In an effort to further develop my photo-book, Passing Youth, I decided I want to create a photo-shoot in response to the deadpan approach. With my initial narrative focusing on a group of young adults, I aim to photograph each of these individuals using the same format. I am going to place my subjects in front of a black background, having them face to camera directly with a neutral face.
Images:
Selection Process:
In deciding the most successful images, I picked the images with the best clarity. To do this I used the X|Y tool in Lightroom to compare, in greater detail, the quality of the images.
However, after placing these images alongside the remainder of the content for Passing Youth, I decided that I wanted the book’ narrative to become more revolved around myself. I response to this change, I carried out multiple photo-shoots of myself, capturing different angles, lighting and different body parts. My aim with these images are to give an insight into my character and by juxtaposing these with different contextual images, it gives the reader an understanding of the circumstances and different properties I’m surrounded by that have shaped my life.
I reduced all the original ideas for my photo-book to:
Location +Abstract portraits
Ephemera + portraits
Quiet images
Full-Bleed establishing shots
Focusing on the ‘Location’ aspect of my project, I focused on form and shape, and capturing images to use as quiet photos. I aimed to create images that would juxtapose with an abstract portrait of mine when designing the book.
I created a final selection (pictured below) to which I transferred to my ‘Book’ collection to be experimented with in the design process
I converted each of the images into black and white to keep the focus on the form and structure of the locations.
For this particular set of images, I mainly focused on the driving aspect of youth culture. A driver’s license typically marks the ‘coming of age’ for adolescents; the transition from the dependent nature of childhood to the responsibility and freedom that’s accompanied with adulthood. I aimed to capture the pleasures and frustrations of repairing or customising a car. Additionally, I aimed to photograph the abuse of freedom that’s common in youth. I am to carry out a shoot including the boot of a car, overloaded with alcoholic cans and bottles. This represents the careless driving aspect of my project, which I will accompany with a collected parking notice earlier on in the photobook.
Some other images I plan to capture, are candid portraits, images of injuries and finally of landscapes to add a sense of location to the project.
Selection process
Considering the large amount of images I started out with, I went through each photo and flagged the best quality ones. I rejected images that I felt had no relevance to the project, that were bad quality, blurred or had a bad composition. Having flagged all the images above, I went through each image colouring it either red, yellow or green: a traffic light system to sort which images I disliked, which images I was undecided on and which images I was 100% certain on.
Finally, I rated each of the images either 4 stars or 5 stars. Rating the images with 5 stars indicated to me that these were the images I was certain on using for the project and 4 stars indicated images that I still thought were good but am less likely to use. Rating the images with 4 stars allows me to return to the images should the 5 star photos not work in my photo-book.
Selection Process
For another shoot, I had 161 photos to filter through. Using the same process as before, I narrowed my photo-shoot set down to
Incorporating the idea of experimentation, I wanted to show the items that the adolescents may use, but avoiding documentation of them using it. Some things I’m aiming to photograph are:
Alcoholicbottles and cans, which will show the obvious experimentation youth do with alcohol.
Drug paraphernalia and Pills. Adolescents can often be seen trying to achieve altered mind states as they are not aware of the full risks or have a sense of immortality. They often feel that the risks behind illegal drug use apply to everyone else but not to themselves. Rolled currency notes have connotations of being used for drug use and so I may incorporate this into the shoot.
Tobacco, Skins and Filters. Much of today’s youth are renowned for smoking and so I’ve considered showcasing the use of tobacco in my project. Additionally photographing smoking skins and filters will further develop this.
Vape devices. Vaping is a fairly new and inventive way to consume nicotine, first emerging in 2003 and becoming popularised around 2014. Because of this, the devices are highly applicable to the youth today. The development of nicotine-salts created new addictions in both smoking and non-smoking teens. Especially after the invention of flavoured Juuls. Vapes are no longer seen or used to cure nicotine addiction, but as a ‘healthier’ way to create new ones.
Where am I photographing this?
I plan to carry out this photo-shoot at home. In order to achieve the effect I want, I’m aiming to create a home-made studio.
By using black card to create an infinity curve, I will be able to achieve an ‘invisible background’, resulting in my props becoming the only visible part of the image, and therefore the main focus.
