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COMPLETE ALL CW FOR MOCK EXAM

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DEADLINE: MOCK EXAM!
Mon-WED 10-12 Feb Class 13C & 13E
WED-FRI 12-14 Feb Class 13B

Interim deadline: Essay Draft MON 3 FEB

DEADLINE for Final Prints WED 5 FEB

INTERIM DEADLINE: FRI 7 FEB
DRAFT PHOTOBOOK LAYOUT

IN PREPARATION FOR MOCK EXAM MAKE SURE THE FOLLOWING IS READY BY THE END OF NEXT WEEK:

  1. A draft layout of your photobook before your Mock Exam day (that time is used to fine tune design with teacher)
  2. Complete and proof read essay by Mon 10 FEB so it is ready to be incorporated into book design. 
  3. Select final prints (5-6) from book project and put into into shared PRINTING folder here M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\A2 PRINTING.
    DEADLINE for submission: WED 5 FEB
  4. Make sure you monitor and track your progress by Fri 31 Jan using planner and tracking sheet below and publish on blog.

PLANNER – Download and save in your folder. Make sure you monitor and track your progress. 2 weeks remaining – including MOCK EXAM!

Personal-Study-Planner-Tracker-2020-Spring-Term-3Download

AT THE END OF YOUR FINAL MOCK EXAM DAY – ALL COURSEWORK MUST BE COMPLETE:

Structure your 3 day mock exam as follows:

Day 1: Complete essay, incl illustrations, referencing and bibliography + publish on blog (essay also needs to be added and presented at the end of your photobook)

Day 2: Complete photobook + blogpost showing design process and final evaluation. Use a combination of print screens + annotation

Day 3: Mount final prints + blogpost showing presentation of your final outcomes + evaluation. Finish and publish any missing blog posts as per planner and tracking sheet.

ESSAY
Include essay in the back of your book. Layout in text columns and make sure to include illustrations of your own images and that of artists, as well as a bibliography. Also publish essay as a separate blogpost

PHOTOBOOK
Final book design checked and signed off by teacher. make sure you have a made a blog post that charts your design decisions, including prints screens of final layout and write an evaluation.

BLURB – ORDER BOOK
Upload book design to BLURB, log onto your account on their website, pay and order the book.

Consider spending a few extra pounds on choosing better paper, such as Premium Lustre in check-out, change colour on end paper or choose different cloth/ linen

BLOGPOST
All blog posts in relation to the above must be published, including any other posts missing from previous work modules since the beginning of A2 academic year ie. Bunker, portraits and objects work, including zines which must be printed and bound ready for assessment and exhibition.

FINAL PRINTS
Select your final prints from book project and make a blog post showing ideas about how to present them.

Extra prints
Save each image in your name as a high-res image (4000 pixels) into shared PRINTING folder here M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\PRINTING

MOUNTING
Complete all mounting of final prints from photobook and all other previous CW projects.

FOLDER
Make sure each print is labelled with your name and candidate number and put in a BLACK folder together with all your other CW produced at AS.

See previous student, Stanley Lucas as a guide on blogposts that needs to be done and published before you the end of your Mock Exam

https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo19al/author/slucas08

Component 1 Personal Investigation

Essay Draft

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How has stories and literature influenced the work of Anna Gaksell?

Traditionally, throughout the 20th century photography was centered around capturing the decisive moment, however, we have come to explore the notion of creating this ‘decisive moment’ artificially, constructing scenes made for only the purpose of photography. Tableaux photographs have been made from the beginning of the medium, although Staged photography emerged as its own known genre in the 1980’s; both ideas involve composing a scene much like a painting, creating elements of Pictorialism. Anna Gaskell creates ominous photographs of women, taking themes from literature and stories, generating a dream-like narrative in her work. I chose to look at Gaskell due to her staged and tableaux approaches and how she uses her influences to warp them into her own narratives and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I am going to review the extent to which stories and literature has influenced her work using her imagery for Wonder (1996-97) influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Hide(1998) influenced by Brother’s Grimm tale The Magic Donkey. In my own work I intent to explore the stories of the myths and folklore based in my home of Jersey. Using Gaskell as my influence to explore the notions of the boundaries of a narrative from a literacy influence in the visual work and representations. I plan to explore these notions with the narrative of the legends, through tableaux and landscape the reality of these stories and their occupation of the island. 

