This photoshoot was to document all the house’s I’ve lived in, and then present them in the form of typologies. Here I was able to take picture’s of 10 house’s as I was unable to get through to the other ones. Some of the quality of the pictures turned out unfocused and dark, this was due to some of the weather changes. However, overall I believe this photoshoot was successful and I was able to create the images I needed. Some of the top images were from Christmas, were I was able to take some portraits of my family, however I believe the images were unsuccessful and felt more rushed and less organised. When editing and developing these images, I will edit them black and white, with similar adjustments to the previous photoshoot.
In this photoshoot I will take inspiration from the Bernd typology work. I will be taking pictures of all the houses I have lived in, 13, to show the lack of ‘home’ and sense of nostalgia in a childhood home. This will link with typologies, as in my photobook I intend to put these images in a grid format.
WHERE?
LOCATIONS FOR PHOTOSHOOT:
JERSEY
HOUSE AND FAMILY IN POLAND
HOUSES LIVED IN JERSEY (ST HELIER, ST MARTIN, ST SAVIOUR)
HOW?
I will be using a camera from school so I am able to create higher quality images. I will be taking a series of landscape and portrait images to see which fit best with the photobook and what layout will go best.
WHY?
This photoshoot is designed to show the lack of ‘childhood’ home and lack of nostalgia. Due to moving many times, you aren’t able to hold onto memories.
Visceral – relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect
Surrealism – Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience. It is a style in art and literature in which ideas, images, and objects are combined in a strange way, like in a dream.
Who is she?
Born in Shinga, Japan, Kawauchi is a popular and admired photographer. She is most known for her ability to capture the moments in everyday life using a soft palette. She has studied photography and graphic design at the Seian University of Art and Design. After graduating in 1933, she spent a period of working as a freelance photographer in advertising and released three photobooks. These were released in 2001 and were called UTATANE, HANABI, and HANOKO. Her hard work resulted in gaining fame practically overnight, and since then she has created several photobooks with work that has been shown across the world.
I wanted to capture a visceral sense and emotion through my image, rather then showing nostalgia through objects or basic images. I want to draw an emotion through the photos in my book, not just a pretty photo to look at. The emotions I want to achieve is nostalgic love and happiness, transporting the viewer to a personal time in their life or childhood that is different for each person. However, I am going to focus on capturing photos that feel close to my childhood, and do this inspired by Kawauchi’s style.
Illuminance
Ten years after releasing her photobooks (Utatane, Hanabi, and Hanako) she published Illuminance which is the most recent volume of Kuwauchi’s work. This book is the first to be published outside of Japan, widening her audience and giving her work more of an opportunity to be appreciated.
This book is carefully constructed from design to the order of the photos. She has reversed the signatures in the binding of the book to create a folded page. At first it seems confusing, however it also lead me to think there was something hidden in the pages, also linking each photo to each other as if they are ‘attached’. She has also used swiss binding, which I find opens the book up more, possibly making the viewer feel like they are entering her world through the book.
The book has a theme of circles throughout, beginning with what looks like a solar eclipse, and ending with a photo from the same shoot later on. The sun is hidden in the first one, but showing in the last, and I feel like Kuwauchi could have created a hidden meaning that this book sheds light on her career or the viewer because they have been immersed into her creative life and skills. Each page links to the photo next to it, whether they both have circular shapes, hands, the same colour tones, the same textures, or link by being opposites. There is not an overall theme presented through her photography, but the images create a visceral sense, drawing emotions through her aesthetic. Her work also shows surrealism with these emotions because her images immerse you into a new world, creating new emotions and feelings.
Analysis of pages
Both of these images seem to juxtapose at a first glance, however taking a closer look you can see both images have a swirl in the centre thirds. They both are natural subjects, one created through its natural movement, whereas the other is flowers, but created in that shape through a man made shape. Kawauchi might have done this purposefully to present the beauty of the world whether natural or man made, or she could have just placed the two images together because they have similar leading lines and shapes. This is what I enjoy about her work, the fact that she has left the image to be interpreted by the viewer, with no writing to be influenced by.
