Davey was born in Brighton in 1964. She studied painting at bath Academy of fine art(1985) and social policy at the University of Brighton (1990). She was a psychotherapist for 15 years before taking up photography in 2014, which she studied at Plymouth University(MA 2014 and MFA 2016).
Her photographic practice focuses on her family, community and self, and is informed by her background in psychology. Her series Looking for Alice is a portrait of her daughter Alice who has Down syndrome. One of the photographs from this series was selected for the 2014 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize exhibition. The series was published by Trolley Books in 2015. In 2016, Looking for Alice was shortlisted for Photobook of the Year in the Paris photo-aperture.
I have chosen Sian as an artist reference because she relates to femininity and what it is to be a girl. Her project of her daughter and what her daughter does with her friends and personal life. I took inspiration from her in my work as I want to create a set of images which will create a story of me and my friends. This could be created by gong on walks or adventures.
Image Analysis
The type of lighting used in the image is natural/ daylight which creates soft lighting. The colour and tone in the image is dark for example there are a lot of dark green, brown and dark blue. There is a lot of texture being created in the image from the different levels of people, some are sat down some standing. There are a lot of things on the floor which also creates texture such as rubbish shoes, bags and other bits almost making the image 3D. To me the emotion in Sian Davey’s daughter face feels as if she doesn’t want her Mum to be there, almost as if she’s invading her privacy and personal life with friends. The emotions on her friends face may say the same.
In an interview with Sian Davey she said:
“PW: You mention anxiety and uncertainty in your description of Looking for Alice and use photography as a tool to understand your relationship with your daughter, Alice. How did your background in psychotherapy inform this project?
SD: Uncertainty creates anxiety and fear, which always affects our relationships adversely, receiving my new daughter’s diagnosis (Downs Syndrome) it was fear of the unknown that was difficult and it was this that affected my earliest connection with her. My background as a psychotherapist gave me a sharp sense of responsibility to address the situation with my new baby and fundamentally informs the way I work photographically. Whilst working on the Alice series I certainly developed a stronger understanding of the more intimate aspects of the process.”
Justine Kurland’s take on the classic American tale of the runaway takes us on a wild ride of freedom, memorializing the fleeting moments of adolescence and its fearless protagonists.
Kurland was born in Warsaw, New York. Her mother sold costumes at Renaissance fairs, so Kurland and her sister lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. At 15, Kurland ran away to Manhattan, moved in with a sympathetic aunt, and concentrated on becoming an artist.
She earned her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1998. The following year, Kurland exhibited in the group show Another Girl, Another Planet, which critics considered a preview of a new generation of talented and innovative female photographers.
Both Kurland’s childhood adventures and her current experiences influence her working style and subject matter. She now spends much of her time on the road, scouting locations for photographs and recruiting models.
While her earlier photographs of schoolgirls were inspired by her own experience as a runaway, the birth of her son Casper in 2004 shifted her focus to pregnant women and mothers. Kurland also attributes her more recent photographs of trains and train stowaways to Casper’s love of those vehicles.
This kind of ironic playfulness repeats itself over and over again in this book. Even the title, Girl Pictures, embossed onto the powder pink cover feels vaguely tongue-in-cheek. It sounds dirty or patronizing. Just one letter shy of girly pictures, the title of this book is akin to categories like “chick lit” or “chick flicks.” I can almost hear someone critiquing these photographs as just a bunch of “girl pictures.” It makes me think of that image with the girl’s hands over the boy’s eyes again. What if rather than removing his perspective, you just take it directly from him? The title feels this way to me, like something stolen back.
“There’s something political about creating a world that you want to exist“
Image Analysis
In this image the light is dull and reminds me of autumn time. This is because of the colours of the leaves and clothing the people are wearing. The focal point of the image would be the woman circled she is about to get into the water. The image shows a group of friends about to get into the water. The layout of the people in the image creates layers and as if the woman getting into the water is the main girl in the group as people are looking up to her.
Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. Cahun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.
“Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”
In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.
The term was first used by the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980, in 1977. It was used all over by the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in various cases with radically different connotations depending upon the term’s context. It has gained currency with the emergence of social activism, manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil rights, and LGBT movements, disabled groups, as well as multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement.
Cultural Wars
A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values. Contemporary politics in the United States is often described as involving a “culture war.” The central claim of those describing a culture war is that the major political cleavage in contemporary American politics is no longer economic class, race, gender, geographical region, or any of the many “social structural” differences that divide our population. Rather, the idea is that a major realignment of sensibilities and controversial issues has occurred since the 1960s, and now the body politic is rent by a cultural conflict in which values, moral codes, and lifestyles are the primary objects of contention. Issues such as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and drug use are the typical points of culture wars contention; others have used the phrase to discuss issues of multiculturalism, diversity, and school curricula. Religious commitments, symbols, and groups have been strongly connected to culture wars politics.
In her photographic practice Clare explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own.
Recent projects have engaged with site specificity, involving works that are captured and displayed within the same environment. A central interest within her practice is the exploration of performance documentation, specifically how the camera can act as a collaborator, rather than mute witness, to the performer.
In this image from Clare Rae the focal point of the image is the lady on the chair. The rule of thirds is used to centre the lady in the middle of the image, because there is nothing else in the image it means that we are only looking at the woman. The room being bland and empty gets us to think about the emotions that the lady may feeling such as lonely, sad and maybe lost. The dull light coming from the window creates a sad solemn feeling in the image. It may also having something to do with the feminist theory as it says ‘Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body’. This can relate to the image above as the woman is stood leaning in an awkward position.
