Gabi Ben Avraham

Gabi Ben Avraham is an Israeli street photographer. He says that street photography is his favourite way of looking at the world. He also said “My camera has become an integral part of me. Via the camera lens I am constantly looking around me, searching for that ‘decisive’ moment that will never return, unless I catch it. When pushing the button, I try to make some sense, restore order to the chaotic scheme of things in the composition, tell the story behind the scene and frame a surrealistic moment. Capturing the elusive, special moment after which things will never be the same and making it eternal – that is my goal. I try to create a private andintimate hallucination in order to share it with the viewer.  I shoot independently for a few years and teach in Street Photography workshops.” I like his work as it captures community as well as colour which is something that I want to try and do with my work. for this project I am going to take inspiration from him and capture images that are colourful as well as linked to identity and community. I am going to do this by taking images of people in and around town who look colourful as well as taking images of things such as resteraunts that have a cultural link.

I particularly like this image as the umbrella and the Ferris wheel are both main focal points as he has captured it at a perfect time and angle where the umbrella fits within the space of the Ferris wheel. I like the colours in this image with the red in the umbrella against the blue of the sky. I think this photo is aesthetically pleasing as although its not perfect and there are many people in the frame it works well.

William Eggleston

William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston took the majority of his images in his hometown, Memphis. I like William Eggleston as a colour photographer to take inspiration from for this project as he takes pictures that indirectly link to community by taking pictures of places that communities may congregate instead of images of actual communities like a lot of other photographers that I have looked at. All of William Eggleston’s images are of places where people would be together such as cafes and shops. I like how he takes pictures of somewhat boring places and makes them look interesting with the way he captures his images.

I particularly like this image as it is not too overloaded with colour, however where there is colour on both the building and the car they look symetrical. I like how the image is took with the car placed in the middle of the view point so that the car colour matches the building in the background and how the lights on either side of the car are red matching the red on both ends of the building. I also think this image shows community well as it shows people going somewhere to possibly hang out and get ice cream or something like that together.

Mind Map

Mood Board

Statement of Intent

For this project I want to focus on colour as well as colour within the community; I want to explore how using certain colours in images can evoke a feeling and keep this in mind while taking my images. I have researched how different colours have different ways of influencing us, some colours make us feel calm, some evoke feelings of fear and tension and others make us feel happy. For example, yellow- it’s the colour of sunshine, warmth, and beauty. Different hues of yellow bring different impacts. Darker shades might enrich an atmosphere even with some dramatic effect while the lighter tones make things merry and happy. So, the colours are powerful tools for creating an emotional structure of photographs. I want to take images that feature a lot of yellows and greens, and am going to take images of things such as architecture that features these colours.

Review and Reflection

For our first Year 12 project we focused on black light and Albert Renger Patzch and Keld Helmer Peterson. We took images of things such as industrial buildings and edited them to look like Keld Helmer Peterson’s Black light photography.

My Images

We then focused on portrait photography for a while before moving onto identity. For this project I looked at artists such as Lisa Riverra and Claude Cahun. The photoshoots I done for this project were inspired by Lisa Riverras work ‘Beautiful Boy’.

Identity

We then explored rural landscape photography before, looking and new topographics and eventually moving onto our Anthropocene project which focused on how we as humans have changed the Earth.

My Images

We then finished the year by focusing on Identity and Community. For this project we first started learning about Jersey by going to a ‘People Make Jersey’ exhibition and learning about the history of the Island and Islanders. For this project I looked at artists such as Percival Dunham and George Georgiou.

Photography an art form began in the late 1830s in france and became publicly recognised ten years later.

Before photography was first created people started to experiment and figure out the basic principles of lenses and the camera. They were able to project the image on the wall or piece of paper, however at that specific point in time no printing was possible at all. A Camera Obscura is what people used to process their pictures in which they took. The Camera Obscura was invented around 13-14th centuries and it is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. Light coming in through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, like the wall of the box.

The first photograph was taken in 1825 by a French inventor Joseph Nicéphora niépce. His photograph show a view from a window at Le Gras.

The exposure had to last for eight hours, so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west appearing to shine on both sides of the building in the picture. This lead to the photograph being more interesting for one to analysis and look at.

