In this project we will explore the theme of NOSTALGIA and respond to a number of different creative tasks, such as classic street photography on a trip to St Malo and produce a set images using AI (Artificial Intelligence) in response to the exhibition, PLAYTIME by Will Lakeman.

Nostalgia is a word that comes from Greek and means a sentimental yearning for the past. It can evoke feelings of pleasure with occasional notes of sadness. Nostalgia can be triggered by many things, such as music, movies, places, or people. Nostalgia can have positive effects on mood, social connectedness, self-esteem, and meaning in life.

Theoretically, the project will explore photography’s fraught relationship with truth looking at seminal images from the history of photography that ‘lied’ and compare with how new technology such as AI generating digital images will potentially alter our perception of reality. This debate will also include discussing the ethics of AI technology, as a force for good that will benefit humanity and its potential dangers, and how it will impact our society as a whole in the future.

Outcomes: a set of classic street photographs and images generated by using AI
Essay: Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?
Presentation: A3 double-page magazine spread and 16 page photo-zine with essay

What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

” It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.”

John McCarthy’s definition in his 2004 paper, What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI), is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. Since the development of the digital computer in the 1940s, it has been demonstrated that computers can be programmed to carry out very complex tasks—as, for example, discovering proofs for mathematical theorems or playing chess—with great proficiency. Still, despite continuing advances in computer processing speed and memory capacity, there are as yet no programs that can match human flexibility over wider domains or in tasks requiring much everyday knowledge. On the other hand, some programs have attained the performance levels of human experts and professionals in performing certain specific tasks, so that artificial intelligence in this limited sense is found in applications as diverse as medical diagnosis, computer search engines, voice or handwriting recognition and now generating content by text prompting producing images, music and films.

The birth of the artificial intelligence conversation was denoted by Alan Turing’s seminal work, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” , which was published in 1950. In this paper, Turing, often referred to as the “father of computer science”, asks the following question, “Can machines think?”  From there, he offers a test, now famously known as the “Turing Test”, where a human interrogator would try to distinguish between a computer and human text response. While this test has undergone much scrutiny since its publish, it remains an important part of the history of AI as well as an ongoing concept within philosophy as it utilizes ideas around linguistics.

At its simplest form, artificial intelligence is a field, which combines computer science and robust datasets, to enable problem-solving. It also encompasses sub-fields of machine learning and deep learning, which are frequently mentioned in conjunction with artificial intelligence. These disciplines are comprised of AI algorithms which seek to create expert systems which make predictions or classifications based on input data.

Over the years, artificial intelligence has gone through many cycles of hype, but even to skeptics, the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT seems to mark a turning point. The last time generative AI loomed this large, the breakthroughs were in computer vision, but now the leap forward is in natural language processing. And it’s not just language: Generative models can also learn the grammar of software code, molecules, natural images, and a variety of other data types.

The applications for this technology are growing every day, and we’re just starting to explore the possibilities. But as the hype around the use of AI in business takes off, conversations around ethics become critically important. To read more on where IBM stands within the conversation around AI ethics, read more here.

More information about AI can be found here on IBM or see RESOURCES below.

PLANNER: Blogposts to make

WEEK 1: 5 – 11 June
Visit and review exhibition ‘PLAYTIME’ by Will Lakeman

Mon 5 June: EXHIBITION > group Yr 12B meet at Capital House 14:00.
Tue 6 June: EXHIBITION > group Yr 12A meet at Capital House 14:00.

Wed: ANALYSIS > review the exhibition and write 500 words incorporating knowledge and understanding from talk by Will Lakeman > 1 blogpost

Writing frame: How does the exhibition make you consider the theme of Nostalgia? How has childhood memories inspired the imagery? Describe photographic techniques used, including AI in the image-making process. In what way are AI images a representation of dreams? Choose one image and analyse in more detail, considering form, concept and aesthetics. Make a final value added judgement on the exhibition as a whole, ie. do you like/ dislike it – provide examples for or against. Would you recommend it to others? If so, why? Include illustration such as installation images from the exhibition. Include also at least one quote from Will Lakeman’s talk or associated publicity material and provide a comment.

See RESOURCES below for more context about Will Lakeman and the exhibition ‘Playtime’. Read also interview here in the Bailiwick Express and a previous review/ publicity of an earlier pop-up exhibition at ArtHouse Jersey’s Greve de Lecq Barracks here.

Homework: Deadline 14 June

RESOURCES – PLAYTIME by Will Lakeman

A FORT REGENT INSPIRED ART EXHIBITION RECREATING THE STRANGE HOLD CHILDHOOD SPACES HAVE ON ADULT MEMORIES

The work in this exciting exhibition recreates the strange hold that childhood spaces have on our adult memories, all centred around the Jersey childhood mecca of old Fort Regent. 

Lakeman is a photographer who has nurtured an obsessive interest in ‘the Fort’, and has spent his adult life revisiting weird dreams of this iconic building and its heyday in the early 1990s. With the works accompanied by a custom soundscape, smell and touch, Playtime encourages visitors to revisit their own dreams. The exhibition opens with a special preview evening on Wednesday 24 May between 5.30pm and 7pm and runs through until Sunday 2 July 2023. 

If you were ever a visitor to Pluto’s Playtime, spun around the roller disco on your Bauers, felt bilious on the pirate ship or slunk around in the shadows of the Exploratorium, this exhibition is without question for you. In a broader sense though, this exhibition is about nostalgia and how it is not always reliable. You can’t photograph a place that has long ceased to exist, so Will Lakeman has responded by using photo manipulation, collage and new technologies of artificial intelligence to recreate the Fort as he remembers it, not as it ever really was. The resulting images try to evoke the odd, fantastical memories we carry of childhoods everywhere.

Artist Will Lakeman said of the upcoming exhibition “I’m really excited for people to see this show, which I now realise I’ve been trying to make for most of my adult life. I have a really intense interest in a specific era of Fort Regent’s history – the funfair and swimming pool – but I have hardly any photos of myself there. I had to try and recreate my memories, and the more I tried the stranger the results became. The show involves photographs, reconstructions made with Artificial Intelligence, a soundscape, found objects and even some smells. Although it’s rooted in “the Fort” I tried to capture something universal in the experience of being a child, beyond excited to go to the leisure centre. I hope it says something to everybody. 

Read full press release here

Will Lakeman: ‘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.

As a photographer I’m mainly inspired by cinema, especially the work of David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Stanley Kubrick. I also love the writing of Philip K Dick and Kazuo Ishiguro. Photographers I enjoy include Todd Hido and Greg Girard.’

Explore Will Lakeman’s website here

Read an interview with Will in Bailiwick Express here – see exerts below.

From ghostly pictures taken at night to eerie images of the Fort recreated by artificial intelligence, Will Lakeman has shared how dream and nostalgia inspire his work.

Pictured: Will says he didn’t take a single good photograph until he was 24.

“I did not take a single good photograph until I was 24,” he said. “I spent 24 years taking pictures that were not very interesting. It was not until I took one where I had an emotional experience that they started getting better. The first photo I took that I was really happy with was one of the Esplanade car park.”

As he started working at night, Will began working with nocturnal images, a series of which went on display at Private & Public Gallery in 2019. Those were partly inspired by his synesthetic hallucinations during which he can “taste colours and feel sounds.”

“I would try and get the sort of sense you get when you see something in a dream, bigger and clearer and more colourful,” Will explained.

Dreams and nostalgia are two big influences in Will’s work and both combine in his latest project. Using artificial intelligence, he has been manipulating images of Fort Regent based on his own dreams of the place.

Will had been wanting to focus on the Fort for a while but couldn’t find a way into it until he stumbled upon AI. His efforts have somewhat been stumped by the lack of pictures of the Fort, an appeal for images has not yielded much results so far, so Will has been creating his own collages and using pictures of the Fort as it is now, as well as the small number of archive images he has been able to find.

“I grew up here and I spent a lot of time there like many people,” Will said. “I am interested a lot about nostalgia, when people talk about what life was, they are not talking about reality but what their memory is.

“I am interested in making those images, but I also understand that it is not reality and that you cannot go back there. I try to make them spooky, very colourful and weird, because even in a nice dream, there’s always something that happens that is a little bit weird. I wanted to try and capture that in an image, to make people remember and think about their own dreams.”

The process to create one image is a lengthy and somewhat fortuitous one. Will has to ‘feed’ the AI source images as well as instructions drawn from his dream diary until he “stumbles” upon something that looks right.

“The AI understands words and sentences but not in the same way as humans do,” he explained. “It’s like a painting where someone is throwing paint at the canvas rather than using a brush.

“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.”

The image comes out the size of a postage stamp so once Will is happy with it, he then has to make it “bigger and bigger”, adding elements as he goes, which he says can be quite “time consuming”.

While it’s an unusual process that Will says does not resemble any other type of creative process, he believes more artists will turn to AI in the future.

“Everyone has the potential to make art that is meaningful to them. Anyone can be a good photographer, you do not need expensive gear, you just need to care. AI is the next thing that will become democratic. I would love to see other people’s weird dreams.”

This article first appeared in the Dec/Jan edition of Connect magazine 2022, which you can read full version here. 

THEME: NOSTALGIA

Thurs-Fri: RESEARCH > explore theme of NOSTALGIA and produce a mindmap and moodboard > 1 blog post.

Nostalgia is something that is both cosy and comforting but also deceptive and an illusion – explain how? Think about your own childhood memories of growing up in Jersey (or elsewhere). Are there specific moments that you treasure, or rather not want to remember? Think about what triggers the feeling of nostalgia, for example music, movies, places, or people. See below for more definition and ideas around theme of nostalgia.

“I am interested a lot about nostalgia, when people talk about what life was, they are not talking about reality but what their memory is.” Will Lakeman

Wikipedia definition of Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming”, a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “sorrow” or “despair”, and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.

Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, especially the “good ol’ days” or 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, this is called declinism, which has been described as “a trick of the mind” and as “an emotional strategy, something comforting to snuggle up to when the present day seems intolerably bleak.”

The scientific literature on nostalgia usually refers to nostalgia regarding one’s personal life and has mainly studied the effects of nostalgia as induced during these studies. Emotion is a strong evoker of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain. These recollections of one’s past are usually important events, people one cares about, and places where one has spent time. Cultural phenomena such as music, movies, television shows, and video games, as well as natural phenomena such as weather and environment can also be strong triggers of nostalgia.

WEEK 2: 12 – 18 June
St Malo Trip and Street Photography

Mon: THEORY & CONTEXT > Henri Cartier-Bresson and the ‘decisive moment’ > 1 blog post, publish by Mon 19 June

Tue: RESEARCH & PLANNING > research your trip to St Malo and produce a moodboard of images of street photography exploring ‘the decisive moment’ > 1 blog post

“Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. 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.”

As a reporter and co-founder of the Magnum photography agency, Cartier-Bresson accepted his responsibility to supply information to a world in a hurry. He documented the liberation of Paris, the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China, Gandhi’s funeral and the partitioning of Berlin. Cartier-Bresson helped develop the street photography style that has influenced generations of photographers that followed. He was influenced by Surrealism and began his career in film working with renowned French director, Jean Renoir as second assistant director to films such as La vie est à nous (1936) and Une partie de campagne (1936), and La Règle du Jeu (1939 – considered one of the most influential films in 20th century.

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression

The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential publication, is widely considered to be one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century. Pioneering for its emphasis on the photograph itself as a unique narrative form, The Decisive Moment was described by Robert Capa as “a Bible for photographers.” Originally titled Images à la Sauvette (“images on the run”) in the French, the book was published in English with a new title, The Decisive Moment, which unintentionally imposed the motto which would define Cartier-Bresson’s work. The exhibition details how the decisions made by the collaborators in this major project—including Cartier-Bresson, French art publisher Tériade, American publisher Simon & Schuster, and Henri Matisse, who designed the book’s cover—have shaped our understanding of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.

