Carolle Benitah

Carolle Bénitah was a French Moroccan photographer, who worked for ten years as a fashion designer before turning to photography in 2001 she explores memory, family and the passage of time. Often pairing old family snapshots with handmade accents, such as embroidery, beading and ink drawings, Bénitah seeks to reinterpret her own history as daughter, wife, and mother.

Benitah took old family photos and made them into new ones but with her version of the story and her feelings towards the people and the photos. She used different styles to re-interpret her own history. For example, she used embroidery on many of her pieces as a way to express her thoughts and experiences, or on some, she used gold paint to cover a part of somebody or she would cover everyone and leave the background black and white.

“Those moments, fixed on paper, represented me, spoke about me and my family told things about my identity, my place in the world, my family history and its secrets, the fears that constructed me, and many other things that contributed to who I am today”

Benitah started to become interested in her old family photos when she was looking through a family album, the photos she was looking at were taken 40 years earlier, but she could not remember the moments that were in these images and what followed those special moments. Benitah felt that those photographs represented her, showed things about her family as well as told people about their identity and her place in the world. She stated those photos “contributed to who I am today”.

Benitah decided to explore the memories of her childhood so that she could understand who she was and define her identity. She started by looking into the photos that she found in her family albums. She chose snapshots because they related to memories and to loss. She saw these photos as fragments from her past, she ordered them, scanned them and printed them so that she didn’t do anything directly to the original photographs. Once Benitah made the image choice she wanted to start telling her version of the story, she then turned her attention to her own history with a new perspective as there were 40 years of distance and life experience.

“I make holes in paper until I am not hurting anymore.”

One of Carolle Benitah’s most unique features of her work is the way she manipulates the photos, she uses needlework, embroidery, beads and ink. She wanted to use embroidery as it is a primarily feminine activity and in the past women embroidered hoping for the man’s return to the home. This style was linked to when she grew up as a girl in a “good family” and used to learn how to do this. Even though Benitah knew that there was nothing subversive about embroidery she wanted to twist it with her purpose. she uses this style of work as a decorative function so that she could re-interpret her own history and expose its failings. The activities she put into her work to dispute the stereotype of embroidery being a sign of a good education with well-behaved girls, a wise spouse and a loving mother.

Carolle Benitah believed that each stitch she made with the needle, that each hole is putting death to her demons and she states that it’s like an ‘exorcism’.

Carolle Benitah – Information

Image analysis

I like how this photograph is manipulated in such a smile way, such as the stitching around each person and the shadows but can convey such a powerful message. Benitah claimed that she liked to use stitching in her photos as she felt that with each hole she was putting death to her demons. When I look at the picture I think that when growing up she had strict parents which had a very specific way they raised their children which could have led to Benitah feeling suffocated and trapped within her family. I enjoy that she is able to portray this through a simple activity such as the stitching with red string. Another feature that I feel brings the full manipulation together is the colour of the sting, red. Red is a colour that can be linked with anger, danger and love which I think a the feelings she wanted to put forward in her projects as she wanted to show case her family and how she grew up and was raised.

Joachim Schmid

Joachim Schmid is a Berlin-based conceptual artists who collects and re-uses photographs that other people throw away. He uses these discarded, ripped and mundane images as a way to create artwork that is alluring, intriguing and captivating. He says that he has a passion for ‘visual trash’. He enjoys using other peoples photos that they throw away in public especially if it to be seen to be done with animosity and intense feeling.

“People are doing it everywhere in the world now!”

Schmid is very much a modern-day anthropologist who tries to understand contempered cultures by studying its visual rubbish. One of the projects he started was Pictures from the Street, (Bilder von der Straße, in German). This was in the early 1980s and it still is continued today. For this project he keeps and classifies each photograph or fragment of a photograph he finds in a public space, the collection now has more than 900 images. If one of the images Schmid finds has been ripped to pieces, he will re-assemble what he can so that he can be re-photographed. Schmid notes the date and place here each photo was found, this helps with imaging the stories behind the images. By looking at this collection it is impossible not to think of the back story, about who once owned these photographs, who’s in the photos and why they were thrown away.

“For the first time in the history of photography, we can study the real-time production of snapshot making – globally!” – Joachim Schmid

Another project that Schmid created came out of a prank which he started by posting what looked like a serous notice in a public newspaper about the ecological dangers of unwanted photographs and negatives. He went on to create an “institute” that offered to safely recycle or re-use dangerous film and photos. This “institute” became publicised worldwide and Schmid was bombarded with parcels of photos and negatives that people wanted to dispose of.

In one of these parcels, he discovered decades worth of medium format negatives from a professional photo studio. But they were all sliced in half in an effort to destroy their value. Schmid found that he could put together the left half of a negative with the right half of another negative to come up with a bizarre composition that was uniformly lit and fit together. It was also helpful that the photo studio always positioned its lights in the same way for years and never moved the camera closer or further way from the model.