Colour photography was explored throughout the 19th century, but didn’t become truly commercially viable until the middle of the 20th century. Before this colour in photographs wouldn’t last for a long amount of time a would start to fade very quickly to become degraded. Several methods of color photography were patented from 1862 by two French inventors: Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charlec Cros, working independently.

The first color photo of an image of a tartan ribbon (shown above), was taken in 1861 by the famous Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who was famous for his work with electromagnetism. Although his work had great influence on the photo industry, Maxwell is not remembered for this as his inventions in the field of physics were more remembered than his photography accomplishment.

The first ever picture to have a person in it was Boulevard du Temple by Louis Daguerre, taken in 1838. However the exposure lasted for about 10 minutes at the time, so it was barely possible for the camera to capture a person on the busy street.

I predict that, for example, personality and identity will be expressed in the portrait because I will be able to show emotions through facial expressions and makeup-up to link to my theme of sexuality.

Essay questions ideas:

Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?

How does fashion shape social identities?

How is religion – specifically Christianity – linked to fairy tales?

In what way does Carole Benitah explore childhood memories through her work as a method of understanding identity and self-expression?

In what way has Broomberg & Chanarin explored / used/ interpreted religious texts in their book Holy Bible

How has B & C explored archives and biblical scripture in their photobook Holy Bible

I have chosen these questions because I think they link in with my project which is touching upon the theme of homosexuality and Christianity. For example, “Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?” links to my theme of Christianity + homosexuality since it touches upon identity and portraiture and for my project, I’m going to have a few portrait photos I assumed this question would link perfectly. Similarly for the other questions like, “How is religion – specifically Christianity – linked to fairy tales?” This touches upon the theme of religion especially because the question specifically asks how is religion linked to another theme like fairy tales?

Essay question:

How has the Bible been portrayed through art / photography?

Essay Plan

Q:
Opening quote
Intro
Pg 1: Theory around photography and memory – Barthes
Pg 2: Bromberg & Chanarin – memory and death
Pg 3: Benitah: memory + childhood – Kuhn,
Conclusion
Bibliography

Island Identity

The Island Identity project has produced a website and a report that has identified distinctive ‘qualities’ of island life in Jersey. ( https://islandidentity.je/report/heritage-culture-and-the-arts ). We were asked to produce a poster based on one of the following themes : Constitution and Citizenship, Communities, International, Economy, Education and Sports, Heritage, Culture and the arts, or the Environment.

What makes Jersey special and why does it matter to you?

Jersey has several unique reasons to why its special, these vary from different aspects of life jersey has to offer. One reason why Jersey is special is the weather this is due to the fact that it has several positive impacts on the environment as well as the community. The climate in which jersey has is highly suitable for the large farming industry in which jersey has.  This matters to us because without our farming industry we would have to import more products from elsewhere causing an increase in pollution within the ozone layer. Alternatively another positive impact is that jersey has a wide range of historical sights. It has several coastal fortifications (bunkers) from several different periods of time such as the English Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, and Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Channel Islands.

What does it mean to be ‘Jersey’, now and in the future?

I feel that living in jersey feels very compact, one may describe jersey as claustrophobic due to the fact that we live on such a small island which is 198 km². Additionally I also feel that as we are such a small island we have a small community with several; different backgrounds which creates a strong and powerful community. Furthermore in the near future I would like to see a more diverse community. Due to the old generations there’s still a lot of stigma around having a equal and diversity community.

What can we all do to solidify a cohesive and positive Island identity?

I believe that we should all be very welcoming to all backgrounds and accepting of one another even if we come from different places as we all live on the same small Island. This will therefore lead to a decrease in island problems overall due to the fact that people will be more willing to help people with problems such as a language barrier because people will be more understanding of this. Additionally this will lead to people becoming more confident in sharing their views on the island as well as making sure there’s next to no discrimination.

Are there barriers to a positive and inclusive Island identity? (What requires a greater focus and what is being missed?)

