in a sentence: the slow but gradual transformation from cold, harsh winter to soft, warm summer, adding in some comparisons to how people change/age over time.
This photobook will be a study on how the weather, environment and general mood changes as the weather warms up and the seasons change from winter to summer. The season of spring has always been represented as a period of transition, and often also as a period of rebirth- not only in a religious sense but also environmentally. I want to have the images seem natural and as if they are seen through your own eyes, and I’m planning to do this by not over-editing the images and carefully using angles to my advantage. I also want to do some portrait work as well and add that alongside, to represent how humans age over time and the transition of youth to adulthood and old age.
DESIGN-
portrait orientation
colour
some text throughout the book (quotes?)
most images in pairs, some as individuals
fairly simple editing to keep the natural theme
title along the side of the book as well as on the front
I don’t have plans for a name yet, but I want it to be short and something to do with the spring, or the changing of seasons.
Katrien de Blauwer is a Belgian artist who calls herself a “photographer without a camera”. Her chosen medium is found imagery: she collects and recycles images from old magazines and papers to re-purpose in her work. She has several published books showcasing these talents and her work evokes the style of photomontage. She often obscures the identities of the people in the images she uses, either by cutting it out of the image, using paint or marker pen, or else covering it up with another image entirely. This generates a sense of anonymity that allows any individual to “recognise oneself in the story,” as her website states. She has quite a distinctive use of form and shapes, using strong lines to contrast or match two images together.
DE BLAUWER’S IMAGES-
i don’t want to disappear silently into the night
scenes
rendez-vous
i don’t want to disappear silently into the night
i don’t want to disappear silently into the night
painted scenes
dark scenes
grey scenes
grey scenes
IMAGE ANALYSIS-
from the “rendez-vous” series
I particularly like this image because of the contrast between nature and humans. The way de Blauwer used the clear lines of the trees to lead down into the people’s legs in the bottom half of the image is interesting and also slightly humorous, as it creates an impression of a sort-of half-man half-tree being. It is also a fairly sweet image, as it can be assumed from how close the people are standing that they are a couple. The fact that she took these images from magazines and newspapers speaks to her skill and artistic eye, and shows her dedication to creating interesting and engaging photographs that showcase the best parts of their original pieces.
I’ve chosen the theme of freedom as the ideas I had in mind about souls, spirits, ghosts and possibly the angel and the devil links in quite nicely. I think that the freedom to push limits and have the freedom to do things that reality prevents you from doing usually whether it’s physically or having too many responsibilities in the real world to be able to do the things we wish to do. The theme of freedom is extremely similar to the theme of limitations which is why I decided to do both. I think photographers like Duane Michals are very inspiring when it comes to the idea I want to present in the film I’m going to make. I think that being inspired by his work and recreating it to come to life will be very interesting. When looking at what I want to do for my own film I think Daune Michals’ work will link in nicely:
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.
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.
“The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at . . .. We’re not our eyeballs, we’re our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they’re totally wrong . . .. That’s why I consider most photographs extremely boring–just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It’s just boring. But that whole arena of one’s experience–grief, loneliness–how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It’s all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don’t have to go anywhere.” – Duane Michals
