My second shoot went really well other than the fact that I was finding it hard to combat some of the shadows but in the end after editing the images I found I liked the shadows because it gaze a sinister vibe to them.

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 

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 relationships 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 in a project before.

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 in the younger generation. 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. On 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, and that is what I am exploring in my personal study. Nan 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, David 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. 

Nan Goldin is a contemporary American photographer 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. 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.  

David 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. 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.

Historical Context:

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 retaliate 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 brings up issues of society and was made with the intent to impact and change the lives of the subject. This then influenced the movement of photojournalism and documentary photography among the genre. Calotype, also called talbotype, is an early photographic technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot of Great Britain in the 1830s. In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. The areas that were hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (Gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper. The developing process permitted much shorter exposure times in the camera, down from one hour to one minute.

Nan Goldin:

Since the 1980s Nan 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 striking. 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.” 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 Nan 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. The tension this creates seems to be a universal problem: the struggle between autonomy and dependency.” Also, Nan looking at Brian shows that even though they had a heated argument, she was still feeling love and pejorative emotions towards him. This photo also shows the pejorative side of relationships and how dark and emotionally painful they can become.

David Kirscher:

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. David 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”. David 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.” The photo above shares an intimate moment with the lovers Mateusz and Giulia. “This set is about heat, longing and trustful love…” David Kirscher. The light nature of this photo portrays a ameliorative 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.

Conclusion:

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.

Bibliography:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nan-Goldin

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/goldin-nan/

https://beloved-stories.com/david-kirscher-exploring-intimacy-through-photography/?fbclid=IwAR2LoYfRQmJJskTWK5AG_JS9A_-aqKixJt6TT_489jcDEoPHv1FTK45zUhA

https://www.arismoskov.com/index.php/event-experience/310-david-kirscher

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/education/learning-resources/education-kits/photography/realism/

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-sac-artappreciation/chapter/reading-early-photography/

https://www.britannica.com/technology/calotype

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1651

• Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
• You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g.
• What are you going to investigate.
• How does this area/ work interest you?
• What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument?
• Whose work (artists/photographers) are you analysing and why?
• What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within. Include 1 or 2 quotes for or against.
• What links are there with your previous studies?
• What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph?
• What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?

Compare Francesca Woodman and Mary Ellen Mark’s representation/documentation of mental illness.

Bibliography:

• Author’s surname (year), Title of document. Location of site: website address (URL)
• Cooke (2014), Searching for the real Francesca Woodman. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/31/searching-for-the-real-francesca-woodman

Introduction:

For me, photography is a way to express perhaps more negative emotions in a non-judgmental medium. Perhaps people interpret the meaning in the wrong way, but the act of capturing the image gives a sense of control over the emotion behind it. That’s part of the reason that I wanted to explore mental illness via photography. After struggling with depression and anxiety in the past and at the time not really having a way to express how I was feeling, I wanted to explore and remember past emotions to educate others on mental illness, while additionally finding a new way for me to cope in the future. I am particularly fascinated by the work of Francesca Woodman. The young photographer was herself suffering from depression and her images are often seen to reflect this as a result of her suicide. Woodman’s images have a very personal feel to them. This is because she elected to photograph herself. George Woodman told The Guardian, “She was concentrating on the picture. That was why she didn’t want people around. She didn’t want any distractions.” (Cooke 2014). I find myself agreeing with this statement as I, too, prefer working alone without others getting my way. I also intent to mirror Woodman’s choice and use myself as the subject for my images. Individuality is important when it comes to mental illness; no one experiences it in quite the same way. Woodman expresses her illness in a way that is very personal to her and its interesting to gather an understanding of someone else’s experiences. However, I also wanted to see how people, who have never experienced severe mental illness, view mental illness. Mary Ellen Mark spent 36 days inside Oregon State Hospital on Ward 81. Mark was tasked with photographing the ward’s occupants along with journalist, Karen Jacobs who wrote a piece on their experience.

How can something that doesn’t physically exist be represented through photography?

The area I will be exploring in my personal study revolves around personal experiences in mental health. However this poses an intriguing question: How can something that doesn’t physically exist be represented through photography? I will be investigating different aspects of how photography can represent things that cannot be explicitly photographed, most notably Emotions. Showing an emotion through a photograph is easy; somebody crying or looking sad is simple enough to create in an image, however it gets much more complicated when you start trying to show those simple emotions without a necessarily obvious subject.