Listen to an audible comment from MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) here Henri Cartier-Bresson. Behind the Gare St. Lazare. 1932 | MoMA

Read interview here by The Guardian’s photography critic Sean ‘Hagan. Cartier-Bresson’s classic is back – but his Decisive Moment has passed

Task: Describe Henri Cartier-Bresson’s theory of the decisive moment using direct quotes from his own text. Include images of his work that illustrates the theory and choose one for detailed analysis of its form (what it looks like), composition (how it is arranged) and capturing a moment (essence of movement) . The decisive moment is particularly concerned with the overall structure and composition of the photograph, such as shapes, geometry, patterns and movement. Comment on these elements as well as other formal elements such as:

The seven formal elements are commonly known as:

– Line
– Shape & Form
– Pattern
– Tone
– Colour
– Texture
– Space

Also make use of other specialist photography vocabulary such as, rule of third, depth of field – see visual matrix below.

Wed 14 June: PRACTICE & RECORDING > St Malo photoshoot (250-400 images)

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”

Walker Evans, ca. 1960 from Afterword in Many Are Called, a photobook featuring Evans’ snapshots of subway riders in New York.

Street Photography: the impulse to take candid pictures in the stream of everyday life. Street photography is a form of documentary but it is decidedly not reportage and rarely simply tells a story. Sometimes a street photographer captures something truly unusual – an extraordinary face, an accident, or a crime in the making. But more often a good street photograph is remarkable because it makes something very ordinary seem extraordinary.

Flaneur: The street photographer is the archetypal flaneur, an urban type popularised by the French poet Charles Baudelaire in the mid-nineteenth century, around the same time that photography itself came into popular circulation. Baudelaire defined the flaneur as ‘a botanist of the sidewalk’ an apt description for most of street photographers. Read more here

Technology: The Leica handheld camera, commercially available as of 1924, was the ticket to allowing a photographer to be on the move, as well as to capturing movement. A 35-mm film camera, the Leica had a wide aperture that required a short exposure time, especially for pictures taken outdoors, and it could advance quickly, which allowed the photographer to take numerous pictures of a subject in quick succession. Read more here on the history of the Leica camera

The Leica became the camera of choice in the 1930s for photographers such as André Kertész, Ilse Bing, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and others, all of whom worked primarily in Europe. Those photographers did not call themselves street photographers even if some of their subject matter fit the genre’s current definition, but instead they identified themselves as photojournalists, fashion photographers (many worked for magazines), or simply as experimenters with a new medium. The Leica continued to be the go-to device for photographers after World War II, especially for New York City photographers such as Roy DeCarava, Lisette Model, William Klein, and Helen Levitt. Robert Frank, who is best known for his book The Americans (1959) and was the leading influence on street photographers of the succeeding generation, documented culture throughout the United States and in Europe. Street photography took off in Mexico as well, with Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Graciela Iturbide. Paris had Robert Doisneau, Czechoslovakia had Josef Koudelka, and London had Bill Brandt.

Photo-assignment: St Malo and decisive moments

American street photographer Gary Winogrand famously said that, ‘I photograph things to see what they look like photographed.’

Using Cartier-Bresson’s theory of ‘the decisive moment’ try and capture images where the overall composition and visual elements are combined with an essence of movement. Find a location or spot that works as a compositional structure and anticipate or wait for something to happen within the photographic frame, eg. movement of people, a passer-by, or a dog, or some other fleeting moment of street life. Consider the following:

SUBJECT MATTER/ CAPTURING A MOMENT > people and humanity, theatre of everyday life, poetics of streets, comic absurdities and humour, small acts of kindness, scenes of unexpected beauty, ordinary moments, visual pun and humour, gestures and poses, faces and crowds.

LOCATIONS & PLACES > inside the walls and on the ramparts, back alleys and sidewalks, beaches and coastal promenades, parks and public spaces, cafes and shops, street corners and intersections, signs and advertising, facades and architecture.

POINTS OF VIEW > low/ high/ canted angles, deadpan approach, light and shadows, intensity of colour, reflections in shop windows, shoot through glass, frame within a frame, focusing and un-focusing, up-close and details, shallow depth of field, artful and funny juxtapositions, geometry and space, lines and form, textures and patterns, signs and shop windows, advertising and graphics, reflections and mirrors.

APPROACH > capturing decisive moments, candid portraits, informal snapshots, inobtrusive observations (Cartier-Bresson style), interactive and confrontational (William Klein approach), spontaneous and subconscious reactions, poetic possibilities, inquisitive mind and roaming eye, looking and prying, shoot from the hip, serendipity and good luck.

CAMERA HANDLING > Lenses (focal length): use wide (18-35mm) to standard lenses (50mm). Focusing: automatic or manual – whatever you prefer. Exposure mode: S or T mode – (shutter-speed priority). Shutter-speeds: experiment with fast (1/125-1/500) and slow shutter-speeds (1/15-1/60). ISO: 100 (sunny weather), 200-400 (overcast ), 800-3200 ISO (inside or evening/ night). White Balance: auto

Download and print prompt sheet here:

For further inspiration see the work of historical and contemporary street photographers below. Or, for a comprehensive Powerpoint presentation with many examples of street photographers, styles and approaches – go to folder here:

M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Presentations\Street photography

WEEK 3: 19 – 25 June
AI workshop with Will Lakeman

Mon 19 June: WORKSHOP > Group Yr 12B (2 hours Pd 4 + Pd 5)
Tue 20 June: WORKSHOP > Group Yr 12A (2 hours Pd 4 + Pd 5)
Workshops led by Will Lakeman on use of AI and ethics in generating images and digital content using software, such as Photoshop AI and DreamStudio.

Wed-Fri: EXPERIMENTING > Using your images from St Malo as inspiration produce a variety of AI generated images (at least 10 variants) using Photoshop AI, DreamStudio or Midjourney. Explore your experiences in St Malo and generate AI images inspired by street photography and Cartier-Bresson’s theory around the decisive moment. Either ‘train’ AI on your original images or recreate street photographs using relevant text prompts linked to your photo-assignment last week – see above. Use key terminology, such as specific words and phrases linked to subject matter, capturing moment, locations & places, points of view, approaches, composition and formal analysis, camera handling and techniques.

Show creative process using a combination of screen grabs and annotation > 1 blog post

AI Image generating software: DreamStudio, Midjourney, DALL-E 2, Dream by Wombo, Craiyon and new version of Photoshop with AI

Photoshop AI (beta version)

Introduction from Adobe to Photoshop AI: Nearly three and a half decades since we first brought Photoshop to the world, we’re writing a new chapter in our history with the integration of Generative AI and Adobe Firefly into Photoshop. Today we deliver an incredible new capability into creators’ hands that empowers them to work at the speed of their imagination while fundamentally transforming the experience into something more natural, intuitive and powerful.

Generative Fill – Adobe Photoshop Quickly create, add to, remove or replace images right in Adobe Photoshop with simple text prompts powered by Adobe Firefly generative AI.

What’s new in Photoshop

The new features introduced to Photoshop are designed to accelerate everyday creative workflows, streamline complex tasks, and reduce clicks.

Adjustment Presets

Adjustment Presets are filters that speed up complex tasks by enabling you to preview and change the appearance of images in just a few steps to achieve a distinctive look and feel, instantly.

There are 32 new presets in the Adjustments panel that you can hover over to see what your image would look like with each preset applied before selecting it. Once a preset is selected, it can be further refined by editing the automatically created adjustment layers in the layers panel.

For more information go here.

Remove Tool

The Remove Tool is an AI-powered feature that enables you to replace an unwanted object by simply brushing over it, preserving the integrity of nearby objects and providing an uninterrupted transition on complex and varied backgrounds.

The Remove Tool is particularly powerful when removing larger objects and matching the smooth focus shift across the image. For example, the tool can remove an entire building or car from an alpine landscape image while seamlessly maintaining the fidelity of the progression from meadow to mountains.

Use the Remove tool for:

• Big objects
• An object near other objects
• An object on a varied-focus background
• An object with structure behind it (think lines, like a fence or horizon)

For more information go here.

Contextual Task Bar

The Contextual Task Bar is an on-screen menu that recommends the most relevant next steps in several key workflows, reducing the number of clicks required to complete a project, and making the most common actions more easily accessible.

For example, when an object is selected, the Contextual Task Bar appears below your selection and suggests actions for selection refinement that you might want to use next, such as Select and Mask, Feather, Invert, Create Adjustment Layer, Fill Selection, or generate something with the new Generative Fill capabilities.

For more information go here.

Generative Fill

The revolutionary and magical new suite of AI-powered capabilities grounded in your innate creativity, enabling you to add, extend, or remove content from your images non-destructively using simple text prompts. You can achieve realistic results that will surprise, delight, and astound you in seconds. 

Click here for a tutorial on how to use Generative Fill

Neural Filter

Neural Filters is a new workspace in Photoshop with a library of filters that dramatically reduces difficult workflows to just a few clicks using machine learning powered by Adobe Sensei. Neural Filters is a tool that empowers you to try non-destructive, generative filters and explore creative ideas in seconds. Neural Filters helps you improve your images by generating new contextual pixels that are not actually present in your original image. 

Click here for a tutorial on how to use Generative Fill

Gradients update

The Gradients feature has been significantly improved, and the workflow has been expedited.

The feature enables you to create gradients in just a few steps and now includes new on-canvas controls which help you have precise controls over many aspects of the gradient in real-time. A live preview that’s created automatically shows you instantly how the changes you make affect your image.

You can now also make non-destructive edits to your gradients, which means you can go back and make changes to your gradient without permanently altering your original image.

For more information go here.

A general tip from Will Lakeman on Photoshop is just to get familiar with Layers, Selections, Masking, and Groups. Almost every complex task just involves being better at these and most problems proceed from small misunderstandings in them. There are free videos explaining any of these, for people who want targeted learning there is a short video on every tool available on Phlearn. The site will try and get you to pay for Premium Content, but there’s loads of free stuff. 

For example, these are all free/quick, the presenter is great, and most contain free sample files to practice on.You can teach yourself a good standard of Photoshop just by following along. Click here for tutorials.

DreamStudio

Midjourney

Explore examples here, Next Steps in Midjourney: Photorealistic Experience with AI Art

Read article here on: How to get great results with Midjourney learning bout being more precise with your text prompts.

DALL-E 2

DALL-E and DALL-E 2 are deep learning models developed by OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions, called “prompts”. DALL-E was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post in January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images. In April 2022, OpenAI announced DALL-E 2, a successor designed to generate more realistic images at higher resolutions that “can combine concepts, attributes, and styles”.

For inspiration and ideas – see RESOURCES below of artists using AI

Nostalgia and AI

Deep Nostalgia, a new service from the genealogy site MyHeritage that animates old family photos, has gone viral on social media, in another example of how AI-based image manipulation is becoming increasingly mainstream. Read a review here and another article by Gadgetflow

“It makes me so happy to see him smile again!" Try our new #DeepNostalgia #PhotoAnimation feature for yourself and prepare to be AMAZED!!! https://t.co/p3h600G3MX pic.twitter.com/YdAn9IxyW0

— MyHeritage (@MyHeritage) February 28, 2021

Read article Deep Nostalgia: ‘creepy’ new service uses AI to animate old family photos in the Guardian.

Here is a list of top 10 Best Alternatives to Deep Nostalgia App 2023

• Best 10 Deep Nostalgia Apps Review (Updated April 2023)
  • 1. Photomyne
  • 2. ImageColorizer
  • 3. VanceAI Photo Colorizer
  • 4. Nostalgic Camera
  • 5. Unfade App
  • 6. Photo Glory
  • 7. Colourise.online
  • 8. Hotpot.AI
  • 9. Playback.fm
  • 10. Retouch Me

Photomyne is a Deep Nostalgia alternative application as it also focuses on the colorization of old family based photos.

Or link to HitPaw Photo Enhancer (AI-Powered): Restore Old Photo, Colorize Black & White Image

Further Inspirations > Experimentation > Development

planet.ai. Artwork created by artificial intelligence. Subscribe here on Youtube to see examples of work or follow here on Instagram. They also sell prompts for Midjourney – see here for more details.