Historical Context:

The movement that took the medium of photography and reinvented it into an art form is known to be Pictorialism. Pictorialists wanted to make the photographs look like painting and drawings to penetrate the art work, this eventually would happen and go on to juxtapose the original purpose of photographs.  In 1839 photography was first used in order to objectively present subjects scientifically, images were highly scientific, fixing the point on objects, and was not considered an art form; that is until pictorialism was presented.  The shift from photography being used to produce purely scientific and representational images happened from the 1850s when advocates such as the English painter Willian John Newton suggested that photography could also be artistic.  Although it can be traced back to these early ideas, the Pictorialist movement was most active during the 1880s and 1915, during its peak it had an international reach with centers in England, France and the USA.  Pictorialists were the first to begin to try and class photography as an art form, by doing so they spoke about the artistic value of photography as well as a debate surrounding the manipulation of photographs and the social role that eventually holds.  Pictorialist photographers used a range of darkroom techniques that allow the photographers to express themselves creatively using it as a medium to tell stories.

Anna Gaskell:

Anna Gaskell is a contemporary American artist known for creating contemporary work exploring themes from literature and stories. Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives, she explains her process of an attempt “to combine fiction, fact, and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work.”, Gaskell is creating imagery by merging together reality, fiction and her own personal touches of the two warping and blurring the lines between the known stories and her own twist on them. Creating photographs that depict narratives from literature that may not be the original people know, Gaskell takes her influences and warps them into her own, stretching the boundaries of the narrative of the stories and literature that has influenced her work. Gaskell’s work dips into the notion of Pictorialism, using tableaux methods to generate her photographs. Gaskell’s photo series “Wonder” is influenced off Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the work is produced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from the larger plots. The photographs are staged and planned in the style of ‘narrative photography’, the scenes are artificial, produced and only exist to be photographed.

I have chosen to look closer at Untitled #47 from Anna Gaskell’s series Wonder, the photograph depicts two young girls both dressed identically interacting with each other with a sense of urgency, one towering over the other holding their neck and nose.  Although interacting with each other they do not represent individuals, but instead, act out the contradictions and desires of a single psyche, Gaskell’s use of twins for the representation of Alice builds a connection and visual link of identicalness for in which we know they are being represented together rather than individually, while their unity is represented by their identical clothing and looks.  Gaskell has staged the photographs to create her own striking visual reinterpretation of Wonderland through the moments of Alice’s physical transformation, the mysterious and often cruel rituals they act out upon each other may be metaphors for disorientation and mental illness.  Gaskell’s work has no clear beginning or end containing ambiguous narratives, adding to the emphasis of the unknown and disorientation.  This idea is striking in comparison to Alice in Wonderland as the narrative can be originally taken as Alice’s own dreams taken from stories, the character collectively evoked is Alice, perhaps lost in the Wonderland of her own mind, unable to determine whether the bizarre things happening to her are real or the result of her imagination. Gaskell has created a alternative narrative one in which the audience is familiar with, generating a post-modern effect of a simulacra to entice her audience.  

In comparison to her series Wonderit is clear Gaskell has been influenced by other stories and pieces of literature which is clear to see in her later series Hide based off Brothers’ Grimm tale The Magic Donkey, this series has been suggested to be her most radical and abstract to date, the title of the series can be linked in reference to the children’s game ‘hide and seek’.  In this series Gaskell has again cast young girls as her forefront protagonists, placing them in photographs that emit a sense of nightmarish foreboding and thinly veiled violence.  Gaskell’s reference to the Brother’s Grimm story is brought out in the sense of anxiety that she creates with the dramatic lighting and camera angles.  

WORD COUNT:  1,035

Bibliography

Readings:

Quotes:

Component 1 Personal Investigation

Conclusion – draft

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Both photographers include family – in Walker Evans’ image you can clearly see the family of five standing together on the porch, and in Latoya Ruby’s image you can see a grandmother and her granddaughter. When it comes to the contexts of their images, they are similar in the way in which they both look at the effect of economic downfall on families. Evans was exploring the effect of the Great Depression on families within small communities, while Ruby was looking at her own family in the time of racism and economic downfall in her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. They also show the importance of family in dire situations, with each of them photographing families which seem to have strong relationships in times which were socially and financially difficult for them. However it is different in the way which while Evans was looking at multiple families and how they were effected by a country-wide event, Ruby was only looking at the effects of economic downfall in her small hometown, and her own family. As Latoya Ruby was looking at her own family, she had more of a connection with those who she was photographing and knew them well, so she could shape her photographs to suit their personalities, lives, ect, whereas Walker Evans didn’t know the families personally and did not have that connection, so he may not have been able to take images which truly reflect who these people are. When it comes to each of them as individuals, there are differences between the two which could effect the way they take their images and look at the events which they are documenting, such as the fact that Frazier is a woman and Evans is a man, so they would each look at the events in different ways – through a man’s point of view and a woman’s point of view. By investigating these two artists they have inspired and influenced my work greatly by showing me ways of approaching my chosen theme of family, such as taking candid images of them within their own homes or out socialising. Latoya Ruby Frazier was able to portray the importance of family through the use of exploring her own family members and taking images of them during a time of financial downfall and racism within her community, and Walker Evans was able to show this by taking images of three families who were just pulling through during the Great Depression.

