For my project I have decided to use Bookwright as it is a relatively easy and well made program to make my photo-book. I created an account with blurb and downloaded bookwright. I chose a small square layout ( 18cm x 18cm ) with premium matte paper and a hardcover design.

COVER DESIGN:

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Above is my final edited cover image that I will use to wrap my photo-book cover with. Using an app called ‘coolors’, I was able to pick out and create a palate of the main colours from my image. This enabled me to make a direct colour decision that would compliment my image; whether the colour would be added to the spine only, or on the pages its self. Some of the colours I experimented with are shown below.

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The colour I decided to use in the end was a light purple called ‘Wild blue yonder”, a colour I picked directly from the jacket I was wearing. The bright but cool tone compliments the image while also contrasting the warmer pinks and oranges. I also added my title and name to the front cover; Dear, Liw.

MY FINAL COVER DESIGN:

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MY PAGE DESIGN:

I decided to set up all my image sizes and orientations on my page. I chose an image setup of 6 x 4 inches, top centre of a page and copied it onto all the other pages. Like in my specification, I wanted all images to be the same size and place on each page (consistency). I also chose 6 x 4 in because that was the size of the original capture of all images, meaning the images can display the true qualities and angles of the raw image.

• I have also decided to keep the pages white to contrast the images.
• all images are 6 x 4 inch.
• all images same place on the page.
• text will go underneath the images

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MAKING MY OWN FONT:

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For the first page of my book I would like to include a very personal statement about all my images in the book:

Intimacy is a beautiful thing, a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group. Throughout my life, I’ve found myself in sheltered in the private and relaxing atmosphere of my own photos. Always aiming for a tranquil aesthetic in my images, I have enabled myself to be constantly encompassed in the hundreds of complimentary images I have created. Despite intimacy being regarded as an emotional connection between one person and another, I’ve found myself sharing a sentimental relationship with my photographs, an intimate relationship. A relationship where I feel a closeness of observation or knowledge of a subject – a unique love for the memories arranged within beautifully crafted filters. Aesthetics have always been a huge piece of my craved visual experiences.

FINAL BOOK LAYOUT:

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Processes:

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In my original plan, I was going to add text below my images. However, after deciding that it didn’t look that aesthetic, even after I experimented with different designs, I didn’t add any text under the images. I feel that this also allowed the viewer to create their own narrative and interpretation of the images, without context to influence their outlook on the image. Although, I will add a page at the back of my book with annotations of each page and image, so people can see my thought on each image at the end.

IMAGE SELECTION:

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In the photos below, I have put all of my images from a couple of my photoshoots onto Lightroom. I plan to choose one or two photographs from each shoot in my photo-book. I flagged and rejected which images I wanted to keep or delete first. I did this by zooming into each image to see if the composition and focus. After sorting through all the images I then colour coded all the images from individual shoots so I can differentiate the images.

I also began to rate my images from 1-5, by comparing each one to each other. I only rated images from 1-3 in the beginning. In the left image above, I filtered out all of the images that where 2 or under and began comparing the 3 rated photos. I used the compare tool to have a greater feel for each images focus and quality. The tool allowed me to compare two very similar images to pick the best looking one. The image on the bottom right is the kind of editing style I am aiming for; it is very indie’ and teenage like, the fading and colour vibrance reminds me of what is assume a vivid memory would look like in my mind. It is also an image directly from Corinne Days book, Diary.

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FINAL IMAGE SELCETIONS:

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SELECTION FOR FRONT COVER:

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STORY: What is your story?

• 3 words : My personal diary
• A sentence : A range of photos from key events in my life 2020/2021.
• A paragraph : I am going to create my own personal photo diary, taking pictures of people I love as well as all the simple, mundane parts of my life. The photos will depict my forest memories, good and bad, that I would like to remember.

NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?