Planet AI: Asking AI to Draw Famous People as Babies!

AI generated pictures of Coronation after party. Check out Charles!!!

Phillip Toledano believes that a photograph should be like an unfinished sentence. Born in London, he lives and works in New York City, where after a decade as an advertising art director, he returned to his true passion, photography. Below are some recent images he has created using Midjourney that were shared in Instagram.

mrtoledano Political art usually works in two ways -either it points outwards, to support and encourage people to rise up, or it points inwards, at a political figure, to ridicule, to weaken, to enrage-that’s that’s hopefully the point of this particular series. Two of trumps (many) characteristics are his misogyny and his obsession with projecting strength -these images make him become his fears

If you look at images of trump, you begin to notice just how many emotions he seems to be missing-there’s plenty of him looking angry, or petulant, or stern, and then there’s what passes for a smile. But real laughter? sadness? Concern ? Joy? Completely and strangely absent – the only option is to create them with ai. Midjourney

Trump is so hyper masculine, so extraordinarily misogynistic, it made me wonder. This is an exploration of what might be his deepest fear-to become what he despises the most

One of the things I find utterly fascinating about Donald Trump is the carefully curated tough guy image he’s crafted over the years -there’s something interesting in piercing that hyper -masculine bubble and showing the world the softer side of Donald

mrtoledano For the final act of the trump series, let’s think about who donald trump would be if he didn’t have his fathers money. If he hadn’t had a gilded life of privilege handed to him. What if he was just Donny from queens ? What would his life look like? What would he be doing ? 

Philip Toledano: I’ve noticed a lot of work uses ai to recreate photography as it is now-some sort of reflection of reality -but what’s utterly intriguing is that AI has its own voice. For instance, this image of the two men fighting I would argue is much more interesting than the one I posted yesterday (can you see what’s different ?) because (metaphorically) I allowed ai to have a say -now this image asks more questions (which is ALWAYS a good thing in art) 

I’m also surprised to see how it handles the animal images I’ve been doing -especially the monkeys and apes-the images have such emotion in them -and finally, I’m very much enjoying the way in which you can abstract the human form …

From his series, another America …

Photos courtesy of the latest version of Midjourney, an AI program which generates realistic deepfakes   –  Copyright  Reddit – Twitter. Read article here

David Fathi: The Machine Seems to Need a Ghost

The Machine Seems to need a Ghost (but the ghost cannot quite make itself at home in the machine) is a work in progress currently composed of three typologies that explore all these questions around the keywords of feedback loop, hauntology, meta, etc., as a neural network of linked ideas and images: 

OpenWalls Arles Vol. 4: TRUTH

The prompt for this year’s theme was French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s line that photography is “catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.” The aim of OpenWalls 2023 is to challenge Lartigue’s notion in a modern context – to not only interrogate the idea of truth in a post-truth age, but to insist upon photographic authority as collaborative, considering multiple truths from across the six continents from which the winning images are taken.

50 single image winners and two series will be shown together at Galerie Huit Arles, all responding to theme of Truth. Read more here BJP (British Journal of Photography)

My goal is not to uncover a single objective truth, but rather to explore the many subjective layers of a truth that are personal and relevant to the persons I am photographing

– Julia Gunther – OpenWalls Arles Single Image Winner

Ultimately, the winning image of this edition of OpenWalls projects demonstrate that truth can be wielded to empower an endless range of human impulses, whether preservation, rebellion, remembrance or imagination. Truth’s flexibility might be the most valuable legacy of the supposedly post-truth age.

Explore more of the winners here

WEEK 4: 26 June – 2 July
ESSAY: Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?
DEADLINE: Mon 10 July

Can a photograph lie?

Are all photographs reliable?

A photograph is a certain delivery of facts?

Claims of truth that most people take for granted?

You often hear a photographer saying: ‘the camera was there and recorded what I saw’.

A common phrase is to ‘shed light on a situation’ meaning to find out the truth.

‘A picture tells a 1000 words‘, is another aphorism that imply images are more reliable.

Picasso famously said: ‘We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.’

Magritte’s painting La Trahison des Images in which he painted a picture of a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (This is not a pipe) goes some way towards an explanation.

Documentary photography’s central moral associations are:

depicting truth

recording life as it is

camera as a witness.

The photograph as evidence

Since its ‘invention’ in the 1830s, photographs have been used as sources of evidence. The direct (indexical) relationship between the sun’s rays and the resulting image makes photographs seem reliable as sources of information. No wonder that photography was enthusiastically embraced by organisations like the police who began to use photographs as sources of legal proof. And yet, from the beginning, artists working with photography began to create images which relied on the manipulation of their photographs using techniques like combination printing, undermining their evidential status. Photographs are very persuasive since they look so much like the things photographed. As Susan Sontag has pointed out, when we hear about something happening but doubt its occurrence, we tend to believe it to be true when shown a photograph of it. However, she also describes the way that photographs are peculiar in the type of evidence they provide:

The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer – a scribe, not a poet. But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective image yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world. It became clear that there was not just a simple activity called seeing (recorded by, aided by cameras) but ‘photographic seeing’, which was both a new way for people to see and a new activity for them to perform.
​– Susan Sontag from On Photography

Some initial questions:

• What can photographs be evidence of?
• How many types of photographic evidence can you list?
• Which of your official documents include a photograph of you?
• Why are photographs considered, in some legal circumstances, to be a reliable source of evidence?
• How reliable is your Instagram feed or family photo album as a record of your life?

In 2016, the Michael Hoppen Gallery curated an exhibition of photographs entitled ‘? The image as question: an exhibition of evidential photography‘.

The exhibition featured a wide range of photographs from fields such as medicine, conflict, engineering, astronomy and crime. Originally used as evidence of something, torn from their original context and hung on a gallery wall, the photographs could be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities and artistry. 

This was further emphasised by the exhibition hang which drew attention to the formal similarities between some of the photographs:

A limited edition of 200 catalogues were produced to mark the show, again conferring on the photographs the status of art object:

Part of the fascination with all photography is that the medium is firmly grounded in the documentary tradition. It has been used as a record of crime scenes, zoological specimens, lunar and space exploration, phrenology, fashion and importantly, art and science. It has been used as ‘proof’ of simple things such as family holidays and equally of atrocities taking place on the global stage. Any contemporary artist using photography has to accept the evidential language embedded in the medium.
— Michael Hoppen Gallery website

Do you know what London really looks like? Take our quiz and see if AI can fool you

After an image of the Pope fooled the internet, test yourself and see if you’re still one step ahead of artificial intelligence. Click here

TASKS: Produce a number of blog posts that show evidence of the following 

Mon-Tue: ESSAY > Write a 1000-1500 word comparative essay on photography’s association with truth using both historical and contemporary images as examples.

The essay question (hypothesis), Photography and Truth: Can a photography lie? is designed to explore the idea of photographs as forms of evidence. Of course this is relevant to all photographs. To what extent can any photograph be relied upon to tell us the truth? With new technology, such as generative AI that produce content from images and texts that already exist on the internet, it also raises questions about originality, appropriation and authorship. These issues are central to contemporary artistic and photographic practice and students should be alert to them. Is the photographer always the one who presses the shutter? Does it matter?

DEADLINE: MON 10 July

Follow these instructions:

1. Select two images that have manipulated truth, one historical using camera technology, one contemporary using AI technology as examples to use in your essay
2. Research history, theory and context of both images thoroughly and make notes.
3. Read several sources (both online and on paper) to acquire sufficient knowledge and understanding
4. Provide a critical perspective by referencing different points of view from sources.
5. Select at least 2 quotes per image from sources you have read that is relevant to your essay question.
6. Use Harvard System of Referencing and provide a bibliography
7. Use key terminology specific to art and photography from the matrix/ sheet below.

Essay plan – use as a guideline

Hypothesis: Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?

Opening quote: to set the scene choose an appropriate quote from key texts or source that you have read and understood. Or select something Will Lakeman said in class discussion around ethics using AI in photography.

Introduction (250 words): Describe how photography from its invention as a new technology in 1839 was viewed as a threat to traditional artforms such as painting and drawing. Provide an overview of why photography (like all other art forms) is an illusion and a representation of reality (reflect on your essay earlier on the Origin of Photography). Explain what AI is as a new technology, and how it is already part of lives, give examples (Google, speech recognition, generative AI etc). Discuss both human and societal benefits and potential dangers of AI, again use examples such as Geoffrey Linton resigning from Google to bring awareness, or Sam Altman’s (CEO of OpenAI) being questioned by USA congress. Select one quote by either Linton or Altman and comment (either for or against). Introduce the two images that you have chosen as examples of the above.

Paragraph 1 (250-500 words): Describe how photography in the past (before the digital age) could be manipulated, both in-camera and in the darkroom (eg. reflect on Pictorialism’s use of chemicals and scratching surfaces in distorting images and earlier masking/ collaging technique sin the darkroom.) Provide an example of an image (see case studies below) from history of photography where the truth was distorted. Describe circumstances, context, different points of view and new discoveries or theories around the origin or meaning of your chosen image. Use either direct quote, paraphrasing or summary from sources and comment (for or against). Make sure you provide your own interpretation of the image too.

Paragraph 2 (250 -500 words): Describe how photography now since the digital age has been altering the truth from faking images in-camera to using image manipulation software, such as Photoshop. Provide an example of an image (see case studies below) produced using artificial intelligence that looks ‘real’, but are in fact a digital construct. Provide analysis of how generative AI such as DreamStudio, Midjourney or DALL E 2 has increased our ability to create new images that has no relationship with either photography or the truth. Use same formula as above and use either direct quote, paraphrasing or summary from sources and comment (for or against). Make sure you provide your own interpretation of the image too.

Conclusion (250 words): Refer back to the essay question and write a conclusion where you summarise in your own words both similarities and differences between your two image examples. For example, compare and contrast how historical images in the past and digital images made today, using new technology such as AI, have altered reality and distorted truth. Conclude with a statement on how you envisage the future of photography and AI image-making might change our perception of reality, and attitude towards truth.

Bibliography: List all the sources that you have identified in alphabetical order. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.

Quotes and referencing: You MUST reference some of the sources that you have used either by incorporating direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, or historical fact.

Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.

CASE STUDIES

Explore case studies where images have ‘lied’ and truth has been manipulated, distorted, staged or altered. Choose two images – one historical and one contemporary – for your essay from case studies listed below that questions the notion of truth regarding the photographic image and its relationship with reality and explain why.

The images of renowned photographer Steve McCurry, who made the famous and iconic image of an Afghan girl for a front cover of National Geography has recently been criticized for making ‘too perfect pictures’ which not only are boring but reinforces a particular idea or stereotype of the exotic other.

Read this article by Teju Cole in the New York Times Magazine which compares McCurry’s representation of India with a native photographer, Raghubir Singh who worked from the late ’60s until his untimely death in 1999, traveling all over India to create a series of powerful books about his homeland.

Read this artcicle on Petapixel in In defense of Steve McCurry’s images

What is your view? Back it up with references to articles read and include quotes for or against.

Reference to Coldplay’s new video also highlight the idea of cultural appropriation that harks back to Britain’s colonial rule and exploitation of the Orient.

Jeff Wall is a Canadian artists known for his large scale tableaux image presented in light-boxes. Today, most of his images resemble reportage and, as such, are likely to incense his detractors, who claim he’s not a “true” photographer. His most contentious new work, called Approach, shows a homeless woman standing by a makeshift cardboard shelter in which we spy the foot of what could be a sleeping vagrant. Wall tells me it was shot under an actual freeway where the homeless congregate and that “it took a month to make, working hands-on” – but he won’t divulge just how staged it is. Is this an actual homeless woman, or an actor? Is the shelter real, or was it built by Wall’s team of assistants to resemble one?

Re-creating images from memory is crucial to Wall’s practice – perhaps because it flies in the face of the tradition of photography as an act of instant witnessing.