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book specification

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Narrative: What is your story?
Describe in:

  • 3 words: My twin sisters.
  • A sentence: An insight into the life and bond of my twin sisters.
  • A paragraph: My twin sisters are identical, however, as they grow older they become less and less identical. People often class them as a collective rather than two individual girls. Twins have a bond that is incredibly strong and people often believe is ethereal or telekinetic. In my project, I want to display that although they do have a strong bond and are similar in many aspects; they are also different individuals. I will explore their interactions, the way they dress, items they own and what they like to do in their free time. They are twins but I like to think of them as doppelgangers; they may look alike both they are both different individuals.

Design: Consider the following

  • How you want your book to look and feel: I want
  • Paper and ink: Matte paper
  • Format, size and orientation: I want the book to be a portrait book and to be A4 size.
  • Binding and cover
  • Title: doppelgänger 
  • Structure and architecture
  • Design and layout
  • Editing and sequencing
  • Images and text
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Uncategorized

PICTORIANISM VS REALISM-Straight photography

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Julia Margaret Cameron was a photographer in the Victorian era. And she was special because she was one of the only female photographers back in her time and everyone was interested in her, she used her family and sibling for her photography .Her photographs focused on both religious and literally work.

Peter Henry Emerson was famous for his book that he wrote and his photographs that had a lot of realism in them and color.

A lot of groups of photographers arised in that time for example The Vienna Camera Club which was mostly on female nudes which raised a lot of concerns and questioned because now a days sexism is not much of a thing any more and females have more rights because the world became more modern, while in the old days specially examples like The Vienna Camera Club you can see how the females bodies where objectivide and that was a normal thing

the pictorialist where a group of photographers around the world which created photographs which had a lot of symbolism in them which where objects in a photograph that meant another thing most of the time about religious or literal stuff

Walker Evans was a documentary photographer that rejected Pictoralisim by photographing farmers or low class people and families and there houses to deliver a message to the people

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Personal Study- Essay Draft Three

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Essay Question- Is it possible for photography to capture moments in time, truthfully?

“What are the differenced between reality, witness and point of view?”– Bright and Van Erp 2019:19

Introduction

My personal investigation looks at my own documentation of my dance training and how it has developed by the time periods when I first started in 2010. I have explored the influence of time periods within my own dance life which are still present to my lifestyle to this day. Having large knowledge towards both practical and academic dance, I decided I wanted to base my project on this as I know I will be able to easily retrieve useful information into my project, enhance the imagery I produce as well as establishing a piece of work which I can cherish once grown older. In the essay I aim to discuss the extent to which both archival images and documentary photography actually portrays reality and how these style of images can capture if this image is true. To go along with this I will be referring to Walker Evens photographic series ‘let us now praise famous men’ and Diana Markosian’s photographic series entitled ‘ inventing my father’. Analysing photographers who captured imagery in two different styles allows me to illustrate wether documentation or archival styled images are the most foremost at producing images truthfully. These two photographers attempt to capture reality through imagery, with both also having other underlying subjects. In my project I am considered an insider looking into my early life, allowing subject to emotion to be explored as well as helping to create a more subjective view towards my reality of being a dancer, creating biased photographs.

Historical Context

Realism and Straight Photography was first introduced in the 1840s and looks at producing imagery which displays life how it is. Artists who work within this area mostly focused on looking into cultural and social issues which were revenant within that time, helping to gain recognition to issues and showcase detailed images to exhibit real life. Artist Frederick Henry Evens and his project ‘A sea of a Step’ is known to distinctly present realism through the use of lighting and space. He uses symbolism of creating subjective perspectives while changing the reliability of art movement. Focusing more on documentary photography, artist Walker Evens uses portraiture to show lifestyle within an enviroment which can sometimes be shown as being accurate or inaccurate. This carries me to explore my own topic which is based on my own dance lifestyle and I left that using a small element of documentary photography within my project would be nessesary to capture my intended subject. Carrying on from this, Paul Strand took an interesting approach to photographing objects where he uses the ‘Macro Technique’ which shows clear focus on light and shadowing. This gives an idea as to how Strands work is seen and how his work causes a narrative which can illustrate how the art movement can be truthful.