SPECIFICATION

and describe in detail what your book will be about in terms of narrative, concept and design with reference to the same elements of bookmaking as above:

• How you want your book to look and feel. I would like the book to fell matte and smooth like ‘Diary’. It could possibly have a textured surface.
• Paper and ink. matte images and matte pages.
• Format, size and orientation.
• Binding and cover.
• Title : some of my ideas have been ‘dear diary’, or ‘dear future me’, but my favourite title has been ‘Dear, Liw’ which really focuses on who’s life my book is about; myself.
• Structure and architecture: random arrangement of images, jumbles dates. One image per page preferably, and all the images will be the same size. Most of the images will be edited in the same way to keep consistency and authenticity.

Design and layout. Editing and sequencing. There will be one image per page in the same orientation, mainly landscape and not portrait. Photos will rarely be in black and white. Images will mainly look like disposables (aiming to edit like Nan Goldin and Corinne Day). Random sequencing, what images look best together on opposing pages. All images will be mostly edited the same, I will try to not crop the images so they are as real to the scene I took a photo of.

Images. New photographic responses, photo-shoots. I will be taking photos on a daily basis of my friends and family. I plan for all of my images to be extremely candid. Due to the fact they will not be particularly planned, it gives a natural feel like a diary would and lets the audience feel like they’re in the moment with me. Old photos from family albums, iPhone. I may want to use photographs from 2020. Due to C19, I have not been able to see/ meet with friends and family like I would usually. I would like to use some images from 2020 t fill my book with lively events.

text. letters, documents, poems, text messages. These will caption each photograph in my book. There will be short caption to each image, explaining what the image is about, however I plan to write what makes sense to me; I’m not explaining the whole story, just what reminds me of the event/ experience. I also plan to scan through my own handwriting to caption each image, making it further seem like my own diary. I could include ‘souvenirs’ from days such as tickets and wrappers, letters etc.

2. Produce a mood-board of design ideas for inspiration. Look at BLURB online book making website, photo books from photographers or see previous books produced by Hautlieu students on the table in class:

images will include things like:

• washing my own first car
• practicing driving for the first time
• going on family walks
• going to friends
• meeting with my boyfriend
• cool images that I find interesting

CORINNE DAY – DIARY

RESEARCHING A PHOTO-BOOK

Corinne Day is the main inspiration for my project, the stunning photographer uses her photography to document her everyday life, displaying the intimacy and love in her circle of friends and family. Corinne Day’s style of photography is often put in the ‘dirty realism’ genre; “a literary genre characterised by a spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments”. Her images are ‘real’, and display immense personal events and emotions.

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1. Describe the story:

Diary – ‘her first solo exhibition in London – is the culmination of ten years’ work and is an intensely personal and frank photographic account of her life and friendships during the last decade of the century in London.’

Corinne Day: diary | The Photographers’ Gallery

Diary is cold and melancholy, it archives young lives with uncompromising realism in the form of photographs, so we as the viewers feel encompassed in the visual and not just the worded description. The books genre is clearly dirty realism and Grunge. At other times, the photos are joyful and celebrate friendship. Day clearly shares her life with the lives of her close friends, and decides to share experiences like hospitalisation, partying, drugs. Clearly, her best friend Tara is a main character in the diary, we follow her though partying, sexual liaisons, illness and finally, motherhood. However, whether in the photograph or not, she is always emotionally present in her photographs.

2. Who is the photographer?

 The photographer of the book is Corinne Day, however thought the book, there are images of herself which may have been taken by Tara (one of the main faces in the diary). One can only assume that Corinne made the photographic diary to remember all of the events in her life, but I think it was also to produce photographs in a ‘grunge’ and ‘dirty realistic’ style. I think the book was really for herself before she passed following the diagnosis of a brain tumour in 1996, but also for her close friends and family, hence the book name ‘diary’. “The series draws comparison with artists such as Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, who also live what they photograph. Like them, Day is curious about people who pursue experiences beyond the norm.” 

Corinne Day – Diary

TITLE AND NARRATIVE

The title ‘Diary’ is a very important aspect of the book, it simply explain what the book itself is; a diary of Corinne Day. The title of the book is written is what seems like Corinne’s handwriting, underneath a photograph of Tara’s face. Tara also seems to be a main character in Corinne’s life, a very close friend, and an important figure.

