I wanted to see what else I could create with my final images- here are some edits I have created of my final stitched pieces. The quality is lower as these are re-photographed.
For this image, i wanted to highlight the biometric science of eyes and identity. By removing his eyes I am some what removing his technologically recognised identity.
This image I have created to highlight the multiple identity’s someone may have.
My exam piece is inspired by Annegret Soltau a German visual artist.
I will focusing on the theme of geographical identity, i will be showing this through the use of physical documents and identity in the style of Annegret Soltau. E.g. Map, passport, citizen’s card, birth certificate, book about location, words in that language.
I will be creating a series of images using people from Hautlieu as my models. I will be using Annegret Soltau as my inspiration. My project will be made using both computer software and also doing bits by hand e.g. the sewing aspect.
I have decided to sew the forms of Identity into the skin instead of covering the face like Annegret Soltau, i feel this creates a more personal style while still emulating the style of Annegret Soltau, I also feel this creates a more personal sense of identifying with their geographical identity as the country you or your family originate from is ‘skin deep’.
Eyes Biometric science
Identification of persons through the eyes is in the field of biometrical science, I wanted to highlight this in my work as a link between document ID and every day life. Technology has been made for places such as airports to validate someone’s passport by comparing the eyes on the photo and the eyes of the traveller. No two eyes have exactly the same iris patterns. Iris scanning measures the unique patterns in irises, the coloured circles in people’s eyes. Biometric iris recognition scanners work by illuminating the iris with invisible infrared light to pick up unique patterns that are not visible to the naked eye.
Adobe Lightroom
I began by importing my images into Adobe Lightroom, I selected the images I thought looked most suitable. I then used the star rating system to choose a final few images. I rated the images I didn’t want to use 1 star and the images i did want to use 5 stars.
Adobe Photoshop
To begin the editing process, I began by collecting different forms of geographical identity from the different models I photographed prior to the exam. I collected forms of ID such as passports, addresses, maps of different towns/ country’s which the subject relates with geographically/ culturally.
I began by using the magic eraser tool to select parts of the face to remove to later replace with a form of identity. I decided to keep features such as eyebrows, eyes, nostrils included in some of the images to have the ID seem more attached to the skin.
I placed the image of the treaty title for the monarch of the United Kingdom, a royal style used in international law and diplomacy onto Aimee’s face, linking with how she is from Jersey but spent some of her childhood living in England.
I resized the image onto Aimee’s face deciding which parts i want showing and which parts I want hidden.
I then moved around the layers to have the images blended together creating a skin-like outcome.
I tested out 2 different ways of editing these images, the first way i tested this was by covering the face completly more similarly to Annegret Soltau, however, I decided I wanted to take more of a personal approach on the style and make it more complex, in that sense, i decided to create the images with the ID stitched into the skin instead of covering the face, I also feel this creates a more personal sense of identifying with their geographical identity as the country you or your family originate from is ‘skin deep’.
Lightroom
I exported the edited images into Lightroom for colour editing.
To edit my images I wanted to emulate the colour style of Soltau. I edited all my images similarly along the lines of the edit history below. I adjusted the editing slightly depending on the persons skin tone/ hair colour to have all the colours and shadows looking some what the same.
My images before sewing.
Sewing
I wanted to include the sewing aspect from Soltau’s work into mine. I used different coloured thread for each person.
The outcome
Photographers I am researching:
Annegret Soltau
Forms of Geographical ID:
Map, passport, citizen’s card, birth certificate, book about location, words in that language.
Annegret Soltau is a German visual artist, born in Lüneburg, Germany. Her work marks a fundamental reference point in the art of the 1970s and 1980s. Photomontages of her own body and face sewn over or collaged with black thread are the most well-known works of the German artist.
While the focus of Soltau’s work never ventures far from the female body and its bodily processes, often incorporating images of herself, at the heart of her practice is an inexhaustible search for identity and meaning.
Claud Cahun
Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer. Since her “rediscovery” over a decade ago, Claude Cahun has attracted what amounts to a cult following among art historians and critics working from postmodern, feminist, and queer theoretical perspectives. Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore, was imprisoned for activities in the resistance during the Occupation, and remained here after the war.