“Something lingers in me until I have to remake it from memory to capture why it fascinates me,” he says. “Not photographing gives me imaginative freedom that is crucial to the making of art. That, in fact, is what art is about – the freedom to do what we want.”

Read full interview with Jeff Wall here

In terms of truth or communicating an idea that make references to a real social problem such as homelessness, does it matter if the image is staged or not? Where does authenticity come into the picture?

Berlin-based photographer Boris Eldagsen rejected the recognition from Sony World Photography Awards, saying that artificial intelligence (AI) images and photography should not compete with each other in similar contests. In a statement published on his website, Erdagsen said that he applied to the competition “as a cheeky monkey” to find out if such events are prepared to handle AI-generated content. The photographer also urged for debate on the role of AI in photography. “We, the photo world, need an open discussion. A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not,” wrote Eldagsen.

Read Boris Eldgasen’s own comments om his website here, where you will also find hyperlinks to many articles and interviews given about the image and his refusal to accept the Sony World Photography Awards 2023.

Seymour, Tom (18 April 2023), The camera never lies? Creator of AI image rejects prestigious photo award. The Art Newspaper. (Accessed 19 June 2023)

Boris Eldagsen has accused the Sony World Photograph Awards of failing to distinguish between a photograph and a DALL-E 2-created image, while the organisers condemn a ‘deliberate attempt at misleading us’

Bush, Lewis (20 April 2023), ‘AI photography is here to stay—here’s why we should be worried’. The Art Newspaper. (Accessed 19 June 2023)

Maybe we should direct our attention less on whether these images count as photographs, and more on the moral right or wrong of how they work

Grierson, J. (17 April, 2023) Photographer admits prize-winning image was AI-generated. The Guardian News & Media Ltd. (accessed 19 June 2023)

German artist Boris Eldagsen says entry to Sony world photography awards was designed to provoke debate.

Williams, Zoe (18 April, 2023), ‘AI isn’t a threat’ – Boris Eldagsen, whose fake photo duped the Sony judges, hits back. The Guardian News & Media Ltd. (accessed 19 June 2023)

The German artist caused uproar this week when he revealed the shot that won a prestigious award wasn’t what it seemed. But, he insists, AI isn’t about sidelining humans – it’s about liberating artists

Parshall, Allison, (April 21, 2023) How This AI Image Won a Major Photography Competition. Scientific American (accessed 19 June 2023)

Boris Eldagsen submitted an artificial-intelligence-generated image to a photography contest as a “cheeky monkey” and sparked a debate about AI’s place in the art world

Bartels, Meghan (March 31, 2023), How to Tell If a Photo Is an AI-Generated Fake. Scientific American (accessed 19 June 2023)

Artificial-intelligence-powered image-generating systems are making fake photographs so hard to detect that we need AI to catch them.

Here is a statement by David Fathi: The Machine Seems to Need a Ghost about his new project and use of AI in his work.

‘Generative artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly advancing. Anyone can use image generation tools to create without needing specific technical or artistic skills. The images generated by these tools challenge the notions of work and creator, as if they were algorithmic ready-mades. Like Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, bottle rack or snow shovel, they are products of mechanization and automation (industrial for Duchamp, digital for these new creations) and displayed in an art gallery. The artist does not have to paint, photograph or sculpt; his choices and decisions shape the work. The algorithm draws from a huge database of images that mirror our world without replicating it accurately. The generated images look more and more realistic and close to reality but also act as a distorting mirror, exaggerating all the stereotypes and biases of our visual culture. 

We are at a turning point where human production has not yet been contaminated by artificial production. However this will soon change as the tools themselves use their own creations as input. Gradually the feedback loop, an endless cycle where culture ceaselessly refers to itself, will come to dominate the database, risking getting stuck in nostalgia for the past and trapped in a closed , meta-stable, system. Duchamp’s ghost still haunts us, an unavoidable reference in the history of contemporary art, often quoted, copied or parodied by generations of artists that followed. He became an art cliché despite himself. Duchamp himself described his own art as “meta-irony” to describe his art – a form of critical distance holding its own questioning. 

Artificial intelligence raises ethical, artistic and social questions that are only an acceleration of the same questions that have followed the inventions of printing, photography, computer or the internet. The growing automation only makes it harder to escape our current system and the “meta” has become a refuge. This constant self-reference, reflexivity, circularity of our art, our technologies, our culture is becoming a trap where the past’s ghosts still haunt our present thinking.’

Philip Toledano: (mrtoledano) For the final act of the trump series, let’s think about who donald trump would be if he didn’t have his fathers money. If he hadn’t had a gilded life of privilege handed to him. What if he was just Donny from Queens ? What would his life look like? What would he be doing ? 

Philip Toledano: I’ve noticed a lot of work uses ai to recreate photography as it is now-some sort of reflection of reality -but what’s utterly intriguing is that AI has its own voice. For instance, this image of the two men fighting I would argue is much more interesting than the one I posted yesterday (can you see what’s different ?) because (metaphorically) I allowed ai to have a say -now this image asks more questions (which is ALWAYS a good thing in art) 

READING > REFERENCES > SOURCES

Below are some background text on some of the topics of discussion, such as truth, ethics, realism, representation and genres of documentary photography and staged photography (tableaux). Reading a couple of these texts would provide you with the background knowledge and understanding that is required for you write a critical essay on the topic around photography and truth. It is your own responsibility to research relevant information and context around the two images that you have chosen from case studies above.

Documentary > Truth > Realism > Ethics > Representation

A short PPT on Documentary Photography

Bright, Susan (2019) Is it Real? in Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.

Sontag, Susan (1977) ‘In Plato’s cave’, Chapter 1 in On Photography. London: Penguin Books

Here some helpful resources on Sontag: On Photography from PhotoPedagogy

Max Pinckers Interview: On Speculative Documentary
How fact and fiction today in documentary photography is blurred

Here some helpful resources on ethical questions regarding the photographer’s position of being inside or outside from PhotoPedagogy

Tableaux Photography > Pictorialism > Narrative > Cinema

A short PPT on Tableaux Photography

Bate, David (2016) ‘Pictorual Turn’ in Art Photography. London: Tate Galleries.

How Tableaux has been influenced by Pictorialism

Tableaux-Photography

Susan_Bright_Narrative

Stephen-Bull_Photographs-as-art_Pictorialism_Modernism_Postmodernism

Artificial Intelligence > Ethics > Regulation > Media – current debates

In March, some prominent figures in tech signed a letter calling for artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” The letter, published by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit backed by Elon Musk, came just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, an even more powerful version of the technology that powers ChatGPT. In early tests and a company demo, GPT-4 was used to draft lawsuits, pass standardized exams and build a working website from a hand-drawn sketch.

Lets watch this interview on CNN with Dr Geoffrey Hinton who says ‘AI could kill humans and there might be no way of stopping it.’. The man often touted as the godfather of AI quit Google, citing concerns over the flood of misinformation, the possibility for AI to upend the job market, and the “existential risk” posed by the creation of a true digital intelligence. For more context read articles in The Guardian and NYT (New York Times) too

‘Godfather of AI’ says AI could kill humans and there might be no way to stop it

other clips DeepMind CEO on AI Godfather Hinton’s Google Departure | Watch (msn.com)

AI Principles

The Asilomar AI Principles, coordinated by The Future of Life Institute (FLI) and developed at the Beneficial AI 2017 conference, are one of the earliest and most influential sets of AI governance principles. Read all principles listed, especially those linked with Ethics and Values.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=538404941814298

AI and Ethics Panel (vimeo.com)

AI and Ethics Panel

The University of Florida hosted a panel on ethics in artificial intelligence on Tuesday, May 2, 2023, with faculty members exploring the important role of ethics as scientists race toward increasingly sophisticated AI technologies. UF faculty members Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Duncan Purves, Tina Tallon and Sanethia Thomas participated in the online panel, which explored various topics related to the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, including algorithmic bias, ChatGPT and the social impact of AI on different communities.

Artforum editor in chief David Velasco visits Josh Kline at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art to discuss “Project for a New American Century,” his first institutional survey in the US. Kline, whose work graces the cover of the April issue, reflects on his world-building art, the unfolding disasters of climate change and AI, and why he still sees the future as a place of hope. In the April issue: Colby Colby Chamberlain on the art of Josh Kline.

https://www.artforum.com/print/202304…

WEEK 5: 3 – 9 July
Developing > experimenting

This week you have some time to catch up with work not completed, such as:

• Editing images from St Malo, select your best 10-12 shots and evaluate > 1 blog post
• Produce a set 10 AI generated images / variations using text prompts > 1 blog post with annotation
• Compare camera-based images with AI generated images > 1 blog post
• Inspirations: Case Study 2 on artist(s) using AI as part of their image-making process > 1 blog post
• Review, improve or complete any outstanding research, analytical/ contextual blog posts on Henri Cartier-Bresson and the decisive moment > 1 blog post
• Complete essay > deadline Mon 10 July
• If all above is completed, begin research task below collecting a variety of picture-stories as inspiration for your page-spread design.

WEEK 6 – 7: 10 – 21 July
Picture story: design a page spread

Make A3 page spreads based on images made in-camera (analogue/ observational) and/or AI generated images (digital/ constructed). Follow the steps below:

1. Research Picture-Stories: Produce a mood board of newspaper layouts and magazine style picture stories. For reference use look at local stories from the JEP as well as international stories from  magazine supplements in UK broadsheets newspaper ( e.g. The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Telegraphs, Financial Times etc). Look at also at digital picture stories from the internet (see photo-agency websites: Lensculture,  Magnum Photos, World Press Photo, AgenceVU, Panos Pictures. Alec Soth’s LBM Dispatch

Find picture-stories here in this folder: M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Picture-stories

2. Analysis and deconstruction: Look at the layout of pictures and analyse how individual pictures relate and tell a story according to the construction of a traditional picture-story. Identify what types of pictures are more important than others e.g. which are major (establishing shots) or minor pictures (detail, relationship shot), and which types of portraits are used (formal, informal, environmental and person at work) see Powerpoint: A Traditional Picture Story below for further guidance. Analyse also the use of headline, text and captions to convey and construct a particular meaning or point of view.

The Traditional Picture Story_v1

3. Headline, text, captions: Think of a creative title and write a selection of headlines that tell your story. Write also an introduction/ abstract that provide further context for your pictures story. Also write captions for each picture: who, what, where, when and put into a new post

4. A3 Page-Spread Designs: Produce at least two different designs/ picture-stories from your photographs. Class tutorial on page design using InDesign. Be creative in your layout and experiment with different ways to communicate your message by clever cropping, sequencing, juxta-positioning, typography, use of graphics etc. Think of catchy headline and also write a short text (50-100 words) and captions for images. Start with a rough sketch of how the page might work and begin to lay out pictures, major and minors.

a) Design a traditional newspaper layout
b) Design a magazine double-page spread

InDesign
Create new document
width: 420mm
height: 297
pages: 3
orientation: landscape
columns: 4
column gutter: 5mm
margins: top, bottom, inside, outside: 10mm
bleed: top, bottom, inside, outside: 3mm

5. Experimentation: Edit your final layout and designs – make sure you show experimentation in your blog of different design and layout ideas combining images, graphics and typography in a personal and creative manner. Produce at least 3 versions of each design

6. Evaluation: Reflect on your final design ideas and explain in some detail how well you realised your intentions and reflect on what you learned/ What could you improve? How?

7. Presentation: Print, mount and present final designs and any other final outcomes, such your best 3-5 images and present as final print.

