The book Mongrelism by Jono Rotman displays portraits of people within the gang, focusing in on their clothing and tattoos, along with photos of correlating objects, scenery and towns. Showing the identity of the gang members in hope to make viewers more vigilant to their traditional beliefs and values. Rotman’s desire for completing this project lead from his interest in power and its representation in society. His approach to image-making was to carry out the sessions without any styling or direction from Rotman, this way each sitter had control over his representation. All of the portraits were shot with a large-format camera, against a dark background with available light. This photobook received the Images Vevey Book Award. The layout of the book is described by a reviewer as having a ‘simple clean design, aimed at keeping our full attention on its content.’
The book cover is a red, linen material with an emboss of a traditional adaptation of a self-portrait whakairo carved by Little Man Rogue, filled with gold leaf. The name and book author is also embossed with gold leafing on the spine.
The first half of the book shows the photos Rotman took on his project, including portraits of mob members, landscapes of the areas they are from and object images of things members of the mob uses. The paper used for this half is glossed, thick photograph paper, with one photo on each page along with their names and the county of New Zealand they are based.
The second part of the book includes texts, and a series of documented conversations between Rotman and various members, during his tour. These pages are a newspaper like texture, with each interview in a chapter format. My favourite aspect of these pages is that Rotman censored with red blocks what seems to be personal or disturbing information, I like this as it shows the respect that he has for these members and it shows the relationships he has formed during the project.
DAY 1: Essay: Complete essay, incl illustrations, referencing and bibliography + publish on blog (essay also needs to be added and presented at the end of your photobook)
DAY 2: Photoshoots/ recordings: Begin editing images or recordings for your photobook / film + produce blog posts showing selection process and experimentation of images. Use a combination of print screens + annotation. Write an evaluation about what went well and what you need to do next to develop your shoots and project.
DAY 3 Photobook/ film: Begin photobook design/ edit film + produce blogpost showing design process and evaluate. Use a combination of print screens + annotation.
Prints: Begin to consider final prints and produce blog post showing presentation ideas and create mock-up in Photoshop and virtual gallery.
Blogposts: Finish and publish any missing blog posts as per Planner and your tracking sheet.
ESSAY Publish final essay as a separate blog post with illustrations of key works by artists and your own images analysed in your text, as well as a bibliography listing all literary sources used. Also incorporate essay in the back of your book using layout in text columns and include illustrations and bibliography.
PHOTOBOOK Make sure you have a made a blog post that charts your design decisions, including prints screens of layout with annotation and write an ongoing evaluation. If you complete it; final book design must be checked and signed off by teacher.
For more help and guidance editing, process and evaluation go to blog post below.
BLURB – ORDER BOOK Inside Lightroom upload book design to BLURB, log onto your account on their website, pay and order the book.
Consider spending a few extra pounds on choosing better paper, such as Premium Lustre in check-out, change colour on end paper or choose different cloth/ linen if needed.
FILM Make sure you have a made a blog post that charts your editing process, including prints screens with annotation and write an evaluation. If you complete it; final film must be checked and signed off by teacher.
For more help and guidance on editing, process and evaluation go to blog post below.
Export final film as mp4 file and upload to Youtube / Microsoft Streams and embed on Blog. Follow these steps:
In Premier: Click on Sequence > Render IN/OUT
File > Export > Media
Export Settings: Format H.264
Output Name: use title of your film and save to V:Data drive
Click Export at bottom
Using Microsoft Stream: Open up Office 365
Go to All Apps and select Stream
Create > Upload Video
Browse to upload your exported film from V:Data drive
Write a short description, choose thumbnail and publish
My Content > Videos > embed film into Blog post with evaluation.
In Youtube: Set up an account at home (www.youtube.com)
Click Create (top right corner) > Upload video
Select file > your exported film from V:Data drive
Write a short description and choose thumbnail
Once uploaded, embed film into Blog post with evaluation.
BLOGPOSTS All blog posts in relation to the above must be published, including any other posts missing from previous work modules since the beginning of A2 academic year, including Zines which must be printed & bound, and NFT film and digital image, including a statement, uploaded to both blog and folders here ready for the exhibition:
FINAL PRINTS Select your final prints (5-7) from photobook/ film and make a blog post showing ideas about how to present them.
In photoshop produce a mock display (create new document size A1: 594 x 841mm) using different image sizes, for example: A3 x 2, A4 x 2, A5 x 3
PREPARE AND SAVE IMAGES FOR PRINTING:
Add your images to the print folder here…M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\Printing Yr 13 IDENTITY
Complete any unfinished work from last term if you have time, For example: select images for print form Zine and NFT projects.
