This is a photo series between 2009 and 2014 from her personal archives. Bénitah was trying to create a dream album where she looks at the idea of the ideal family looking at the themes of memory and loss. The stitches ressemble the conflict, drama and pain of family history that is absent from the images.
The photobook has a mix of black and white images and colour images. Carolle Bénitah worked into the images with stitching which adds texture but not physically because it is her images printed in the book. The book it self is roughly A4 and the images range in size and orientation. The book is a hardcover and has been binded using perfect binding which is when the binding is hidden by the cover using glue and stitching. The cover is made of card and has a single graphic image that wraps around the book and the title of the book is embossed on the front. The title is literal as it is her family’s’ photo souvenirs.
Photos from Photos Souvenirs:
Pomplondin
A la plage, 2009 – at the beach
La Cicatrice – The scar
Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
The story seems to be about her family and is told by using old images from her own families’ archive and she has manipulated them by sewing into them, adding a new narrative or adding to the current story/memory told in the image.
Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
Throughout the book most images are single page images and often there is one image on one page then a blank page next to it. Some pages consist of a double page spread image that has been sliced in half horizontally taking up half the double page or a spilt in colour, for example white at the top and red at the bottom.
Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
The images follow a journey of her life from daughter to wife to mother, telling the story of Carolle Bénitah.
Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others. Use of captions (if any.)
There is no introduction before the images start in the book. Majority of the images in the photobook do not have any texts linked to them but there is a couple which have texts that Carolle Bénitah embroidered into the images (shown below).
il ne dit pas – he doesn’t say
Demeler le faux du vrai – to sort the lies from the truth
At the end of the book there is one final image which consists of a picture of two frames one with her and her son and the other being her parents with the text, “a mon fils” and “a mes parents” which translates to for my son and for my parents which tells us the book is dedicated to them.
The statement at the end of the book is a summary of what Benitah wanted to portray in the photobook.
Carolle Bénitah was born in Casablanca, she now lives and works in Marseille. Bénitah was a fashion designer before becoming a photographer in 2001, she incorporates sewing and beading into her photography. She often explores the themes of memory, family, desire, loss, mourning and time. in her work.
“I started photography when the fragile dimension of life imposed itself on me and functioned as an existential crutch. Faced with a reality difficult to apprehend”
-Carolle Bénitah
The Photobook Photos Souvenirs is based on her memories of her Moroccan childhood, reinterpreting her own history as a daughter, wife and mother by manipulating images from her own personal archives using embroidery to create an album. She uses the slow and precise process of embroidery as a metaphor of time passing by, and to create designs that break the happiness in the images and deconstruct the myth of an ideal family.
“To embroider my photograph, I make holes in the paper. With each stitch, I stick the needle through the paper. Each hole is a putting to death of my demons. It is like an exorcism. I stab the paper until I don’t hurt anymore.”
Have a look at some these questions listed below from the book Photography Decoded authored by curator and writer Susan Bright and curator, writer and photo-historian Hedy van Erp.
How is narrative constructed in the work of Shipla Grupta and Umberto Verdoliva?
Opening quote
Introduction (250-500 words):
I am going to look at the theme of identity within family heritage, childhood, and location, focusing on how photographers create narrative with images. I find this interesting because it adds more depth to an image and creates more meaning. Narrative in photography also creates questions for the viewer and a sense of nostalgia or sentimentality which connects to the viewer, adding more value to a piece. The two photographers I will be looking at are Shilpa Gupta Umberto Verdoliva, I have chosen these two photographers because in their works they both explore storytelling and narrative in their own distinctive ways, looking at unique topics and different photographic processes.
In my current project for Identity, I am looking at location and upbringing by going through my own families archive of images and taking new images from the same locations of the old images around Jersey, focusing on a more photographic approach instead of a casual snapshot. I will take inspiration from both photographers mentioned and create double exposers and split my images in half to create a more interesting set of images.
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Looking at both photographers I am studying, realism and pictorialism seem to have an influence on their photographic styles. Pictorialism is an art movement that started in 1880 and came from photographers who wanted to prove photography as an art form. They were heavily influenced by artist of the time and would manipulate their images to make them look more like art. Pictorialists would use techniques like Vaseline on a camera lens to get a blurrier effect, scratching negatives to create a brush stroke effect and mixing chemicals. Realism is an art movement that started in 1915 as a reaction to pictorialism, certain people did not like the manipulation that would go into the pictorialst photographs and wanted to take pictures as they were, providing records of the world.