BOOK IN HAND

• large A4 square/ rectangle
• portrait book in black
• 56 pages
• 54 photographs
• hard cover
• colour and back and white images
• all same paper is used inside
• feels heavy, smells fresh.
• no letterpress, silkscreen or hot-stamping.
• cover is matte card with a printed image of Tara
• none of the words are embossed/ debossed.

image wrap/dust jacket. saddle stitch/swiss binding/ Japanese stab-binding/ leperello

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

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Images are all placed in the same orientation on each page, and there is one photograph per page. there are also no double page spreads, but rather only one image to represent an event. Some photos aren’t of people, but they are aesthetically pleasing. There are no fold- outs or inserts in the book either, this makes the book very uniform and organised, a juxtaposition to the crazy, frantic life Corinne was having in the photos.

• one image on each page (54 images)
• landscape images, rarely portrait
• images are all the same size, just rotted landscape or portrait
• images don’t seem to be size edited, same size as taken with camera
• photos can be quite dark and gloomy, quite a grunge feel to them

The images are all linked together very well by how they are edited and by their captions. The photos all have the same ‘art-rock’ vibe, with gloomy, high contrasted and saturated images. Some photos even look to be taken on a disposable camera (however they are just edited in this way).

A narrative is constructed by the captions under each image, even though the images are not in chronological order. The captions are short and seem to be written in Corinne’s handwriting, making it very personal. She tells a story though jumbled photographs, however the captions seem to make sense, and really feel like a diary.

EDITING AND SEQUENCING

When looking at the photos in Corinne Day diary, there seems to be a particular selection of photographs; for each special (or main) event in her life with her family and friends, there only ever seems to be one image that represents the whole experience. For example: one image is of a man named Andy in bed, the image is captioned ‘Andy after party NewYork 1996’. There seems to be no images from the party in the book, only one image of a rather hungover Andy, which may be all that’s needed to remind Corinne of the experience. There seems to be no chronological order in her book, images are placed where they compliment each other.

HOW DO BOTH CORINNE DAY AND NAN GOLDIN CREATE A ‘DIRTY REALISM’ WITHIN THEIR PHOTOGRAPHY?

‘Dirty Realism is the fiction of a new generation of American authors. They write about the belly-side of contemporary life – a deserted husband, an unwed mother, a car thief, a pickpocket, a drug addict – but they write about it with a disturbing detachment, at times verging on comedy. Understated, ironic, sometimes savage, but insistently compassionate, these stories constitute a new voice in fiction.’ – Bill Buford.

The term ‘dirty realism’, coined by Bill Buford, formed the title of the Summer 1983 edition of the Granta magazine. Buford wrote an explanatory introduction at the beginning of Granta 8, to define this North American literary movement. This beautiful, honest movement not only spread through literature but through art and photography too. In 1986, Nan Goldin published ‘‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, a deeply personal diary composed of 700 snapshot photographs, documenting her life. The protagonists of the book and the photographer herself are frozen within intimate moments of love, pain, ecstasy, sex, and drug use. The book itself is the definition of ‘Love and Rebellion’ and has deeply inspired me to create my own personal photo diary, including the people and things I love, but more importantly, focus on exploring the idea of dirty realism and intimacy in photography. A Photographer who, in the following decade, emerged in the grunge genre of photography is Corinne day; a highly skilled fashion photographer inspired by Nan Goldin. Corinne day created ‘diary’ a photographic book similar to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Both photographers use specific techniques in order to convey emotion and intimacy within their photos, techniques that I will uncover and analyze and use to lead my creative path. This category of photography really changed the way many photographers understood photography, and it strongly inspired later generations of photographers, including myself,  to express very personal life experiences through an album of images.