How am I photographing this?
Having set up the personal studio, I plan to use natural light to highlight the props. I planed to use the infinity curve I created below to photograph my objects. However, a lot of my objects are dark, so I am experimenting with white and coloured paper to see the different outcomes
Setting up the infinity curve beside a large window where natural light can flood through.
using foil to reflect the light on the other side of the object.
Images:
Shoot: Black infinity curve
Edited images:
To edit these images, I used the editing software in both Lightroom and Photoshop. I started by editing the images in my catalog, decreasing the exposure where necessary and increasing the saturation of black in the photos. This allowed for an even black background, so that the objects would become isolated. For the images that still needed further work to reach this stage, I transferred them into photoshop and used both the pipette and the brush tool to get the desired background
in what way is identity and autobiography expressed in the work of cindy sherman and jen davis?
“I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.”
Both this essay and my creative project is all about documenting, whether it be how I feel about myself and how my chosen photographers, Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, reflect on their own personal experiences, both emotional and physical. The essay is going to delve into how both the photographers explore their identity and autobiography in their photographic work. My creative project will include self-portraits, landscapes, portraits and objects, to hopefully portray things about myself and my life. Jen Davis work shows a journey of self-discovery and portrays her feelings toward her looks. Our subject matters don’t align specifically, but there are some similarities, such as we both have taken self-portraits that show how we feel about ourselves. Cindy Sherman’s work is mainly role play, challenging gender stereotypes ; she dresses up as different types of people and poses for the camera, with a nod to cinematic scene portrayal. This is a kind of tableau, with carefully chosen locations, backdrops and props. However in an article she does explain that she does sometimes see herself in her images.
The photographers that I am studying in detail, Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, both explore identity and autobiography in their work, however they both use different genres of photography to do this. Cindy Sherman’s work relates to the post-modernism genre, as she doesn’t hide where she gets her inspiration for her work from but instead, she genuinely mocks it. All of her images have a ridiculing element to them, whether it maybe through her makeup, clothing or ridiculous props that are featured in her images. Her images literally poke fun at what society expects women to look like. The post-modernism genre was first seen in the 20th century, when architects criticised the style of the modernist architecture for being too formal, austere and functional. Post-modernist photographers, including Barbara Kruger, Corrine Day and Hannah Starkey, use their work to build on the themes and conceptual ideas that began during the modernist period.
Hannah Starkey
Corrine Day
Barbara Kruger
A quote I found (Susan Bright (2010) Autofocus) aligns directly with what Sherman wanted to do with her photography, “postmodern thinking led to a radical shift in the way that the body was presented and understood”, in the sense that her work has changed how viewers look at the female body. Jen Davis work relates to realism, even though her images are reconstructed, she hopes to document her own issues with her body and relationships and intimate fantasies with men. Realism came about in the 1940’s and aimed to provide an accurate representation of the real world, real problems, real life. The images, relating to realism were made to look more like photographs than art and were a reaction to pictorialism. Artists that are known in the realism genre, are Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange and Jacob Riis. I found a quote (Susan Bright (2010) Autofocus)that relates to Jen Davis photography work, “photographers have produced large bodies of work consisting of frank and intimate portraits and self-portraits that explore the gritty, bohemian lives of those around them and act as important documentation of the times they capture”, in the sense that the images that Jen Davis took over the span of 11 years investigated many aspects of her life, that wouldn’t have probably been explored without this project.
Jen Davis investigates identity and autobiography in her photographic project, Eleven Years, where she produced a large amount of beautiful self-portraits, using natural light and strong compositions, over the span of 11 years. In the project Davis images portray the ideas beauty, sense of identity and her struggles with her body image. In an article on (clampart (2014) https://clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/#thumbnails)Jen Davis describes the idea of ‘Eleven Years’ was to ” invite the viewer into the past eleven years of my private life, exploring the vulnerabilities… body, feelings of isolation, the battle to recognise beauty, a quest for intimacy, and sense of acceptance through the camera’s eye”. To me ‘Eleven Years’ does just that, it does allow the viewer to understand who Jen Davis really is, what she internally struggles with, and tells a story of her journey of change. As you flick through the photo book that she produced, her story starts to unravel before your eyes and it is clear that the person in the photo in the first image is not the same in the last image, but a different, more established version of Jen Davis. Davis cleverly describes how she personally feels about beauty and what she has captured within her images, “I couldn’t necessarily identify with the idea of someone seeing me as ‘beautiful,’ but I could accept that the pictures that I created and inhabited were.” clampart (2014) https://clampart.com/2014/04/eleven-years/#thumbnails) Essentially what Davis feels is that she cannot be beautiful but the images that she took were, is that because she could carefully compose them and enhance things that real life shows? Or was it because she felt she could truly be herself in front of camera? Why didn’t she feel beautiful?
