Biography; the two artists I’m studying are Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isaak. Sources and texts about them and their work;

Edward Honaker-

At the age of 19, photographer Edward Honaker was diagnosed with a mood disorder that affects about 14.8 million American adults. This disorder is characterized by a persistent feeling of sadness, one which acts as an overwhelming obstacle during an individual’s day-to-day life. In other words – just two years ago – Honaker was diagnosed with depression.

“All I knew is that I became bad at the things I used to be good at, and I didn’t know why,” the photographer told The Huffington Post. “Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn’t work properly, it’s scary.”

To convey his inner thoughts and feelings, Honaker turned to his camera and creativity. What results is a surreal series of self-portraits – which are filled with powerful symbolism. Each black-and-white image is as artistic as it is revealing. If you’ve coped with depression or are currently coping with depression, Honaker’s work can act as a beacon of empathy. And if you haven’t, you can still learn a lot from the creative’s telling snapshots.

“Mental health disorders are such a taboo topic. If you ever bring it up in conversation, people awkwardly get silent, or try to tell you why it’s not a real problem. When I was in the worst parts of depression, the most helpful thing anyone could have done was to just listen to me – not judging, not trying to find a solution, just listen. I’m hoping that these images will help open up conversation about mental health issues. Everyone is or will be affected by them one way or another, and ignoring them doesn’t make things better.”

Gabriel Isak-

The objective of Gabriel Isak’s art is to shine a light on the experiences of being and the states of mind those brings along. His subjects are anonymous with the slightest glimmerings of consciousness, imprisoned in monochromatic settings, so the viewer can envision oneself as the subject, reflecting back on one’s own experiences and journey in life.

Gabriel Isak’s art entails surreal and melancholic scenes where he invites the viewer to interact with the inner world of solitary figures that symbolize our own unconscious states. He uses photography as a medium to draw and paint surreal images, minimal and graphic in its aesthetic, rich in symbolism and emotion, focusing on themes inspired by human psychology, dreams and romanticism, as well as his own experiences, especially the years he went through depression.

essay question; In what way have Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak represented mental health through photography?

essay plan;

1. Essay question: In what way have Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak represented mental health through photography?
2. Opening quote– “Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn’t work properly, it’s scary.”
3. Introduction (250-500 words): my area of study is mental health thats shown through photography. The artists i will be looking at are Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak as they show different mental issues and feelings within the mind through their images. I will be responding to their work through showing the mental issues that teenagers go through by taking inspiration from their style of work and show it in my own way.
4. Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to mental health. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian. 
5. Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse Edward Honaker in relation to my essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
6. Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse Gabriel Isak in relation to my essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
7. Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
8. Bibliography: (in the first paragraph)

essay;

Essay question: In what way have Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak represented mental health through photography?

intro-“Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn’t work properly, it’s scary.”(Honaker 2018:2).

My study explores and raises the issues of different mental health issues within teenagers and intends to show how it can make you feel if you deal with anxiety or depression from a young age and the effects it has on your everyday life and how it may affect your future and relationship with others around you. This area interests me as so many people around you to tend to be suffering from these issues and it’s so important to realise how many people may be dealing with personal problems and how it both effects them individually and also people near them, such as family and friends. Through photography you see how these mental issues are real and in some cases very serious and the effect it has on teenagers. In my study I’m analysing the work of Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak as they both raise awareness of mental health issues in different ways and how our mind is detached from our real body, as it’s not there with you 100% and not functioning properly, as well as you feeling depersonalised from yourself. Edward Honaker presents his mental state by taking simple full body portraits of himself around his house and includes many self-portraits to tell his story, he must do this by using a tripod and then later edit all his images by blurring his face and masking his identity that represents his mental state and that’s how he shows this topic through his work, almost making him look disconnected from his mind and body. On the other hand Gabriel Isaak interprets and presents mental health in a more digital way and uses far more editing to show mental health. Most of his images are taken in extremely open spaces (mostly with an all white or blue background) this creates a sense of loneliness and sadness. He then uses silhouette figures in his images to present the mental state , usually its either two people or a group. Most of the time he uses all black silhouettes or sometimes white too with hoods on, this clearly represents people and their present or conscious state as two different figures, one being your body and the other the state of your mind and the feeling of emptiness that’s presented by the open space.