File Handling and printing...
Remember when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to 1000 pixels on the Short edge for “blog-friendly” images (JPEGS)
BUT…for editing and printing when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to Short edge for “high resolution” images (JPEGS) like this…
A5 Short Edge = 14.8 cm
A4 Short Edge = 21.0 cm
A3 Short Edge =29.7 cm
This will ensure you have the correct ASPECT RATIO
Ensure you label and save your file in you M :Drive and then copy across to the PRINT FOLDER / IMAGE TRANSFER
For a combination of images, or square format images you use the ADOBE PHOTOSHOP > NEW DOCUMENT + PRINT PRESETS on to help arrange images on the correct size page (A3, A4, A5)
You can do this using Photoshop, Set up the page sizes as templates and import images into each template, then you can see for themselves how well they fit… but remember to add an extra 6mm for bleed (3mm on each side of the page) to the original templates. i.e. A4 = 297mm x 210 but the template size for this would be 303mm x 216mm.
Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop
Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…
For my first shoot I went to speak to my Grandmother who keeps good records of out family history. I looked at the images and chose the ones which are important to where I come from and my family. I then scanned in and cropped the images so they are ready to edit.
Using these images I can now create a timeline using the dates of images I have also scanned in.
1. Research a photo-book. The book I’m choosing to study is “Help” by Daniel Butt. The story he’s trying to tell is about his experience with drugs and how it affected him. Most likely to raise awareness and show history with drugs and how differently it can influence people. He includes loads of different types of photographs, such as self portraits in black and white, and still life images in colour of pills.
2. Who is the photographer? the photographer is Daniel butt, a former student. i think he decided to make his book to raise awareness to the effects that drugs can have on a young individual and how they can change your life and make you a completely different person. he shows how using drugs affected him has a teenager and how he had to deal with stopping and the depression/ other mental illness’s he had to deal with from using them and relying on them. i think he wanted to reach everyone as the audience, as anyone can start consuming them and relying on them especially teenagers and he wanted to share his own experience. it can spread a message to other people who are dealing with the same situation or even someone whos never done drugs to show them the effects it can have.
3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design.
the book is consisted of a hard copy cover , mostly all black which creates a sad and dark atmosphere/mood about the book before you even open it which I think was done on intention.
Paper and ink:. He uses a mix of different papers and includes a letter in his book which creates a different texture however most of his pages are glossy. He uses both black and white images and colour this creates a nice contrast in his book when looking through it.
Format, size and orientation: His book includes a lot of self portraiture however a few images of objects such as pills are used too. His book is slightly bigger than a square format and his images are all different shapes and sizes which contrast with each other.
His book is a hard copy book, with an image wrap and its slightly smaller than an a4 sized book.
Cover: his front cover includes a letter press with a single word which makes you intrigued and the rest of the book is all black.
Title: relevant and intriguing title as it fits the mood of the book and makes you wan to know what its about.
Narrative: the story he’s trying to tell is about using drugs. he presented his own experience with how drugs affected him through this book and shows how they can affect you during your teenager years.
Structure and architecture: he develops his narrative through self portraits that show his emotions and they contrast with the images of colourful photos of pills meanwhile his images are black and white which shows how they affected him
Design and layout: most of his is images are on single page however some do include a double spread and he uses a letter in one of his pages.
Editing and sequencing: he includes a lot of juxtaposition of photographs as one page is a photo of him in black and white and the other page shows a colourful pill which contrast together, eventually as you look through on the final page there’s a letter saying he got prescribed on medication which shows how his journey with drugs ended.
I created a mindmap based on my initial ideas for my personal study. I started by finding some topics which interested me and then developed those ideas and started thinking about how I could turn these ideas into a shoot. I found this helped me to then go on and create a moodboard with artist references and helped me to clearly pick and find a theme that I was most interested in and had the more inspiration for.
Childhood
John Stezaker
John Stezaker was born in 1949 in Worcester, United Kingdom, and attended the Slade School of Art in London and graduated in the 1973. He is a contemporary British conceptual artist who is best known for his collages of found images taken from postcards, film stills, and commercial photographs. Stezaker’s work resembles early-Surrealist and re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image. Through his careful juxtapositions, Stezaker adapts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own meanings. He adds meaning to his images by intertwines images of landscapes, famous portraits and layers them creating silhouttes and curves. He creates interesting and fascinating small-format collages that have qualities of Surrealism. Stezaker said “My ideal is to do very little to the images, maybe just one cut: the smallest change or the most minimal mutilation” as he feels what he does is destructive however also has meaning behind the actions. His works have been featured at many museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and many more.
