After I finished my personal project, I printed some of the final outcomes from my previous work from y12 and wanted to display it .
I ended up putting all my photos on mounted backgrounds and used spray glue to make sure the images stay, I had to precisely cut them all out and trim them. as well as my final images I printed out my zine project which was about jersey’s history and different environments/ cultures. this was a booklet and I have some images down below showing my final outcomes;
I had some extra images for some of these outcomes therefore I experimented with my work and placed some of my smaller prints on top of the larger ones, this way it created a good illusion and gave the images a more abstract look.
Animation is a technique during which pictures are manipulated to look as moving pictures. In ancient animation, pictures were drawn or hand-painted on clear celluloid sheets to be photographed and shown on film. Today, most animations are created with Computer-generated images (CGI).
Fewocious
Fewocious is an NFT artists. He specialises in drawing his own story and life experiences. He states that this new era has opened a lot of doors for young people to be able to be creative in their own way and get recognition.
His new series series of NFT woks, paintings and ephemera have gone on sale in June to witch he says he feels like his in a “dream or something”
Known as one amongst the world’ greatest digital artists, the 18-year-old has staged many winning solo releases, additionally as 2 ground-breaking collaborations within the NFT area – with digital fashion whole RTFKT Studios and its collaborators Odius, Parrot_ism and Jonathan Wolfe – resulting in sales in the millions. His latest project, Hello, i’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and this is My Life, offers 5 distinctive works that detail his adolescent journey so far, growing up as a transgender man in an abusive family. on sale at Christie’ from June 25.
I went onto Artsteps to design my final gallery display of my images. I wanted to do a walk in gallery.
I selected my template and began to import my images and displaying them onto the walls.
Once I placed the images I wanted on the walls I could walk around the gallery and see all my photos.
I did a walk in gallery instead of just placing them all on on wall as I wanted it to seem more real and included my top picks.
I then started to think about how I would like my final prints to look like once I frame them so I decided to go on photoshop and create a small design for them. I used my favourite images from my photobook.
I want my images to be presented on a black canvas or paper and here is the layout I would like to have them in;
Overall, I think I presented my ideas and topic very well through using many editing processes to achieve my final outcome and showing mental health through photographs.
Here are some images of how my final photobook design turned out to look like;
I used about 2-3 different template designs and tried to keep them consistent throughout my book and change the order of them around to create a good contrast of layouts going in my book. I mostly stuck with using full bleed spreads, photo being in the centre or photo being slightly to the right of the double page. As well as changing the layouts I also changed the page colour to black on some images that I thought the image would contrast well with if being placed onto a black page. I did this to show how some days can be better or worse with using coloured pages and the colour black is there to represent sadness and a dark atmosphere.
I kept changing my images around to avoid having the same ones on the same pages or on the next spread. I used photos I thought either went really well together or images that contrast with each other to create juxtaposition in my book. However I did repeat some of my images to create the illusion of how everyday can feel the same when struggling with your mental state as you do the same things everyday just experience different emotions
Comparing my work to my chosen photographers;
Overall, I achieved my first photo shoot by taking inspiration from Edward. It gave me ideas on how to edit my images and edit them in a way that presents my topic – mental health. It allowed me to use the blur tool as well as the wrap tool and select certain features such as the face to crop it out or blur it out. I was inspired by the photos of looking at yourself into the mirror as I think it shows how you’re looking at your own reflection and you dont even know who you are anymore as well as there being two sides of you- one looking into the mirror and the blurry reflection of yourself.
Here are some examples of my images that I took being inspired by Edward.
I tried to keep the overall images simple and natural as I wanted to create an everyday life effect apart from the studio photos. I got my model to face a mirror and then lay on her bed and face a mirror as well. I though that these images would be perfect for my topic as I can work with them and edit with them. I also got my model to sit on chairs and stairs to create everyday natural settings. I also edited most of these images in black and white to create a sad atmosphere and show the mood of the images.