DIRTY REALISM

The area of art that has particularly sparked my creative direction is an extremely honest side to reality. Dirty realism is ”a literary genre characterized by a spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments”. The writers of this subcategory of Realism, such as Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, seem to write about the more mundane aspects of life, the more ‘real’ aspects. As I explained earlier, the term ‘dirty realism’, was coined by Bill Buford and it formed the title of the Summer 1983 edition of the Granta magazine, which would define a new school of American writers and inspire the world of photography. After extensively researching this movement, I came across Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver, the ‘Dirty Realism Duo’, credited as the fathers of the “Dirty Realism” genre during the 1980s. The duo’s intentions branched from the minimalism movement, a primarily American movement originating in New York City in the late 1960s. The movement was outlined by ‘the stripping of fiction down to the least amount of words and a concentration on the subject’s view of the object’.The characters inCharles Bukowski and Raymond Carver’s books are usually ordinary, everyday people – the lower or middle-class worker, the unemployed, the alcoholic, the addict, the beaten-down-by-life. Similar to the photography aspect of dirty realism, it was ‘characterized by extreme simplicity of form and a literal, objective approach. This approach was quickly introduced into the creative arts as a form of fashion photography, stemmed from the idea of being ‘real’, and incorporated movements like grunge, indie, and punk: ‘defiance of traditional norms and nihilism.’ photographers shot gritty and uncomfortable pictures during these fashion subcultures, involving over or undersized clothing.

NAN GOLDIN

Nan Goldin wrote “‘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.’”. This amazing photographer is extremely well known for her controversial yet earthy outlook on life itself, an outlook which to the vast majority of people, is undeniably true. Nancy Goldin was a part of that great number of people, whose lives entailed grief and chaos. Goldin talks about her family during her time growing up: ‘’My father, who was not always great with my mother, was critical…There was a lot of bickering going on, and I wished they’d get divorced most of my childhood.” She also explains that her mother was very possessive of her father at that time, who was more focused on his sons. A tragic moment is Nancy’s life is detailed in the introduction of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. During the preface, she writes very honestly about the heartaching situation, and makes note so some of the political topics she explores withing her photoraphs; “I was eleven when my sister committed suicide,” and continues to write:

“This was in 1965, when teenage suicide was a taboo subject. I was very close to my sister and aware of some of the forces that led her to choose suicide. I saw the role that her sexuality and its repression played in her destruction. Because of the times, the early sixties, women who were angry and sexual were frightening, outside the range of acceptable behavior, beyond control. By the time she was eighteen, she saw that her only way to get out was to lie down on the tracks of the commuter train outside of Washington, D.C. It was an act of immense will.

In the week of mourning that followed, I was seduced by an older man. During this period of greatest pain and loss, I was simultaneously awakened to intense sexual excitement. In spite of the guilt I suffered, I was obsessed by my desire.”

Goldin, a famous American photographer in the dirty realism movement, regularly focussed on taboo subjects such as fetish, sex, homosexuality, drug addiction, and transvestism. Her most notable piece was composed of almost 700 snapshot-like images that produce a stunning and personal narrative of her life between the late 1970s, 1980s, around Boston, New York, Berlin, and more. During an interview in 1996, Goldin describes her meaning of snapshots: “People take them out of love, and they take them to remember – people, places, and times. They’re about creating a history by recording a history. And that’s exactly what my work is about.”The book itself was originally a film, and was developed with multiple live and improvised performances, while goldin flipped through the slides alongs with a beautiful soundtrack; from Maria Callas to The Velvet Underground. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, released as a film  in 1985, is presented in its original 35mm format, including photographs that also emerge as images in the slide show. Shortly after, during 1986, Nan released “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” as a book. This was Goldin’s first book and remains her best known. 

One well-known piece by her was a self-portrait of herself after being beaten by her husband: to ‘show her world without glamorization or glorification.’ This photograph in particular truly displays the mundane reality of life itself, the alcoholic, the abuser, the victim, etc. Some of her images could even need viewer discretion due to their exposing nature of abuse. The photographs themselves were often blurred or gritty, which created a very authentic and ‘everyday’ grunge and dirty shot. When Nan was a young adult, the controversies around gay rights and the ‘LGBTQ community’ were still up in the air and not completely accepted. This makes Goldin’s work that little more questionable.