para 1- the area I chose to explore in my personal study has the closest link to is surrealism. The history of mental health in photography was perfectly presented back in the mid 1980s which was developed by Jo Spence and her work on photo-therapy. This shows that mental health has always had an important role in peoples lives as well as in photography. Jo Spence believed that “depression or anger is often so well contained, that eventually many of us become silenced or ill”. (Martin and Spence 2003: pg 24) She wanted individuals to connect with their own intimacies and struggles which is what made her begin start taking photographs. She developed photo-therapy when she got diagnosed with breast cancer and wanted to used photography as a medium to work on psychological health. Her work was well known as it showed the” importance of representing the ill body, one that is affected by the invisible and the hidden”. (Dennett 2009: 7) In photo-therapy, self -portraits are a very powerful tool to express emotions. This is because we start a dialogue between our thinking mind and our ‘gut’ to draw from an inexhaustible source of meanings, which must be expressed. The self-portrait can be incredibly empowering. It forces us into the now, and helps us  perceive and express our essential humanity in a photograph. Jo spence used three early methods ‘therapeutic staging’, ‘mirror therapy’, and ‘Scripting’. Phototherapy is very strong way an individual can express their mental health or any other issues they’re dealing with and share it with anyone who might be going through. This made me interested in this topic as I think its important to raise awareness to all these different types of issues.  Surrealism was closely involved with contemporary developments in psychology and psychoanalysis. Freud’s work had a huge impact on psychoanalysis as he researched dreams and dream analysis to understand the cause of many mental illnesses such as depression or phobias, doing this by accessing the unconscious and figuring out what different objects or symbols in dreams represent in real life. Freud’s conception of the unconscious as a site of primal violence and conflict repressed from consciousness played a role in the work of many surrealist artists. Max Ernst and André Masson, in particular, frequently employed images of violence, his theories had a huge impact on photographers work. (Show illustration of Surrealist work of art)

Paragraph 2–

The first photographer I chose to study is Edward Honaker. He focuses on photographing mental health in a very personal way as he from the age of 19 was diagnosed with a mood disorder. This disorder is characterized by a persistent feeling of sadness, one which acts as an overwhelming obstacle during an individual’s day-to-day life. In other words – just two years ago – Honaker was diagnosed with depression. He focuses on blurring out his face in his images or tries to mask his identity away, this creates a concept of not knowing where his mind is really at or he doesn’t even know who he is anymore. You can see that all his images are in black white which creates a sad mood as there’s no colour this clearly interprets his own feelings and he does this by taking self-portraits. His own life from a very young age influenced his life which is why he takes his own images and the whole story behind his photography is about his own experience and his own mental health which makes his images so much more powerful when you know the photographer behind the work is dealing with the problems he’s photographing. To convey his inner thoughts and feelings, Honaker turned to his camera and creativity. What results is a surreal series of self-portraits – which are filled with powerful symbolism. Each black-and-white image is as artistic as it is revealing. If you’ve coped with depression or are currently coping with depression, Honaker’s work can act as a beacon of empathy. When he spoke about his experience he said “All I knew is that I became bad at the things I used to be good at, and I didn’t know why,”(Honaker 2018:1). This inspired me for the first shoot, which consisted of plain headshots which I then edited out to create a sense of depersonalization and losing yourself/personality due to mental health. Honaker’s work links it with history of mental health and Surrealism art movement; it involves dreamscapes, symbolism and the unconscious mind; Surrealism art changed modernism by encouraging artists to delve into their imaginations. Surrealism  was steeped in the psychoanalytic works of Sigmund Freud and centred on understanding the unconscious. This can explain certain disorders such as depression which is sometimes caused due to childhood events that remain in the unconscious and the disorder is resolved when brought back into the conscious as an adult which links into Edward’s experience as he had to deal with depression from a young age, and if it wasn’t for the Surrealism art movement, photographers wouldn’t be expressing their emotional states. His work significantly links in with surrealism as the ability to evoke dream-like scenarios in photography became central to surrealism. Photo effects such as double exposure, blurring and distortion helped create images that were evocative, hallucinatory, and sometimes upsetting. The purpose of these effects was to create an image alienated from reality as if it was a window into another dimension. Edward uses many of those editing processes such as blurring for most of his images.