Jen Davis – Untitled
This image is may relate to the way Davis feels about herself and lack of self-confidence. The light in this image is natural, which seeps through a gap and allows some light to shine on the face, illuminating the features. This aspect is truly beautiful and idyllic. Jen Davis employs compositional and lighting techniques that are reminiscent of The Dutch Masters. The Dutch Masters used and painted light in a very clever way, by featuring windows in their paintings. By adding these elements they illuminated the main element of the image. Jen Davis has done this multiple times throughout her book, projecting light onto herself. Did she do this to illuminate other things? To illuminate how the way she feels about herself contrasts with the way society views her.
Johannes Vermeer – The Milkmaid
A question that is created by this image is one of, what is she thinking about? What is running through her mind during this image was being taken? Is she thinking about how she feels about herself? Is she reflecting on how she felt during a part of her life? This aspect is unknown to the viewer but is what makes the image so powerful. This aspect is under the interpretation of the viewer and the viewer only. During my creative process I have taken many self-portraits and struggled to look back at them. It’s an interesting and weird feeling seeing yourself as if you were one of your friends looking at you. The criticism I felt towards myself was shocking. In an article (Diana Spechler (2012) https://www.oprah.com/health/jen-davis-self-portraits-weight-loss-and-photography/all), Jen Davis describes how she felt during her creative process, “It was like I was taking self-portraits,” she says, “except I wasn’t in them.”, it’s fascinating to think how Davis and myself feel so detached from the portraits of our own self, even though it is clearly us, as we know what we look like. Maybe it’s because we have our own perspective of ourselves and so does everyone else, but the self-portraits show us how we are seen in the world, reality. This quote from Davis creates the interesting question of does she lack identity? Or does she just lack the confidence to see herself within an image she took. Jen Davis work relates clearly to autobiography, not just because she tells her own story but because she investigates real and unconventional struggles of the life she lives.
Cindy Sherman cleverly investigates identity and autobiography in her work, which consists of hundreds of self-portraits where she dresses up in different outfits, puts strange make up and wears extravagant wigs, to alter her person to become a different one to portray different characters and story lines. These portrays explore identity and gender, and were made to intentionally mock how society expects women to dress, act and be. In the project, Complete Untitled Film Stills, where she created film-like stills by dressing up as different characters from mid-20th-century B movies and photographed herself in various locations. These images quickly became very popular and were used to spark up conversations on feminism, postmodernism and representation. In an article, Sherman described how she felt during her childhood. She was the youngest child and felt, in order to gain the attention of her family she would have to be different, and she achieved this by dressing up and changing her appearance. She made a clever statement in the article which I feel explains her intentions of all of her projects, “if you don’t like me this way, how do you like me this way?”. On the surface her images may not seem like they are about herself, but maybe if you look deeper, they are, maybe she enjoys changing her appearance, identity, herself entirely, even it is just for a photograph, for a split second. Is dressing up a part of an act of escapism for Sherman, but the question is what, what is she escaping?
