How do the films ‘Chef’ (2014) Jon Favreau’ and ‘JUICE (2017) Neeraj Ghaywan explore cultural identities through the use of cinematography and mise-en-scene?
PHOTOGRAPHS OF FOOD ARE RARELY JUST ABOUT FOOD. THEY HOLD OUR LIVES AND TIME UP TO THE LIGHT.
Bright, S. Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography (2017)
When exploring culture, food often can be the key to discovering cultural differences and similarities. The way food is cooked, served, eaten and enjoyed is interesting and can offer a real insight into specific cultures that other explorative devices cannot offer. ‘Chef’ and ‘Juice’ both provide an understanding of food culture in the US and India respectively. The food culture that both the films represent have deeper underlying links to cultural issues in both countries. Chef brings to light issues on familial and romantic relationships as well as workplace security. In Juice, it explores the systematic oppression of women. In art, food has been used to investigate culture and identity for millenniums with examples of food art being found in paintings such as “Fresco Depicting a Woman Holding a Dish” estimated to have been created between 1-79 AD, 2000 years ago. Food has always been used in art as an allegory for other substance, often being taboo subjects such as sex and pleasure but more often being used to signify power and wealth such as the commodification of the pineapple fruit to show status that only the richest in society could achieve. Photographer, Martin Parr is renowned for photographs of people and food that impart an incredibly intimate insight into different people’s cultures as well as providing historically significant simulacrum to educate years after his photography is taken, seen in work such as ‘Anniversary Tea’ and ‘Steep Lane Baptist’.
Planning
intro- talk about history of food and art- introduction to central ideas of both films
chef- ideas of food porn- sexuality and food, food tourism, food in the western world- multiculturalism, culinary tourism
juice- systemic oppression of women, patriarchal society, food as allegory for freedom
conclusion- talk about ho0w own film connects and then reaffirm points
bibliography
Visual Feast: Contemporary Food Photography and Styling: Contemporary Food Staging and Photography by Gestalten
Re-contextualising the Spectacle of Online Gastronomy: A Studio Investigation into Contemporary Food Imaging by Nathan Taylor BFA (Hons) School of Creative Arts
From around the 1990s, the chef as celebrity or celebrity chef was born. As such, food media took on another dimension of cross-platform branded style marketing. Chefs, like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, have their own range of books, television shows and cookware, stimulating another surge in the recent saturation of food imaging. Jamie Oliver is a pertinent example of how brand-based marketing is commonplace within food media and directly impacts consumer activities.
Women do not have to necessarily absolve themselves of traditional duties to feel equal, all they need is to feel and act as equals in both responsibilities and privileges.- Hindustan Times Nov 26, 2017
Chef is most engaging when it shows Carl at work, in scenes supervised by Roy Choi, who worked at Manhattan’s posh Le Bernardin restaurant before wowing L.A. with his Kogi BBQ Taco Truck. Carl will duplicate Choi’s success when he acquires a battered truck in Miami Beach and takes it on the road home through New Orleans and Austin.- time magazine BY RICHARD CORLISS MAY 8, 2014 10:30 AM EDT
Bright, S. Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography
martin parr anniversary tea-1978, steep lane baptist 1976
It looked greasy, satisfying, and deceptively simple – which is reason enough to try a recipe. Learn To Be Considerate And Forgiving With Italian Nonnas And Stanley Tucci – Entertainment News, Firstpost By Judy J. Beasley Last updated Jan 23, 2022
After finishing all of my shoots, I began to edit my film together using the adobe premiere software. I cut out a lot of unnecessary pauses, ums and ars as well as irrelevant pieces of conversation that did not tie in as well as other more applicable and consistent parts. This cutting created a fast paced and interesting piece of work and kept it to just about my time constraints. I ordered each interview to create variety having a young person and then an old person interviewed in order to follow Neale’s genre theory by not keeping everything the same, creating differences to keep audiences intrigued
In order to introduce each culture I began each interview with an image of each nation/regions flag to create a visual preface into each ethnology. To augment this I included a segment of a stereotypical non-diegetic piece of music indicative of each culture. This included traditional bagpipe playing for Scotland, Jersey’s anthem ‘Beautiful Jersey’ sung in our traditional language jerriais, ‘La Bamba’ for Mexico and a Lancashire folk song for Yorkshire, for which I sampled the part with the thickest accent in order to enhance the verisimilitude of the film.
I decided not to edit the colour palate instead opting for a more natural amateurish feel with quality reminiscent of early louis Theroux interviews
Mood board
I include my mood board to remind me of my initial idea for the direction I wish for my film to go, providing a firm link between the dishes and the cultures that they belong to.
Due to camera difficulties including shakiness, blurriness and the accidental inclusion of the books used in lieu of a tripod, some clips, specifically from the interview about Yorkshire is not visually appealing and is in some cases virtually unusable. To fix this I plan to use an J cut technique to allow a voiceover to continue the linear narrative but overcut with archival footage relating to the relevant culture/dish or alternatively just something being discussed.