It took me a while to understand the meaning behind these two images, but I came to understand that both images represent some sort of death. The image on the left presents prolonged death by choice, as cigarettes are used to satisfy its user, but is followed by consequences such as death. The image on the right also shows death, but not by choice. It is also a death generated by humans, with the intention to satisfy a user (the fish will be sold for enjoyment). I think Kawauchi was really clever placing these images together, each creating an idea of possible suffocation, maybe relating to how she feels as a photographer. I also took into consideration that this was her first book sold worldwide, and this could be her illustrating how she felt subject to Japan.
“My goal is just to create images that generate a conversation about things that aren’t spoken about. I want to change the ways young girls look at themselves and the way women at large are looked at…. So, when I was 15, and started working, it was a time when I was going through puberty, and beginning to discover my sexuality and photography and film were a means of working that out.”
Petra Collins has been working since she was 17, and over the last 13 years she has explored many creative forms from shooting everyone under the sun to art shows to clothing lines to directing. A photographer, artist and model, Petra became known for her dreamy female lens shooting intimate moments of the teenage years in her home city of Toronto, going on to define a new generation of photographers. There are two of her projects that I want to explore: “the teenage gaze” and “24hr psycho”.
THE TEENAGE GAZE
In “the teenage gaze” by Petra Collins, she explores shared experiences of adolescences from their perspective rather than the stereotypical views, aiming for a ‘fly on the wall’ style. The intimate portraits shot from 2010-2015 takes advantage of the lighting, location, and props within the shots in order to create beautiful imagery.
Collins’ wanted to explore the juxtaposition of the early developmental stages of a girls life and her teenage years. The shift from what is labelled as period of innocence and purity, pretty dolls are shoved into her hands and tiaras placed upon her head transforms into a strange reality of catcalls and the fear that no matter how a girl decides to dress or act, she simply cannot win. If she wears makeup then she is giving into societal beauty standards and if she doesn’t, she simply won’t be pretty enough. “Pretty” is a word that girls learn to strive for before they can understand that they do not have to please anyone other than themselves in order to be beautiful.
24HR PSYCHO
“The constant battle within oneself, having to balance oppositional ideals of virgin, whore, mother. I was depressed at a very young age – mental illness runs in my family, especially on the female side… When we are angry, sad, depressed, or manic, we are immediately seen as unfeminine, or ugly, or weak”
– Petra Collins
For this project, Petra Collins wanted for women to take control of their emotions and to show that emotions should not be ladled as “negative”. It shows young women’s emotions in states of sadness and emotional suffering, moments of vulnerability then become acts of empowerment. Fragility and emotionality are emotions stereotypically associated with the female gender; Petra Collins wants to emphasize these characteristics and wants to show the world what it means to be a girl who lives adolescence today, constantly in contact with social media. These images, deeply intimate and private, face the complex question of a generation that does not know the world and people, if not through a screen.
Tableaux style photoshoot consisting of my father and objects that symbolize my father’s relationship with the sea, such as his surfboard, wetsuit, or any personal items
To present my fathers connection to the ocean throughout his lifetime, use of first and most recent surfboard
By producing images in a location holding sentimental value to my father, use of close/mid shots, portraits
Late afternoon when light is soft
Along St Ouens Bay, favourite surf spot/other locations with meaning
Inspiration
PHOTOSHOOT TWO
Documentary Style photoshoot consisting of my father/unknown surfers/the landscape/waves, experimenting with long exposure
To present my fathers connection to the ocean throughout his lifetime/stills of the ocean and surf culture
Producing series of landscape/long exposure images documenting surf/surfers in action
Justine Kurland’s take on the classic American tale of the runaway takes us on a wild ride of freedom, memorializing the fleeting moments of adolescence and its fearless protagonists.
Kurland was born in Warsaw, New York. Her mother sold costumes at Renaissance fairs, so Kurland and her sister lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. At 15, Kurland ran away to Manhattan, moved in with a sympathetic aunt, and concentrated on becoming an artist.
She earned her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1998. The following year, Kurland exhibited in the group show Another Girl, Another Planet, which critics considered a preview of a new generation of talented and innovative female photographers.
Both Kurland’s childhood adventures and her current experiences influence her working style and subject matter. She now spends much of her time on the road, scouting locations for photographs and recruiting models.
While her earlier photographs of schoolgirls were inspired by her own experience as a runaway, the birth of her son Casper in 2004 shifted her focus to pregnant women and mothers. Kurland also attributes her more recent photographs of trains and train stowaways to Casper’s love of those vehicles.