Cindy Sherman – Untitled
The colours that are incorporated in this image are garish and bright, and don’t really complement each other, but clash. The background is almost over powering of the face within the image, was this the purpose? It brings about the question of what relevance does it have to the face that Sherman has portrayed. The lines within the background lead the viewers eye towards the face in the image. Overall, this image has a high level of composition. Who is Cindy Sherman trying to be here? Someone who likes to look pretty and glamorous? However, she seems to be mocking them, as the makeup is over the top and excessive. So, does she pretend to be different people to almost try and gain attention from people to make up for the lack of recognition from her family. During her childhood Sherman was obsessed with her appearance, and enjoyed to wear makeup, so does this image relate to her past self, and maybe she is mocking who she was? Her film stills were left untitled, and a critique to her work stated (Simon Hattenstone (2011), me, myself and i, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/15/cindy-sherman-interview), “All the photos are untitled – another way of distancing herself from the images.” But why did she want to do this? Was it because secretly the images were about herself and did depict who she really was? In another article, Sherman describes how she feels now about her own photographs, “I am a little more comfortable now in letting parts of myself show through.”, does this now mean that she is part of the photographs and they are intentionally about her, or still does she still have a detachment from them and herself within them. A quote from an article describes exactly how I feel about Shermans work, “through the use of their bodies, artists constantly question what it means to be human”.
Although this project is solely inspired by Jen Davis and Cindy Sherman, I have explored some differences during the progression of my project. All of our work is based on identity ;who we are and who we are not, who we strive to be and our internal monologue/autobiography. However, my work has become very abstract and some of the images are centred around things I love. The work I have produced have abstract meanings and when some people look at what I done may not understand what I am trying to portray and to be honest some of the things don’t even really make sense to myself. Like what is life, what is love, what is rebellion? Where does love come from? Why do we rebel? How have I rebelled, or have even I rebelled at all? My work itself is an act of rebellion. By taking pictures of things of I shouldn’t and when I shouldn’t, I have essentially rebelled. My work is also an act of love. By taking pictures in order to learn more about myself, and to document things, places, feelings and people I love. The similarities between mine and Cindy Shermans work is that by taking self-portraits we have explored who we are, and use make up to explore ourselves. After an in-depth study of Cindy Shermans work it is apparent that her images are made to show different characters and not herself. The differences between mine and Cindy Shermans work is that she intends to change her identity by dressing up and looking different. Does she dress up as people she wants to be and regrets not being? Her whole project is solely self-portraits that portray and mock societies views on women and how they should look, act and what they should become. We have seen this in the earlier work of Claude Cahun too ; body image, gender roles and stereotypes are pushed and pulled around. The viewer is left to make concious decisions about what it is they are seeing. The similarities between mine and Jen Davis work is that by taking self-portraits we have explored the idea of beauty, both within ourselves and others, and learnt things about ourselves. The differences between mine and Jen Davis work is the solely took self-portraits and looked in detail into her fantasies and how she yearns for intimacy. Over the span of 11 years Davis explored the relationships she had had and included many of them in her work. Overall, the photographers that I have studied have inspired my creative processes but have also allowed myself to explore different ideas too.
I created this photobook in an attempt to demonstrate the experiences and struggles that a teenage boy faces when passing through to adulthood. This is the final layout for my photobook. I have began and ended the book with black and white images as a way of showing that the experiences and thoughts of many teenage boys are trapped within them selves. Other than these two images, the rest of the book is very vivid and bright creating an almost psychedelic colour scheme. My original plan was to create the book in black and white to amplify the deep emotion I have attempted to portray. However, upon inspection of my first photoshoot I decided that the images would be a lot more powerful in heavily saturated colour. This creates frantic images with a lot to look at and emphasises the bestrewed mind of the teenage boy. The use of the multi-protagonist effect in my ages definitely proved to be the biggest obstacle. I believe if I had known how challenging this process would be, I could have planned more photoshoots and allowed my self more time for editing, so that my book could have consisted of more images. The sequence its self is split into three distinct portions. The first three images are highly saturated pictures all consisting of their own metaphorical meaning in relation to the teenage mind. The subsequent six images come in pairs, I have compared the three photos of Charlie with the objects ‘hidden in plain sight’ within the photos. I emphasised the Alcohol, cigarettes and poker to show these ‘taboo’ objects and how they are so simply and easily introduced into the life of a young teenager. I chose to show the closeups of the images before the photo they are compared with as an attempt to foreshadow what was to come. I believe this was the main meaning of my photobook followed by the effect this has on an individuals mind and their love towards themselves. This is seen in my final three images where I present Charlies reflection in a mirror not representing him properly. I did this to heighten the idea that he is disconnected from himself and not only does he not recognise the person he sees in the mirror but they are two completely different people. Overall I am happy with the outcome of my photobook, although it did not go exactly to plan, I believe that I still managed to convey meaning and a narrative in the way that I wanted to.
