All together I took about 188 photos and 10 of them are setting up the cameras settings I went round St Malo in a group with Angus George and Jude I haven’t edited them yet however I feel like I have some good photos
‘Playtime’ by Will Lakeman explores the nostalgia of childhood spaces and the strange memories the adult brain retains of them. Focusing specifically on Fort Regent and his childhood visits to the leisure centre. He uses AI software to manipulate images creating odd perspectives and bright colours to mirror the way his memories are old and not always truthful. The images feel sensory with shapes and colours whilst the exhibition uses sound and light as well as not only flat images including a life guards chair and old signs as a physical way of immersing you further into his memory . Some of his other photos are displayed in light boxes him explaining that printing them lessens their look and looses their bright qualities.
“Through my work I try and communicate something of the weird, vivid sensations of my dreams and nightmares. I dream inside a world of intense colour and strange symbolism, but I also daydream in my waking hours as I drift around the place. I also experience synaesthetic hallucinations where my sensed become confused.” – Will Lakeman
To me Lakeman’s work does a very good job of capturing the way memories are warped and the childlike perception of spaces. I like the dream like quality of the images, some images feel as if they were rooted in an idolization of the fort whilst others have a more disturbing tone to them with the ways the Ai bends and merges things, effectively displaying how not all memories are good.
Having not lived on jersey until recently I have no experiences in fort Regent but I still found myself able to relate and experience the nostalgia just with my own memory, Lakeman creates images around experiences with places and imagination most children have had so its easy to remember your own experience.
Lakeman explains that finding photos of fort regent as it was was a difficult task many he has taken from archives or other people have submitted. Others he has taken himself straight to the point photos which he then runs through an ai generator to achieve his ‘memory’.
Use of AI
I don’t think I can review this expedition avoiding the topic of Ai generation and art. Coming from the standpoint of an artist I find AI particularly frustrating and almost scary I don’t think human art and creativity is something that should or can be automated. I think AI spits out watered down and jumbled renditions of artists work usually without credit, compensation or permission claiming it as ‘new work’ devaluing years artists have put into there craft. Inevitably AI will be used instead of hiring illustrators and designers. There is masses of ethical issues with how AI takes work and even how it depicts certain things and I think it is concerning to hand the responsibility for creation of art and what is put into the world over to a machine who can only learn from our history so far and not create new things or take steps forward.
“The move towards white features and sexualised females aren’t the only biases present in AI art generators. In the case of DALL-E, the training data has been filtered to reduce violent or sexual imagery which inadvertently resulted in fewer women being created, something telling of the portrayal of women through history.“
I think the most beautiful thing about art is how it has always been used as a course for change throughout history expressing current issues and documenting the past whilst still moving forward. I think AI is stuck in time.
However I think Lakeman uses AI in an interesting way of aiding his photography and as a means of enhancing his own creative work I think the AI perfectly depicts the ways memories are warped and strange whilst also showing that perhaps AI and art can be used hand in hand.
“Sometimes it’s really frustrating, you just do it over and over again and it looks nothing like you hoped it would, and then suddenly it looks exactly like it did in your dream.”
Analysis
I think this image is effective in achieving the aesthetic and fever dream look Lakeman aims for in his work. The yellow and blue create a nice contrast with little other colours showing how memories often only have very specific thing such as colour and little detail. The image shows a swimming pool being dead centre and stretching across the entire image with nothing else allowing the viewer to focus more on how the Ai warps the perspective and shapes of the image whilst still keeping decisive lines leading your eye around the image and still allowing you to discern what you are looking at. The edges are not sharp and instead blurry creating less structure and more of a feeling tying in with how Lakeman wishes to capture ‘sensations’. I would 100% recommend this exhibition the anyone with the way it captures nostalgia along with the use of Ai which is not much seen in exhibition and raises a lot of questions.
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, especially a “warm childhood”. There is a predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more favourably and future more negatively. When applied to one’s beliefs about a society or institution, it’s been described as “an emotional strategy”, something comforting to snuggle up to when the present day seems intolerably bleak.