It is known that there has been an ongoing debate on how documentary photography portrays reality and if it is accurate which has been going on since the 1930s. Manipulation has been previously mentioned for effect from the Victorian era and is known to still be used in the present day which helps to suggest that photographers can’t actually portray reality through an image.

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” image

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 very emotional and focuses mostly on the images she has taken which don’t include a lot of editing, adding a raw approach to her work and showing it for how it originally was, adding an element 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, due to the size and build it looks like a male suggesting it is her father. The cut out also proposes that the father has either left or the mother has left him as a cut out is very drastic for precious family photographs. Carrying on from this, the cut out shows to the audience 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 as she cut out her husbands image from the family photograph after she left him to move to California after he had been dissapering 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. Technically, we don’t know whether this image has been taken with a camera because of the high quality phones which are used in this day and age. However, we can see that there has been artificial lighting used in taking the image because of shadowing.

Evans is known as being one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century through his sharp photographs which have deep meanings behind them. His typical use of documentation showcases his ability to look into different elements of life 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. Looking into his portraiture, it is clear to see what the families have gone through and how they don’t know any different. He has stated that he enjoys to use editing as a large part of his image as it develops an image even if you are trying to prove a realistic point. Evans imagery has been described as “You can’t sniff the stink of the quilts in the Evans pictures” showing a positive response to his work and emphasis how he is accurate with representing his work in the way he is successful at capturing raw images through simplicity. Evans uses naturalistic 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. Capturing the subject in their naturalistic environment allows a sense of authority to the images, adding emotion and a sense of sympathy.

AO3 Record Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Uncategorized

personal project photo shoot 2

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Introduction

This is my second attempt at a photo shoot for this project and i used a studio to photograph my self wearing a uniform to show how i want to be a part of the navy because i was motivated to do that from my great grandfather. And i wanted to show my motivation to be in the navy by photographing myself in my favorite uniform.

Studio

So i began by booking the studio and placing a permanent yellow lighting on a white background only from one side and i used the school’s camera by putting it on a tripod then i just set the timer on 5 seconds and kept photographing myself against the white background. And these are the photographs i came out with:

this is my first photograph in my MTP uniform making a random position and unfortunately the shutter speed was very slow so the photograph wasn’t in focus and there was a shadow effect in the back ground which i should’ve eliminated.
This is the second photograph with my hands in my pocket looking straight at the camera but unfortunately the same goes here for the shutter speed and the shadow but in addition my glasses also reflected the light in here so i should’ve moved the light to another position.
This is one of the most focused photographs because i was very still but still should’ve set the shutter speed faster
This photograph was taken by mistake so is probably no going to be used as it is very out of focus
this is a more full body photograph to show most of my body with the MTP training uniform.
now i put my Number 1s uniform or the Blue’s uniform which is more worn during parades or memorials , the camera was a bit more focused but still needed faster shutter speed
this is just an upper body photograph showing me saluting as i would to an officer while wearing my number 1s uniform.

Conclusion

So in conclusion i’m probably not going to use many photographs from this photo shoot as i had some technical issues with the photograph, what i learnt from this photo shoot is to use faster shutter speed and two lights instead of one to eliminate the shadow effect, and i will be doing this photo shoot again.

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Photo shoot plan

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The images will be of landscapes and areas that were of significance to my grad-parents and their relationship during the occupation. Will include Gory pier, albert pier, areas around Grouville and the sea.

For the photos I will be shooting my images with 2 rolls of vintage ilford blank and white film (FP4-125-35mm) that expired in 1996 the reason I will be doing this is that the ilages will be in blank and white which has “fine grain, medium contrast and outstanding sharpness.”

The film being out of date will mean that the images will likely be distorted with good amounts of grain. There may also be some defects in the developed images in the form of blotches or patches of distortions.

Image result for FP4 PLUS 35MM CANISTER FROM 1980
This is the same film that I will be using except the one in the image is newer.
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation

Archival Materials

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I have looked into using some archival material for my photo-book, exploring the Jersey archives I have found that the Dolmens I have visited were badly excavated int the 19th century and do not have good recorded documents of the sights so I will be unable to use them. Devil’s Hole however was and still is a tourism sight and had made a lot of news around them so there were a lot of postcards on it I have chosen the ones I did specifically as one matches a picture I have myself and the other I feel works well as the entrance of a story.