In early-20th-century France, when society generally considered women to be women and men to be men, Lucy Schwob decided she would rather be called Claude Cahun. It was her way of protesting gender and sexual norms. She thrived on ambiguity and she chose a name, Claude, that in French could refer to either a man or a woman. She took the last name from her grandmother Mathilda Cahun.
Claude Cahun was a Surrealist photographer whose work explored gender identity and the subconscious mind. The artist’s self-portrait from 1928 epitomizes her attitude and style, as she stares defiantly at the camera in an outfit that looks neither conventionally masculine nor feminine. “Under this mask, another mask,” the artist famously said. “I will never be finished removing all these faces.” In the late 1930s, Moore and Cahun moved to Jersey, an island off the coast of Normandy, where they, disguised as non-Jews, they produced and distributed anti-Nazi propaganda. After being caught, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, they successfully escaped such a fate when Jersey was liberated by allies in 1945. Cahun is considered to be a ground-breaking artist who fully embraced her gender fluidity long before the term came into use. Tragically, she never fully recovered from her maltreatment in prison and passed away on December 8, 1954 in Jersey, United Kingdom. Her work left a huge impression on photography and directly influenced contemporary photographers Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and Nan Goldin. Today, her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.
I will focusing on the theme of geographical identity, i will be showing this through the use of physical documents and identity in the style of Annegret Soltau. E.g. Map, passport, citizen’s card, birth certificate, book about location, words in that language.
I will be creating a series of images using people from Hautlieu as my models. I will be using Annegret Soltau as my inspiration. My project will be made using both computer software and also doing bits by hand e.g the sewing aspect.
The photoshoot
For my photoshoot, I will be creating a series of deadpan images, similar to old passport images.
my idea of what I want it to look like
Personal identity is the way you perceive yourself, this may fall under many different categories. Someone’s identity can be recognised through their qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and expression. Identity can also be created and formed by the culture or place you have grown up in. Identities are not the fixed markers people assume them to be but are instead dynamically constructed in the moment. Choices that feel identity congruent in one situation do not necessarily feel identity-congruent in another situation. This flexibility is part of what makes the self useful.
We can understand parts of someone’s identity without being told. Documents such as passports can tell us small parts of a person such as where they are from, when they were born and where they live. Physical traits can also tell us things about a person, colourful hair and clothes may indicate that they are a fun and bubbly person.
Gender identity
Identity is fluid and interchangeable, gender identity is an individual’s personal sense of having a particular gender. Nowadays, it is normal for people to question they’re gender and change from one to another if they feel they identify with the opposite gender more than they’re born identity.
Cultural identity
Cultural identity refers to identification with, or sense of belonging to, a particular group based on various cultural categories, including nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and religion
social identity
An individual’s social identity indicates who they are in terms of the groups to which they belong. Social identity groups are usually defined by some physical, social, and mental characteristics of individuals.
Geographical identity
An individual or group’s sense of attachment to the country, region, city, or village in which they live.
political identity
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular gender, religion, race, social background, social class or other identifying factors, develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.
I categorised my images using the star system – 1 star for no, 5 stars for yes and 3 stars for maybe.
Basic Edits
Further Experimentation
I decided to place a stained church glass design in the eye socket of the skull to represent the link between death and the church.
For this image i wanted to include an image from my environmental photography shoot, i decided to make a collage of different images from different object shoots and merge them together into this Vantas style still life montage.
This is my outdoor Arnold Newman inspired photoshoot. I chose to photograph my friend Ingrid in her garden as it is a place where she spends a lot of her time during the warmer months, sunbathing and having barbecues with her family and friends.
Original photos – unedited
This image is inspired by Newmans ‘Igor Stravinsky’. I loved his placement in the image and wanted to emulate it. I believe the placement of having Ingrid small in the left hand corner could symbolise humans subordinate size compared to nature, or Meer size of the individual on earth.
I love the contrast in this image of her light skin, hair and clothing compared to the ominous darkness of the vegetation behind her.