The other photographer that inspired me with my photo shoot and editing process was Isaak. I was very intrigued by his editing style and when you read more about his work you realise how his story matches his images and how he presents his experience with mental health through photography. This helped me to understand how you can show mental health in a visual way and inspired me for my second and third photoshoot. He created individual silhouettes and shadows to represent himself and his mental state through loneliness and using cold colours such as blue which creates a sad atmosphere. This helped me to use many photoshop tools and transform my images and creating a different meaning which presented my topic very clearly.
my photos;
I also decided that I wanted to add my essay onto the end of my photobook as I think my essay links really closely into my photobook and explains a lot about the topic I chose to portray- mental health.
I then realised that it would be better to have my essay in columns instead of a big text as it looked more clear and was easier to read , I also included the images that I used in my essay to give some examples of the work I was looking at and my photographers work examples.
The last thing I did was adding a front and back cover, I wanted it to be all black like I have planned from the beginning as my topic is quite dark and serious I wanted my book to look the theme. I then thought of a title and named it “mind.” as mental issues happen inside someone’s mind and its about what goes inside everyone’s head.
Evaluation- overall, I think I presented my topic very clearly in my photobook and achieved the final outcome that I wanted. I used a mix of simple portrait photos as well as many editing processes such as blurring, selection tool, cutting out images and filling them in as well as the quick selection tool. All of this helped me to present mental health visually which I took inspiration from my two chosen photographers. As Edward focuses on simple , black&white ,self portraits and blurring out his face, whereas Isaak uses editing software’s and creates an abstract representation of mental health.
On the side of out Identity and Community project, we have been given the opportunity to submit our work to be printed and presented in the JEP. In preparation for this, we have been asked to gather our strongest pieces from year 13 and present them in different ways: a full bleed, a collage/montage, a sequence and a juxtaposition spread.
Collage
For my collage piece, I have decided to input my collage that i made during the NFT project, this was made by hand using printed images and a canvas sheet displaying same sex models , however due to the paper material, I don’t think that the quality of the print will be suitable for the newspaper.
Sequence
These photos surrounding the middle image consists of close up images of the same models arms. This is my sequence spread as all the images have a common theme. I feel like this spread is the only one out of my project that can work as a sequence due to all the tattoos being so diverse and personalised to each individual.
Full bleed
I chose this image as a potential full bleed as this is my favourite photo aesthetics wise, this image shows a symmetric full chest and neck tattoo. This photo is what I used for my front and back covers as the image wrap will be perfectly symmetrical with the eye in the middle, on the spine of the book.
My next full bleed is a coloured image showing a variety of tattoos, with the main piece being the roman philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. I found the same broken statue as the tattoo and decided to line it up, showing the tattoo and statue together.
Juxtaposition
Here we can we can see two photos both displaying hands, however bring different essences to the photobook. the photo on the left shows an open hand with a tattoo of a day of the dead skull, this give the image a powerful and imitating demeanour. This is strange to see that an open hand gives this feel when you see more intimidating images, they include closed hand. However, the closed hand on the right has a sense of delicacy and remembrance, supported by the background writing.
My plan for my photoshoots is to set up a black back screen I have in a separate, untouched room so I can leave the set up there to keep going back to with my models, this will improve the efficiency of the photoshoots as I won’t have to keep taking down and moving the equipment place to place. My aim is to use around 10 people within my project, this will give me a wider range regarding the styles of body art and also a wider range of meanings and reasonings. This may deeper my project.
To start my photobook process, I uploaded all my images into Lightroom to start my editing. I transferred them all to their own collection I labelled photobook.
I started off the editing process by going through and ‘flagging’ the clearest and cleanest photos of from the shoot. I chose the ones that I felt extenuate and display the tattoos firmly, presenting them clearly. `This will benefit the clarity of showing the images in a book as I have experiences in the past, photos look different when not on the computer screen and sometimes unseen shadows or distortments can arise. This process took a lot of time due to taking care for how to avoid those possibilities.
Experimenting
Instead of adjusting the photos through shifting exposure, shadows etc. , I wanted to experiment on more abstract ways to present my added materials in with my photos, cooperated and intertwined with the images. Testing in both black/white and colour to see which version of the image if more powerful.
The process of this image started by tracing the few words off of the note given to me on photoshop, then pasting the phase and positioning them until they covered the whole of the black background. Next, I cut out the image of the hand using the lasso tool so then the hand and arm were isolated from the background. Then pasted it into the words. Once I was happy with the final image, I flattened it, ready to be saved.