This kind of ironic playfulness repeats itself over and over again in this book. Even the title, Girl Pictures, embossed onto the powder pink cover feels vaguely tongue-in-cheek. It sounds dirty or patronizing. Just one letter shy of girly pictures, the title of this book is akin to categories like “chick lit” or “chick flicks.” I can almost hear someone critiquing these photographs as just a bunch of “girl pictures.” It makes me think of that image with the girl’s hands over the boy’s eyes again. What if rather than removing his perspective, you just take it directly from him? The title feels this way to me, like something stolen back.
“There’s something political about creating a world that you want to exist“
Image analysis
In this image the light is dull and reminds me of autumn time. This is because of the colours of the leaves and clothing the people are wearing. The focal point of the image would be the woman circled she is about to get into the water. The image shows a group of friends about to get into the water. The layout of the people in the image creates layers and as if the woman getting into the water is the main girl in the group as people are looking up to her.
By taking inspiration from Kurland and further developing my past images I will try to create a story which people can understand and relate to.
I plan on doing my first photoshoot of candid and staged photos.
I want the environment of this photoshoot to be mainly of in and around my friends cars. I will create different photos from in and around the car from different point of views. This photoshoot will represent girlhood in the way of going out adventuring and feeling free.
I will take exterior shots from outside the car to juxtapose the interior shots from inside of the car of my friends.
I plan to take these images around the times of sunset, so before and during, this is because I want the natural, dim, strong lighting to create dreamy silhouettes and backlighting. I’m hoping the dramatic skies cause rich and intense colours in my images.
Theo Gosselin is a French photographer. He is mostly famous for his bohemian pictures taken during different road-trips around the world. Deliberately cinematic, his photography reveals friends in the act of escaping from their regular lives into newly enticing and perilous modes of existence, ever in search of the persistent though elusive idea of freedom.
Theo Gosselin pictures, like Justine Kurland, are a true homage to freedom, captured like a snapshot. His favourite themes are life, love, his generation, his adventures, and large spaces; in definition a youth thirsted for freedom and an alternative living, where human values and harmony with nature dominate.
Passionate about drawing, music, and cinema, he chose a path through the art school, and graduated in 2012 as a graphic designer in Amiens. He started photography around 2007 and chose to pursue and develop this. He loves to capture the simple life, love, good and bad moments, his friends and his adventures. Gosselin is an eternal traveller and shares his way of life with the people he loves; because the truth is in wide open spaces and in the heart of the characters he meets along the way.
His work is simple but heart-breaking, pictures which speak the language of feelings and true emotions. Without artifices or lies, the young photographer captures the intimacy with tenderness and accompanies to adulthood.
This image is a good example of photos I want to be taking. The focal point of this image is the two people, however the viewers eyes are drawn to their surroundings. It looks like they are in a service area restaurant and it makes you wonder what their story is, are they runaways? Are they on their own adventure? Are they lost? I want my images to create this kind of atmosphere.
Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German photographer who mainly takes photographs during the night of urban areas in cities and urban areas, where she likes to use long exposed images because of the lighting she can get from the streets. She is influenced a lot by cities, without considering the noise and chaos, she sees it as flexible, where anything can happen and be photographed, where the pace of life slows down, and the city lights up, where there is as much space as you could possibly want. She grew up in the country side which she says, “Your future is mapped out for you from the very beginning”, which shows her influence for the mix of urban and street photography Rut uses. People believe that Rut Bless Luxemburg is separated from most photographers because of her ability to find beauty in the most depressing and unlikely places, where she creates an ominous mysterious look in her images.
Rut Blees images create a lot of mystery and during her night photography include no people, but rather the template for where people are, which is why you can see footprints in the water and mud, it shows the presence of people without directly showing them and even going into personalities. She looks at the bigger picture, of where people live and where, and how we live in a broader picture. The area she has chosen for her images (London) is perfect for what she is aiming for, because of how although it gets silent at night, there is still perfect lighting everywhere and things still happening or areas that have been left for the night to take over, which she chooses to image.
I personally like Rut’s work, especially her urban and street because of the aesthetic it gives off with an abandoned look and deterioration and isolation. I also like how she mentions about her photography in her urban night area aiming more towards showing the template for people in society and what we use to travel and be efficient in every day life which we might not pay attention to. Her images use a lot of contrast especially with her use of warm and cold colours which I like because the specific tints and vibrancy she uses work well.