PRINT FOLDER: M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\NOSTALGIA\PRINTS

EXTRA RESOURCES / INSPIRATIONS / CONTEXT

History of artificial intelligence: Key dates and names

The idea of ‘a machine that thinks’ dates back to ancient Greece. But since the advent of electronic computing (and relative to some of the topics discussed in this article) important events and milestones in the evolution of artificial intelligence include the following:

• 1950: Alan Turing publishes Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In the paper, Turing—famous for breaking the Nazi’s ENIGMA code during WWII—proposes to answer the question ‘can machines think?’ and introduces the Turing Test to determine if a computer can demonstrate the same intelligence (or the results of the same intelligence) as a human. The value of the Turing test has been debated ever since.
• 1956: John McCarthy coins the term ‘artificial intelligence’ at the first-ever AI conference at Dartmouth College. (McCarthy would go on to invent the Lisp language.) Later that year, Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw, and Herbert Simon create the Logic Theorist, the first-ever running AI software program.
• 1967: Frank Rosenblatt builds the Mark 1 Perceptron, the first computer based on a neural network that ‘learned’ though trial and error. Just a year later, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert publish a book titled Perceptrons, which becomes both the landmark work on neural networks and, at least for a while, an argument against future neural network research projects.
• 1980s: Neural networks which use a backpropagation algorithm to train itself become widely used in AI applications.
• 1997: IBM’s Deep Blue beats then world chess champion Garry Kasparov, in a chess match (and rematch).
• 2011: IBM Watson beats champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy!
• 2015: Baidu’s Minwa supercomputer uses a special kind of deep neural network called a convolutional neural network to identify and categorize images with a higher rate of accuracy than the average human.
• 2016: DeepMind’s AlphaGo program, powered by a deep neural network, beats Lee Sodol, the world champion Go player, in a five-game match. The victory is significant given the huge number of possible moves as the game progresses (over 14.5 trillion after just four moves!). Later, Google purchased DeepMind for a reported USD 400 million.
• 2023: A rise in large language models, or LLMs, such as ChatGPT, and image-generating software, such as DALL-E2 and Midjourney create an enormous change in performance of AI and its potential to drive enterprise value. With these new generative AI practices, deep-learning models can be pre-trained on vast amounts of raw, unlabeled data.

Types of artificial intelligence—weak AI vs. strong AI

More information about AI can be found here on IBM

Weak AI—also called Narrow AI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)—is AI trained and focused to perform specific tasks. Weak AI drives most of the AI that surrounds us today. ‘Narrow’ might be a more accurate descriptor for this type of AI as it is anything but weak; it enables some very robust applications, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, IBM Watson, and autonomous vehicles.

Strong AI is made up of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or general AI, is a theoretical form of AI where a machine would have an intelligence equaled to humans; it would have a self-aware consciousness that has the ability to solve problems, learn, and plan for the future. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)—also known as superintelligence—would surpass the intelligence and ability of the human brain. While strong AI is still entirely theoretical with no practical examples in use today, that doesn’t mean AI researchers aren’t also exploring its development. In the meantime, the best examples of ASI might be from science fiction, such as HAL, the superhuman, rogue computer assistant in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Deep learning vs. machine learning

Since deep learning and machine learning tend to be used interchangeably, it’s worth noting the nuances between the two. As mentioned above, both deep learning and machine learning are sub-fields of artificial intelligence, and deep learning is actually a sub-field of machine learning.

Deep learning is actually comprised of neural networks. “Deep” in deep learning refers to a neural network comprised of more than three layers—which would be inclusive of the inputs and the output—can be considered a deep learning algorithm. This is generally represented using the diagram below.

The way in which deep learning and machine learning differ is in how each algorithm learns. Deep learning automates much of the feature extraction piece of the process, eliminating some of the manual human intervention required and enabling the use of larger data sets. You can think of deep learning as “scalable machine learning” as Lex Fridman noted in same MIT lecture from above. Classical, or “non-deep”, machine learning is more dependent on human intervention to learn. Human experts determine the hierarchy of features to understand the differences between data inputs, usually requiring more structured data to learn.

“Deep” machine learning can leverage labeled datasets, also known as supervised learning, to inform its algorithm, but it doesn’t necessarily require a labeled dataset. It can ingest unstructured data in its raw form (e.g. text, images), and it can automatically determine the hierarchy of features which distinguish different categories of data from one another. Unlike machine learning, it doesn’t require human intervention to process data, allowing us to scale machine learning in more interesting ways.

There are numerous, real-world applications of AI systems today. Below are some of the most common use cases:

• Speech recognition: It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text, and it is a capability which uses natural language processing (NLP) to process human speech into a written format. Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice search—e.g. Siri—or provide more accessibility around texting. 
• Customer service:  Online virtual agents are replacing human agents along the customer journey. They answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) around topics, like shipping, or provide personalized advice, cross-selling products or suggesting sizes for users, changing the way we think about customer engagement across websites and social media platforms. Examples include messaging bots on e-commerce sites with virtual agents, messaging apps, such as Slack and Facebook Messenger, and tasks usually done by virtual assistants and voice assistants.
• Computer vision: This AI technology enables computers and systems to derive meaningful information from digital images, videos and other visual inputs, and based on those inputs, it can take action. This ability to provide recommendations distinguishes it from image recognition tasks. Powered by convolutional neural networks, computer vision has applications within photo tagging in social media, radiology imaging in healthcare, and self-driving cars within the automotive industry.  
• Recommendation engines: Using past consumption behavior data, AI algorithms can help to discover data trends that can be used to develop more effective cross-selling strategies. This is used to make relevant add-on recommendations to customers during the checkout process for online retailers.
• Automated stock trading: Designed to optimize stock portfolios, AI-driven high-frequency trading platforms make thousands or even millions of trades per day without human intervention.

The rise of generative AI models

Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can take raw data — say, all of Wikipedia or the collected works of Rembrandt — and “learn” to generate statistically probable outputs when prompted. At a high level, generative models encode a simplified representation of their training data and draw from it to create a new work that’s similar, but not identical, to the original data.

Generative models have been used for years in statistics to analyze numerical data. The rise of deep learning, however, made it possible to extend them to images, speech, and other complex data types. Early examples of models, like GPT-3, BERT, or DALL-E 2, have shown what’s possible. The future is models that are trained on a broad set of unlabelled data that can be used for different tasks, with minimal fine-tuning. Systems that execute specific tasks in a single domain are giving way to broad AI that learns more generally and works across domains and problems. Foundation models, trained on large, unlabelled datasets and fine-tuned for an array of applications, are driving this shift.

WEEK 2: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY – further inspirations
‘THE DECISIVE MOMENT’

mood board

For further inspiration see the work of historical and classical street photographers such as, William Klein, Vivian Mayer, André Kertész, Ilse Bing, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roy DeCarava, Lisette Model, Helen Levitt. Robert Frank, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Robert Doisneau, Josef Koudelka, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans and Gary Winogrand.

mood board

Today with the growth of social media and online content street photography is having a renaissance. Explore the work of contemporary street photographers listed below or go to online street photography collective, In-Public, Christophe Agou, Arif Asci, Niels Jorgensen, Peter Funch, Polly Braden, Maciej Dakowicz (Cardiff at Night), George Georgiou, Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr, Joel Meyerowitz, Raghu Rai, Michael Wolf, Thierry Girard, Sigfried Hansen. Richard Kalvar, Osuma Kanemura. Martin Kollar, Jens Olof Lasthein, Frederic Lezmi, Jesse Marlow, Gus Powell,, Ying Tang, Mimi Mollica, Trent Parke, Mark Alor Powell, Bruno Quinquet (Salaryman), Paul Russell, Matt Stuart, Alexey Titarenko, Nick Turpin, Alex Webb, Amani Willett, Wolfgang Zurborn.

Thurs-Fri: DEVELOPING > Edit images in Lightroom and produce blogpost with selection of best images and evaluation.
– Edit images in Lightroom showing selection of best images and write an evaluation > 1 blog post

EXTRA: History of Street Photography and concept of the ‘flaneur’. Guy Debord and psycho-geography.

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. 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.”

As a reporter and co-founder of the Magnum photography agency, Cartier-Bresson accepted his responsibility to supply information to a world in a hurry. He documented the liberation of Paris, the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China, Gandhi’s funeral and the partitioning of Berlin. Cartier-Bresson helped develop the street photography style that has influenced generations of photographers that followed. He was influenced by Surrealism and began his career in film working with renowned French director, Jean Renoir as second assistant director to films such as La vie est à nous (1936) and Une partie de campagne (1936), and La Règle du Jeu (1939 – considered one of the most influential films in 20th century.

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression… In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.

The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential publication, is widely considered to be one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century. Pioneering for its emphasis on the photograph itself as a unique narrative form, The Decisive Moment was described by Robert Capa as “a Bible for photographers.” Originally titled Images à la Sauvette (“images on the run”) in the French, the book was published in English with a new title, The Decisive Moment, which unintentionally imposed the motto which would define Cartier-Bresson’s work. The exhibition details how the decisions made by the collaborators in this major project—including Cartier-Bresson, French art publisher Tériade, American publisher Simon & Schuster, and Henri Matisse, who designed the book’s cover—have shaped our understanding of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.

Listen to an audible comment from MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) here Henri Cartier-Bresson. Behind the Gare St. Lazare. 1932 | MoMA

Read interview here by The Guardian’s photography critic Sean ‘Hagan. Cartier-Bresson’s classic is back – but his Decisive Moment has passed

The Decisive Moment is Only About Composition

Here the decisive moment is described:

If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of form must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality… In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it.

But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. (my emphasis)

A Dynamic Situation in a Single Image

Early in the book, he articulates his ambition to capture the essence of a dynamic situation in a single image — the source of the misuse of “a decisive moment” —

I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to “trap” life — to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize, in the confines of one single photograph, the whole essence of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

On Finding Subject Matter

Cartier-Bresson makes the case that many others have made — that there is no end of possible subject matter (and as Elliott Erwitt said years later, that photography is less about the object and more about how you see it.)

Cartier-Bresson says “There is subject in all that takes place in the world…” and “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.” He continues “Subject does not consist of a collection of facts…” which speaks to the distinction between photographing objects vs. moments. “There are thousands of ways to distill the essence of something that captivates us.”

approach – see old ppt + task sheet for ST Helier shoots – David Sheppard book + shoot from the hip book + old picture stories

Snapshot photography vs candid photography

New technology: Leica 35mm camera

-Prep for St Malo trip
Henri Cartier-Bresson and ‘the decisive moment’
Nick Waplington and the indecisive moment https://www.photopedagogy.com/the-indecisive-moment.html
observational vs confrontational
HCB vs William Klein (Bruce Gilden)
Vivian Mayer

list useful quotes

Roland Barthes: punctum/ studium

WEEK 3: AI WORKSHOP with WILL LAKEMAN

AI image generators: Large Language Models (LLM)
Open AI: Dall-E 2
DeepMind: Midjourney
Dreamstudio

EXTRA – for Sept

Mon: Lesson 1
Theory: What is documentary photography vs staged photography – discuss in class – see my old blog post and PPT
Practice/ Photo-assignment: make one image which is documenting reality and one which is staging reality

Use Will Lakeman’s images from Playtime as an example of an artist drawing inspiration from lived experiences and memories to create new images using AI technology

and record two focused photo-shoots in Jersey based on Nostalgia – choose sites/ locations which triggers childhood memories – beaches/ castles/ heritage sites/ bunkers/ home/ gardens/ family
Jersey landmarks, such as Corbiere Lighthouse, Gronez Castle, etc etc. Decide how you are going to make the photograph, ie. a documentary approach or staging it/ an event.

INSPIRATIONS – ARTISTS REFERENCES
AI and truth – other photographers
David Fathi and Emanuel Macron
Philip Toledano and Donald Trump
…King Charles III

• Photo-archive visit? tourism/ nostalgia > Sept?

2. PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT: Make one image which is documenting reality and one which is staging reality. Evaluate and describe differences and similarities.
Photo-assignment: make one image which is documenting reality and one which is staging reality. Evaluate and describe differences and similarities.

1. ANALYSIS: Choose one image from case studies listed below that questions the notion of truth regarding the photographic image and its relationship with reality and explain why.

Follow this method of analysis:
TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.