When reediting my film after publishing the first draft I gathered archival images to add over the film and hide imperfections such a camera shakes and blurriness
I also replaced the flags with more real looking flags with visible movement in order to keep all regions the same as well as adding a sense of verisimilitude.
In ‘Chef’ Jon Favreau explores parental roles and the impact of social media on job security, set to a backdrop of a culinary road trip across the US as main character Carl, played by Favreau, rediscovers his passion for cooking after a career destroying social media meltdown. The beautiful cinematography and extensive mise-en-scene of Chef is what solidified it’s status as a cult film and helped to adequately explore the vibrancy of Latin-American cooking and culture. The beginning of the film see’s Carl fall victim to cancel culture as he serves a popular but boring and overused menu to a food critic who gives a negative review which sparks Carl to respond with abuse on twitter, this exchange being familiar to contemporary audiences where cancel culture is a common occurrence that many celebrities falling victim to. By using film to deep dive into food culture, Favreau effectively brings a new medium to the phenomenon of food porn. One scene in particular stands out as displaying an erotic side of cookery as Carl prepares a dish of ‘Aglio e olio’ for love interest Molly. The simple dish shows off the sensual nature of Italian cooking and culture and the scene is now iconic for the way it does this. This scene reiterates the zeitgeist of food as a love language, as the dishes mimic the characters personalities and storylines. A scene where Carl makes a grilled cheese for his son Percy shows the beginning of Percy’s own culinary journey as the grilled cheese connotes an all American and childlike personality which is juxtaposed by a later scene where father and son bond over making Cubanos. Initially Percy asks why so much effort has gone into making the meat for the sandwiches, remarking “You could’ve just bought this at the store” but soon changes his tune begging to try the dish and helping his dad run the food truck, in turn putting him more in touch with his Latin heritage showing how food has brought people together “Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together.1” Carl’s identity as a white male forces audiences to read the film with a postcolonial lens, as he is effectively taking from other countries cultures and profiting from it. In an era of food tourism this cultural appropriation can often be misconstrued as appreciation as epi-curious, gastronomes endeavour to boost their cultural capital, especially considering that for many Latin immigrants in North America, a food truck is their livelihood and a way to share their culture with the public whilst for Carl this is a brief fixation that will ultimately bring him back to suburban life in middle-class Las Angeles as a top chef. The film utilises overhead shots when filming cooking scenes which help to bring more attention to the dishes being made. Lots of colour is used when creating the food, making it look more appealing but also more exotic to show Carl’s peregrination from the samey and traditional menu enforced at Gauloises where he was completely restricted in his ability to create anything contemporary, to the opening of his own restaurant with the freedom to experiment. In cooking scenes with multiple chefs’, actors were instructed to improvise a majority of their lines in order to emulate kitchen banter which effectively elevated the verisimilitude of the film. ‘Chef’ heavily relies on its score to enhance to atmosphere of the film, using iconic and nostalgic music by artists such as Gente De Zono, Pete Rodriguez and Perico Hernando’s whose Lain heritage and mariachi style deepen the roots and tone of the film.
‘Juice’ an independently produced Hindi language film by Neeraj Ghaywan, explores gender roles in India through a dinner party hosted by housewife Manju. There is a clear divide between the men and women from the start as the husbands enjoy themselves chatting and eating whilst Manju serves them, and the rest of the wives stay in the hot kitchen cooking and cleaning, becoming domestic caregivers in lieu of guests. While gorging themselves on chicken, the men gossip (a traditional feminine activity) about the ineptitude of a female superior at work treating one of them men as a subordinate and making him send unnecessary emails. The men show little knowledge on the topic they are discussing but that does not stop them from blathering on, another man asking, “do you have a problem with the email or the female?” illustrating male entitlement and a general distain for women who are viewed to be inferior and better suited to domestic roles like their wives in the kitchen. Gender roles in India are seen to be defined in childhood as a young girl playing video games is told “Food is ready come and serve your brothers” Manju looks on disgusted by this example of systemic sexism, like much of this short film she prefers to communicate with actions and facial expressions rather than words which makes her look of antipathy much more meaningful and crucial in driving the narrative as audiences begin to see her resentment towards the patriciate that demands girls to become slaves to men before even maturing into young women. This theme of children is repeated later when a wife suggests that having children is the key to marriage “If there no excitement in a marriage just get a baby” reinforcing the idea that a child, especially one that is female, is merely a versatile tool. This links with another line “But which book of law states this that either you can raise kids or pursue a career?” as Manju questions why the hegemony has created a dominant ideology that women cannot balance life in both the workplace and the home. After burning her finger whilst cooking and being subjected to an onslaught of verbal abuse as the men become increasingly impatient in their wait for additional food, Manju takes a stand by pouring a glass of juice, dragging a chair into the living room, and sitting, sipping her drink and relaxing with the cool breeze of the