I feel that this image is very successful and the writing in the background brings a captivating power to the image. Showing the importance of the tattoo with the repetition of ‘memory’.
For these images, I decided to experiment with archive images I collected from the models and hand written notes about the meaning of the tattoos, layering them on top of each other. This benefits reducing the amount of materials I have to include in the photobook, allowing more negative space around the images. Although this method makes the archive images quite busy as there is a lot of information the image holds, the space will become useful to break up the page.
This collection shows my original images with external materials imprinted onto them.
One of the images shows the models shoulder with a lavender plant tattooed, this led me to layer an image of the plant on top to bring some bold, bright and happy colour to the image as the model said that lavender bring joyful memories of her childhood with her brother.
The next image was created through me not knowing whether I preferred the image in colour or black and white, so I decided to see what it would look like half and half. This version happened to become my favourite as it seems to present the present and the past through the colours. I see this in this edit as the tattoo is of Marcus Aurelius, whose philosophies are still used current day.
The final image I decided to take the album cover that the tattoo was influenced by and paste pieces of it on top of the image, however I feel that the image alone is stronger than the edit.
After my selection and editing process, I moved all the images I will be using in the photobook into separate subfolder to section them away from any unwanted images. I then started the book, moving the images around to fit the narrative.
For this layout I simply got an image of a plain gallery off of google and placed my images onto the same tab on photoshop. I then resized them to how I wanted them and placed them in the order that I wanted.
For this layout idea I started by opening an image of a gallery off google onto photoshop, I then used the polygonal lasso tool to cut out the images that were on the canvases. After that I copied the images I want and placed them underneath the original layer. I then went to edit, transform and clicked distort, which I then used to fit the images onto the wall at the right angle. After placing all of the images onto the wall I copied the image of the green wall and turned it upside down, I then flipped the image, turn down the opacity and cut off the parts of the image I didn’t want so that I could create the look of the reflection on the table like in the original image.
Final Print Ideas
For this final piece I want to print off these three images and then mount them onto a white background in this layout of them in a row.
With this image I want to print it A3 and mount it onto black card, as a simple final idea.
With these two images I like how there is yellow in both pictures and like how they look next to each other, I am going to print these two images in A4 and mount them next to each other.
For this final print I opened the image on photoshop and copied the layer 3 times, I then lowered the opacity and moved the images around to get my desired effect.
Introduction (250-500 words):What is your area study?Which artists will you be analysing and why? . How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
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.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Structure plan
Introduction
250-500 words
Opening quote
lead with my initial idea for the project and personalise it to my experience. Introduce the artists I will be analysing with a brief summary of why I chose them.
Paragraph 1
500 words
Talk about the history of tattooing, including the value of the art to cultures to lead in Jono Rotman.
History of portraiture, including dates and locations of where this medium was first seen.
Paragraph 2
500 words
Analysis of Jono Rotman’s relevant project, including his own heritage, background context on the Mongrel mob.
include quotes from critiques and comment on them, either supporting them or going against them.
Choose one image from the project to analyse
Paragraph 3
500 words
Analysis of Danny Alexander’s relevant project.
Comment on quotes from critiques and Alexander himself.
Choose one image from the project to analyse.
Conclusion
250-500 words
Comment on similarities and differences between the two artists
Relate points made to the historical context
My work in relation to the artists (similarities/differences)
Possible essay questions:
How does Richard Todd and Danny Alexander use portraiture to represent different identities?
How does Richard Todd and Danny Alexander use portraiture to explore a persons identity?
How is intimacy created in the work of….
Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?
How does Richard Todd and Danny Alexander use and manipulate lighting to emphasise focus?
How to reference: Harvard system of referencing
Wolf, N (2007). Romanticism Koln ; Taschen
In text referencing ‘I did not paint to be understood, but I wished to show what such scene is like’ (Wolf, 2007, p7)
A sentence: A story of peoples’ body art and what they mean to them through a documentary style.