Stezaker’s images
Ken Nwadiogbu
Ken Nwadiogbu is a visual artist who creates innovative conceptual drawings on various surfaces as he engages in multidisciplinary modes of storytelling. His interest in art, as well as his career began while earning his degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering despite the fact he had no formal training. His work was inspired by issues which related to him and those around him as he grew up, he began creating works that reflect his society with the hopes of making a change within his community. He calls his method of work contemporealism which is a fusion that is centered around hyper realism and contemporary art. Gender equality, African culture, and Black power are a few aspects of his current research and artistic practice. Nwadiogbu work constitutes a silhouette of a human, which he embeds an eye or parts of a face into his ultimate theme of creating consciousness to what represents our collective reality through art. Ken Nwadiogbu is constantly revitalising his practice by challenging modes of Black representation and he is constantly updating how he works by using new variants of photography to present his work for example NFT’s.
Jim Goldberg
Jim Goldbergs was born in 1953 and is an American artist and photographer whose work reflects long-term collaborations with those who face neglection, been ignored, or otherwise outside the mainstream populations. Goldberg is best known for his photography books and multi media exhibitions especially for his trio serious of photography books called Rich and Poor, Nursing Home and Raised by Wolves. Goldberg is part of an experimental documentary movement in photography, using a straightforward approach based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. For my project I will be focusing on Goldbergs book ‘Raised by wolves’ which combines ten years of original photographs and text, home movie stills, snapshots, drawings and diary entries. He used this book to document the lives of runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. From 1985-1995, Goldberg was working on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco getting to know numerous homeless teens and building the relationships that would come to form the basis of Raised by Wolves.
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. It was an approach to photography which emphasized beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality and was an imitate of art.
Time period:
1880 – 1920
Key Characteristics:
From the 1880s and onwards photographers strived for photography to be art and resemble hand made art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings e.g. manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus, blurred and fuzzy imagery and using Vaseline on their lenses.
Artists associated –
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature. In her works in particular, her artistic influence was Pre Raphaelite, with far away looks, limp poses and soft lighting. Cameron’s photographs were unusual in their intimacy and she had a visual habit of created blur through both long exposures, where the subject moved and by leaving the lens intentionally out of focus.
Examples of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work
Sally Mann
Sally Mann is an American photographer, widely known for her large-format, black-and-white photographs, at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. Mann created a haunting series of photographs that tells a story about the one subject that affects us all, the loss of life. She created a project called ‘What Remains’ which was created in 2004 is a five part meditation on mortality and explores the ineffable divide between body and soul, life and death, spirit and earth. In ‘What remains’ Munn reflects on her own personal feelings towards death as she examines the boundaries o contempary photography.
Peter Henry Emerson
Peter Henry Emerson was born 13th May 1856 and died 12th May 1936, he was a British writer and photographer. His photographs are early examples of promoting straight photography in an art form. Emerson is known for taking photographs which displayed rural settings and for his disputes with the photographic establishment about the purpose and meaning of photography. Initially he was influenced by naturalistic French painting, he argued for “naturalistic” photography and took photographs in sharp focus to capture country life as clearly as possible. His first photo album was published in 1886 and was titled ‘Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads‘ and it consisted of 40 platinum prints that were inspired by these ideas. However after a while he became dissatisfied with rendering everything in sharp focus, as he didn’t like that the undiscriminating emphasis it gave to all objects was unlike the way the human eye saw the world. He then started experimenting with soft focus, but was unhappy with the result of this aswell. He was experiencing difficulty with accurately recreating the depth and atmosphere which he saw as necessary to capture nature with precision. Although he was getting frustrated with his photography he carried on to take many photographs of landscapes and rural life in the East Anglian fenlands and went onto publish seven further books of his photography through the next ten years.
Modernism
Modernism was a broad movement surrounding all the innovative isms of the first half of the 20th century. Although different modern-isms were often incompatible they all rejected the dominance of older movements such as Classicism and Naturalism in favour of new experimental ways of producing art.
Time period:
Early 1900s and continued until the early 1940s.
Key Characteristics:
It was a broad movement encompassing all the avant-garde isms of the first half of the 20th century. Early modernity is characterised by a belief that science could save the world and that a foundation of universal truths could be established. During the modernism photographers began to embrace its social, political and aesthetic potential by experimenting with light, perspective and developing, as well as new subjects and abstraction.
