was kept to a consistently high level and that all my shoots were methodical, and well carried out. I believe a finished photo-book was the best way to present the final outcomes, due to the large amount of sequencing involved and pairing between some of the images alongside the appropriately fitted and relevant quotes from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. One way I could have improved this project was by creating a plan to and photographing objects that my subject “Max” posseses which relate to the theme of extravagance and wealth and the contradiction this has to the stereotypical polish immigrant workers here in Jersey. This alongside the already captured images may have just added some further depth and detail to the overall portfolio and made my work slightly more interesting. Again, having said this I believe overall the the project was a significant success and had captured all of my aims and intentions in the final outcomes.