Theory: Explore case studies where images have ‘lied’ and truth has been manipulated/ distorted – altering reality / staging photographs
Case Study 1: Roger Fenton and Jim Rosenthal
Case Study 2: Steve McCurry –
Case Study 3: David Fathi (Macron), Philip Toledano (Trump)
Start Digital/ Neil Mason (King Charles – Midjourney)

Wed: Lesson 3 – Truth or Lies: Can a photograph lie?
– use Will’s workshop as starting point for discussion around ethics etc. – set essay at that same time

Photography and Truth | 2024 Photography Blog (hautlieucreative.co.uk)

Standards and Ethics in documentary | 2016 Photo A2 Blog (hautlieucreative.co.uk)

TASKS
1. ANALYSIS: Choose one image from case studies listed above that questions the notion of truth regarding the photographic image and its relationship with reality and explain why.
Follow this method of analysis:
TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.

Documentary vs Staged Photography
If we examine documentary truth (camera as witness) versus a staged photograph (tableaux photography) all sorts of questions arise that are pertinent to consider as an image maker. Remember our discussion we had at the beginning of September when we began module of Documentary and Narrative. We discussed a set of images submitted at the World Press Photo competition on 2015.

Read my blog post again: Standards and Ethics in Documentary

Link to article about controversial images made by Giovanni Trioli at this years World Press Photo context

Since then the debate surrounding what constitutes ‘documentary’, ‘truth’, ‘veracity’ and how much manipulation is accepted has raged within various bodies representing documentary photography and photojournalism.

Read here the new Code of Ethics, revised rules and detailed guidance to ensure ‘truth’ of entries for the WPP contest 2016 by its Managing Director, Lars Boering. Read further interview with Boering here in an article in the BJP

Mon: CONTEXTUAL STUDY > Documentary vs Tableaux (staged photography) > 1 blog post.
Describe the genres of documentary photography and tableaux photography and highlight the differences/ similarities in the approach of the image-making process. For example: What do we mean by a photograph that is ‘documentary’ in style. How does a staged tableaux image construct a narrative different from documentary photography?

RESOURCES > First, Look through both these PPTs to get a basic understanding documentary photography and tableaux photography.

Documentary Photography

Tableaux Photography

To develop a deeper understanding, read these two texts by David Bate from his book, Art Photography (2016) Tate Publishing. Include images to illustrate both genres of photography and show evidence of reading by including direct quotes from sources and referencing using Harvard system.

New approaches to documentary in contemporary photography David_Bate_The_Art_of_the_Document

On rise of Tableaux in contemporary photographic practice David_Bate_The_Pictorial_Turn

EXTRA READING:
For a contemporary perspective on documentary practice read photographer, Max Pincher’s Interview: On Speculative Documentary  To read this interview you must access it online from home as it is blocked the internet filter in school.

Bate D. (2009) ‘Documentary and Storytelling‘ in The Key Concepts: Photography. Oxford: Berg

Bright S. (2005) ‘ Narrative‘ in Art Photography Now. London: Thames & Hudson

WEEK 4: 26 June – 2 July
CONTEXTUAL STUDIES

Can a photograph lie?

Are all photographs reliable?

A photograph is a certain delivery of facts?

Claims of truth that most people take for granted?

You often hear a photographer saying: ‘the camera was there and recorded what I saw’.

A common phrase is to ‘shed light on a situation’ meaning to find out the truth.

‘A picture tells a 1000 words‘, is another aphorism that imply images are more reliable.

Picasso famously said: ‘We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.’

Magritte’s painting La Trahison des Images in which he painted a picture of a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (This is not a pipe) goes some way towards an explanation.

Documentary photography’s central aesthetic, political and moral associations are:

depicting truth

recording life as it is

camera as a witness.

TASKS: Produce a number of blog posts that show evidence of the following 

DEADLINE: Mon 3 July

1. ANALYSIS: Choose one image from case studies listed below that questions the notion of truth regarding the photographic image and its relationship with reality and explain why.

Follow this method of analysis:
TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.
Read more here on PhotoPedagogy

2. PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT: make one image which is documenting reality and one which is staging reality. Evaluate and describe differences and similarities.

The rationale behind this task is for you to consider the nature of the photograph to be a true representation of reality. In order to complete the tasks successfully, you must read and look through supporting material and consider the bullit points too that may prompt you in your answers .  It is important that you do thorough research and use direct quotes and reference  from sources included below

RESEARCH: Look through this Powerpoints:  Photography and Truth and also read also this text for further context:  Issues in Photojournalism.

For a contemporary perspective on documentary practice read photographer, Max Pincher’s Interview: On Speculative Documentary  To read this interview you must access it online from home as it is blocked the internet filter in school.

Documentary photography is based on assumptions that the photograph represents a one-to-one correspondence with reality, which is nearly accurate and adequate, and that the photographic image is capable of conveying information objectively.

Consider these points when you analyse your image

• Traditional documentary believes the viewer to be a receptive subject taking in the objective information of the world through the photograph
• Can we rely on its ability to capture a moment in time accurately as historical evidence or as a witness to the world?
• Postmodernism points out that all forms of representation is subjective? How? Why?
• Digital photography has made manipulation much easier?

READING: Background and context of the historical, conceptual and aesthetic approaches and differences  between documentary practice and tableaux photography.

David Bate (2016), Art Photography. Tate Publishing

New approaches to documentary in contemporary photography: David_Bate_The_Art_of_the_Document

On rise of Tableaux in contemporary photographic practice: David_Bate_The_Pictorial_Turn

Also read and look through both these PPTs to get a basic understanding of Documentary vs Tableuax

Documentary Photography

Tableaux Photography

CASE STUDY 1: In the terrorist attacks in Brussels in 2016 Fox News was reporting from the Place de la Borse. Video footage shows a young photographer posing a woman in front of a makeshift memorial: is it bad journalism ethics, or just the way it’s done?

Read the Guardian newspaper article here and make a blog post that expresses your own thoughts and views.

https://youtu.be/aDlRF_xiBCk

Further insight can be read here on Petapixel

Here is the image that photographer, Khaled Al Sabbah posted on Instagram

CASE STUDY 2: Another image from the Brussels attack has also generated a lot of chatter on social media.

A photograph of a woman in shock with torn clothes and injured foot has gone around the world.

Read a few articles here.

Time Magazine

The Guardian

USA Today

Following the second explosion, Kardava  (the woman who took the image on her phone) fought her urge to run to a safe place. “I also wanted to take pictures. As a journalist, it was my duty to take these photos and show the world what was going on. I knew I was the only one at this spot.”

Is there a moral dilemma in photographing people injured or dying? As photojournalist should you take the image?

What is your view? How has this image become iconic of the terrorist attacks in Brussels airport?

CASE STUDY 3: Using another news images as an example, such as the drowned Syrian boy (read article here), consider if photographs can change the world or change people’s perception?

Here is a link to another article about the photographer who took the photos of the dead Syrian boy where she speaks about why she took them.

For a different point of view read this blog post by photographer and lecturer, Lewis Bush where he discuss the above in light of recent images of dead Syrian refugees in Europe. Incorporate his views and include quotes, for or against your own analysis and point of view.

CASE STUDY 4: Jeff Wall, Canadian artists known for his large scale tableaux image presented in light-boxes

Today, most of his images resemble reportage and, as such, are likely to incense his detractors, who claim he’s not a “true” photographer. His most contentious new work, called Approach, shows a homeless woman standing by a makeshift cardboard shelter in which we spy the foot of what could be a sleeping vagrant. Wall tells me it was shot under an actual freeway where the homeless congregate and that “it took a month to make, working hands-on” – but he won’t divulge just how staged it is. Is this an actual homeless woman, or an actor? Is the shelter real, or was it built by Wall’s team of assistants to resemble one?

Re-creating images from memory is crucial to Wall’s practice – perhaps because it flies in the face of the tradition of photography as an act of instant witnessing.

“Something lingers in me until I have to remake it from memory to capture why it fascinates me,” he says. “Not photographing gives me imaginative freedom that is crucial to the making of art. That, in fact, is what art is about – the freedom to do what we want.”

Read full interview with Jeff Wall here

In terms of truth or communicating an idea that make references to a real social problem such as homelessness, does it matter if the image is staged or not? Where does authenticity come into the picture?

CASE STUDY 5. The images of renowned photographer Steve McCurry, who made the famous and iconic image of an Afghan girl for a front cover of National Geography has recently been criticized for making ‘too perfect pictures’ which not only are boring but reinforces a particular idea or stereotype of the exotic other.

Read this article by Teju Cole in the New York Times Magazine which compares McCurry’s representation of India with a native photographer, Raghubir Singh who worked from the late ’60s until his untimely death in 1999, traveling all over India to create a series of powerful books about his homeland.

Reference to Coldplay’s new video also highlight the idea of cultural appropriation that harks back to Britain’s colonial rule and exploitation of the Orient.

Read this artcicle on Petapixel in In defense of Steve McCurry’s images

What is your view? Back it up with references to article read and include quotes for or against.

CASE STUDY 6:

Kevin Carter and The Bang Bang Club

Starving Child and Vulture

Kevin Carter knew the stench of death. As a member of the Bang-Bang Club, a quartet of brave photographers who chronicled apartheid-­era South Africa, he had seen more than his share of heartbreak. In 1993 he flew to Sudan to photograph the famine racking that land. Exhausted after a day of taking pictures in the village of Ayod, he headed out into the open bush. There he heard whimpering and came across an emaciated toddler who had collapsed on the way to a feeding center. As he took the child’s picture, a plump vulture landed nearby. Carter had reportedly been advised not to touch the victims because of disease, so instead of helping, he spent 20 minutes waiting in the hope that the stalking bird would open its wings. It did not. Carter scared the creature away and watched as the child continued toward the center. He then lit a cigarette, talked to God and wept. The New York Times ran the photo, and readers were eager to find out what happened to the child—and to criticize Carter for not coming to his subject’s aid. His image quickly became a wrenching case study in the debate over when photographers should intervene. Subsequent research seemed to reveal that the child did survive yet died 14 years later from malarial fever. Carter won a Pulitzer for his image, but the darkness of that bright day never lifted from him. In July 1994 he took his own life, writing, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain.” Read more here: http://100photos.time.com/photos/kevin-carter-starving-child-vulture

Below are some INSTRUCTIONS AND INSPIRATIONS for your headshots in the studio in the next couple of weeks until Easter. These tasks will allow you to continue to experiment with studio lighting and respond to a number of creative approaches to headshots with reference to both historical portraits photographers from Societe Jersiaise Photo-Archive and contemporary practitioners.

TECHNICAL

RECORDING: produce at least 2-3 portrait shoots in the studio and consider the following:

1. Lighting: soft, hard – use softbox/ reflectors – make use of lighting techniques: Rembrandt, Butterfly, Chiaruscuro

2. Framing: Headshots

3. Focusing: focus on the eyes

4. Expression: Explore different moods and emotions.

5. Pose: Manner and attitude. Use hands

Camera settings (flash lighting)
Tripod: optional
Use transmitter on hotshoe
White balance: daylight (5000K)
ISO: 100
Exposure: Manual 1/125 shutter-speed > f/16 aperture
– check settings before shooting
Focal lenght: 105mm portrait lens

BLOG

You are expected to show evidence of the following three EEEs on the blog for the work on Headshots.

EDITING: For each portrait shoot produce a screen-shots of your image selection and adjust your BEST 3 IMAGES in Lightroom using basic tools such as cropping, contrast, tonality, colour balance, monochrome. Describe also the lighting setup using an image from ‘behind the scenes’, ie. key light, back light, fill light, use of reflectors, gels etc.

EXPERIMENTING: Complete at least 3 out of these 5 experiments on DIAMOND CAMEO, DOUBLE/ MULTIPLE EXPOSURE, JUXTAPOSITION, SEQUENCE/ GRID AND MONTAGE (see more details below). Make sure you demonstrate creativity and produce at least 3 different variations of the same portrait experiment.

EVALUATING: Compare your portrait responses/ experiments and provide some analysis of artists work and images below that has inspired your ideas and shoots. Use this Photo-Literacy matrix.