In order to make this image appear as if it is in complete darkness I increased the contrast and decreased the brightness on photoshop and then adjusted the whites & blacks in Lightroom. I used a computer screen to hold the image to create the reflection and I coloured out parts of the computer using the clone stamp tool to create complete darkness.
I took this photo with a Go-Pro attached to a beam in the ceiling. I has to rotate the image in order to make it more symmetrical and I then had to readjust the colour, clarity and contrast in order to make the image look more like my other two final pieces from this shoot.
This is the final photo in my sequence, so I made it B&W to amplify the emotional effect of this reflection of charlie. I kept the mirror reflection yet I removed charlie from the image to emphasise a sense of disconnection from himself.
For this image I have increased the saturation to greatly increase the vibrant colours within the photo. I was aiming to create a sense of joyfulness in this picture as it is the only photo that I believe holds a connection between childhood and young adulthood in relation to my subject.
I wanted to compare these two images side by side as I am trying to draw emphasis to the unhealthy habits that form due to peer pressure and ‘lad culture’, however I also wanted all my images to have a full bleed across the entire page so they can be viewed in as much detail as possible.
I started creating my front cover. I wanted the image to be very abstract, and create questions for the viewer as to what the book was going to portray. I have named the book ‘5:15’ because that is the time I wake up everyday and the images that are included in my book essentially illustrate what shows what I do during my waking hours, how I feel and who I am. image 1 and 3 shows my first layout for the cover, I personally didn’t feel the placement worked and didn’t want the title and my name to be separated.image 2 and 4 shows another layout that I liked, where the title and name was placed together. I felt this worked better. I knew when I started the planning process of my book I wanted the quote “id rather walk alone” on the front cover. image 5 and 6 shows my processes of working out the placement of this quote. I felt it needed to be diagonally placed from the title and my name, as this aesthetically looks very neat. I felt that in image 6 the quote was placed incorrectly and it was too hard to read it on the white parts of the strongly contrasted image. image 5 was the final cover
I then wanted my first page to have the same image as my front cover but slightly faded. I did this by adjusting it in photoshop. I then used the same placement of the title and my name as the front cover on this page.
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image 1 shows my first placement of the image. I found it was too big and overwhelming on the page. image 2 was the image slightly smaller, but I found that it still wasn’t the perfect size and needed more of a surrounding space around it. image 3 is the perfect size of the image and meant that it wasn’t too overpowering on the page.
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all of these images are very similar and are placed periodically throughout the book to separate the narrative up.
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image 1 shows one way I placed these 2 images, I felt this way worked best because the compositions of both images looked nice like this. image 2 shows another way I could have placed them, but I felt this didn’t really work as image on the left looks odd there, as the image just ends there.
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image 1 shows the image just placed on the left page, I felt this looked odd and didn’t look aesthetically pleasing. image 2 showed the image placed more to the left, and slightly larger. This placement is not great because the face is placed directly on the centre of the double page spread. image 3 is the image placed to the right of the book. I find this looks good because the centre line of the double page spread is in a place that works for the images and almost separates the image into 2 images entirely, however but line sits on the face reflected in an odd place and I don’t like this. image 4 shows the image placed slap bang in the centre of the double page spread and works similarly to image 3, in the sense that it separates the image into 2 images. the significance of this aspect is important because it show disassociation and how the two figures, both real and reflected are two separate entities.
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image 1, 2 and 3 show the development of this spread. I found that image 3looks the best because it is full of colour and in the book the few previous images have been predominantly black and white. The change to the colour left the book feeling fresh and not too samey.
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image 1 shows the first arrangement of a spread that contained two very abstract images. I found this spread was not very correct and lacked aesthetically aspects. image 2 shows an alternative arrangement, however I feel it still didn’t look great, as the light was coming from the same place. image 3 shows how I changed the orientation of the image and makes the overall spread looks better and more succinct.
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image 1 and 4 show 2 different ways I could have presented this image in the centre of the page, I preferred it on the right as I liked the writing on the bottom righthand side as it looked aesthetically pleasing. image 2 and 3 shows 2 different ways I could have presented the image as a full page. I didn’t really like this as it was too full on and needed some white space around.