fan. She then engages in a pseudo staring contest with her husband who loses when he awkwardly looks away, allowing Manju to assert her dominance over the situation and empower the rest of the wives who have gathered to watch this spectacle. As Manju goes the grab the juice the whole atmosphere changes, with a non-diegetic crescendo of dramatic music increasing tension and the diegetic quieting of background noise as the house guests are shocked into silence upon witnessing Manju’s defiance. The prop of electric fans adds drastically to the mise-en-scene and as a narrative device, effectively showing the gender segregation and discrimination between the men and women. Despite arduously working in the incommodious and uncomfortable kitchen, the women are left with a broken fan that does nothing to alleviate the wife’s malaise, whilst the men who lounge around doing nothing have the amenity of the large working fan that allows them to relax. The contrast of this scene shows a paradoxical subversion of expectations as, by western standards, women sit and gossip and men do physical handiwork such as the attempted repairing of the faulty fan. Manju disrupts this convention when she moves her chair in front of the good fan to give herself a break from the harsh conditions she has been subjected to, displaying the power of female rage which she uses to dismantle the patriarchy in the microcosm of her home as seen in the quote “In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it” ‘Juice’ displays perfectly bell hook’s theory of intersectionality, in an age of 3rd wave feminism many people in the west believe that women are now equal to men and that feminists have achieved all that they set out for however hooks acknowledged that women of colour are excluded from this narrative and face adversity from both the feminist movement and the hegemony especially outside of the western world in countries such as India where women are still discriminated against and treated as inferiors, saying “As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realised”3
I have a clear idea for how I want my personal study to come out. I have researched many documentaries such as ‘heavenly bites’ a Mexican food documentary, as well as several short YouTube videos focusing on themes of ‘food around the world’ to educate myself on specific food cultures as well as gain inspiration for my own film. To manage time within the film itself I have set a 10 minute timeframe in which to present to present each culture. To give each culture enough airtime I aim to explore 4 different areas with around 2 and a had minutes of airtime each. The cultures I am going to explore are from Yorkshire, Jersey, Mexico and Scotland, which is very scaled down compared to the initial 8 cultures I wanted to investigate. I chose to do this because I felt that the film would be more fulfilling if each culture had the ability to be explored in depth rather than many cultures with limited information because of insufficient allotment of time.
Name
Culture
Food
Date
notes
Erin Middleton
Scotland
Irn-Bru, Shortbread, Caramel wafer
29/12/21
tartan hairband
Margaret Williams
Jersey
Bean crock (les pais au fou)
10/12/21
bring extra light as environment is dark
Carmen Kirchner
Mexico
Guacamole, Micheladas, Elotes
27/01/22
Bring gluten free beer for michelada
Glyn Williams
Yorkshire
Yorkshire pudding
28/01/22
bring extra light as environment is dark
Timesheet for filming shoots
To add to the mise-en-scene and create a atmosphere relating to the specific cultures I plan to create backdrops with specifically stereotypical decoration, subtle enough to blend in with the rest of the scenery. Speaking from hindsight this did not happen as decorations felt gaudy and offensive to cultures represented, instead background indicitive of the subjects homes where used as they gave a more personal representation of how each culture lives.
To prepare for filming I created a storyboard. Despite making a documentary and not having specific scenes to storyboard I felt that this was the best way to visualise my idea and plan my frames.
Before taking my final images, I did a practice photoshoot in order to find out which kind of lighting I need to use to create delicate shadows and soft highlights.
This screenshot shows the process of choosing which images I want to reject and keep based on first glance. The images I want to keep have a white flag in the corner and the rejected images are faded to a grey colour.
I used the star rating system to select how much I like the images from a 1-5 rating. The images with 5 stars underneath show the images I like the best, and Images with a lower star rating I still like but aren’t quite successful as the others.
I cut down the view of my images to only the images that were flagged in order to see them in a clearer view. I also used the colour system of highlighting my favourite images in green and those I am still unsure about in yellow.
As I start to edit my images in Lightroom, I duplicate the image I want to edit to see how it looks in black and white to compared to the image in colour. I also edited the exposure, highlights and tint of the image to make it look almost worn and weathered as to make the image seem as if it had been taken years ago.
After editing my images and choosing between whether I want the images in black or white or an altered coloured edit, I used the colour system again to decide which final images I liked the most and wanted to keep.
Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. It usually refers to a time period beginning late 19th century and concluding mid 20th century at the beginning of the second world war. It was a reaction to and rejection of the period of enlightenment, in which society as we know it was shaped to make people ‘proper’ The movement looks at human nature and progress and criticises the idea that everything has to be looked at realistically. It functions under the idea that institutions are oppressive and works to subvert expectations and break down traditional photographic customs. In photography, modernism rejected the idea of a soft focus, instead creating harsh lines with sharp focus similar to Straight photography.