EXPERIMENTATION

TASK

You must produce the following experiments:

1. DIAMOND CAMEO : Recreate a diamond cameo, similarly to Mullins of which four separate portraits of the same subject are arranged onto the same document in Photoshop.
   
2. DOUBLE/ MULTI-EXPOSURE: Either in camera or in post-post-production layer or merge two or three images into one portrait.
   
3. JUXTAPOSITION: For example, select 1 portrait by Mullins and one response that you have made and juxtapose opposite each in a new document in Photoshop. Look for similarities in pose, expression, gestures and overall composition. If you have some environmental portraits from previous shoot try and juxtapose in a similar way that Michelle Sank responded to Mullins portraits in ED.EM.03. Or, juxtapose a portrait with an object from your still life project, or an personal object that is linked with your sitter/ model. You can also juxtapose a headshot with landscape based image and consider the concept of people & place – see more ideas below!
   
4. SEQUENCE/ GRID: Select a series of your headshots (between 5-12) and produce a sequence either as a grid, story-board, contact-sheet or typology. Reference Mullins pages in his portrait albums
   
5. MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of portraits and create a montage of layered images in Photoshop as an A3 document.

INSPIRATIONS

Henry Mullins is one of the most prolific photographers represented in the Societe Jersiase Photo-Archive, producing over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000. The record we have of his work comes through his albums, in which he placed his clients in a social hierarchy. The arrangement of Mullins’ portraits of ‘who’s who’ in 19th century Jersey are highly politicised.

You can read more here in an extract from Gareth Syvret’s (former photo-archivist) text in ED.EM.03. Henry Mullins / Michelle Sank – on the social matrix. We also have copies of this photozine in classroom for further study and reading.

Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Here he would photograph Jersey political elite (The Bailiff, Lt Governor, Jurats, Deputies etc), mercantile families (Robin, Janvrin, Hemery, Nicolle ect.) military officers and professional classes (advocates, bankers, clergy, doctors etc).

His portrait were printed on a carte de visite as a small albumen print, (the first commercial photographic print produced using egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper) which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 × 89 mm normally mounted on a card sized 64 × 100 mm. In Mullins case he mounted his carted de visite into an album. Because of the small size and relatively affordable reproducibility carte-de-visite were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons.

Here are some spreads from ED.EM.03 Henry Mullins / Michelle Sank – on the social matrix. ED.EM is a photo-zine produced by Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive that presents a selection of images from its historical collection.

Becque á Barbe: Face to Face: A portrait project about Jèrriais – the island of Jersey’s native language of Norman French. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to his or her childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past at a time when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools.

Juxtaposed with portraits of Jèrriais speakers are a series of photographs of Jersey rocks that are all designated as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs); important geological outcrops that are protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. The native speakers of Jersey French should be classified as People of Special Interest (PSIs) and equally be protected from extinction through encouraging greater visibility and recognition as guardians of a unique language that are essential in understanding the island’s special character.

Ole Christiansen (Danish): A special preoccupation has been music photography, portraits, but also – often strongly graphically emphasized urban landscapes which is reflected in his portraiture . Ole has over the years provided pictures for a myriad of books, magazines, record covers, annual reports, etc.

THE DEADPAN AESTHETIC

According to sources the origins of the word “Deadpan”  can be traced to 1927 when Vanity Fair Magazine compounded the words dead and pan, a slang word for a face, and used it as a noun. In 1928 the New York Times used it as adjective to describe the work of Buster Keaton.

It is less clear when it was first used to describe the style of photography associated with Edward Ruscha, Alec Soth, Thomas Ruff and many others.  Charlotte Cotton devotes a complete chapter to Deadpan in The Photograph as Contemporary Art and much that has been written since references that essay.

In summary Deadpan photography is a cool, detached, and unemotional presentation and, when used in a series, usually follows a pre-defined set of compositional and lighting rules.

This style originated in Germany and is descended from Neue Sachlichkeit, New Objectivity, a German art movement of the 1920s that influenced the photographer August Sander who systematically documented the people of the Weimar Republic . Much later, in the 1970s, Bernd and Hilla Becher, known for their devotion to the principles of New Objectivity, began to influence a new generation of German artists at the Dusseldorf School of Photography (4). These young German photographers included  Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer and Thomas Ruff. The Bechers (4 & 5) are best remembered for their studies of the industrial landscape, where they systematically photographed large structures such as water towers, coal bunkers or pit heads to document a soon-to-disappear landscape in a formalistic manner as much akin to industrial archeology as art. The Bechers’ set of “rules” included clean, black and white pictures taken in a flat grey light with straight-on compositions that perfectly lent themselves to their presentation methodology of large prints containing a montage of nine or more similar objects to allow the study of types (typology) in the style of an entomologist.

If you want to learn more about the theoretical and philosophical basis for the deadpan aesthetic READ HERE.

Thomas Ruff wanted to mimick the setup for a having a set of passport images taken. Read an interview with him here recently published in the Financial Times

PASSPORT PHOTO

From the UK Government website

FACE:

• eyes must be open and clearly visible, with no flash reflections and no ‘red eye’
• facial expression must be neutral (neither frowning nor smiling), with the mouth closed
• photos must show both edges of the face clearly
• photos must show a full front view of face and shoulders, squared to the camera 
• the face and shoulder image must be centred in the photo; the subject must not be looking over one shoulder (portrait style), or tilting their head to one side or backwards or forwards
• there must be no hair across the eyes
• hats or head coverings are not permitted except when worn for religious reasons and only if the full facial features are clearly visible
• photos with shadows on the face are unacceptable
• photos must reflect/represent natural skin tone

BACKGROUND:

Photos must have a background which:

• has no shadows
• has uniform lighting, with no shadows or flash reflection on the face and head
• shows a plain, uniform, light grey or cream background (5% to 10% grey is recommended)

TYPOLOGY means the study and interpretation of types and became associated with photography through the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs taken over the course of 50 years of industrial structures; water towers, grain elevators, blast furnaces etc can be considered conceptual art. They were interested in the basic forms of these architectural structures and  referred to them as ‘Anonyme Skulpturen’ (Anonymous Sculptures.)

The Becher’s were influenced by the work of earlier German photographers linked to the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s such as August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt and Albert-Renger-Patzsch.

BRUCE GILDEN: FACE: Bruce Gilden is renowned for his confrontational style and getting up close to his subject. Between 2012-14 Gilden travelled in America, Great Britain, and Colombia and created a series called FACE. Read a review here in the Guardian newspaper and another on Lensculture.

UP CLOSE

In addition to focusing on details of the face try and isolate body parts, gestures, clothing and physical features, such as hands, elbows, shoulders, neck, torso, hip, knees, feet. Your understanding of abstraction in photography; focusing on shapes, colours, light and shadows, textures and repetition is crucial here.

Satoshi Fujiwara: Code Unknown: In Michael Haneke’s 2000 film Code Unknown, there is a scene in which the protagonist’s lover, a photographer, secretly snaps pictures of passengers sitting across from him on the train.

Inspired by the film, I used the same approach to shoot people in Berlin trains. Yet in contemporary society, it is not acceptable to rashly and publicly display pictures of people’s faces that were taken without their permission. Thus, I shot and edited my pictures in a way that makes it impossible to identify the individual people who served as my “models.” To avoid impinging on the “right of likeness,” I used the shadows created by the direct sunlight pouring in through the windows, various compositional approaches, and digital processing to keep their identities anonymous.

When we look at another person, either directly or through another medium, we interpret a wide range of information based on outward appearance (face, physique, clothes and accessories, and movements)—in other words, various codes. By regulating and altering these codes in various ways, I set out to obscure the individuality and specificity of the subjects in the pictures in my series.—Satoshi Fujiwara

David Goldblatt: Particulars: Following a series of portraits of his compatriots made in the early 1970s, photographer David Goldblatt, for a very short and intense period of time, naturally turned to focusing on peoples’ particulars and individual body languages “as affirmations or embodiments of their selves.” Goldblatt’s affinity was no accident: Working at his father’s men’s outfitting store in the 1950s, his awareness of posture, gesture and proportion—technical as it was—formed early and would accompany him throughout his life.

In this series we see hands resting on laps, crossed legs, the curved backs of sleepers on a lawn at midday, their fingers and feet relaxed, pausing from their usual occupations. This deeply contemplative work is framed by Ingrid de Kok’s poetry.

DIAMOND CAMEO

DOUBLE / MULTI-EXPOSURES

Double or multiple exposures are an illusion created by layering images (or portions of images) over the top of each other. This can be achieved in the camera settings, or on Adobe Photoshop by creating LAYERS and then using BLENDING OPTIONS and OPACITY CONTROL. Artist have used these techniques to explore Surrealist Ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.

Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien. Idris Khan’s Every… Bernd And Hilla Becher… series appropriates the Bechers’ imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still.

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition is placing two images together to show contrast or similarities. For inspiration look at some of the page spreads from ED.EM.03 where pairings between portraits of Henry Mullins and Michelle Sank are juxtaposed to show comparison/ similarities/ differences between different social and professional classes in Jersey mid-19th century and early 21 st century.

For inspiration look also at the newspapers: LIBERATION / OCCUPATION and FUTURE OF ST HELIER produced by past A2 photography students and the publication GLOBAL MARKET by ECAL.

Juxtapose images according to shapes, colours, repetition, object vs portrait

SEQUENCE/ GRID

Henry Mullins: Pages and re-constructed contact-sheets from his portrait albums.

Shannon O’Donnell: That’s Not The Way The River Flows (2019) is a photographic series that playfully explores masculinity and femininity through self-portraits. The work comes from stills taken from moving image of the photographer performing scenes in front of the camera. This project aims to show the inner conflicts that the photographer has with identity and the gendered experience. It reveals the pressures, stereotypes and difficulties faced with growing up in a heavily, yet subtly, gendered society and how that has impacted the acceptance and exploration of the self.

Duane Michals (b. 1932, USA) is one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’s singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Tracy Moffatt: The nine images in Something More tell an ambiguous tale of a young woman’s longing for ‘something more’, a quest which brings dashed hopes and the loss of innocence. With its staged theatricality and storyboard framing, the series has been described by critic Ingrid Perez as ‘a collection of scenes from a film that was never made’. While the film may never have been made, we recognise its components from a shared cultural memory of B-grade cinema and pulp fiction, from which Moffatt has drawn this melodrama. The ‘scenes’ can be displayed in any order – in pairs, rows or as a grid – and so their storyline is not fixed, although we piece together the arc from naïve country girl to fallen woman abandoned on the roadside in whatever arrangement they take. Moffatt capitalises on the cinematic device of montage, mixing together continuous narrative, flashbacks, cutaways, close-ups and memory or dream sequences, to structure the series, and relies on our knowledge of these devices to make sense and meaning out of the assemblage.

Philip Toledano: DAYS WITH MY FATHER is a son’s photo journal of his aging father’s last years. Following the death of his mother, photographer Phillip Toledano was shocked to learn of the extent of his father’s severe memory loss.

Walker Evans: One of the founding fathers of Documentary Photography Walker Evans used cropping as part of his work.  Another pioneer of the photo-essay, W. Eugene Smith also experimented with cropping his picture-stories.

Read more here on Walker Evans and his magazine work and  his series Labour Anonymous.

Hans-Peter Feldmann: (b. 1941 Duesseldorf). The photographic work of Hans-Peter Feldmann began with his own publications in small print-runs between 1968 and 1975. Often using reproductions of photographs from magazines or private snapshots, which he mixed with his own photographs, Feldmann, like Ed Ruscha, undermined the aura of the unique, “authentic” work of art. With his laconic imagery he seeks to break down conventional notions of art.

PHOTO-MONTAGE

Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. 

John Stezaker: Is a British artist who is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

Thomas Sauvin and Kensuke Koike: ‘No More, No Less’
In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography. The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.