CORINNE DAY

Corinne Day, a very similar artist to Nan Goldin, is the main inspiration for my project, the stunning photographer uses her photography to document her everyday life, displaying the intimacy and love in her circle of friends and family. Day was born in 1965, and was a self-taught fashion photographer who was one of the first to introduce a new documentary look to photography, a formation of both candid and intimate images. Corinne Day’s style of photography is often put in the ‘dirty realism’ genre. Corinne has always been a massive admirer of Nan Goldin’s work, and it clearly shows in her most known work “Corinne Day Diary”. In her autobiography she states: “I met Nan there and to my astonishment and delight Nan had been an admirer of my work since the early Kate photographs. I first discovered Nan’s work in New York in 1992 when I was there meeting with Barney’s department store. Ronnie Cook took me to a photography book store and the first book I picked up was The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. At this time I had no knowledge of art photography, only what I had seen in commercial magazines. I had already been conveying my own personal experiences through my photography in magazines. I wanted the ordinary person to see real life in those pages. I found Nan Goldin’s and Larry Clark’s work liberating and their work also validated the way I had started to take photographs myself.

Corinne Day has been the main inspiration for my project, the stunning photographer uses her photography to document her everyday life, displaying the intimacy and love in her circle of friends and family. Corinne Day’s style of photography is often put in the ‘dirty realism’ genre; “a literary genre characterised by a spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments”. Her images are ‘real’, and display immense personal events and emotions. Before Corinne passed away she created a beautiful and personal book called “Corinne Day Diary”. The title ‘Diary’ is a very important aspect of the book, it simply explains what the book itself is; a diary of Corinne Day. The title of the book is written in what seems like Corinne’s handwriting, underneath a photograph of Tara’s face. Tara also seems to be a main character in Corinne’s life, a very close friend, and an important figure. Even though the photographer of the book is Corinne Day, there are images of herself which may have been taken by Tara (one of the main faces in the diary). One can only assume that Corinne made the photographic diary to remember all of the events in her life, but I think it was also to produce photographs in a ‘grunge’ and ‘dirty realistic’ style. I think the book was really for herself before she passed following the diagnosis of a brain tumour in 1996, but also for her close friends and family, hence the book name ‘diary’. “The series draws comparison with artists such as Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, who also live what they photograph. Like them, Day is curious about people who pursue experiences beyond the norm.” 

 Diary is cold and melancholy, it archives young lives with uncompromising realism in the form of photographs, so we as the viewers feel encompassed in the visual and not just the worded description. The books genre is clearly dirty realism and Grunge. At other times, the photos are joyful and celebrate friendship. Day clearly shares her life with the lives of her close friends, and decides to share experiences like hospitalisation, partying, drugs. Clearly, her best friend Tara is a main character in the diary, we follow her though partying, sexual liaisons, illness and finally, motherhood. However, whether in the photograph or not, she is always emotionally present in her photographs. In the image above, one of Corinne’s friends, Tara is seen crying at home, told by the caption below the image. What makes the book even more authentic is her handwriting that accompanies each image, describing a short story that will only be memorable to her. 

I have been lucky enough to see the book and feel it by hand. There are many different things about the book that have inspired me, but also made the book personal and authentic. The images are all placed in the same orientation on each page, and there is one photograph per page, as well as this, there are no double page spreads, but rather only one image to represent an event. Some photos aren’t of people, but they are aesthetically pleasing. There are no fold- outs or inserts in the book either, this makes the book very uniform and organised, a juxtaposition to the crazy, frantic life Corinne was having in the photos. A narrative is constructed by the captions under each image, even though the images are not in chronological order. The captions are short and seem to be written in Corinne’s handwriting, making it very personal. She tells a story through jumbled photographs, however the captions seem to make sense, and really feel like a diary. What I really enjoy about Corinne’s book, is that all the images are ‘real’ there is no acting or posing, all the images are taken freely, as if they are core memories in Corinne’s mind. This is what really makes Corinne Day part of the Dirty realism genre of photography.