Alfred Stiegltiz, The Asphalt Paver, NY, 1892, printed 1913.
Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano, 1936.
Both have abstract approaches to taking photos and often find themselves focusing on shapes and forms. Umberto Verdoliva’s images in his project What is a dream? have a more pictorialist approach to them because they are artier in nature and have been manipulated to create his final outcomes.
Storytelling is something that has been around for a while, since humans could speak and before through cave drawings, in forms of myths, legends, fables, anecdotes, or ballads. A story is a series of related events or experiences which unfold over time, likely to follow the structure of exposition, conflict, climax, resolution. Narrative is not necessarily a story it is also the way a story is told and interpreted. David Campell, professor, and political scientist says that ‘in telling visual stories about the world, photography is narrating the world’ which suggests that narrative aids photography and is more than photography alone which is often linked to context. A photograph is non-verbal in nature and captures a moment in time removed from a timeline, a singular image can tell a story individually, also images put together in a certain way can tell a story through sequencing.
Interpretations of narratives in photography can change the way a viewer looks at an image, whether this be clear with context behind an image, or something left to the viewer to analyse inside their own mind. Photographers developing a visual story should focus on what story they are going to tell and how they are going to communicate this to the viewer.
Narrative in photography can be shown in various ways such as photo collage where each photo represents different events and the contrast between these images creates a relationship to the viewer. Photobooks are also a way of conveying a narrative through photography even though they would not be thought to have a narrative in the sense of a sequence of events unfolding over time. Photobooks concentrate on an overall theme, concept, or idea. This is done by the way they are presented on a page and throughout the book.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
My first photographer I will be looking at is Shilpa Gupta who is an Indian artist who uses a broad range of mediums to create her images and artworks, often interactive typically using sculpture, installation, text, photography and audio and visual technology. She creates artworks that focus on human relations, subjectivity, and themes such as desire, conflict, security, technology, borders, and censorship.
I will be looking at her project Altered Inheritances- 100 (Last Name) Stories focusing on the key themes of narrative and family. In this project she looks at family heritage through family names where she presents her images split in half and reassembles them to form a misaligned set of images which she exhibits in a room and the different sets are presented next to one another in a long strip.
Gallery view from Shilpa Gupta, Altered Inheritances- 100 (Last Name) Stories, Pigmented inkjet prints in split frames, 2012-2014.
She takes historical photographs, snapshots, and scans of abstract drawings. The text on the images tells the story from hundreds of different people who had to abandon their last names after crossing boarders and migrating somewhere new. The abstract geometric shapes of the split images with the line split in the middle works as both a divider and connector with framing the isolation from identification and belonging.
This story is similar to what was seen in the Jewish Evacuation during World War 2, migrations of Bengalis from East Bengal to India, or from one place to another. Gupta says this act is ‘a crucial step towards sacrificing your tribe, ancestor, family, parent’ by her misaligned images because if we change our story, we complete something better, inspiring, and practical but we also lose ourselves.
In the exhibition where Shilpa Guptas’ Altered Inheritances is exhibited and Zarina the walls of the gallery and work is installed in the Tyler of a house plan. Divided into different parts of the gallery both artists artworks complement each other and conversing with each other as well as the people who view them.
The house in Zarina’s work turns into the form of the presentation itself in the gallery. Shilpa Gupta looks at the divide in people sharing common culture and the deportation of these people within state boundaries like West Bengal and Bangladesh. These two regions are similar but are part of two countries meaning they attract and repel each other. Gupta looks at the political divide and takes this as the crucial matter that splits communities turning them alien to the other half which can be seen further in her work by the physical divide of her images.
Shilpa Gupta, Altered Inheritances- 100 (Last Name) Stories, Pigmented inkjet prints in split frames, 2012-2014
Shilpa Gupta’s work is inspired by the issues with how south Asians are treated in the gulf and how they survived by changing their names, changing their identity. In the above sequence there is seven split images including images of surfaces, landscapes, and a portrait image.
In the middle of the sequence there is an image of a coastal scene where there is people stood next to a beach with rocks and the sea. Under the image there is a quote that reads, ‘In 1970’s, when he boarded the overnight train to the dream city, he left his surname behind. He chose a new one, something sounding ‘more local’, more Maharashtrian, something that could effectively camouflage his Gujrati back ground. He had been told he would be dealing with several who resisted new entrants into Mumbai. Vaishav Rathore Panchal’ typed in a type-writer front.