A paragraph: I wish for my photobook to display and take viewers through a series of images showing my families’ and friends’ body art. Expressing what these pieces’ importance to to them. I will mix in some images without any explanation or further imagery to still give my photobook a sense if subjectivity, alike my artist I studied, Danny Alexander.
Design: Consider the following
How you want your book to look and feel: hard back
Paper and ink: My photobook will use a glossed paper as I feel that for my project, it will extenuate the quality of the images better. I don’t have any large bodies of text other then the essay so there will be no negative effect on the ability viewers have on the book. I also feel that having a glossy finishes on my photos will give them more of a professional feel.
Format, size and orientation: My photobook is 20*25 cm, in portrait orientation, which is just short of an A4 paper, however not all images will fill up the page as a bleed, some will take a smaller section of the page to break up the similarities throughout.
Binding and cover: as my book revolves around such a graphicly designed topic, I will over exaggeratedly edit one of my images and use it as a image wrap.
Title: inked
Design and layout: I want the layout to be basic and spread as the images themselves have a lot to say and project to the viewer.
Editing and sequencing: pair added materials of symbols with their tattoo representation.
Images and text: I will use quotes from the models as text in or on their photos.
TIME PERIOD: Pictorialism dates back to the late 19th century, specifically thriving during the years 1880-1920.
AIM: Pictorialism was the movement revolved around taking the essence of photography away from only being used for scientific logs and develop it into a respected artform.
INFLUENCE: Photos seen from this time period look to have been influenced by the Italian renascence and have a biblical or spiritual atmosphere. The collection of pictoriality also fit in with romanticism.
METHOD: Artists added to their scenes through many methods. Vaseline was used to smear the lens prior to photographing, scratched were added to negatives later on in the dark room and painting chemicals on the photos to add a painting like feel to the photos.
ARTISTS ASSOCIATED: Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Peter Henry Emerson.
Alfred Stieglitz
Peter H. Emerson
Paul Strand
Realism/ Straight
TIME PERIOD: Realism was first pictured around 1915 and has continued to be used to this day.
AIM: To except reality and to show what is seen through the lens without any manipulation.
KEY FEATURES: Photographs during this style usually incorporated geometrical shapes, high contrast, rich tonalities and a pointy focus. These photographs often showcased seemingly mundane objects and landscapes, with the aim of the photograph to supply an accurate and descriptive record of the visual world. Photographers of this art movement didn’t want to treat photography as a sort of monochrome painting.
ARTISTS ASSOCIATED: One of the pioneers of this photographic movement was Paul Strand, said to possess brought new perspectives to often overlooked subjects, who studied under photographer Stieglitz . These two photographers were said to be influenced by European avant-garde art movements, which may be seen in there abstract and geometric images. Walker Evans also helped to develop this genre, instead that specialize in portraits containing detached and disinterested expressions from the themes.
METHODS : Most of the time these photographs aren’t manipulated and believe the attention of the photographer. These images were often taken in an abstract manner and from unique angles. so as to require these images, photographers used crisp focus with a good depth-of-field, contrasting with the design of Pictorialism.
Paul Strand (1917)
Modernism
TIME PERIOD: Early decades of the twentieth century
INFLUENCE: Modernism is often identified as a term that encompasses the broadness of all the avant-garde isms that were seen within the beginning of the 20th century. This new movement was a reaction to ‘the enlightenment’, which saw science and reason become more prevalent in society than spiritualistic beliefs. This dramatic change of thought cause many artists seeking answers concerning fundamental questions on the character of art and human experience. Many came to the conclusion that art needed to renew itself by confronting and exploring its own modernity. Works during this style were often supported idealism and a utopian vision of human life, also as society and a belief ongoing .
ARTISTS ASSOCIATION: Ansel Adams is often described as an early modernist photographer, together with his dramatic photographs of North America’s vast landscapes that showcased large contrast in tones. Stieglitz was known to even be a modernist photographer also , taking photographs that displays striking architecture with a pointy focus, after moving faraway from his soft edge pictorial style.
METHODS: There were not many key defining techniques that were in constant use throughout this movement, however modernist artist usually experimented with form, technique and process. This was in contrast to purely that specialize in subjects, believing they were ready to find how of reflecting the fashionable world.