When comparing Corinne day and Nan Golding, There are very clear similarities between the two people, and the books they’ve created. Within their images they clearly perform to the qualities of the Dirty realism genre with how they show their hectic and honest lives through their images. Their personal and raw captions and images really do make it seem like the viewer is looking through the photographer’s diary. The editing processes both artists make truly display how the atmosphere and characters were feeling, whether the photographer was crying in hospital or had been beaten by their husband. I have truly taken inspiration from these beautiful dairies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://www.corinneday.co.uk/autobiography/
• om/artists/nan-goldin/
• https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/nan-goldin-2649
• https://www.moma.org/artists/7532
• https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/44-nan-goldin/
• https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/corinne-day-diary
• https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp88351/corinne-day

During the Love and Rebellion theme , I have covered many different styles of art and photography, using new and challenging software. Some of the major projects have been our photo-zines and short films, which I decided, would both be about the main theme of love. The next module of work will be my personal investigation. The idea of the personal investgation is to critically question and challenge a particular style or area of work by artists and photographers which will help me develop my own ideas as a photography student. 

My Personal Study is a written and illustrated project. During the course of the next year I have the choice to make I will be creating a lens-based body of work (either stills photography or moving image), so either a short film (3-5mins) or a photo book in response to the theme “LOVE & REBELLION”. I have decided I would like to explore creating a phonebook. For my book I will use the online software Blurb or by hand using traditional book binding techniques. As an additional piece to the project I will also include a written essay (2000 words).

My intention in to continue with my theme of identity that Ive executed in my short film, but exploring ideas of teen culture as shown in the examples below by Theo Gosselin and Corinne Day. My main idea is to continue with dirty realism and take a look at how I can create my own, personal photo diary, including the mundane and ‘real’ parts of my life as a teen, like the people I love, things I love doing, relationships and more.

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Corinne Day is an amazing photographer who focused on creating a diary of her teenage and young adulthood. She documented her life with her friends and what it was like to be her age at that moment isn time. The book explores gender, intimacy, drugs as well as everyday life out and about. I would like to include images like hers in my project that display the people close to me, the people I love, and some go the things we love to do as teenagers.

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In his book, Gosselin presents a glimpse of a life beyond boundaries of geographical and social conventions, and documents his most recent road trips across the US, Spain, Scotland and native France.

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During the Love and Rebellion theme , I have covered many different styles of art and photography, using new and challenging software. Some of the major projects have been our photo-zines and short films, which I decided, would both be about the main theme of love.

PHOTO-ZINE:

My photo-zine consists of 16 pages with 9 different final images revolving around the main theme of love. The story within my zine shows the relationships in my family through three different generations, my grandparents, my parents and my own. Creating the photo-zine was very challenging as it forced me to be creative on a new piece of software, Adobe InDesign, which I had never used before. All of the images are in black and white, which contrasts the photos imbedded between the images of family members, as well as this it links them together to strengthen the idea that they are all from the same family tree.

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SHORT FILM:

My short film, Multiple Identities, may have been the most challenging projects so far, as I’ve never made a film before. I chose the theme of gender in my project, linking it to political movements about gender identity, hence the name ‘Multiple Identities’. Using Premiere Pro was also very difficult as I’d never used it before. Although, despite this, the film has been my favourite project so far as it’s allowed me to explore my ideas in a more creative way, for example, during my film I used a mixture of stop motion footage and normal clips.

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NEWSPAPER SPREADS:

After the making of my short film, Multiple Identities, we where able to make a series of edits and experimentations that could be used to go into a newspaper. Our guidelines where to choose two film stills to form a juxtaposition, 5-12 still to form a story board, 1 image to form a full bleed two page spread and to use different stills to make a montage. Using InDesign I was able to position my images, and using Photoshop I was able to make layers and form a collage.

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Here is the link to my final film, Multiple Identities, which explores gender identity.

MANIFESTO

INTENTIONS (dice task) :

BLACK – RISK –  ‘the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value, often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences’

WHITE – COLLAGE – ‘a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.’

RED – PLAY – ‘engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.’

VISUAL:

• playing with gender, makeup, clothing, male and female etc – links to risk and play
• using different clips to form layers of the video, making a collage (make some layers translucent, linking to collages make during the dada movement) – links to collage
• the video could maybe in complete black and white, maybe some stop motion too.
• aisle wanted to add rundown clips of objects and places to add sway away from the normal idea of a film, rebelling against the norm, unexpected.