Image analysis

This image is a mix of two halves of different negatives to create one final piece, I like how this manipulation of a photo allows for there to be many different elements in one smile photograph. This image consists of one side of the negative being a women in black and white with glasses with a wide smile compared to the other half which is presented as an older man in a smart suit with a closed lipped smile. I like how different each side of the image is but also how they seem to fit together and create a good composition making it pleasing to the viewer. Another element of the final piece which I find intriguing is how the left side of the photo is bigger then the right, this makes me think that Schmid wanted the women and her facial features to be more present in the photograph compared to the mans features.

Birthe Piontek

Birthe Piontek is a German photographer who moved to Canada in 2005 after she received her MFA from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. Piontek’s work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows and is featured in many worldwide collections.

One of my favourite projects of Piontek is ‘Mimesis’ as she uses it as a way to make a fictional world that represents our relationship to reality and the way we perceive images of ourselves and other people. Piontek wanted Mimesis to expose how mirrors and pictures are just one version of the self, versions that can be cracked and reshaped. She reinterpreted the original photos through collage work and photoshop additions as her work invites viewers to look beyond the surface images, especially of ourselves and other people to help us realise that everyone has many sides to them.

Birthe Piontek – Mimesis

Birthe Piontek – Information

Another one of Birthe Piontek’s projects that I will be taking inspiration from is ‘Her Story’, I really like how she has manipulated the photos in each one of her final pieces as you can tell how the women are represented throughout the edits. Piontek created this project as an approach to the topic of her mother’s and grandmothers’ loss of memory due to Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Piontek stated that she had many thoughts about memory and memory loss, which seemed from her personal connection and emotional involvement with these topics. She also wanted to explore these subjects as she has always had the same question and fear that she might carry the disease, she also enjoyed how she could express her thoughts around the lineage and heritage not only within her family but also on a bigger scale: how humans interact and are connected by collective memory, as well as how our memories shape our identities. The nature of memory Birthe has always sounded fascinating and has always been a lifelong obsession of hers.

Birthe Piontek – Her Story

Birthe Piontek – Information

Image analysis

Above is a photo from Birthe Piontek which I think is able to portray a deeper meaning without having to have extravagant features with a lot of elements. Piontek used a single tool such as a pencil, pen or pin tack to create these holes in the photo of the woman. I like how much emotion this image conveys as there is clearly anger behind this, which makes the backstory even more interesting. Even though Piontek hasn’t released a meaning behind this photo being able to make a story in your head keeps viewers interested. One feature that I enjoy about this image is the contrast of light from the dots behind the photo compared to the darkness of the background and the actual photo o the woman.

PICTORIALISM

time period : 1880-1920

Key characteristics/ conventions : to make photography an accepted art form. Not considered art from orginally as all you had to do was click a button. A camera was seen as a mechanical devise. Photography was a threat to other art froms as they could make such perfect images.

Artists associated: Alfred Stieglitz

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Scratching the negatives, vasaline on lenses

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period:1915 – present

                                                                                                                    
Key characteristics/ conventions :realism, to photograph things as they were in the view finder without any manipulation

Artists associated: strand. – imspired by cubism, picasso, prague. Walker evens, Edward Western.

Inferences – Pictorialisms

Key works: Real, As seen,

Methods/ techniques/ processes: sharp images without any manipulation after the photo is taken.

MODERNISM

Time period:1900-1940s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

WWI and WWII, Self Conscientious

Inferences

Artists associated:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

POST-MODERNISM

Time period:

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Embrace of randomness. Postmodern works reject the idea of absolute meaning and instead embrace randomness and disorder. …

Playfulness. …irony and even humour…a subverting of grand narratives at times

Fragmentation. …provocative and disruptive

Intertextuality

Lack of grand narratives

Postmodern art rejected the traditional values of modernism, and instead embraced experimentation with new media and art forms including intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, multimedia, performance art, and identity politics.

Artists associated:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Art Movements & Isms

PICTORIALISM

time period : 1880s – 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : To make photography an accepted art form. Saw photography a quick and easy process. the point of photography was democratic. The technology at the time was the camera make called kodak. kodak invented a camera called a box camera that were cheap so anyone could buy it.

Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process.

Photography was invented for a scientific purposes.

Artists associated: George Davison, Hugo Haneberg, Alfred stieglitz, Henry peach Robinson

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: There were many different scientific process, Smearing Vaseline on the camera lenses, used chemicals in the process of the printing. Scratching the negatives

Influences:

EXAMPLES:

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1920 –

Key characteristics/ conventions : To photograph things as they are without any manipulation. To produce sharply focussed images without manipulating it to change colour or shape.