Take for example the work of Leif Sandberg; many of his images are self-portraits, which communicates the idea of self-reflection, and despite the fact he is part of many of his images, they are never intended for him to be ‘the subject’ the way he frames and manipulates his images make the subject something more obscure, something that doesn’t exist on a physical level. Ideas such as loss, aging, life, panic attacks and death are all explored through various images made by Sandberg, with him even saying “The Ending project is not from the outside, but from inside myself.” When talking about how photography has helped him in various aspects of his life. This goes to show that in order to create emotions through photography of something that doesn’t exist, personal experience can help out with understanding how to show these emotions.

I will be exploring these concepts using a diverse range of camera techniques like multiple exposures, slow shutter speeds, the use of a remote trigger, as well as exploring different lighting setups and techniques.  This subject of mental health and photographing invisible subjects links very nicely into the previously studied Occupation Vs Liberation topic, as it explores ideas of isolation and being trapped somewhere with no way to get out.

How do social political opinions influence Sheila Bright and Laurie Simmons into constructing reality?

How do social and political opinions influence the work of Sheila Bright and Lauri Simmons in constructing reality

• Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can use an opening quote that sets the scene. Or think more philosophically about the nature of photography and and feeble relationship with reality.
• You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study e.g.
• This form of work interests me
• As a teenager myself who has grown up influenced through different types of medium
• My personal study will focus on the construction of fantasy within society. Within my work I will explore what creates this fantasy from childhood such as the media, stereotypes and the childish mind. My project will address matters that match my views of society such as the idea of cradle to grave and unrealistic constructs such as unrealistic body images. I plan to uses images of toys and dolls that represent the childish mind and the fantasy society constructed at childhood. I will also take images of real things to represent my awakening to the bigger world and picture. You eventually realise how society is structured in a cradle to grave format and how the way we think is manipulated from a young age. I believe that now in the 21st century because of things like trends and social media it takes longer to become aware and how because of trends there is less individualism when we are supposed to be living in an age of acceptance.
• I am analyzing Sheila Pree because in her series Plastic Bodies she constructs a reality that puts across her socio-political views. She believes that women are misrepresented by dolls, so to prove this she takes pictures of dolls and edits them together to highlight, the outcome being quite haunting. I am analyzing Laurie Simmons because she constructs a reality out of dolls and toys that show her opinions of society in a tableux viviant kind of way. With her work she comments on stereotypical gender roles. Both photographers believe that these conceptions of life start from when we a children that is why they use dolls in their work.
• In 2003 Sheila Pree created her series of image Plastic bodies which aimed to show unrealistic body images and to challenge western ideals of whiteness and beauty. Her goal was to explore how this impacted young girls and women.
• In 1972 after her work, ‘objects with legs’ Laurie Simmons found an antique doll house and was inspired with how is represented roles in society and matched how many saw the world at the times. This was during the second wave feminist movement who saw dolls as creating unrealistic body images and domestic indoctrination for young girls. Her work borders tableaux viviant in the way that in most of her pieces she has set up dolls to be carrying out stereotypical domestic roles.
• What links are there with your previous studies?
• What have you explored so far in your Coursework or what are you going to photograph?
• How did or will your work develop.
• What camera skills, techniques or digital processes in Photoshop have or are you going to experiment with?

Biblography

–

 To what extent can we trust documentary photography to tell the truth about reality? 

"Reality, witness and point of view can actually blend into one onother." (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019:18)  

The quote above displays how all of these factors can be completely seperate from eachother, a point of view from one side of a story can alter the true reality of an event, however can alighn aswell. The reality is that I have younger twin sisters, they were born premature and were in intensive care for a month, I have then been a witness into them growing up, from baby to toddler, from toddler to child and now they are transitioning from child to teenager. They are still young, a thirteen year old is often viewed as still being a child, but as they're growing up they're being more and more exposed to the realities of the world and beginning to have a cusp of adulthood. As a witness of their development I have my own point of view, their collective identity as twins, the younger they were the more similar they looked and behaved. As babies if one threw up the other would in sympathy, however the further they deveoped the more individual they have become, one is an introvert one is an extrovert, one loves makeup and one is too lazy to do it so prefers a naturalistic look. As being part of a large family there are multiple points of views, my parents my sister Poppy and the twin sisters themselves. All of our points of views can be merged into one, a collective family identity which further melts into our reality and being witnesses to our development in life. 