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz’s fetish for young women was well known throughout his career, his explicit photos making his preference obvious and hard to ignore. A majority of his photos are erotic in nature and focus on themes of femininity from his ow perspective. Stieglitz is credited with bringing modernism to America, starting the movement in the country and making modernism a popular medium on a global scale. In accordance with the style of modernism, Stielglitz photographs usually follow a narrative, telling a story with just one photo.
Postmodernism refers to the majorities stylist movement of the second half of the 20th century, directly following modernism, hence its name Post-modernism. The movement denied the existence of any ultimate principles, instead focusing on conceptual ideas stemming from modernism with a sharp departure from typical conventions of traditional photography with the addition of random objects that subvert expectations.
Kenneth Josephson uses the conventions of montage to create postmodern photographic art, often including the addition of physical photographs in the frame of his photos to add depth and meaning and evoke feeling of nostalgia through a genre of coming of age.
How does Marchand and Meffre explore how wealth and power create divides within communities?
Almost 90% of the world’s wealthiest adults live in North America, Europe, and Japan. A wealthy individual, community, or nation has more resources than a poor one, while having access to resources can be a personal bonus for the rich and powerful, for others it is not. We are now living in the Anthropocene age- which means human influence on the planet is so profound and terrifying it will leave a lasting impact on the planet for thousands of years to come. Emissions from flights stay in the atmosphere and will warm it for several centuries, meaning the excessive travel of wealthy, known individuals are a main contributor to the ongoing global warming issue. Donald Trump; has been dubbed, “the person responsible for the most carbon emissions in the world.” With the power that Donald Trump possessed while president he not only enacted policies that negatively affect the environment, but his personal choices are also wildly anti-environmental. Wealth and power are one of the things that divides us most as humans, while people can argue that having money does not make you powerful- the wealthiest people in the world, are not running countries and creating laws, like many world leaders, who’s wealth barely scrapes the surface of the sort of wealth Jeff Bezos has, wealth does make you powerful. By being wealthy, you have something that others want, that is where the power lies. Jeff Bezos spent 5.5 billion dollars to go to space for 4 minutes; this same amount of money could have saved 37.5 million people from starving in 2021. For the practical side of this project, I have decided to take pictures that I believe show Anthropocene and abandonment to communities as well as the divide of rich and poor communities.
I chose the style of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre to take inspiration from while taking images for this project. They are two French photographers who met through a mutual interest in contemporary ruins. They began their collaboration in 2002 by exploring Parisian urban remains before their interest took them to Detroit, where a thorough exploration of the city lasting five years resulted in their seminal work, ‘The ruins of Detroit’. Their other projects after that include ‘Theatres’ where they discovered and documented the sorry state of theatres they came across while travelling around America. Their work responds well to Anthropocene as it is filled with dull colours, mostly neutral tones like beige and creams. Their images show Anthropocene well as it mainly focuses on buildings that has been built from wood and such materials that have been sourced from the Earth and then abandoned to rot and ruin the landscape. This has a massive impact on landscapes and the Earth as people are cutting away nature and ruining habitats to build homes and buildings that are abandoned and left to decompose. There are over 19 million vacant buildings in America where the land could have been left untouched. I have chosen these photographers to discuss as I believe that I may be able to find vacant buildings in Jersey that I can take images of. It is no secret that Jersey is the home of many wealthy individuals, this can be seen first-hand through the images I have taken for this project. For my first photoshoot I decided to photograph The Water’s Edge Hotel a vacant hotel at Bouley Bay, what was once a beautiful hotel just metres from the beach is now an eyesore on the landscape. While the hotel has been sitting vacant since 2013 there have now been controversial plans to convert the 50-room, 4750sq-m hotel into one home for a wealthy individual. Not only is this taking away what was once a place where families to spend days together and tourists to visit the island, it is also going to make the beach surrounding the hotel uninhabitable whilst the demolishment of the building takes place. Senator Sam Mezec said, “I think this is sad. It’s essentially the commoditisation of our coastline for the benefit of an extremely small number of rich people, rather than for the benefit of all the people who want to enjoy this area and we’re seeing this in other parts of the island too like Greve de Lecq and at some point, we’ve got to say no and say our coastline is one of our most beautiful assets.” This is just a small instance of wealth and power dividing the community of Jersey however it is still controversial. Water’s Edge Hotel (first image) Computer generated image of new plans (second image).