Image from above sequence
The image is muted in colour and has a warm tone to it. The texture in the waves, people and rocks creates a high tonal range and makes the overall feel of the image gritty. As this is in the middle of the sequence, the rough texture could indicate the middle of a story where there is usually a turning point in the plot. This could relate to this image as there is a lot of grain which implies that there is more character, something is happening.
The contrast between the people and the sea creates a diagonal divide, cutting the people from the sea, this could link to the cutting of their freedom as the people who were forced to change their names to fit in with a new society lost that freedom of expression and perhaps lost themselves. The image is taken from above looking down which gives the image a different perspective and creates a more interesting point of view.
The quote suggests that there is a serious divide in Mumbai between people who are fleeing to safety and people who already live there which is reflected in the image by the divide between the light and dark from the people and the sea.
At the end of the sequence there is an image of the sky, with the quote, ‘When he was getting married, he wanted him and his wife to have the same name, but felt it was unfair to ask her to take his surname. So they both changed their surnames to something new ‘, handwritten under the image.
Image from above sequence
The image is quite monochrome and only has two colours, being white and blue. There is not much tonal range in the image creating a low contrasting image which is soft in colour. The image is taken from eye-level, in level with the horizon capturing the whole sky as the sole image. The natural daylight from the sky adds to the soft, bright atmosphere, this could be a metaphor because the image is at the end of the sequence and could symbolise a happy, peaceful ending.
Gupta has added a white geometric circle into the centre of the very organic image creating a contrast between them. This creates a divide between the calm and soft background and the harsh crisp circle.
The quote under the image and the blank circle could suggest an empty space, a new beginning for the people who changed their names or could be symbolising heaven where everything is pure and tranquil.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
My second photographer I will be looking at is Umberto Verdoliva and his project What is a dream? Focusing on how he has created a narrative through layering images/ multiple exposures. He takes two real moments captured over time and merges them to create a new meaningful and unique image. Recreating a scene, an atmosphere, short reality/snapshot from something that existed in different times and places.
Image from What is a dream?
Image from What is a dream?
He currently lives in Treviso, Italy and produces most his work from the streets of his whereabouts. Umberto Verdoliva’s images are part of street photography which is a genre of photography that records everyday life in public places. Being in the public setting enables the photographer to take candid picturesof strangers, sometimes without them knowing. Street photography does not have to be taken on the streets, the aim of it is to capture culture and lifestyle. Images should tell a story or document a moment. Some street photography is created to make the viewer pause and question themselves.
Verdoliva likes street photography because it has helped him think about his daily routines and life, constantly looking for poetry and beauty in his surroundings and street life around him.
In 2013 he founded ‘SPONTANEA’ which was an Italian group dedicated to street photography, but this ended in 2019. Verdoliva has presented workshops, exhibitions, portfolio readings, presentations and writes articles on photography, showing his passion for the subject.
Verdoliva takes an interesting approach to street photography, looking at angles and geometric, his style being sensitive. Taking ordinary moments and transforming them into something extraordinary to focus on the poetry and significance. All his photographs are made on film and are double exposed to create the effect of two images one which means that preparation is important for his images. Always out and about looking for connections between things and people and the atmosphere/feeling in each place. He creates new realities by merging, mixing element from completely different places. By his precision and careful planning, we learn how attentive he is as a photographer as well as his sure sense of composition and in showing a story in a short fragment in time.
Image from What is a dream?
The image includes a man walking on a pavement into what looks like a plastered picture of a close up shot of a woman, like he is walking into a new world. The street picture is taken at eye level from a slight distance so he could get the man and the pavement in the picture. Verdoliva takes his pictures at random when he is out but plans for possible outcomes. The image has no specific name but is part of his ‘What is a dream?’ series which is about getting the viewer to use their imagination.
The image is in black and white which creates a high tonal range throughout the image emphasising the contrast between light and dark. The lighting would have been from the natural daylight which translates to the images’ softness, it is not harsh and bold, which creates a ghostly feeling as it is light and empty. even though the image has layers to it, it still has a short depth of field and feels 2D. There is a lot of textures in the outcome from the wall in the background, the peeling plaster sheet and the close-up portrait adds to the textures. These create quite harsh lines, like dry brush strokes in a painting, adding depth and grain to the image.