Surrealism
Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by the poet ‘Andre Breton’ and continued Dadaism’ exploration of everything irrational and subversive in art. Surrealism was more explicitly preoccupied with spiritualism, Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism. It aimed to create art which was ‘automatic’ which meant that it had emerged directly from the unconscious without being shaped by reason, morality or aesthetic judgements. The Surrealist also explored dream imagery an they were an important art movement within Modernism involving anything from paintings, sculpture, poetry, performance, film and photography.
Artists associated:
Rene Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte was born on the 21st November 1898 and died on the 15th August 1967. In the 1920s, he began to paint in the surrealist style and became known for his witty images and his use of simple graphics and everyday objects, giving new meanings to familiar things. Often his images were depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art. Magrittes earliest paintings date back to 1915 which then sparked his career in surrealism. With his art becoming more and more popular he was able to pursue his art full-time and was celebrated in several international exhibitions.
Post Modernism
Difference between modernism vs post modernism
Post modernism was a reaction to modernism and was influenced by disenchantment brought on by the second world war. Postmodernism was the collective name given to the shattering of modernism. In photography this was the direct challenge to the ideal of fine art photography whose values were established on an anti-commercial stance.
Time Period:
Late 20th century
Key Characteristics:
Postmodernism makes references to things outside the art work, e.g. political, cultural, social, historical,psychological issues. Postmodern work are aware of and make reference to the previously hidden agendas of the art market and its relation to art museums, dealers and critics. Postmodern work often uses different approaches in the construction of the work such as collaboration, parody, recycling and reconfiguration. Postmodernism favours the context of a work including examining subject and the reception of the work by its audience.
Artist associated:
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still lives.Wall is a leading contemporary photographer whose work is concerned with ideas about the nature of images, representation, and memory. He has been producing carefully staged photos since the end of the 1970s.
This photobook, published in 2016 and created by Carolle Benitah, displays reworked, archival photographs taken from the the artists Moroccan childhood and adolescence. These images that Benitah used here are have been taken in a mostly candid manner. However, some of which also being tableau, as the family has been placed and arranged in the frame for a group portrait. With these photographs she uses methods such as embroidery, beading and some other forms of multi-media to produce a new meaning from these old and forgotten images.
Carolle Benitah, born in 1965, Casablanca, is a 57 year old artist and previous fashion designer that explores the theme of identity through family photographs through her work. Benitah states in her photobook ‘Photo Souvenirs’ that she created this series to construct a fantasy album, which deconstructs the myth of the ideal family to produce a more nuanced image. In addition, Benitah uses needlework as a method in which to create a sense of drama, conflict and pain that is lacking in these photographs that do not display the whole truth. The artist has claimed that this slow and precise process is a metaphor for the shaping of one’s identity and for the passage of time. As well as this, needlework is often related to women and motherly duties, meaning this may be a protest of the expectations of woman’s roles in a family and regaining a sense of power for Benitah herself, subverting ideologies that claim women must not show characteristics such as anger. This photobook may have originally only served the purpose of acting as a kind of therapy for Benitah, but could also be argued to provide a service to an audience with complicated and difficult families, which many have, in particular women who find themselves in these places of familial untruthfulness. This book was received positively by many and named one of 2016’s best books by international curator/essayist Yumi Goto.
The photobook itself is a 21×24 cm printed hard-cover, presenting an image of one of Benitah’s pieces from the centre of her book. Containing 112 pages and 53 images, the paper used to display these photographs on are glossy throughout, kept together with a red running stitch binding. Although some of the archived images Benitah used here are black and white, there are elements of juxtaposing colour throughout, that bring new life and messages to the forgotten photographs, this usually being red embroidery or beading. The narrative of Bentiah’s Photo Souvenirs centres around her family archives, focusing on her childhood and selecting images which relate to memory and loss. This is emphasised by the chronological order in which the photographs are placed. The first image showcased in the photobook showcases Benitah as a child within a black and white family portrait and the final image displaying her and her son in a colour photograph. This progression of time is not only displayed through the growth of Benitah herself, but also in the development of photographic technology as the images slowly posses a higher quality as the book progresses. The title ‘Photo Souvenirs’ suggests that these photographs are a way of holding onto and remembering the past for Benitah’s family, which could also mean that these images were originally a façade, before Benitah’s manipulation of them, concealing the truth of what is often a complicated and messy reality. The design and layout of this photobook mostly presents one image within every double page, leaving a large amount of empty space around it and often a blank page next to it. This choice of layout could be a choice to bring attention to one image at a time, allowing it to resonate and connect with the viewer more. Benitah does not accompany these photographs with pieces of text throughout her photobook, but only features text in the final pages with mentions and a description of the series.