Artists associated: Paul stand , Alfred Streepridges, walker Evans, Edward westerns

Key works: Family of Man by Bernice Abott, MOMA by John Szarkowski, The Steerage by Stieglitz, Hale Country by Walker Evans, Cubism, Fauvism.

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Explored the ideas of Cubism – Picasso. Soft/crisp focus, wide depth of field, digital photography.

Influences: pictorialism, cubism

EXAMPLES:

MODERNISM

Time period: 1900s – 50s

Key characteristics/ conventions : Photographers began to embrace its social, political and aesthetic potential, experimenting with light, perspective and developing, as well as new subjects and abstraction. Coupled with movements in painting, sculpture and architecture , these works became known as ‘modernist photography’.

Artists associated:  Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter, Aaron Siskind, Henry Callahan, Frederick Sommer, Paul Strand.

Key works: Harry Callahan and Chicago (1948), Frederick Sommer and Three Grazes (1985), Paul Strand and Porch Shadows (1916).

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Makes references into photographic techniques inside the art itself such as the form, composition, medium, material, skills, techniques, processes, etc.

Influences:

POST-MODERNISM

Time period: 1910s – 2000s

Key characteristics/ conventions :  Used by Postmodernists/Architects who went against the international style of modernist architecture, relativism, used by postmodern artists to explore the way that society proposes the traditional hierarchy of cultural values/meanings, explores power and economic/social forces which shape identities of individuals/cultures, used by female photographers and artists in the 1980s, represents seriality and repetition

Artists associated: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Sam Taylor-Wood, Corrine Day,

Key works: : Chapter 5 in ‘Intimate Life’ in which is Charlotte Cotton’s book The Photograph a Contemporary Art, Barbara Kruger and Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground (1982), Corrine Day and Diary (1997), Sam Taylor-Wood and Soliloquy I (1998).

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Postmodernists use text, speak in one voice, photographs/other works consists of having one meaning, the photograph is reproducible and adaptable, blown up, cropped, blurred, used in other medias,

Influences:

LEWIS BALTZ

Lewis Baltz was born in Newport Beach, California, he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, and received an MFA from the Claremont Graduate School in 1971. He worked as a freelance photographer in California and taught photography at various institutions, including the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California (Riverside and Santa Cruz), Yale, the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Art Academy of Helsinki. His work has been included in major exhibitions, including New Topographics at the George Eastman House in 1975 and Mirrors and Windows at the Museum of Modern Art in 1978. Baltz, who received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1973 and 1977 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977, has produced many projects on commission, among them The Nation’s Capital in Photographs for the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Near Reno for the Nevada State Arts Commission. He has been based in Europe since the mid-1980s and travels extensively.
Lewis Baltz produces photographs in series focused on a particular theme.

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In 1204 King John lost the Battle of Rouen against the French King Philippe-Auguste. The defeat signalled the loss of continental Normandy, united with the English Crown since the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. The Channel Islands, part of the Duchy of Normandy for more than a hundred years at that point, might have been expected to align themselves with the French King in 1204 but they were persuaded by a combination of carrot and stick to side with King John instead.

Among the privileges which the King granted Islanders was the right to be governed by their own laws and he instructed them to select their 12 best men as Jurats who, sitting with the Bailiff, became the Island’s Royal Court.  A warden, later to become governor, was appointed by the King to organise the defence of the Island.

The Crown Dependencies are three island territories in the British Islands that are self-governing possessions of the British Crown: the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Isle of Man. They are not part of the United Kingdom (UK) nor are they British Overseas Territories. They have the status of “territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible”, rather than sovereign states. As a result, they are not member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. However, they do have relationships with the Commonwealth and other international organisations, and are members of the British–Irish Council. They have their own teams in the Commonwealth Games.

Each island’s political development has been largely independent from, though often parallel with, that of the UK, and they are akin to ‘miniature states with wide powers of self-government’.

As the Crown Dependencies are not sovereign states, the power to pass legislation affecting the islands ultimately rests with the King-in-Council (though this power is rarely exercised without the consent of the dependencies, and the right to do so is disputed). However, they each have their own legislative assembly, with the power to legislate on many local matters with the assent of the Crown (Privy Council, or in the case of the Isle of Man in certain circumstances the lieutenant-governor). In Jersey and the Isle of Man, the head of government is called the chief minister. In Guernsey, the head representative of the committee-based government is the President of the Policy and Resources Committee.