The background image with the man walking follows the rule of third as the horizon is in the bottom third and the main subjects are off centre, creating the perfect composition. The Woman also looks like she is looking over her shoulder as if the man is following her which creates an atmospheric feeling.
The image contains a mixture of geometric and organic shapes like the hair in the portrait of the girl and the run-down wall in the background and geometric shapes like the pavement lines which also is a form of repetition. The white solid line which is the edge of the paper that the man is walking into, could link to the idea of walking into a new world using the Solid white line as a divide between the two places, acting as a door. This creates a dark and eerie mood overall in the image. Verdoliva would have planned this as likes to get people to question themselves and their imaginations while looking at his images especially for this project.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Both artists approach narrative in photography differently but still tell the story they want to be told. They use multiple images to tell a story, Umberto Verdoliva uses double exposures and Gupta uses sequencing. When it comes to the stories themselves that each photographer is trying to portray they are different. Gupta focuses on the history of people migrating to India for safety whereas Verdoliva does not base his narratives on anything, he looks for opportunities around him and tells the story he wants in that moment.
Umberto Verdoliva, Image from What is dream?
Shipla Gupta, Image from Altered Inheritances
Both of their photographic styles also contrast each other, Verdoliva clearly takes his images in a street photography style, capturing things in the moment. In contrast Gupta’s images seem to be more pre meditated in the way that her images are structured. She also includes a lot of objects in her sequences which is very different to street photography that focuses on scenes and people.
My own outcome
When creating my own responses using old family photos and new images I took inspiration from Gupta’s sequences and split my images like she has. In my opinion this links to the divide in time because the old family images are from around 15 years ago and the new images are taken in the present day.
My own outcome
This idea of merging two different moments in time and creating a new outcome also links to Verdoliva’s work because that is what he does with his images and is his main principle behind taking them.
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Elena Martinique 2016, Reading the Narrative Photography
Pictorialism came from people who wanted to prove photography as an art form. Pictorialist photographers were heavily influenced by artists of the time and would manipulate their images after to make them look more like art.
To make the photos look more handmade they would use techniques like Vaseline on a camera lens to get a more blurry effect, scratching negatives to create a brush stroke effect and mixing chemicals.
Clarence H.White, Morning, 1908
Examples of Pictorialism in photography:
Alfred Stiegltiz, The Asphalt Paver, NY, 1892, printed 1913.
Peter Henry Emerson, Rime Crystals, from Marsh Leaves, 1895
Julia Margret Cameron, I wait (Rachel Gurney), 1872
Clarence H. White, Evening—Mother and Boys, 1905
Pictorialism was also the first signs of staged photography, where photographers got models to pose for the image in the way the photographer wanted. Julia Margret Cameron (above) is a prime example of this as she got members of her family to model for her.
Paul Strand, Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Connecticut, 1915
Realism/ Straight Photography
Started in 1915
Realism or straight photography came from people who did not like pictorialism and wanted to take photos as they were, no manipulation, providing records of the visual world. Photographers would take photos of shapes and forms, abstract in nature.
Examples of Realism/Straight Photography:
Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano, 1936.
Walker Evans, River Hill Cafe on Corner with Telephone Pole in Foreground, Alabama, 1936
Ansel Adams, Windmill, 1932
Alfred Stieglitz, From My Window at the Shelton, West, 1931
Jacob Riis, Peddler Who Slept in the Celler of 11 Ludlow Street, 1892
Pictorial photographers did not take photos of the urban environment or rural areas with poor communities. Danish immigrant Jacob Riis published a book ‘How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums and living conditions in Manhattan and this sparked a new kind of realism with a socialist perspective. Photographers Dorothea Lange and Lewis W Hine started to photograph the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on working class Americans. This new photographic response brought up the issue of housing and labour to legislators and the public , which was the beginning of photojournalism.
Modernism
20th Century
Modernism was a reaction to enlightenment, the new discoveries in technology and science. Technology was improving and there was a clash between science vs religion and more intellect within society. It was also a rejection to realism and a move towards abstract photography and modern times. People were questioning freedom from leaders. Modernism also makes references to the art of the work itself like composition, material, skills and process, it is heavily critiqued and people who admire the art from modernism often look for originality, what makes something unique, seeking for the new.