SOUND:

• music/clips from the time the Dada movement began and even into the surrealist movement, linking to that theme of rebellion and identity. This is music from 1910 to 1920 onwards
• some bits could be silent depending on what part of the video they are.

FILM SPECIFICATION

IDEAS AND INSPIRATIONS:

My theme for this short film is rebellion, gender and art, mainly focussing on how individuals express themselves in society through their gender and art styles. Gender has always been a very political subject through history, and only now in 2020 are we really starting to accept peoples identities and feelings. People in modern day society have the ability to present themselves however they like, through clothes, makeup, hobbies, body, actions etc, when is past decades, this was merely impossible due to social norms.

I am very inspired by the Dada and Surrealist movements (collectively from 1916 to 1966) as they where the first people to explore radical things like Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism and formed a revolution against the constraints of the rational mind; and by extension, the rules of a society they saw as oppressive. These two movements have intrigued me and I would like to incorporate some of their ideologies, artwork styles and views in my film. One main artist that I have been influenced over the past couple years is Claude Cahun as she has Cahun illustrated the various possibilities of genders and of the body. Here is a blog post that I have created while researching Cahun, explaining her intentions and ideas.

SURREALIST AND DADA ARTWORK INSPIRATION:

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SOUND: I would like to incorporate many different aspects of audio and vocals into my film, to create a scene of randomness and to make every second unexpected, linking to the risk factor, some of my ideas that I would like have in my audio include:

• Ambient noise; which refers to the background noise present at a certain scene or location, including noises such as rain, traffic, crickets, birds, etc. My man idea is the radio playing/echoing in a supermarket, or maybe the radio while at home, like channel 103 or radio 1. Rain would be a great sound to have in the background as it is a relaxing and soft sound.
• News interviews, and political interviews that would be on Tv daily. I would like to make sure these clips are related to news about gender right, and other identity related topics, to link to the idea of my film.
• news articles include: “Government considers reforming gender identity rules” and California to house transgender inmates based on gender identity which I will record and put into my film.
• Silence. I would like there to be no noise in many parts of my film, depending on what clip is being watched. I think that having some parts of the film without audio will create an interesting contrast to the other audios played. Maybe I could include subtitles on the screen like a silent film would. This would add diversity to my film.
• Tristan Tzara sings The Song of a Dadaist (1920)

SHANNON O’DONNELL

Shannon O’Donnell is an emerging photographer, focusing on ideas like gender, men and women roles in society, manhood and all sorts of other identity related concepts. She has recently graduated documentary photography at the university of South Wales, and completed media photography and history as subjects for her A-Levels.

Her inspirations include Claude Cahun and she calls her ‘rebellious’ for being one of the pioneers of identity photography. Another inspiration Shannon mentioned to us was the Casa Susanna project where all types of people would gather in the 1960’s, and celebrate what we would call now, LGBTQ. Walter Pfeiffer and Adi Nes (a jewish Israeli who works mainly on work related to masculinity, being a male, manhood stages, masculine roles and war), were also some people whose work interests her.

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”By Your Bedside (2018) is a series of images that I created to compliment my short film, Susan’s Sleep. The images are quite, to reflect my own experience during the time my mother was in a coma. I went mute during this time, isolated myself and kept my emotions inside. The only time that I felt able to express myself was when I was sat by my mother’s bedside. These images convey the surreal movie-like experience I felt while waiting for my mum to wake up.” – Shannon O’Donnell

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Susan’s Sleep is a very personal piece by Shannon made in the last year or two. O’Donnell describes the film she made as a type of personal therapy to help her process a tough part of her life, when her mother was put into a coma. It consists of a series of photos and clips made into a short film. This video she has made includes lots of sounds from the hospital, places behind clips taken by a phone, GoPro and camera, as well as footage from her family archives.The film depicts a scary and very personal experience of not knowing what will happen, and also the experience of living in intensive care. Through this harsh time she recorded audio and film, and now her mother is doing much better after 6 months rehabilitation to help her walk regain good mental health. I personally think it represents a lot of what society is facing today with the ongoing pandemic and how we have to stay strong.