Paragraph 3 Structure (500 words) : 

The second photographer I chose to study and become inspired by is Gabriel Isaak. The objective of Gabriel Isaak’s art is to shine a light on the experiences of being and the states of mind those brings along. His subjects are anonymous with the slightest glimmerings of consciousness, imprisoned in monochromatic settings, so the viewer can envision oneself as the subject, reflecting back on one’s own experiences and journey in life. He focuses on themes inspired by human psychology, dreams and romanticism, as well as his own experiences, especially the years he went through depression. What I find interesting about his work is the way he edits his images which makes them almost look like a dream and something that isn’t real which creates a unique idea of his mental state, like it’s all a dream. His photographs have a big emotional impact as it creates this sense of loneliness and being alone somewhere in a dream with your mind. The photographer intended to create a new vision of mental health and romanticise it instead of making it look like a scary thing to be afraid of. Both of my photographers link perfectly with each other as both of them have dealt with their own issues with depression and decided to photograph their experience in two completely different unique ways. Both of them create an idea in the audience’s mind of what it’s like to deal with these issues or if someone from the audience is already dealing with the same problems it can create a sense of feeling safe and comfort knowing there are others that feel the same and their choosing to photograph their feelings in a unique way. The photographer Gabriel Isaak inspired me for my photoshoots at home and in a very open natural environment to create an illusion of a dream as well as use more advanced photoshop skills to achieve this idea. Surrealism would have had a huge impact on Isaak’s work as surrealism derived significant inspiration from psychoanalysis, developed by Sigmund Freud to treat mental disorders. “The set of theories and techniques were established to delve into the unconscious mind It aimed to illuminate the causes of abnormal and unhealthy mental habits.” (ref source) According to psychoanalysis, the mind is separated into the conscious and unconscious. Psychoanalytic treatment aimed to bring the repressed desires and fears of the unconscious mind to the surface. This can be seen in his photos because as mentioned before the silhouettes he uses represent the conscious mind and how it can feel detached from you body. One of the founding fathers of surrealism Andre Breton cited psychoanalysis as a gateway to restoring one’s artistic identity, liberated from conformity and social normality. (ref source) He asserted that the application of psychoanalytic thought and automatism in art would make someone a true surrealist artist. For example Rene Magritte’s work , a famous surrealist artist in 1927, shows how mental health was presented back in the early days. This art shows most of the woman’s face cut out and dragged away from her body , unmasking what’s underneath it which looks like a solid, dark wooden texture of nothing with small pins it, implying there’s a hard material underneath her face that acts as a ‘mask’ and the texture underneath it is the woman’s mental health which is quite hidden and acting as a secret to help hide her real identity. This is really similar in how Gabriel Isaak presents mental health in his images, through using open spaces , like Magritte’s image that has an ocean, and using plain silhouettes or shadows of people to present their conscious and mental state- creating a feeling of loneliness and emptiness as your mind travels away from your body due to having a disorder.

Conclusion (500 words) :

Start by comparing two artists; similarities/ differences. common themes, influence of surrealism/ psychoanalysis etc

“Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn’t work properly, it’s scary.”(Honaker 2018:2).