By the start of the 20th century photography was a way of mass communication, being used in magazines and newspapers and photographs were being used in advertising.
Charles Sheeler, Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company, 1927
Examples of Modernism in photography:
Christian Schad, Schadographie Nr.24 b , 1960
Otto Steinert, Face of a Dancer, 1952
James Nachtwey, A survivor of a Hutu death camp poses for James, at the height of the 1994 Rwandan troubles
Saul Leiter, 1950-60
Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, CA, 1944
Edward Weston, Artichoke halved, 1930
Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House
Post-Modernism
Late 20th Century
Post-modernism was a reaction to modernism and was heavily influenced by what was going on in the world. It started after the impact of the technology in WW2.
A heavy influence to post modernism as a movement is relativism which means no society or culture is more important than another. Not all postmodern artist are relativists but they often explore ideas of the way society is constructed and question traditional hierarchy of cultural values. They also explore power of economic and social forces use that power by manipulating peoples’ identities and cultural identities.
Architects did the most for the start of post-modernism, they rejected the modernist style of architecture as it was too formal and simple. They wanted more playful and dynamic buildings.
The art of postmodernism are admired for the imperfect, accessible and temporary aspects rather than being perfect and technically good like modernism. Postmodernism is more about examining a subject.
Examples of Post-Modernism in photography:
Jeff Wall, Insomnia, 1994
Morimura Yasumasa, A requiem: spinning a thread between the light and the earth/1946, India 2010
Photography was invented in 1826. The first photographic process was the camera obscura, these were boxes that were used to expose light-sensitive materials to a projected image.
French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph using a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura, leaving to be exposed for hours. He took this at his family’s country home in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France and titled it View from the Window at Le Gras (right).
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826.
The camera obscura was not invented in 1826, the earliest written account is from the 4th century (400BC) by a Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu. He wrote about how light from a illuminated object would pass through a pinhole into a dark room and create an upside down image of the object. The first use was in the 13th century when they used a camera obscura for safe observation of sun eclipse. An astrologer, alchemist and physician Arnaldus de Villa Nova used camera obscura as a projector for entertainment. Artists started using them in the 15th century. Artist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci talks about camera obscura in his book Codex Atlanticus, a twelve-volume bound set of his drawings and writings.
Louis Daguerre, Paris Boulevard, 1839, Daguerreotype
Louis Daguerre
August 1839 was when the Daguerreotype was announced to the public. It was a collaboration invention with French artist and photographer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. They made a permanent image by using a copper plate coated with silver iodide, exposing that to light in a camera, then fume that with mercury vapour, creating an image and then make it permanent by using a solution of common salt.
Daguerreotypes have detailed and high contrast outcomes which is why they became very popular for portraiture. However daguerreotypes cannot have copies made of them which put a lot of people off of them but also appealed to people who wanted something personal.
Henry Fox Talbot
Scientist over the years, from the camera obscura, realised that certain chemicals were light sensitive but did not know how to stop them from developing, which led images to keep on developing until they were black.
William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist and inventor who could not draw something so he wanted to invent something that could take a photo and he would be able print copies. Around 1834 Talbot created a way to develop photos using chemical coatings containing silver salts so that under light the paper would darken. He continued to work in secret until Louis Daguerre went public with his process, the Daguerreotype.
Talbot then worked on his process and in 1840 created the Calotype which required a much shorter exposure time and was a negative so could be reproduced as a number of positive prints.
“Oak Tree in Winter,” calotype and salt print by Henry Fox Talbot, 1842-3
Kodak (Brownie)
The Kodak brownie was released in 1900. This is how photography was made popular to the average person. They would buy the camera take there photos then send it back through the post to be printed and they would be sent back again to the person. The Kodak Brownie was invented primarily for children but adults would use it to because the price was so low.
I will not need anyone as a model because I’ll be taking pictures of objects and landscapes.
What?
I’ll be photographing places and things that relate to my identity from my whole life, childhood to present day.
Why?
I want to take individual things and create some sort of narrative or sequence with them to show how I have evolved but also show the important things to me.
Where?
Greve De Lecq, St Catherines pier, Corbierre Lighthouse, Harve Des Pas, St Aubins and the school studio.
When?
I’ll need to do a few different shoots on different days and different times because the places and landscapes are all over the island. I also need to think about the lighting I want for each location and the weather (sun, rain, fog, blue skies?) The pictures of old photos can be taken at any time in the studio at school.