Nostalgia to me:
My Moodboard:
These are things that make me think of my childhood – I thought I’d recreate this reminder in a Moodboard of things that I think of when I’m asked about my childhood.
To prepare my layout for my zine I printed out 12 images from my St Malo photoshoot and edited them to my liking. Before putting them into InDesign straight away I printed my images out on paper and then did a ‘mock up’ of how id like to present my zine and where everything will go. I used trial and error to try create the best possible outcome. It was also useful as I could think about what i want to write about and which images would go with whatever subject of text for the specific page.
This image I turned black and white in order to create this vintage nostalgic feeling. Due to the direct mode of address (with the women looking directly at the camera) it made the image more powerful, as it gives a sense she is looking directly to the audience. The frown she gives in the image shows she’s uncomfortable yet the way she positioned her body with this facial expression created uncanny image which gives this ominous aura. Furthermore that black and white could connote that idea she feel behind a camera, so therefore even though she felt uncomfortable with the image it shows some level of authenticity.
EDIT TWO:
This image is simple, yet shows the touristic post cards of St Malo which clearly states where the images were taken. This image remained in colour as the lively colours created a playful image and shows the colours of St. Malo. Here I slightly decreased the exposure in order to make the colours more visible while also heightening the contrast it so that the colours are more vibrant.
EDIT THREE:
In this image I was able to capture an elderly lady between the tunnel. This created a frame in frame, and makes the woman the main subject. In the editing process I added a vintage filter, this is so the subject has a connection with the photograph. To further create this image in a vintage look I increased the grain and the texture so it had a more older and rusty look.
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is a common, universal, and highly social emotional experience. Nostalgic reverie is centered around the self, important social connections, and personally meaningful life events. In other words, when people bring to mind memories that make them nostalgic, they are revisiting personally meaningful life events shared with loved ones. A growing body of research positions nostalgia as a psychological resource with self-regulatory implications. Negative affective states such as sadness, loneliness, and meaninglessness trigger nostalgia and nostalgia, in turn, enhances well-being, feelings of social connectedness, and perceptions of meaning in life.
In total i took around 200 photos, however, after going through each one id say I only have around 7-10 best images as most are blurry or the same subject which I photographed several times. This was due to trying to get around different areas in St Malo which was making my images blurry as I was mainly walking most the time and quickly taking pictures. I also found it difficult and awkward to stop and take a obvious picture of someone in case they didn’t like it. However most of my best images were taken by me just holding the camera at my hip and not looking into the lens. This technique gave me more candid outcomes which I think look the most interesting.
CONTACT SHEETS:
EDITING MY IMAGES:
Original image (I prefer this without any editing)
Nostalgia is a feeling we experience on a daily, which is a sentimental longing for the past. We tend to think about the past sentimentally as some memories are comforting and make us feel good when looking back on them. Because we already know what has happened, even it is not reality anymore, but an illusion in someone’s mind, it still is truthful to that person. it is easier to think of the past as that already happened, where if a person thinks of the future, it is an abstract thought that is not real or truthful, meaning the future or thinking about the future is unsteady and not certain to happen. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, therefore it is much more comforting to think about the past.
Above I’ve created a mood board of what to me nostalgic photographs look like. some are of a places that give a comforting feeling, or are a documentative photographs of places that no longer exist, for example someone’s bedroom from the 90s, where all items are a description of that time. some other photographs I’ve included are of people doing activities that are nostalgic to them, like roller-coaster rides. I think the photographs that look the most nostalgic to me are more old fashioned photographs, that would be taken with a film camera, as they have an older feel to them. Same with images purposely edited to give that similar effect.
As people feel good when they think of positive memories, most of the photographs are of happy moments or moments that a person can look back on in a positive way. This is why I think to capture nostalgia in photographs, it should represent a place or person in a positive, cheerful way, so that when another person is looking at it, the photograph also connects to their nostalgic past.