Masculinity describes the degree to which society focus on assertiveness and achievement. When in contrary, femininity describes the focus of society to quality-of-life issues, such as caring for others, group solidarity and helping the less fortunate are valued. In other words, society still recognizes a gap between male and female values. This dimension is frequently viewed as taboo in highly masculine societies.
Masculinity: Strong egos – feelings of pride and importance are attributed to status. Money and achievement are important. Examples of masculinity cultures are Slovakia, Japan, Hungary, Austria, Venezuela.
Femininity: Relationship oriented, more focus on quality of life. Examples of femininity culture are Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark.
Masculinity
The term ‘masculinity’ refers to the roles, behaviours and attributes that are considered appropriate for boys and men in a given society. Masculinity is constructed and defined socially, historically and politically, rather than being biologically driven.
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.
Diamond Cameo. The PATENT DIAMOND CAMEO. The Patent Diamond Cameo photograph was registered by F.R. Window of London in 1864. Four small oval portraits (1″ x 3/4“) were placed on a carte de visite in the shape of a diamond, each portrait being of the same person photographed in a different position. A special camera made by Dallmeyer was used in which the one glass negative was moved to a new position in the back of camera after each portrait had been taken, and when the paper print had been pasted on the card a special press was used to punch the four portraits up into a convex cameo shape.
t is unlikely the process became very popular with Adelaide’s photographers, as the failure of just one of the four portraits through movement, poor expression or incorrect exposure meant that the plate had to be rejected and another four portraits made on a new plate. To obtain a carte de visite which had a pleasing overall effect would have involved careful advance planning of the four positions to be taken, as it was only after the negative was developed that the photographer could see if an acceptable negative had been produced.
In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be identical to each other.
By enabling the multi-exposure setting on the camera and setting the pictures to either 2-9 we can create a multi exposure image. This is created by the model or camera moving with every picture that is being taken
By using the honey comb attachment onto the light with a coloured gel, and a different colour gel in the snoot light attachment. I then took the pictures into photoshop, I duplicated the images then flipped them and changed the opacity of the top layer of the image.
A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. Camera obscura can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in which an exterior image is projected inside.
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 Short Introduction
Ibn al-Haytham(965–1039), an Arab physicist also known as Alhazen, described the camera obscura effect. Over the centuries others started to experiment with it, mainly in dark rooms with a small opening in shutters, mostly to study the nature of light and to safely watch solar eclipses.
Pinhole Photography
Pinhole photography uses the most basic concepts of a camera. A lightproof box, an aperture, and light-sensitive material. Light is passed through the pinhole to project an inverted image onto the paper or film on the opposite end of the camera. The earliest recorded mention of a pinhole camera was as early as the fifth century BC, by the Mohist philosopher Mozi. 2 In 1021, the Arabian scientist Ibn al-Haytham wrote about pinhole effects in the Book of Optics. He discovered that by using a smaller pinhole the image appears much sharper, but is also dimmer.
Nicephore Niepce & Heliography
Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. View from the Window at Le Gras is a heliographic image and the oldest surviving camera photograph. It was created by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and shows parts of the buildings and surrounding countryside of his estate, Le Gras, as seen from a high window.
Louis Daguerre & Daguerreotype
Louis Daguerre called his invention “daguerreotype.” His method, which he disclosed to the public late in the summer of 1839, consisted of treating silver-plated copper sheets with iodine to make them sensitive to light, then exposing them in a camera and “developing” the images with warm mercury vapor.
The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. The silver-plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror.
Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype
The daguerreotype was the first mode of photography ever invented, while the calotype was the first negative to positive photographic technology, providing the basis for photographic technologies still in use today. 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.
Robert Cornelius & self-portraiture
Robert Cornelius was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States, an image of Central High School taken by Joseph Saxton in 1839. Robert Cornelius March 1, 1809 – August 10, 1893 was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States, an image of central High School taken by Joseph Saxton in 1839. His self image taken in 1839 is the first known photographic portrait of a person taken in the United States. He operated two of the earliest photography studios in the United States between 1841 and 1843 and implemented innovative techniques to significantly reduce the exposure time exposure time required for portraits.
Unlike a selfie, a self portrait has both of the arms of the person down. Many would use a timer or a clicker to capture the photo. In a self portrait, the person is capturing a photo of themselves by themselves. It is more of a photo that would be seen on a passport or driver licence.
Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism
She is known for her soft focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature. Cameron and her pictoriality contemporaries pursued painterly compositions, subjects, and qualities, hoping to elevate photography to a high art. A representation of a person or thing in a work of art. From her ‘first success’ she moved on quickly to photographing family and friends. These early portraits reveal how she experimented with soft focus, dramatic lighting and close-up compositions, features that would become her signature style.
Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit
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. Initially he was in partnership with a Mr Millward, about whom very little is known. By the following year he was working alone and he continued to work out of the same studio for another 26 years.
For a brief period in the 1860s he also worked in London, but judging by the collection of his photographs which is now held by La Société Jersians’, he found plenty of willing sitters in the island prepared to pay half a guinea (promoted as “one half of that in London”) to have their portrait taken by him.