How?
I will use my camera and the natural daylight, but for the studio pictures I will use artificial lighting.
Umberto Verdoliva
Who?
I will not need anyone as a model because I’ll be taking pictures of landscapes.
What?
Similar to my Shipla Grupta photoshoot I want to take images around jersey that relate to my identity but for this photographer I intend to focus on a more abstract approach like the images from Procida. But also try and incorporate the abstract style with landscapes.
Why?
I want to take images of landscapes which relate to me and my current life in Jersey and contrast it with where my parents grew up but also to show my identity through places.
Where?
Greve De Lecq, St Catherines pier, Corbierre Lighthouse, Harve Des Pas, St Aubins.
When?
I’ll need to do a few different shoots on different days and different times because the places and landscapes are all over the island. I also need to think about the lighting I want for each location and the weather (sun, rain, fog, blue skies?) For this photographer in particular it would be good to take photos on a sunny day so I can get the same high contrast images.
Lights, shadows, contrast, sarcasm, and the hunting of visual poetry. The atmosphere of city life ignites my curiosity, leading me to capture real moments with the camera. Ordinary life creates the most attractive and charming pictures
-Umberto Verdoliva
Umberto Verdoliva is from Castellammare di Stabia near to Naples. he currently lives in Italy. He captures street photos mainly around Italy, focusing on his daily life in depth looking for the beauty in humanity around him. He does not plan his outcomes, he goes out into the city streets and looks into crowds, waiting for the right moment to capture. When taking photos he focuses on the relationship between man and the urban environment. Verdoliva became a photographer to be closer to people and enjoys meeting people when he goes out to take photos.
He shows his love for photography by organising workshops, exhibitions, portfolio readings, presentations, writing articles and insights on his photography. In 2010 he became a member of the international collective “Vivo” until 2017. during this he founded “SPONTANEA” an Italian collective dedicated to street photography from 2013 to 2019.
Verdoliva is inspired by photographers, Fan Ho and Henri Cartier-Bresson for their use of light, shapes and strength in their images.
Two real moments captured over time, merged to create something meaningful, balanced, and unique. Recreating a scene, an atmosphere, an ephemeral reality from something that existed in different times and places has been the leitmotif of my work.
-Umberto Verdoliva
The images from “What is a dream?” are made on film, double exposures which is two or more photos put together. Verdoliva plans these images when making them hoping the final outcome sparks the viewers imagination.
I’m constantly roving around the city looking for “connections” between things, people, feelings. When I’m photographing, I look at everything as if it were a dream. With my double exposures, I try to create new realities: merging, mixing, matching elements far and wide to produce new, unimagined meaning.
I particularly like this project and the outcomes he made and the technique of double exposures. I like how they add more layers to an image and tell a more in depth story.
Why the island? Because it is the point where I isolate myself, where I am alone: it is a point that is separate from the rest of the world, not because it really is, but because in my state of mind I can separate myself from it.
-Giuseppe Ungaretti
Procida is one of the islands part of the Flegrean Islands off the coast of Naples in southern Italy.
In this path, which still continues, Procida has been my transit, the refuge, a door revealed with the key of my camera, it has allowed me to find myself again, to discover, to leave out the tiredness and misunderstandings of a life that I might have wanted. different.
“But most beautiful of all, the Island Not Found” are the lines of a poem by Guido Gozzano, an imaginary place that is there to be continually reinvented by those who perceive its soul and grace.
On the island, however, we also find a landing place, a temporary stop for a transit, a stop to recover strength and then continue. The island and the sea, elements that have always been contained in the narration, have allowed me to abandon myself to the beauty of the wind, the light, the smell of salt and my own silences, giving birth to the ancestral desire to tell and reveal the profound enigma inside me.
In the term “isolation” the word island as a place constitutes its backbone, and the very proximity to the mainland accentuates the dimension of distance.
I like the way these images have strong lines and angles, making them very strong and bold images. If I was to use this style for my own double exposure images it would add texture and shape to my images.
Image Analysis
Content – The image includes a man walking on a pavement into what looks like a plastered picture of a close up shot of a women, almost like he is walking into a new world. The street picture is taken at eye level from a slight distance so he could get the man and the pavement in the picture. Verdoliva takes his pictures at random when he is out and looks for possible outcomes. The image has no specific name but is part of his ‘What is a dream?’ series which is about getting the viewer to use their imagination.