I decided to mainly focus on Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s project ‘The ruins of Detroit’ as I think that the images, they captured in that project tell a lot of stories from just an image of an abandoned room and can be left open to interpretation. I also thought that I would be able to likely recreate and be inspired by these images more than the images from their project ‘Theatre’ as the images in Ruins of Detroit possess more similarities to buildings that I am able to capture images of in Jersey than their Theatre project. For my photoshoots of abandoned buildings, I focused on taking images in a similar style, by taking my images in a natural lighting and focusing on the dull tones in the images, another key similarity between our images is that the interior of the building I focused on are very derelict and falling apart a lot like the images in ‘The ruins of Detroit’ you can tell they have all been vacant for a long time and taken a lot of damage over the years from people intruding.
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre – The Ruins of Detroit
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are two French photographers who explore and question ruins. Through their photography, they show the vestiges of an era and the evolution of our societies. In an interview they described why they photograph what they photograph. “To give a rather broad definition of what we do, we are interested in buildings that strongly embody an era and a society and we observe their metamorphosis. The 19th and 20th century buildings often reflect the great transitions that are still underway today, like our series on the American theatres, which are examples of entertainment architecture produced on an industrial scale. These auditoriums, with their eclectic decorations, provided an attractive form of self-staging of the identity of a country that is still young. We then observed the city center movie palaces, huge assembly places, which declined due to suburbanization, the mass arrival of television – of individualized leisure basically – and to see some of these movie halls turned into churches, shops, shopping centers, etc. Through the prism of a type of place, we see an entire alternative modern history of our societies. That’s probably what makes us interested in these “modern” ruins, because they resonate directly with what we know.” I believe that throughout my work I also explore how once lively buildings turn derelict and then end up converted into something more modern and self-serving than a place that was once built for a community. That is why I have chosen these photographers to take inspiration from.
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s work
My Photographs – inspired by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre
Furthermore I have also decided to look at Jacob Riis he was a Danish-American social reformer, journalist and social. Within his work he contributed to multiple things; one which stood out to me was ‘How The Other Half Lives ‘ this is because his photographs have a strong and clear impact which adds key specific detail and also leaves his photographs left open to interpretation. Jacob Riis was one who decided that within his work he is going to publicized the serious crisis in housing, as well as the lack of good eduaction and poverty at the height of European immigration to New York City in the late nineteen century. In 1911 Riis stated in the San Jose Mercury that he was “I was a writer and a newspaper man, and I only yelled about the conditions which I saw. My share in the work of the slums has been that. I have not had a ten-thousandth part in the fight, but I have been in it.” As his work was so successful he was able to befriended President Theodore Roosevelt and later managed to change the law and create societal improvement for some the poorest in America. This clearly demonstrates how clear and strong the impact that his photographs had on individuals as he was able to have a strong enough impact for one to change laws and regulation to improve the overall quality of life.
Jacob Riis – How the other half-lives.
As well as those photographers I also chose to focus on Robert Adams. Robert Adams was born in New Jersey and moved to Colorado. He was a professor of English literature for several years before fully committing to his photography career in the mid 1970s. He also released multiple books such as The New West, Summer Nights, Los Angeles Spring as well as several others. In 2009 Adams was awarded the Hasselblad foundation international award in photography. Robert Adams bought a 35mm reflex camera in 1963 and this is when he began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. Personally, I find Robert Adams work very inspiring due to the fact that each photograph in which he has taken is very unique in their own particular ways and has different morals behind each photograph. However, they are all very similar to each other due to the minimalistic contrasts within the photos and the mutual tones used. Additionally, I also feel that you can clearly see the main focus in each photograph as well as the non-focus which is mainly based on the backgrounds. In my opinion I feel that the photographs which he has taken involving architecture are highly more interesting for one to look at as each building may portray a different story of who may coincide there. For my photoshoot, I took images in the style of Robert Adams, I went into the side streets in St Helier and captured images of buildings that interested me, I then converted all of my images into black and white to match Robert Adams photography style. To a degree, all of Adams’ work is simple, but deceptively so. Since he first came to public attention in the mid-1970s as part of the New Topographic movement, his subject has been the American west: its vastness, its sparse beauty, and its ecological fragility. You could say that Adams was a pioneer of eco-conscious photography, but that would be a very reductive way of describing an artist whose vision has remained constant, and constantly rigorous, and whose work demands close attention – and a degree of patient attentiveness – from the viewer. I enjoy the simplicity of Robert Adams images (pictured below) as whilst being sparse there is a captivating feel to the way they have been taken which makes you want to see more. The photographs below are very similar this is due to the light dark tones which he has used to maybe add contrasts and details. Additionally I enjoy the way that he decided to not just capture the houses and also capture the people that may live there as this adds to the story of the photographs.
Robbert Adam’s work
I like these images a lot as I feel the monochromatic colouration of them match Robert Adams images well. While in some of his images he has darker shades in they are mostly filled with light greys and white shades and I feel these images are a good representation of how he has inspired my practical work for this project.