Do you remember the picture of a large bay window, the first paper negative ever to be made – that we watched in the film Fixing the Shadows – episode one of the first major television series devoted to the medium of photography, The Genius of Photography.  

In the summer of 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot experimented with various chemicals to develop paper coatings suitable for use in a camera. He placed small wooden cameras that his wife called “mousetraps” all over his estate. The earliest surviving paper negative dates from August 1835, a small recording of the bay window of Lacock Abbey (left). In 1978, the German photographer Floris Neusüss visited Lacock Abbey to make photograms of the same window. He returned again in 2010 for the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A to create a life-sized version of Talbot’s window (below right).

That 1978 photogram was the start of our adventures in creating photograms of large objects in the places where we found them […] we took our equipment to Lacock Abbey and made a photogram of a fixed subject. This particular subject was for us not just a window in a building but an iconic window, a window on photography, opened by Talbot. The window is doubly important, because to be able to invent the photograph, Talbot first used photograms to test the light sensitivity of chemicals. His discovery became a window on the world. I wonder what percentage of our understanding of the planet we live on now comes from photographs?
​
— Floris Neusüss

The idea of photographs functioning like windows makes total sense. Like the camera viewfinder, windows frame our view of the world. We see through them and light enters the window so that we can see beyond. Photographs present us with a view of something. However, it might also be possible to think of photographs as mirrors, reflecting our particular view of the world, one we have shaped with our personalities, our subconscious motivations, so that it represents how our minds work as well as our eyes. The photograph’s glossy surface reflects as much as it frames. Of course, some photographs might be both mirrors and windows.

Photo-historian, Gerry Badger who was part of the editorial team producing the television series The Genius of Photography wrote in the introduction of the book of the same name that John Szarkowski’s distinction of photographs as ‘mirrors’ or ‘windows’ is useful, but only to a point, ‘because most photographs are both mirrors and windows.’ (Badger 2007:8)

The exhibition Mirrors and Windows, an exhibition of American photography since 1960, opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMa) in July of 1978. The curator John Szarkowski’s attempted to categorise photographers whose work largely reflected the subjectivity of the artist in comparison with those whose work largely sought to see outside themselves. Szarkowski wrote in the catalogue essay that accompanied the exhibition:

“The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half-century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugène Atget of the second. In either case, what artist could want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” 
— John Szarkowski, 1978

MIRRORS AND WINDOWS has been organized around Szarkowski’s thesis that such personal visions take one of two forms. In metaphorical terms, the photograph is seen either as a mirror – a romantic expression of the photographer’s sensibility as it projects itself on the things and sights of this world; or as a window – through which the exterior world is explored in all its presence and reality.

READ a pdf of the original book Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 here and MoMa’s original press release (1978) here. As a critical point of view read also a contemporary analysis of the significance of this exhibition here.

Take a look at the images below. Think about whether, in your opinion, they are mirrors or windows.

You could draw a horizontal line with the word ‘Mirror’ at one end and ‘Window’ at the other. You could add a list of words that help to describe what these words suggest.

Now, try placing each of these images somewhere on this spectrum. Annotate the images to explain your decisions.

TASK 1: 1000 word mini-essay
Essay question: How can photography be both ‘mirrors’ and ‘windows’ of the world?
DEADLINE: WED 6 DECEMBER

Follow these instructions:

1. Read two texts above and select 3 quotes form each that is relevant to your essay.
2. Select two images, one that represent a mirror and another that represents a window as examples to use in your essay.
3. Use some of the key words that you listed above to describe what the mirrors and windows suggest.
   

Essay plan
Introduction (250 words): Reflect on the origin of photography and describe in your own words the difference between the two photographic processes, Daguerreotype and Calotype. Consider how they could be viewed as either a mirror or a window of the world according to John Szarkowski’s thesis. Choose one quote from Szarkowski’s text and comment if you agree or disagree.

Paragraph 1 (250 words): Choose an image that in your view is a mirror and analyse how it is a subjective expression. Choose one quote from Szarkowski’s thesis and another from Farrah Karapetian’s analysis which is opposing Szarkowski’s original point of view. Make sure you comment to advance argumentation in providing perspective.

Paragraph 2 (250 words): Choose an image that in your view is a window and analyse how it is an objective expression. Choose one quote from Szarkowski’s thesis and another from Farrah Karapetian’s analysis and follow similar procedure as above ie. two opposing points of view and commentary to provide a critical perspective.

Conclusion (250 words): Refer back to the essay question and write a conclusion where you summarise Szarkowski’s theory and Karapetian’s critique of his thesis. Describe differences and similarities between the two images above and their opposing concepts of objectivity and subjectivity.

TASK 2: Photo-assignment
A creative response to documentary (reality) and tableaux (fiction) photography
DEADLINE: MON 11 DEC

RECORDING > Based on the theme of ‘NOSTALGIA‘ – and with relevance to your Personal Study – produce 3 images that are documenting reality and another 3 images that are staging reality. Use either camera or AI technology, or a combination at free will. The focus here is on creativity, imagination and experimentation. Add images to your essay as photographic responses to Szarkowski’s thesis and evaluate.

DEADLINE: MON 11 DEC
Publish essay and your photographic responses

GUIDELINES: ESSAY WRITING

Literary Sources:

• Read key texts that will provide you with knowledge and understanding
• It demonstrates evidence of reading and will enable you to draw upon different points of view – not only your own.
• Select relevant quotes and make notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages including page number
• Write down author’s name, date it was published, title, publisher, place of publication so you can list source in a bibliography

Bibliography:

List all the literary sources that you have read and arrange in alphabetical order. For example:
Szarkowski, J. (1978), Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. Museum of Modern Art: New York

Quotation and Referencing:

Why should you reference?

• To add academic support for your work
• To support or disprove your argument
• To show evidence of reading
• To help readers locate your sources
• To show respect for other people’s work
• To avoid plagiarism
• To achieve higher marks

What should you reference?

• Anything that is based on a piece of information or idea that is not entirely your own.
• That includes, direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, definitions, images, tables, graphs, maps or anything else obtained from a source

How should you reference?

Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/223710862?h=4090a8316c&dnt=1&app_id=122963

Here is an full guide on how to use Harvard System of Referencing including online sources, such as websites etc.

Homework Task: Develop and write an introductory blog post on the origins of photography. Use the information below to help you create the content for your blog post.
DEADLINE: Wed 15 March

Watch the documentary on ‘Fixing the Shadows’ from BBC Genius of Photography, Episode 1.

To embed your understanding of the origins of photography and its beginnings you’ll need to produce a blog post which outlines the major developments and practices. Some will have been covered in the documentary above but you also need to research and discover further information.

Your blog post must contain information about the following and keep it in its chronological order:

• Camera Obscura & Pinhole photography
• Nicephore Niepce & Heliography
• Louis Daguerre & Daguerreotype
• Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype
• Robert Cornelius & self-portraiture
• Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism
• Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit

Each must contain dates, text and images relevant to each bullet point above. In total aim for about 1,000-2000 words.

Try and reference some of the sources that you have used either by incorporating direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, or historical fact.

Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.

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In addition, research at least one photographer from the list below in the Societe Jersiaise Photographic-Archive and choose one image that references some of the early photographic processes, such as daguerreotype, calotype, salt paper prints, wet plate collodion, albumen prints, autochrome and colour transparencies as part of the origins and evolution of photography and include it in your essay.

Henry Mullins
William Collie
Ernest Baudoux
Clarence P Ouless
Francis Foot
Charles Hugo
Edwin Dale

Photographic-Processes

Camera Obscura

Origins of Photography: Study this Threshold concept 2: Photography is the capturing of light; ​a camera is optional developed by PhotoPedagogy which includes a number of good examples of early photographic experiments and the camera obscura which preceded photography. It also touches on photography’s relationship with light and reality and delve into photographic theories, such as index and trace as a way of interpreting the meaning of photographs.

Photography did not spring forth from nowhere: in the expanding capitalist culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, some people were on the look-out for cheap mechanical means for producing images […] photography emerged experimentally from the conjuncture of three factors: i) concerns with amateur drawing and/or techniques for reproducing printed matter, ii) light-sensitive materials; iii) the use of the camera obscura
— Steve Edwards, Photography – A Very Short Introduction

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, French (1765 – 1833)

Debates about the origins of photography have raged since the first half of the nineteenth century. The image above left is partly the reason. View from the Window at Le Gras is a heliographic image and arguably the oldest surviving photograph made with a camera. It was created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827 at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France. The picture on the right is an enhanced version of the original which shows a view across some rooftops. It is difficult to tell the time of day, the weather or the season. This is because the exposure time for the photograph was over eight hours.

Louis Daguerre, French (1787 – 1851)

What is a daguerreotype?

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate.

In contrast to photographic paper, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is rather heavy. The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp. It has a mirror-like surface and is very fragile. Since the metal plate is extremely vulnerable, most daguerreotypes are presented in a special housing. Different types of housings existed: an open model, a folding case, jewelry…presented in a wooden ornate box dressed in red velvet. LD a theatre set designer

The invention of photography, however, is not synonymous with the invention of the camera. Cameraless images were also an important part of the story. William Henry Fox Talbot patented his Photogenic Drawing process in the same year that Louis Daguerre announced the invention of his own photographic method which he named after himself. Anna Atkins‘ British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions of 1843 is the first use of photographic images to illustrate a book. This method of tracing the shapes of objects with light on photosensitive surfaces has, from the very early days, been part of the repertoire of the photographer.

Henry William Fox-Talbot, British (1800 – 1877)

Fox Talbot was an English member of parliament, scientist, inventor and a pioneer of photography.

Fox Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing. Although simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it required extremely long exposure times. By accident, he discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not see it, he found he could chemically develop it into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then fixed with a chemical solution. This removed the light-sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative image, Fox Talbot realised he could repeat the process of printing from the negative. Consequently, his process could make any number of positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes. He called this the ‘calotype’ and patented the process in 1841.

In the month of August 1835, William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first photographic negative to have survived to this day. The subject is a window. Despite the clear connection, it is an entirely different image compared to those of his colleagues Niépce and Daguerre. Those are photographs taken from a window, while this is the photograph of a window. From the issue of realism, we shift here into an extremely modern outlook which today would be likened to conceptual and metalinguistic discourse. While the window constitutes the most immediate metaphor to refer to photography, Talbot doesnʼt use it but more simply he photographs it. He thus takes a photograph of photography. The first to comment on this was the author himself, writing a brief note (probably added when it was displayed in 1839) on the card upon which it is mounted. The complete text reads:

Latticed Window (with the Camera Obscura)
August 1835 When first made, the squares of glass, about 200 in number could be counted, with help of a lens⁶

Robert Cornelius, American (1809-1893)

Julia Margaret Cameron, British (1815 – 1879)

She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature.

Much of her work has connections to pictorialism and even movements such as The Pre-Rapahelites, and often had a dream-like, constructed quality to the images.

Henry Mullins, British (1818-1880) Lived and worked in Jersey 1848-73

Between 1850-73 Henry Mullins made over 9000 carte de visite portraits of Jersey’s ruling elite and wealthy upper classes. The collection that exists of his work comes through his studio albums, in which he placed his clients in an ordered grid with reference to mid-nineteenth century social hierarchies.

In 2013 Michelle Sank spent 6 months in Jersey as the inaugural Archisle International Photographer-in-Residence. She took inspiration from Henry Mullins collection of images and produced a new set of portraits that reflects upon a culturally diverse and more inclusive demographic of islanders as Jersey. In the photo-zine ED.EM.03 – on the social matrix Mullins 19th century portraits are paired with Sank’s images from 2013. Viewed together they represent 165 years of the practice of photographic portraiture in Jersey. During that period the island has undergo major social and economic changes. Through these photographers’ works, we examine those changes and the power structures that remain in place within this insular society. 

TASK 2 Windows and Mirrors > for later in the project
In 1978, the German photographer Floris Neusüss visited Lacock Abbey to make photograms of the same window. He returned again in 2010 for the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A to create a life-sized version of Talbot’s window (below right).