Image from What is a dream?
Formal Elements – The image is in black and white which creates a high tonal range throughout the image emphasising the contrast between light and dark. The lighting would have been from the natural daylight which translates to the images’ softness, it is not harsh and bold. even though the image has layers to it, it still has a short depth of field and feels 2D. There is a lot of textures in the final outcome from the wall in the background, the peeling plaster sheet and the close up portrait adds to the textures. These create quite harsh lines, almost like dry brush strokes in a painting, adding depth and grain to the image. The image contains a mixture of geometric and organic shapes like the hair in the portrait of the girl and the run down wall in the background and geometric shapes like the pavement lines which also is a form of repetition. The white solid line which is the edge of the paper that the man is walking into could link to the idea of walking into a new world as Verdoliva likes to get people to question themselves and their imaginations while looking at his images. The background image with the man walking follows the rule of third as the horizon is in the bottom third and the main subject is off centre.
Mood – The mood overall is very dark and eerie. The softness of the image also creates a ghostly feeling because it is very light and empty. The Women also looks like she is looking over her shoulder as if the man is following her which creates a atmospheric feeling.
Shilpa Gupta is an artist from Mumbai, India. Gupta uses a range of mediums from manipulated found objects to video. She often responds to the topic of human perception and how information is received and internalised everyday. Gupta looks at how objects, places, people get defined and her work links to these where definitions like labels are used. She also responds to issues in India which include gender and class barriers and religious differences.
Gupta’s works relate to the highly mediated act of seeing, retrieving and remembering trying to get the viewer to see something different or get them to question what they are looking at.
This exhibition is about how people from South Asia are treated in the Gulf. Gupta traced individual people who changed their names for survival or to succeed. The images also include the reasons behind why the names were shed. The splitting of images is showing a sharp break from the past. The words on each are “triggers for memory” in Zarina’s Home is a Foreign Place (1999), about a longing for a home she could not return to. The architecture in the exhibition is inspired by the floor plan of her childhood home. The exhibition also has a video of Zarina remembering leaving the house after the Partition in 1947 made by Sophie Ernst.
Left: details from Shilpa Gupta, Altered Inheritances – 100 (Last Name) Stories, 2014. Installation, Site specific, pigmented inkjet prints in split frames. Right: details from Zarina, Home from Home is a Foreign Place, 1999. Woodcut with Urdu text printed in black on Kozo paper and mounted on Somerset paper.
I really like the way that she splits her images in half and the presentation being misaligned, I would like to include this in my own work.
The images are also interesting, they have a sense of personality and Identity to each one whether it is an object, landscape or portrait photo. I would also like to take inspiration from these when taking my own photos.
Image Analysis
Shipla Gupta, from Altered Inheritance.
Key Themes – Shipla Gupta’s work is inspired by the issues with how south Asians are treated in the gulf and how they survived by changing their names, essentially changing their identity.
Content – Seven split images including pictures of surfaces, landscapes and one portrait image.
For the image analysis I will be focusing on the half-image at the end of the sequence, the picture of the sky, with the quote, ‘When he was getting married, he wanted him and his wife to have the same name, but felt it was unfair to ask her to take his surname. So they both changed their surnames to something new‘ hand written under the image.
Image from above sequence
Formal Elements – The image is quite monochrome and only has two colours, being white and blue. There is not much tonal range in the image creating a low contrasting image which is very soft in colour. The image is taken from eye-level, in level with the horizon capturing the whole sky as the sole image. The natural daylight from the sky adds to the soft, bright atmosphere to the image, this could be a metaphor as it is the end of the sequence so could symbolise a happy ending. Gupta has added a white geometric circle into the centre of the very organic image creating a contrast between them. In context to the quote under the image the blank circle could suggest an empty space or new beginning.
Mood – The image creates a sense of peace and calm as the colours and clouds are soft. Gupta could be trying to link the happy ending or to heaven where everything is pure and tranquil.
I want to explore the idea of identity in the sense of location and upbringing. I want to look at this as I think it is a big part of someone’s identity and shows where they have come from and family heritage, which shapes people to be who they are.
I’m going to develop my ideas from work by Shipla Grupta who looks at family heritage through names and has a project based on this where she presents her images split in half and reassembled to form a misaligned set of images.