My Photographs – inspired by Robbert Adams
Additionally, I have researched an artist named Nick Hannes as he took photos of the rapid change in which Dubai has had over several years. This includes photographing luxury cars, nightlife as well as also portraying the way in which the lower class people live and the lifestyle in which they have. The photograph below shows several construction workers waiting for the collective bus transport to take them back ‘home’ to their labour camps. The wall behind them may suggest that they could be separated from ‘wealthier’ community as you can see the sky scrappers behind them which may either be offices or apartments of wealthy people. Furthermore another factor to why I think that this wall creates a clear divide is that there’s graffiti on it which states ‘FREE YOUR MINDS’ this may suggest that the workers may believe that social status does not matter to them. I feel that Nick Hannes kept this photograph in colour as if he was to adapt it to black and white it may not have had such a strong impact on the viewer, in addition the use of natural lighting is very effective as I feel the tones and shading would be very different and not as achieving if it was taking using artificial light.
Nick Hannes – Garden of Delight
In my own practical work, I have taken equal inspiration from both Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre as well as Robert Adams. I have taken photoshoots in both of their styles, first photographing derelict buildings and then moving onto buildings that are inhabited. The differences between my two photoshoots is that I left my first set of images that are inspired by Romain Mefree and Yves Marchand in colour as the dull colours in the image create a more abandoning and vacant feeling than when they are in black and white. However, after taking a closer look at the images I captured for my Robert Adams inspired photoshoot I decided to not only convert them to black and white to match his images but to also bring out the simplicity of them without overbearing colours. Finally I’m also going to take photographs that I have been in inspired by Nick Hannes as I feel that all his photos have different interpretations making the photographs genuinely more interesting for the viewer overall; one would say his work passes a strong message that money and power may create a divide within the communities. This may be due to the variety of income in which different people earn as people who are of higher income may feel more empowered when this shouldn’t be the case.
For my photobook shoot, I want to recreate iconic images of Lillie Langtry but in a more modernised way. I may use more modern settings or change the costume in a way that still relates to historic fashion, but with modern elements.
Here is a mood board of some of the images I am aiming to recreate.
I want to find an old fashioned or antique dress from a charity shop to recreate the costume. I may take some photos out of the studio for the images with the sofa or in nature. I will use simple makeup on my model and put their hair up as seen in the photos of Lillie Langtry. The images have a high contrast of light and shadows, so in the studio I will use harsh lighting directed from one side of the face. I may also use props such as chairs, fake flowers and hats.
In what way have Mary Ellen Mark and Laia Abril portrayed women’s mental and physical health.
“I remember learning that society had mandated that getting my period should remain a secret. The same ritual that was supposed to symbolize that I had “become a woman,” came with an unbearable pain that was normalized.” Abril, L. (2021) Menstruation Myths.
Menstruation is an example of one of the many things that women must go through; yet keep it concealed due to society’s opinion on it. Women have been stereotyped to be accommodating and emotional, this could easily be interpreted as weak. Women grow up with this stigma and therefore have been known to be victimised by others. This has been proven with statistics provided by the UK government, let alone the rest of the world. Laia Abril is known for focusing on things that women could go through at some point in their life. Her project History of Misogyny include the topics: rape, abortion, periods, eating disorders and sexuality. Her images are always raw to show the true feelings and experiences of going through these situations; for rape she focused solely on objects that can be connected to the subject. This form of photography helps engrave the reality of things in people’s minds. Mary Ellen Mark has done a range of work, including being an associate producer for the film American Heart in 1992 as well as creating many photo books, all seemingly focusing on social minorities. Her work over the years has helped her accumulate many awards which she began to receive in 1980 for her work Mother Theresa to her most recent award in 2014 for an outstanding contribution to photography award. Both women have showed the public what life is like for others who could be counted as less fortunate than themselves. They have inspired my work and I have tried to adopt their techniques and themes throughout my personal study. I want my work to be more informative than emotional. I want to reveal the realities of life for women.
The feminist movement took off when the Suffragettes began to fight for women being able to vote in the UK in the 1870s, this was known as first wave feminism. Once the First World War began, the men went off to war and the women had to stay behind and help work in factories and build bombs rather than staying in the house doing domestic work. This meant that when the war was over, women wanted to have more independence and get their own job away from the house, and their husbands. This became a popular opinion, the fact that women over the age of 30 in the UK in 1918 may have had a part in it also. The second wave in the feminist movement began in the 1960s and led to the 1990s during the anti-war protests. Instead of focusing purely on the gender inequalities, the second wave of feminists broadened those ideas onto sexuality, reproductive rights, domestic violence, marital rape etc. This was a huge deal as this time it was not only women protesting, but men also joined in as they saw the injustice in the world. This wave helped enforce the criminalisation of marital rape in 1994 (UK) as well as in 1965 (USA) the Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965 prevented anyone from limiting a woman’s access to contraception or other methods of birth control. This ground breaking work done by historical movements has allowed Mary Ellen Mark and Laia Abril to create the work they wanted without anyone questioning whether they are the right people for the job.