Above I’ve created a mind map of what the potential “triggers”, which are categories that would make people think of a specific memory because of a certain specific smell, experience, food etc. It is a certain thing that links to memories, for example when eating a certain food, the taste could remind a person of a time when they tasted that for the first time.
People- a person can bring back memories in all kinds of ways, for example not seeing a family member or an old friend for a long time, then suddenly visiting them again in the future would bring back nostalgic memories of what you did with that person in the past. even not seeing a person for a long time alone, could make someone nostalgic of them, and start to miss them as they are a reminder of the past.
Food- following a similar concept of not experiencing a certain taste for a long time can cause not only longing for the food but also for the memories that are linked to the taste. for example being a child ad having warm milk before you go to sleep would be a link to a pleasant memory of laying down in the covers or watching tv etc., then by having warm milk as an adult, this could trigger the memory of when you would have it as a child.
Places- places is quite a broad one as every memory happens in some sort of place, however by going back to a place you grew up in will make you nostalgic of memories that were formed in that place, especially if someone was to move somewhere and left “home” behind, visiting then makes it more meaningful. in everyday life, when we are unable to visit a childhood place, which could be a comfort zone, what often some might do is find new places that give a similar feeling as the past one, and find a new home in them.
Media- this is tv commercials, music, movies, or any other media material. Seeing a movie that you once saw before will bring back the memories of maybe the people you were with or the place. same with music, when you randomly would be reminded of a song that you forgot even existed, the sound will sound similar and bring back memories associated with that song, like what life stage you were at, who you were with, first time hearing the song, etc.
Experiences- Again experiences are quite broad as any of the past, places, people, music, all like to past experiences, as all memories are experiences, however doing a certain activity, like sailing, could bring memories of doing this for the first time or in the past in general.
Scent- Scent could also come in the pair of food, as scent is very recognisable when your eating a food. but maybe the smell of the place or even a person, which could be the actual place or person from the past or a new place or person, could trigger a though of experiencing that in the past. for example the smell of fresh backed bread in a bakery, could be a link to another place you would visit in the past of a similar smell.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), a French photographer who is considered to be one of the fathers of photojournalism and masters of candid photography. He sought to capture the ‘everyday’ in his photographs and took great interest in recording human activity. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a humanist photographer influenced by surrealism.
He wrote,
“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”
Image Analysis
In this image from Cartier-Bresson he uses leading lines, shown in red. He does this to lead your eyes to the cyclist on the road. The rails are what is used to create this, he has done this by standing at an angle where it creates all different lines which draw your attention to the person cycling. By turning the image black and white it brings out the shadows and creates contrast. I will use this image as inspiration for when we go to st malo, and try to create something similar.
Nostalgia is having a sentimentality of the past, especially places and people associating with positive experiences. Nostalgia is a learned formation of a a Greek compound: (nóstos) meaning “homecoming”, and a Homeric word (álgos) meaning “sorrow”. It was created by a 17th-century medical student to describe the stress displayed by Swiss Mercenaries fighting away from home; a powerful infantry force constituted by professional soldiers originating from the cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. It became a key trope in romanticism, being reported as a medical condition and a form or melancholy in the Early Modern Period.
The personalities, possibilities, and events of the past are seen as a longing when associated with nostalgia, specifically the idea of “good old days”. People typically view the future more negatively , in contrast to the past as a more favourable thought. This is called diclinism when applied to one’s beliefs about society/ institution. It’s been expressed as “a trick of the mind” and as emotional approach to find comfort when the present day is dull.
The scientific literature of nostalgia states that emotion is a strong influencer of nostalgia because of the process of the stimuli passing through the amygdala (a major processing centre for emotions). The memories of the past tend to be important events involving people one cares about, or places that hold comfort and have been visited one or many times. Nostalgia can also be activated by music, TV, video games and weather.
Nostalgia’s affects
Nostalgia can improve your mood because even though it is typically activated by negative feelings, it brings out positive emotions through the happy memoires of the past. It can also improve someone’s social connections. Memories can be of people and can cause someone to get in touch with those people creating the nostalgic feeling.