Shipla Grupta
Umberto Verdoliva
Umberto Verdoliva is another artist I would like to start this project with, I specifically like his project where he layers images on top of each other to create a new meaning to both images, adding a narrative. I really like this idea of taking something apart and putting back together and creating a new narrative.
I will do this in my own project by using old family archive images and taking new images. At the end of the project I will produce a photobook with my best outcomes.
I like the way that the images have been split in half and stuck back together again in a mix match way and how this represents how the names were shed and then split apart as they needed to change them.
For my own project I would like to take the style Gupta has used and split my images where possible because I think it adds another layer of story to the final product. I plan to look at my own identity and take pictures of objects from my childhood and use old photos to create a snapshot of my life.
I was born in Dubai, a country rich in religion that intrigued my interest in the Islamic culture. I am interested in using photography as a tool to reframe perspectives and emphasis the way in which a cultural image within society has been constructed through the media. I want to raise awareness within the viewer of the way newspaper coverage and online access to current events manipulates our views and opinions of Islamic culture. My photography aims to express the way the media distorts, blurs and shows a selected view, and to explore the way this process can result in the loss of individual identity.
-Freya Dumasia
Photos from Freya Dumasia’s A level Photography portfolio:
I like the style of Dumasia’s digital photos and would like to try and use it in my own work by perhaps layering a digital overlay over images or using a low shutter speed and taking blurry self portraits or object photos.
Two real moments captured over time, merged to create something meaningful, balanced, and unique. Recreating a scene, an atmosphere, an ephemeral reality from something that existed in different times and places has been the leitmotif of my work.
-Umberto Verdoliva
I like the story in these images and how Verdoliva has used photomontage to blend two images together and create a narrative. I plan to mix my photos from the past (from my childhood) and present self portraits or pictures I take that relate to my identity.
Why the island? Because it is the point where I isolate myself, where I am alone: it is a point that is separate from the rest of the world, not because it really is, but because in my state of mind I can separate myself from it.
-Giuseppe Ungaretti
I also like the way that Verdoliva has captured his life and made it personal to him as it is his surroundings. I would take photos inspired by these of places on the island which relate to me or perhaps get images from our family archives of where my parents are from and their hometowns because these are also my ‘homes’ and where the rest of my family lives.
Last year was special for everyone, I focused on the citizens of my little town of Rodez in the south of France as we was living between the multiple levels of lockdown. I was participating for the Ricoh GR challenge with all the finalists of the Spi awards 2020 and I have to say that it was a special moment with a lot of luck and good energy. This kind of times when things happen with an idea in it, I feel I just have to capture them in the timing. I selected this ten photos because of the short period in witch I did them and it seems to me that they fit well with each others and making a good series of how I saw my city and the ones who was living it with me in this hard cover situation, maybe I needed to put more creativity into my work to balance. I only used the Ricoh GR3 for this series.
-Jocelyn Calac
If I was to focus on community I would take photos like these where Calac has caught people in the moment and they are living their own lives but part of the community where he lives.
These were the two main photographers I studied and created responses to. These two photographers work have got strong geometric shapes in them.
To create my final outcomes I used photoshop to layer images over each other and edit the lighting to black and white. I also edited the pictures to have a high contrast to get the shapes stronger.
Started this project looking at different artists and learned a lot about compositions. Like the Golden Ratio and Rule of Thirds which helped me develop my photography skills and create interesting images which were more appealing to the eye and told more of a story in some situations.
We were given the theme of Identity to start a new project. I chose to look at the word identity it self and to not focus on my own identity to start with.
I looked at the different approaches from each photographer looking at Identity as a topic and took Alec Soth’s and Raina Matar’s styles to create my own outcomes focusing on my identity but also the way that outside influences have on our identity.
After researching many photographers like Alexander Apstol, Ed Rushca, Rut Blees and Lewis Baltz I chose to focus on The New Topographics which is a theme about landscapes which have now been man-altered like urban areas being turned into parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses. I also focused on old urban landscapes and was inspired by the works of Eugene Atget who took images of the constantly changing Paris architecture and streets.
Lewis Baltz:
Eugene Agtet:
Identity + Community
This project helped me with selection of my images and understanding more about why certain images go together or contrast and why photographers choose to sequence images together.
learning about selection ad sequencing
In this project I also used Lightroom for the first time and have found this helpful in my current work.
Using Lightroom for the selection process
In all my work I have enjoyed looking at compositions and shapes within different landscapes and objects.
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