Emmeline Pankhurst getting arrested in the streets of Manchester (1910)
The Oxford dictionary definition of documentary is “to document or record”. Documentary photography has been used to keep record of major events that happen worldwide. This includes civil wars, world wars, coronations, and even natural disasters. Photography is a way for information to be held in the mind without needing to remember key information such as dates and times, all you need to remember is the details of the image itself. It’s scientifically proven that images are registered better than words by the brain, this means that if an image is attached to a news article, you are more than likely going to remember the story because they remember the contents of the images and not necessarily the paragraphs of information that they just read. Therefore, photography is such an important part of life, we can process valuable information a lot easier, and it is often enjoyable unlike reading pages and pages of information. The term Documentary Photography can be seen as contradictory. Images can be interpreted in different ways which is the opposite of a documentary which states purely facts from whatever topic it is based on. For example, the image above of Miss Pankhurst being arrested could be interpreted in many ways. Her facial expression is not as emotive as someone would expect when being arrested for something you believe in. One would expect more of a commotion when someone is being arrested for fighting for basic human rights. She seems as though she is at peace with the fact that she is going to be locked up for an unknown amount of time. This contradicts with the fact that she is being held at the wrist by the police officer. He seems to be gripping her so tight that she is having to latch on to her pair of gloves. This is the danger of documentary photography, everything that was just explained was an opinion. No one knows what the circumstances of the situation unless they were there themselves. “We no longer believe that the photograph directly replicates the circumstances” (Wells 2003:16).
Laia Abril’s work is what some would deem abstract for the subjects that she is addressing. For example, On Rape has images of different uniforms, this helps explain to the world that what a woman or man wears is not the issue; it is the people who think it’s acceptable to do it that are the issue. You don’t need to be doing anything specific to be found in that situation, it’s solely the rapist that can tell you when it’ll happen; often it’s too late. In addition to this, Menstruation Myths is an amazing collection of images which help raise awareness of the stigmatism of the natural menstruation cycle. The colour theme of her images is red to symbolise blood. Blood in most circumstances is seen as one of the most important parts of the body, this is due to its lifesaving roles in the body. Yet when a woman is on her period it is seen as disgusting and something that shouldn’t be spoken about openly, even though almost every woman must go through it for forty plus years of their life. My favourite image she made is a silhouette of a woman and there are white dots going down the centre of her body as though it’s her spine and at the bottom of those dots, a female reproductive system highlighted. I feel as though the image had helped highlight the fact that every woman has a uterus, and almost every woman goes through it in their lifetime.
Taken from Laia Abril’s Menstruation Myths.
Abril’s work mainly consists of objects rather than people. I feel like she has done this so more people are able to relate to certain situations, rather than setting out a whole scenario for only a few people to link to. She did this because she knows that “the repercussions are most of the time psychological, so it’s very difficult to visualise it.” (Abril 2019) in response to the fact that rape is difficult to capture due to it being stigmatised. This shows that she is conscious of how she composes her images, to prevent any unnecessary pain towards the viewer. While doing this, she manages to show the fact that the women who are represented in her images are not victims, but survivors who are strong and able to take back control of their lives. She helps those who are viewing her images that nothing can stop you from being who you are and no matter what has happened in your life, you are strong enough to fight back.
“There is only one reason I’ve stayed a photographer for so many years. Photography is always challenging” Ellen Mark, M. (1998) American Photo.
Ward 81 is a book that haunts the minds of its viewers. The images have no notes which leaves the viewer predicting what has happened to the person on the page. The books itself is very monotone and simple and this was shown with a white border as the images displayed were often mounted. However, the images throughout are varied sizes and seem to have no pattern, this could have been done intentionally to help represent the instability of the women in the ward. As you flick through the book, the images become progressively more graphic and traumatic. Once the final images have been shown, the editing notes can be seen, this helps the viewer understand Ellen Mark’s thought processes when bringing all the images together. Her main inspiration was W. Eugene Smith, he is seen by many as one of the most important photographers in the development of the editorial photo essay. The work that inspired Mark was the Country Doctor, one of Smith’s famous pieces of work.
The doctor taped a patient who broke some ribs after a horse rolled over him. W. E. Smith’s “Country Doctor”
Mary Ellen Mark herself, was an inspiration to many. The only reason that Ward 81 happened was because she was a photographer on the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; it was filmed on an empty ward in Oregon State mental institute. Once the film had been released, Mary Ellen Mark returned there in 1976 and stayed in the hospital for six weeks in an abandoned ward next to the women’s metal ward. The women who were in there, were a danger to either themselves or someone else and needed to be under strict supervision. Mark was able to highlight the fact that the brain is a mysterious organ, and it only takes one person’s opinion to be deemed insane. Ward 81 was created to show the world how the supposedly insane live from an outsider’s opinion. The raw images highlight the fact that the women were sometimes shocked with electrical currents when their behaviour wasn’t up to someone’s standards. Everything in that ward was created because of someone’s opinion. Mary Ellen Mark allowed people to see the true story of life. She wanted people to see the model’s true self and not the barrier they put up for everyone else. The most amazing thing about Ward 81, is the unpredictability of it; this is due to the fact even she didn’t know what the women would be doing that day. This is since their own brain has taken over, they could no longer function as a stereotypically normal person, and became a danger not only just to themselves but also society. However, there is a sense, as you get further into the book, of familiarisation and a connection between the camera and the women.