Overall I think I’ve presented my ideas and the concept of mental health very well through taking several different shoots that were inspired by my two chosen photographers. I explored how it might feel to deal with a mental illness and not really knowing how to deal with it or loosing your personality , though a simple shoot consisting of editing and blurring certain features to show uncertainty in how an individual may feel and bringing attention to the mind, as well as at home shoots to show what everyday life may be like and in big open spaces to create a sense of loneliness. I photographed an individual in a way that shows her feelings and her mental state through a series of portraits exploring her body language. I experiment with different editing techniques such as blurring out the model’s face in order to show you don’t feel like yourself when your mind isn’t working properly. A previous study I have done in my A-level photography work that links in with my personal study is the loss of identity which is when you’re not too sure what you’re doing or what you want to do when you grow up, which I achieved through edited portraits. My work will develop through editing all my images using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop and turning them from simple headshots and full body shots into a way of presenting mental health in the style of Gabriel Isaak by selecting the model’s silhouette and filling it in with a black shadow separating one figure from her body showing the state of her mind. The digital processes I like to work with are the quick selection tool, lasso tool, and the object selection tool as well as the blurring brush to achieve the final images I want. My two photographers helped me create this vision as I could see and learnt about how mental health can be presented through a visual concept and photography as its a very difficult topic to express through photos as everyone’s experience and mind is different , they made me understand how certain editing and specific environments can help in achieving spreading the message I want.

I was able to select my final outcomes through using Lightroom and photoshop, once I know what images I wanted to use through rating them, I began to edit images I knew would go perfectly together and I was then left with my final images , ready for my personal study to be presented with these images. The more photos I took the more ways I started to think of in order to present my subject which helped me putting this project together. once I started reading into my chosen artists background and history I got a better understanding of how people who have to dealt with mental illness from a young age started using photography in order to share their experience and capture their feelings through photographing themselves which I thought was really important and really inspired me to chose quite a heavy topic for my personal project as I think mental health plays a huge part of your identity and shapes you into the person you are in the future, which all my final outcomes show successfully. as once said “Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn’t work properly, it’s scary.”(Honaker 2018:2).

Bibliography

Dennett, T (15 April 2009). Jo Spence’s camera therapy: personal therapeutic photography as a response to adversity. European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling. (Volume 11, 2009.): 7-19 Issue 1: Phototheraphy and Therapeutic Photography. (Jo Spence’s camera therapy: personal therapeutic photography as a response to adversity: European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling: Vol 11, No 1 (tandfonline.com) Accessed 9 Feb 2022.

Martin, R. and Spence, J. (2003), ‘Photo-Therapy: Psychic Realism as a Healing Art?’ in Wells, L. The Photography Reader. London; Routledge

Harvard system of referencing; example

Bibliography;

Pardo, A. (2018), Masculinities; Liberation through photography. London: Prestel Verlag

In-text referencing;

“these larger-than-life images are imbued with strength, power and desire, simultaneously tinged with a certain vulnerability.” (Pardo 2018:110)

The Origins of Photography

Photography, as we know it today, began in the late 1830s in France. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a portable camera obscura to expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light. … Daguerreotypes, emulsion plates, and wet plates were developed almost simultaneously in the mid- to late-1800s. Photography has come a long way in its relatively short history. In almost 200 years, the camera developed from a plain box that took blurry photos to the high-tech mini computers found in today’s DSLRs and smartphones.

Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura, ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means “dark chamber,” and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. For centuries the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century, as an aid to drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built, followed by smaller and even pocket models; the interior of the box was painted black and the image reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up. The introduction of a light-sensitive plate by J.-N.Niepce created photography.

‘Fixing the Shadows’

1839 was the year that a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre and an Englishman, Henry Fox Talbot introduced rival processes that would accomplished what the called ‘fixing the shadows’ Henry Fox Talbot was an accomplished inventor however he couldn’t draw. HE wanted a way to capture what he was seeing before him and therefore started thinking about camera obscura and the chemical processes of light sensitive materials. He then began experimenting with paper coated in silver salts and shoe-box sized cameras nicknamed ‘mousetraps’ which developed something called a negative. This is when the tones in an image are reversed. Talbot realised he could produce multiple prints from these exposures making it possible to reproduce images for the masses which would go on to shape modern photography. These prints are called Calotypes. Louis Daguerre was an academically trained French painter who had an alternative response to Henry’s process. Louis developed a method of printing onto a silvered copper plate creating an image that was much clearer and sharper than that of Henry’s calotypes, these were named Daguerreotypes. However, Talbot realised producing daguerreotypes was a dead end and that human communication was through paper. Daguerreotypes did not have the ability to create a multitude of prints like the calotypes, they were also very fragile, making it a less commercially successful process. Because the early days of photography were largely financially motivated, the beginnings of photography were all about the Darwinian struggle to see which process will prosper in the industry. 