Alexander is an American photographer from Louisville, with a degree in philosophy, he turned to photography after realizing he would need a creative outlet along side his career in corporate.
‘Since picking up a camera, I’ve worked with numerous magazines to highlight, document, and promote individuals within the community, businesses, and over 100 restaurants. I’ve completed several projects which have been featured on websites such as The Phoblographer, won several awards, and in 2016 I became a semi-finalist for Adorama’s Top Photographer reality show competition.’
Danny has completed several projects including the year long 52 Portrait Project and, more recently, a tattoo portrait series entitled Skin as Canvas. Of which Danny calls an “intimate representation of some aspect of that person’s life.” He started this project due to finding body art and those who dedicate their bodies to it fascinating. The idea of permanently modifying their bodies for art and offer this intimate insight that is on display to the public. ‘I wanted to highlight this in the series by removing all other possible tells of that person’s character, like clothing and environment, and have the viewer look past just the aesthetics of tattoos and try to decipher its meaning.’
This photo by Alexander demonstrates model with an aline spine tattoo as the main focus.
The light source is positioned in a way to extenuate the tattoo and draw the viewers attention to the focus. The little soft lighting seen gives an unusual innocence that isn’t usually associated with tattoos, challenging the negative view points and allowing the subjectivity of body art.
The studio lighting causes a contrast as it allows the photographer to move and angle the light however he wants. Lighting only on the tattoo represents the darkness of space around the solar system and how broad it can be / how small we are to our surroundings beyond earth. This could possibly be a reflection of how we see others around us and how we don’t know the depth of all the identities around us.
As the model is wearing all black clothing, it leaves viewers focus to the tattoo. This also means that the dull clothes give no insight to the viewer seeing their personalities or styles, leaving tattoo meaning up for interpretation by the viewer. This gives the opportunity for them to connect to the model based on the own interpretation and therefore viewing it more personally.
shoot 1- the first shoot I’ll be doing is using the studio and a model. I want to take some clear shots, close ups and full body shots of my model with clear two point lighting and a white backdrop with no backgrounds. I want these images to be simple and in the style of Gabriel Isaks work, so that the model is facing different sides and I want these images to be simple in order to edit a lot over them on photoshop to get clear black and white silhouette figures like Gabriels work.
shoot 2- I want my second shoot to be based in a home, I want to photograph my model facing a mirror and then edit and blur out the face. I also want to take photos of the model laying on her bed and alone in a room to show how you may spend most of your time when dealing with mental health issues. This will be more inspired in the way of Edward as most of his images are taken of himself at home.
shoot 3- my final and last shoot I want to do in a very open natural space, like a field or open beach. Taking inspiration from Gabriel Isak’s work this will represent the mental state of the individual once again. In a very large open space the individual will look quite small and alone which is how you may feel when dealing with your issues. Then i will edit them and turn the silhouettes into dark outlines
What is the relationship between photography and memory?
Barthes, R (1982) Camera Lucida, London: Jonathan Cape https://monoskop.org/images/c/c5/Barthes_Roland_Camera_Lucida_Reflections_on_Photography.pdf
Overview of Barthes book Camera Lucida in Photo Pedagogy The first half of this article talks about Barthes theory of a studium and punctum. The latter part about a photograph of his dead mother which allows him to think about memory. Commentary on Barthes book https://www.photopedagogy.com/roland-barthes.html
Rereading: Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes Article by Brian Dillon in the Guardian, 26 March 2011 Grieving for his mother, Roland Barthes looked for her in old photos – and wrote a curious, moving book that became one of the most influential studies of photography https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/26/roland-barthes-camera-lucida-rereading
DEATH IN THE PHOTOGRAPH – critical article in response to Roland Barthes seminal book ‘Camera Lucida’ reflecting on photography. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/books/death-in-the-photograph.html?pagewanted=all
Other key texts for you to read around family and memory
What do I remember? https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo20al/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2019/11/What-do-I-remember.pdf
How can you tell a story? https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo20al/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2019/11/How-can-you-tell-a-story.pdf
Kuhn, A. Remembrance: The Child I Never Was in Wells, L. (ed) (2003) The Photography Reader. London: Routledge https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo21al/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2021/01/Annette-Kuhn_Remembrance_the-child-I-never-was.pdf
Colberg, J (May 28, 2012) Photography and Memory blogger on Conscientious http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/photography_and_memory/