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image 1 shows the placement of these 2 images. I didn’t feel it looked great this way because the centre line of the double page spread cut through the portrait and ruined the aesthetics of the page. image 2 shows an alternative arrangement of the 2 images. this arrangement works best because the centre page line sits better on the portrait.
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image 1 shows a potential placement of 3 images. I feel this doesn’t look great as the single portrait sits unbalanced and doesn’t really look great next to the other 2 images. image 2 shows an alternative arrangement which to me looks the best and the foregrounds of the two images on the left sit nicely on the centre line of the double spread. image 3 shows a different arrangement of the two images on one side of the page. I found this arrangement looked off because the figures in the foreground didn’t flow from one to another.
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image 1 shows a spread of 2 images. I felt these images didn’t work great together because they are both very similar in colour and dont complement each other. image 2 shows another potential spread, however like the image 1 doesn’t really work either, as the are both very busy. this spread did make me realise that the 1 of the 2 image needed to be black and white to create a contrast between the 2. image 3 shows a spread that contained an image with words. I felt this didn’t really work either, as the words were distracting and took the focus away from the colourful image to the left of it. image 4 shows the chosen spread. I used this black and white image with the colourful image because 1 was full of movement and the other 1 was still and juxtaposed nicely.
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image 1 shows the image that I used in my first draft of the book, however I felt it lacks interest, was too simple and also didn’t really relate to the narrative of my book. image 2 was of a photo that I really liked but like image 1 didn’t really relate to the narrative of my book either. image 3 included an image that was similar to another and I didn’t want the book to be too samey so it was rejected. image 4 shows a full bleed of an image that is similar to the photograph in image 1 but has a much more clearer and purpose for the book. I chose a full bleed for this image because I found it was an important image for the narrative, and represented speed, time and travel.
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I had used this image in the first draft of my book but it had a piece of text in the bottom righthand corner and I felt this was distracting and didn’t help with the minimalistic, clean and sleek feel I was going for with the book. image 1 shows the image with a different orientation and without the piece of text. on reflection I felt the image lacked interest so decided to reedit the image and increase the saturation to brighten up the streaks of light. I also cropped and flipped it too as there was too much negative black space within the image and which left the streaks of light being the smaller element of the piece, whereas I wanted it to be the larger element of the piece. image 3 was the final version of the photograph and placement in the photo book.
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image 1 shows the original image that I used for this spread. I felt that the text that was placed on the picture was distracting. However on reflection I felt that I didn’t really like the image after all. Personally I wished it was all in focus and that elements weren’t blurry. image 2 shows a potential image that I chose to replace the other one, however I felt the colours were too bright and didn’t flow with the ones before it, so I decided to chose a black and white image instead. image 3 shows a different image that I liked. I placed the it to the left as I didn’t want the centre line of the double page spread to cut across the image as it would then lower the aesthetic level of the spread. image 4 shows another potential photo to use, however I felt that it was framed badly in the photographic process and the face was too zoomed up and would have looked better with more of a background.
when planning the book I had decided that I wanted the book to have some personal elements but wasn’t sure of how I was going to execute this. after some thought I decided to hand write the title, my name and the quote for the front page and the first page too. I did this by using the brush tool on photoshop on transparent page, writing whatever needed to be written. I kept the same placement of the title, my name and quotes as before as it worked well.
light red
black
I found that the red was too bright on the more faded background on the first image, so I tried 2 different colour : a lighter red and black. I felt that the black looked the best as the lighter red sort of blended into the background and was harder to read.
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after reviewing the book I found that it had lots of white pages which was honestly very boring so I decided to make the key pages with the similar images have a bright colour in the background. This also helped separate the book up into sections, and split up the narrative better. I also added quotes from my personal journal and found words. I did these in my handwriting too, to add to the personal elements I wanted to include in my book. When first editing my images I did have some photos with quotes on, but I did find that they distracted from the original intent of the image, so when this idea came about I thought it was the perfect way to include my own words from journal and found words that I like.
Throughout the project I have taken some images, however they are on film and didn’t want to add them in digitally but physically. after the book has been printed I am going to add them in.