I believe that its highly likely that there will always be multiple positive barriers to and inclusive island. These consist of things such as when it comes to different cultures, some people may have certain issues or may not be as accepting as others. This can lead to problems as it would be holding back the progress of Jersey being an accepting community.  Additionally another barrier is that people from different cultures may not want to learn about jersey heritage due to the fact that they weren’t born in the island.

Pictorial artists take photography as an art form and reshape it into an art form putting beauty tone and composition above the creation of an accurate visual record. Through their creation this movement tried to elevate photography to the same status as canvas and was considered similar y galleries and other art institutions. Photography was created in the late 1830s and was initially considered a way of producing purely scientific and representative images. This situation began to change in the 1850s when a lawyer similar to the British painter William John Newton suggested that photography can also e artistic. Although
can e traced ack to these early ideas the pictorial movement was most active from 1885 to 1915. In its heyday its influence spread internationally with centres in the United Kingdom France and the United States. Followers used a variety of darkroom methods to create images that would allow them to express their creativity train it to tell stories recreate mythical or biblical scenes and create dreamlike landscapes. There is no simple description of the cliché of image journalists but it usually means that an image has been manipulated in some way to increase its artistic impact. Common themes in this style are the use of soft focus tints and rendering operations similar to emulsions or adding brushstrokes.

Photorealism also known as Metaliterary was an American art movement that began in the 1960s that took photography to its end. Editorial realists created most illusions that were not natural but reconstructed. Artists such as Richard Estes Ralph Goings Audrey Flack Robert Bechtel and Chuck Close have attempted to recreate what a camera can record. Several sculptors including Americans Duane Hanson and John De Andrea were also associated with the movement. Like painters who rely on prints sculptors rely on living models and thus arrive at a simulated reality.

Publishing agency was born from the Pop and Minimalism movements that preceded it. Like pop artists the Pulishingists were interested in breaking down the scale of applicable subjects y including everyday scenes from the merchants life – cars shops. and signs for illustration. Like them publishers have tapped into marketable advertising and images. The practice y advertisers of using artificial fashion or machinery similar to photography as the foundation of their work to create detached and non-personalized effects is also linked to both ethnocentrism. Mass and minimalism. However countless aphorisms proclaimed the resurgence of representational illusionism as a challenge to clean minimalism and countless people saw the movement as an attack on the interests of clean minimalism. Significant benefits have been realized y the modern abstract we.
Realistic publishers often project a hacked image onto canvas and also use airbrush to reproduce the effect of a print published on glossy paper. Estes stated that the idea of ​​this painting was mainly about something quick and that the drawing was just a fad to complete it. He chose to disguise the character in his New York street scenes with the look of his photography. Goings and Bechtel also sought to capture a crisp plank using gas mixing in their numerous images of popular us culture in America. Flack projects opulent still-life slides onto canvases rationalizing the 17th-century theme of vanity and reminding viewers of the transitory nature of material possessions. Almost completely converting his friends prints into a giant film before that first in lack and white and also in morning colour in 1970. He first put a grid of light pencils for evaluation. footage and also sketch images with airbrush; He completed the picture by drawing in detail.

The birth of Ultramodern Photography heralded a significant aesthetic change in photographic affair as well as a shift in the way in which photography was produced, employed and appreciated. Ultramodern Photography encompassed trends in the medium from the early 1900s through to the 1960s. The move from early photography to Ultramodern Photography is distinguished by a departure from the language and constraints of traditional art, similar as oil, and this change in station was imaged by changes in practice. Shutterbugs started using the camera as a direct tool rather than manipulating images to conform to traditional sundries of cultural beauty (a custom particularly associated with Pictorialism). In introducing this move, ultra modernist shutterbugs ultimately disintegrated the wider conventions of the art world by expanding both what was considered art and what was supposed an respectable subject matter for it.
Although Ultramodern Photography doesn’t start until the morning of the 20th century, before photographic inventions give a technological and contextual frame for after developments and are important in understanding the stylistic changes of the period. Some of the crucial approaches of Ultramodern Photography are unique to the medium whilst others align with wider art movements similar as Dada and Surrealism. In discrepancy to earlier connections between photography and cultural groups, which tended to be imitative, Ultramodern Photography came completely bedded in these movements and handed a new and important medium for trial and expression.