For my personal project I will explore the lives of  my twin sisters and although they're seen to be very similar looks wise and personality wise, they're also drastically different. This interests me because the world percieves my sisters as a collective, as one but I want to present them as individuals, they have an exceptionally strong bond but are so different to eachother. 

Artists that I am interested in are Sian Davey, in particular, her project on her step-daughter 'Martha'. Davey's is able to capture the lives of both Martha and her friends who are transitioning from child to adult. Davey's also captures a set of twins who are Martha's friends. Davey tends to use a documentative approach to her photography, capturing the natural essence of Martha's development in life. ALthough they look very similar due to them being identical, the audience is able to distinguish that they do have some different characteristics e.g. their different hairstyles and clothing choices. I want to study Davey's work in particular because of her approach to photographing the teenagers, she isn't trying to sugar coat or emphasize their actions, but just want to capture what they do together and how they interact with eachother. 

Another artist I will study is Ariko Inaoka. During his travels in Iceland, he came across Erna and Hrefna, identical twin sisters. They have an ethereal bond and are incredible close to eachother. They are very similar and in Inaoka's photographs tend to wear the same outfits. I want to study Inaoka's work because he is able to portray how twins live in their own world. His pictorialistic approach is able to display this. However, I also want to have my own approach to Inaoka's photography, using his pictorialistic approach whilst displaying both the similarities and differences between the twins.

Straight photography and realism emerged in the 1840's and its intent was to showcase the realities of life, not to sugarcoat or maniplulate how the world should be percieved. I want to showcase the lives of my sisters how both they and I view their world, meaning I will use a documentative approach. However, I also want to use a pictorialistic approach to demonstrate how my sisters live in their own world, they see it through a different set of eyes. 

Mood Board:

“Nan Goldin is a contemporary American photographer who became famous in the 1980s for her gritty, intimate, often chaotic images of friends, lovers, and herself in the Boston queer and party scenes of the time. Her most famous body of work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has become an invaluable record of a creative community soon to be torn apart by the AIDS crisis – with many of the artist’s photographs now haunting memorials of friends and lovers lost to the disease.

Since the 1980s Nan 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 and worthy of attention – exhibiting in major galleries around the world.

In later work, Goldin’s photographs are placed alongside images of famous works by Old Masters in the Louvre. Here, she expands her interest in desire, violence, and looking to encompass the Western history of art and image-making, 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.” https://www.theartstory.org/artist/goldin-nan/

Image Analysis:

Technical:

This image looks like it was taken with natural light to capture the raw moment. This image has quite a high contrast and saturation which give it a ominous vibe. The aperture for this photo is very quite high and the depth of field is quite sharp. Also, the ISO will be around 400 and the white balance looks to be either daylight or shade.

Visual:

The colour of this photo is very saturated and is quite dark to give it a ominous and mysterious look to it. Also the cropping of this photo leads the eye to the people sitting on the bed. Also, the people being the main focus in the photo makes it stand out a lot.

Contextual:

This photo was taken to show one of the arguments Nan Goldin had with her partner and she wanted to portray a pejorative feel to the photo. Also, the context behind abuse and unhealthy relationships are prevalent in her work.

Conceptual:

Her work portrays gritty, intimate, often chaotic images of friends, lovers, and herself in the Boston queer and party scenes of the time. Also, she expands her interest in desire, violence, and looking to encompass the Western history of art and image-making, 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.

For my essay I have a few key ideas that I am looking at:

Love:

One idea that I am looking at is the idea of love and relationships. I want to look at my relationship with my boyfriend and also the relationships of my friends. I want to portray the idea of vulnerability in relationships and young love.

Inner Emotions:

Another idea I am looking at is inner emotions such as anxiety, fear and isolation in different relationships. I would like to photography different types of relationships, good and bad.

Possible essay questions:

How Can Photography Reflect Inner Emotions Such As Fear and Isolation?

How do Nan Goldin and David Kirscher photographs represent the concept of Love?