LAETITIA VANCON is a French photographer, who started her photography career after studying engineering for 7 years. After that career not fulfilling her, she changed her path and found photography. Her photography acted as a healing process, and helped her to feel herself again. VANCON wanted her photography to interrogate society, their place in society and their true identity. These aspects that she photographs around are easy for her to photograph because they are familiar to her. VANCONs’ approach to these aspects are a mix between journalism and poetry.
“ Photography is interesting because it’s limiting. It doesn’t tell actually the all story. It lets a lot of space for the viewers to fill up the gap with their own personal stories, that is -in my opinion- the magic of photography.“
– LAETITIA VANCON
In this image all the colours are fairly muted, apart from the yellow coat that the man is wearing, which is bright and stands out really nicely on the dark colours in the background. Has VANCON done this for a reason? Does the subject in the yellow coat have some significance? As a viewer we really don’t know, however we can make up our narrative for who he is. Is he a commercial fisherman out on a boat catching fish to supply his town with food, or is this his hobby? There are a wide range of different tones of light and dark. The birds that are in the sky act as leading lines to draw the viewers’ eyes towards the subject in the yellow coat. This image comes from the project by LAETITIA VANCON, At The End Of The Day. In this project, VANCON looks at showing those in the Herbredies identities.
After researching LAETITIA VANCONs’ project, At The End Of The Day, I have found that it falls within the categories that I am using as inspiration for my project. The categories being, LIMITATIONS AND FREEDOMS, and this is because, VANCON explains how some of the islander from the Outer Hebrides feel they are trapped on the island, but however some feel free living on the island. The island has different meanings to everyone that lives there, but the island is significant to them in someway. These ideas that have been sparked by LAETITIA VANCON are something that I too what to investigate. All the individuals that I am going to be interviewing live on Jersey. Do any of the aspects of Jersey make them feel free or limited, similarly to those who live in the Outer Hebrides Islands.
Francesca Woodman is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence. These beautiful and yet unsettling images seem fleeting but also suggest a sense of timelessness. This fragility is exaggerated by the fact that the photographs are printed on a very small scale – they seem personal and intimate. She continuously explored and tested what she could do with photography. She challenged the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She playfully manipulated light, movement and photographic effects, and used carefully selected props, vintage clothing and decaying interiors to add a mysterious gothic atmosphere to the work.
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–1976
1975-80 Francesca Woodman 1958-1981
When looking to relate her photography to my film I the uneasiness that the audience may feel when viewing her photos will link into my film. The main theme of my project being Freedoms and Limitations links into her photography also; the movements of the people in her photos make them look as if they’re ghosts or spirits; having the freedom to move how they like without boundaries. I think when linking her work into my more personalised theme being spirits and ghost, her work also links into that also. I like the gothic atmosphere that she presents in her work which I would also like to recreate within my own film. Bringing her work to life through my film would be something I would like to create but out my twist and narrative on it. Somehow I will link her work into my idea:
To explore the freedoms and limitations of the mind within reality and within our own abstract thoughts. In my film I would like to venture to the captivity of our own minds and the limitations it causes and then explore the freedoms of having no commitments or responsibilities in another reality. I want to express the freedom a lost soul may have compared to a living soul and I will show this by showing the same person in two different worlds; one in the real world with commitments and limitations of what we are able to do and another world where the person has the freedom to do what they want. Within the spiritual world I’m going to use a red ball to show guidance to represent that freedom can also have its down sides of feeling lost or not knowing what to do with the space around you. The ball will lead the ghost to where their human self would like to go if they ever got the chance and then they’ll be able to enjoy and see the beauty in the different parts of the world around them that they wouldn’t get to do if they had the chains of responsibility and guilt holding them down. The girl in the real world is somewhat meant to represent the devil as the limitations and the girl in the spiritual world where she has the freedom to go wherever she wants is meant to represent the angel. So there is a good and a bad part to the story. At the end the devil and the angel both realise that in life there are freedoms but as well limitations. They visuals will also include: A girl wearing a black dress to represent many things but mainly limitations and transition into another scene where the same girl is wearing a white dress to mainly represent freedom. The girl in the black dress will just show scenes of having a dull life and have a lack of enjoyment shown but longing for adventure and to see the more exciting parts of life e.g. the beach, nature, traffic lights and the urban parts of the island etc. The ending will show the girl in the white dress going into the room of the girl in the black dress and opening a book of sketches of the places the girl is black wanted to top to and then both of them merging into thew same person to represent the good parts of life and the bad parts and then to add a horror factor to the film I’ll make the eyes of the girl change colour and the candle going out that was lit at the start.
From another perspective, Woodman tested the boundaries of bodily experience in her work and her work often suggests a sense of self-displacement. Often nude except for individual body parts covered with props, sometimes wearing vintage clothing, the artist is typically sited in empty or sparsely furnished, dilapidated rooms, characterised by rough surfaces, shattered mirrors and old furniture. In some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or blending into the background, wallpaper or floor, revealing the lack of distinction of both – between figure and ground, self and world. In others she uses her physical body literally as a framework in which to create and alter her material identity. For instance, holding a sheet of glass against her flesh, squeezing her body parts against the glass and smashing her face, breasts, hips, buttocks and stomach onto the surface from various angles, Woodman distorts her physical features making them appear grotesque. Although Woodman isn’t the only inspiration that I had for my film, my other inspirations include:
I have similar inspirations to the film I did previously but the other inspirations are: Duane Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. I like the way that Michals presents his work as dark and ominous as that’s the way I like to go about presenting my work also. I like the theme of black white where shadow and light appears to be a lot more dramatic than it would be if the photograph or film was in colour. Whether the spirit/ghost is visible in the photo or if there is a feeling of the supernatural lurking around the photo, I think Michals work represents the unsettling feeling of uncertainty. His work links to my theme of Freedoms and Limitations as there’s the idea that the angel/devil near the bed had the freedom to do what they want without consequences but as had the limitations of not having a normal human life. My other inspiration is Michael Chaves, specially the music video he helped Billie Eilish make called Bury A Friend and the movie The Conjuring 3. When looking at Bury A Friend, from the album “When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?”, I think the concept of nightmares and horror links in nicely as well as the title pf the song quite literally linking to death; intertwining with graves, spirits and ghosts. My idea of making peoples spirits/alter self come to life makes me think of the demonic character Billie Eilish is trying to portray. I was thinking of having two main people in the film like the music video where the man on the bed is unconscious but talking whilst dreaming in this dimly lit building and Billie Eilish being the monster in his bedroom watching him, under his bed and lurking around the hallways of his building. I also think the lyrics in the song itself have a lot of meaning and would help me to move forward with the theme of Freedoms and Limitations. The freedom to express your darkest thoughts and make them come to life but the limitations of how far you can express what you’re thinking without making your ideas too dark as well as the limitations of not having full control of what your thinking or feeling.