Dry Plate Process

Dry plate, also known as gelatin process, is an improved type of photographic plate. It was invented by Dr. Richard L. Maddox in 1871, and had become so widely adopted by 1879 that the first dry plate factory had been established. With much of the complex chemistry work centralized into a factory, the new process simplified the work of photographers, allowing them to expand their business. Gelatin emulsions, as proposed by Maddox, were very sensitive to touch and mechanical friction and were not much more sensitive to light than collodion emulsions. Charles Harper Bennett discovered a method of hardening the emulsion, making it more resistant to friction in 1873. In 1878, Bennett discovered that by prolonged heating, the sensitivity of the emulsion could be greatly increased. George Eastman developed a machine to coat glass plates in 1879 and opened the Eastman Film and Dry Plate Company, reducing the cost of photography. A competitor of Eastman in the development and manufacture of gelatin dry plates was the architectural photographer Albert Levy.

Kodak

In 1888, inventor George Eastman invented a game-changing kind of dry, transparent, flexible photographic film that came in a roll. The film was designed for use in Eastman’s newly designed, user-friendly Kodak cameras.  His first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. Later he offered the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children. By 1927, Eastman Kodak was the largest U.S. company in the industry. When Eastman was 24 he began researching how to make photography less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy. After seeing a formula for a “dry plate” emulsion in a British publication, and getting tutelage from two local amateur photographers, Eastman formulated a gelatin-based paper film and a device for coating dry plates. He resigned from his bank job after launching his fledgling photography company in April 1880. In 1885, he headed to the patent office with a roll-holder device that he and camera inventor William Hall Walker had developed. This allowed cameras to be smaller and cheaper. Eastman also came up with the name Kodak, because he believed products should have their own identity, free from association with anything else. So in 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera (a few years later, he amended the company name to Eastman Kodak). The Brownie camera was launched in 1900 to target new hobbyist photographers — children — and with its $1 price tag, it also became a favourite of servicemen. Eastman supported the military in other ways as well, developing unbreakable glass lenses for gas masks and a special camera for taking pictures from planes during World War I. The Original Kodak was fitted with a rotating barrel shutter unique to this model. The shutter was set by pulling up a string on top of the camera and operated by pushing a button on the side of the camera. After taking a photograph, a key on top of the camera was used to wind the film onto the next frame.

First Kodak Camera

Latest Kodak Camera

Kodak Disposables

Realism

1848-1900

Arguably the first modern art movement, Realism, began in France in the 1840s. Realism refers to an artistic movement characterised by subjects painted from everyday life in a naturalistic manner; however the term is also generally used to describe artworks painted in a realistic almost photographic way. Realism was a result of multiple events: the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, the rise of journalism, and the advent of photography. Each inspired new interest in accurately capturing everyday life. This attention to accuracy is evident in art produced during the movement, which featured detailed, life-like depictions of subject matter.One of the most influential leaders of the Realist movement is Gustave Courbet, a French artist committed to painting only what he could physically see.

Impressionism

1865-1885

Impressionist painters sought to capture the immediate impression of a particular moment. This was characterized by short, quick brushstrokes and an unfinished, sketch-like feel. Impressionist artists used modern life as their subject matter, painting situations like dance halls and sailboat regattas rather than historical and mythological events. Claude Monet, a French artist who spearheaded the idea of expressing one’s perceptions before nature, is virtually synonymous with the Impressionist movement. His notable works include: The Water Lily Pond (1899), Woman with a Parasol (1875), and Impression, Sunrise (1872), from which the name of the movement itself is derived.

Post Impressionism

1885-1910

Post-Impressionist painters worked independently rather than as a group, but each influential Post-Impressionist painter had similar ideals. They concentrated on subjective visions and symbolic, personal meanings rather than observations of the outside world. This was often achieved through abstract forms. Post-Impressionist painters include Georges Seurat, noted for his pointillism technique that used small, distinct dots to form an image. Vincent van Gogh is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter, searching for personal expression through his art, often through rugged brushstrokes and dark tones.