Mary Ellen Mark- ” Ward 81″ (300B-016-035)
As well as Ward 81, Mark created her book, STREETWISE as well as a book about Indian women who had gone into the occupation of prostitution, called Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay. These books were created and further showed the true lives of others. Mark doesn’t censor her images unlike the press, this helps show the world that the human body is beautiful, and no two bodies are identical. The world nowadays only highlights the supposed perfections in life and hides the things women having to go through, such as prostitution, just so they can have food and water and pay bills. Mark showed the world that no woman is the same, as well as showing a joint injustice the world shows to women because of our sex. Although documentary photography is never created in a malicious way, some people, such as Martha Rosler, believe that the fact that some people who do not intervene with what was happening in the images they took is a crime against humanity. “The site of victim photography in which the victims, insofar as they are now victims of the camera” (Rosler 1981). This highlights the fact that when people are being photographed in certain situations, they could be seen as trapped. For example, in Falkland Road, there are images of teens who are prostituting their bodies, which is illegal and can be seen as immoral if not stopped. In addition to this, in Ward 81, the image 300B-069-011 is of a woman surrounded by nurses with what seems to be a lollipop stick in her mouth, this suggests that she is going through pain, surely one would assume that, that moment in time was not the best to be interfering in whatever the patient was going through. This supports Rosler’s opinions, Mary Ellen Mark could have tried to stop the young girls putting themselves in danger by selling their own bodies to people who could potentially put them in danger both physically as well as mentally.
“FALKLAND ROAD:PROSTITUTES OF BOMBAY”- Mary Ellen Mark (300D-001-016)
For my personal study, I have worked mainly in portraiture. I have focused on the theme of secrecy and wanted to incorporate the phrase “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil”. I wanted this to symbolise the deafening silence of assault victims who are too afraid to speak up. Most of my images are in black and white, like Mary Ellen Mark’s work. Black and white is often used as a phrase which has connotations of simplicity and history as historical images are stereotypically in black and white. This contradicts the topic of my project. Mental and physical health is complex, there is rarely a definitive answer to most queries that are brought forward. In addition, I have taken inspiration from Laia Abril’s work by taking images of objects which may seem simple but the more you look at it, the more meaning the object begins to have. Both Ellen Mark and Abril take images that, at first glance, may not seem like they have much meaning, but the longer they are looked at, the true meaning of the images becomes clearer.
I addition to Ellen Mark and Abril, Jo Spence is an inspiration to my work. She used photography as therapy, and this started because she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She documented the stages of her life whilst living with the disease as well as fighting against the stereotypes of what a woman’s body should look like. This is important to note as she had to make the decision on whether she would have a mastectomy or not. A mastectomy is a major operation for a woman to go through as breasts are always associated with the female image. In the end she only had tissue removed from the breast yet still wanted to show that you do not need to have a certain body part to be seen as a woman. At the end of the day, a breast is just tissues and fat that is stored in the body, not a symbol of femininity.
Libido Uprising Part I and Part II Jo Spence (1989)
Both Abril and Mark help show their audience, that women are strong individuals and no matter what they go through, they are still women. This is especially important to them; their work have shown different sides of individuals who have gone through different things but still convey the same message of power and control. Both artists show some form of control whether it be positive, when the women regain confidence and go back to what they counted as normal before whatever happened to them occurred. Or negative, like the women in Ward 81 when sadly their own minds had taken over and trapped them in a mental institution for their own safety. Both points highlight the fact that Mary Ellen Mark and Laia Abril wanted to show their audience that the female body and mind are powerful. The female body will in one way, or another save itself from pain and grief and help mend itself, even if added help is needed in the process.
Although both Abril and Ellen Mark have shown the power that women have, neither have shown women in a positive way. They both focused on why women must be strong due to negative situations rather than how women are strong in normal situations, like being mums and grandparents. The injustices shouldn’t be used to show the good in the world. The good in the world should be able to shine through without the need for bad things. Jo Spence used photography to show how much she grew; she took a bad thing that happened to her and made it positive. Photography is a powerful invention. It can be used for good but can also be manipulated into something it is not. It’s subjective yet provides facts. We need to use it to show the world that we are strong, not that we are weak.