“The Crown” is defined differently in each Crown Dependency. In Jersey, statements in the 21st century of the constitutional position by the Law Officers of the Crown define it as the “Crown in right of Jersey”, with all Crown land in the Bailiwick of Jersey belonging to the Crown in right of Jersey and not to the Crown Estate of the United Kingdom. Legislation of the Isle of Man defines the “Crown in right of the Isle of Man” as being separate from the “Crown in right of the United Kingdom”. In Guernsey, legislation refers to the “Crown in right of the Bailiwick”, and the Law Officers of the Crown of Guernsey submitted that “The Crown in this context ordinarily means the Crown in right of the république of the Bailiwick of Guernsey” and that this comprises “the collective governmental and civic institutions, established by and under the authority of the Monarch, for the governance of these Islands, including the States of Guernsey and legislatures in the other Islands, the Royal Court and other courts, the Lieutenant Governor, Parish authorities, and the Crown acting in and through the Privy Council.” This constitutional concept is also worded as the “Crown in right of the Bailiwick of Guernsey”.

The Bailiwick of Jersey consists of the island of Jersey and a number of surrounding uninhabited islands.

The parliament is the States Assembly, the first known mention of which is in a document of 1497. The States of Jersey Law 2005 introduced the post of Chief Minister of Jersey, abolished the Bailiff’s power of dissent to a resolution of the States and the Lieutenant Governor’s power of veto over a resolution of the States, and established that any Order in Council or Act of the United Kingdom proposed to apply to Jersey must be referred to the States so that the States can express their views on it. There are a few political parties, as candidates generally stand for election as independents.

Inferences

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PICTORIALISM

Time period :1880s – 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : attempting to make images which resemble paintings

Artists associated: Clarence H. White, John Everett Millais, Paolo Veronese, JMW Turner, Peter Harvey Emerson

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: painting over photos, smearing Vaseline on lenses, scratch the negative out on prints,

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REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1880-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : Picture meant to look the way it looked through viewfinder, no image manipulation, framing more specific,

Artists associated: Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Framing, collections,

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MODERNISM

Time period: 1830

Key characteristics/ conventions: celebrates unity,

Artists associated: Olive Cotton, Alfred Stieglitz

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

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POST-MODERNISM

Nialistic reaction to modernism, result of ww2, Postmodern photography is characterized by atypical compositions of subjects that are unconventional or sometimes completely absent, making sympathy with the subject difficult or impossible

Time period: “arose in the second half of the 20th century”

Key characteristics/ conventions : celebrating difference rather than unity,

Artists associated:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Abstract,

PICTORIALISM

Time period: 1880s – 1920s

Key characteristics/conventions: To make photography an accepted art form. People saw photography as being too easy because all you did was click a button, which was so much different that going to school for years and learning how to be a “real” artist.

Influences: Their ideas came from the history of painting, more specifically: allegorical painting. Peter Henry Emerson’s naturalistic photography. Julia Margaret Cameron used her family and created spiritual images.

Artists associated: Alfred Stieglitz – Heinrich Kuhn –

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: They would use vaseline on the lenses to make the photographs blurry and painting like. Scratching the negatives. They used chemicals in the printing process to manipulate he colour of the photographs.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions: To capture things as they were without any manipulation. To emphasise the quality of photography. The photographs differed depending on the photographer’s eyes. Abstraction as a genre was born in this period.

Influences: Inspired by the pictorialisms and cubism (Picasso and Braque).

Artists associated: Ansel Adams – Edward Weston – Alfred Stieglitz – Paul Strand – Walker Evans

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: To produce sharply focused mages without any manipulation and relay on the camera to record things as they are.

MODERNISM

Time period: 1900s – 1940s

Key characteristics/ conventions: Photojournalism, emphasised the truth/materiality of a work of art, believed meaning was embedded in work/created by the artist themselves (not interested in context), tried to produce timeless pieces that did not link to history/tradition, rejected older concepts + movements,

Influences: Against the enlightenment (pro science and technology), Dadaism (Hannah Hoch), expressionism, surrealism

Artists associated: Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Form, composition, focuses on object rather than content

POST-MODERNISM

Time period: 1970 – current

Key characteristics/ conventions: It explores power and the way economic and social forces exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures. It has a sceptical and political approach to the world. It has no rules or manifesto. This type of photography also often features surrealism, expressionism or other similar themes.

Influences: Themes and ideas came from the modernism period (to reject it). Technology also had an impact.

Artists associated:  Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky and Cindy Sherman.

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

• Eclecticism – mixing art forms, mixing cultures, mixing styles
• No Value to the worth of Art – mixing high art with pop culture
• Intertextuality – Including the work of others, the “quoting” of others work
• Collaboration – Creating work with others
• Pastiche – copying an original
• Parody – imitating in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some fun at
• Recycling – re-using the same material more than once
• Refiguration – re-structuring of an original
• Bricolage – deconstructing and then restructuring existing materials in a new, exciting and inventive way