Art Nouveau

1890-1910

Art Nouveau, which translates to “New Art,” attempted to create an entirely authentic movement free from any imitation of styles that preceded it. This movement heavily influenced applied arts, graphics, and illustration. It focused on the natural world, characterized by long, sinuous lines and curves. Influential Art Nouveau artists worked in a variety of media, including architecture, graphic and interior design, jewelry-making, and painting. Czechoslovakian graphic designer Alphonse Mucha is best-known for his theatrical posters of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Spanish architect and sculptor Antoni Gaudi went beyond focusing on lines to create curving, brightly-colored constructions like that of the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Fauvism

1900-1935

Led by Henri Matisse, Fauvism built upon examples from Vincent van Gogh and George Seurat. As the first avant-garde, 20th-century movement, this style was characterized by expressive use of intense color, line, and brushwork, a bold sense of surface design, and flat composition. As seen in many of the works of Matisse himself, the separation of color from its descriptive, representational purpose was one of the core elements that shaped this movement. Fauvism was an important precursor of Cubism and Expressionism.

Expressionism

1905-1920

Expressionism emerged as a response to increasingly conflicted world views and the loss of spirituality. Expressionist art sought to draw from within the artist, using a distortion of form and strong colors to display anxieties and raw emotions. Expressionist painters, in aquest for authenticity, looked for inspiration beyond that of Western art and frequented ethnographic museums to revisit native folk traditions and tribal art. The roots of Expressionism can be traced to Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor. Prominent groups including Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) formed so artists could publish works and express their ideals collectively.

Cubism

1907-1914

Cubism was established by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who rejected the concept that art should copy nature. They moved away from traditional techniques and perspectives; instead, they created radically fragmented objects through abstraction. Many Cubist painters’ works are marked by flat, two-dimensional surfaces, geometric forms or “cubes” of objects, and multiple vantage points. Often, their subjects weren’t even discernible.

Surrealism

1916-1950

Surrealism emerged from the Dada art movement in 1916, showcasing works of art that defied reason. Surrealists denounced the rationalist mindset. They blamed this thought process on events like World War I and believed it to repress imaginative thoughts. Surrealists were influenced by Karl Marx and theories developed by Sigmund Freud, who explored psychoanalysis and the power of imagination. Influential Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí tapped into the unconscious mind to depict revelations found on the street and in everyday life. Dalí’s paintings in particular pair vivid and bizarre dreams with historical accuracy.

Pop Art

1950-1960

Pop art is one of the most recognizable artistic developments of the 20th century. The movement transitioned away from methods used in Abstract Expressionism, and instead used everyday, mundane objects to create innovative works of art that challenged consumerism and mass media. This introduction to identifiable imagery was a shift from the direction of modernism. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein sought to establish the idea that art can draw from any source and there is no hierarchy of culture to disrupt that. Perhaps the most famous pop culture work of art is Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans production.

Minimalism

1960-1970

The Minimalist movement emerged in New York as a group of younger artists began to question the overly expressive works of Abstract Expressionist artists. Minimalist art instead focused on anonymity, calling attention to the materiality of works. Artists urged viewers to focus on precisely what was in front of them, rather than draw parallels to outside realities and emotive thoughts through the use of purified forms, order, simplicity, and harmony. American artist Frank Stella was of the earliest adopters of Minimalism, producing nonrepresentational paintings, as seen in his Black Paintings completed between 1958 and 1960. Each features a pattern of rectilinear stripes of uniform width printed in metallic black ink.

Gabi Ben Avraham

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

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

William Eggleston

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

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

Mind Map

Mood Board

Statement of Intent

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

Review and Reflection

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

My Images

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

Identity

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

My Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay questions ideas:

Can personality and identity be expressed in a portrait?

How does fashion shape social identities?

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

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

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

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

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

Essay question:

How has the Bible been portrayed through art / photography?

Essay Plan

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