MON: Academic Sources

• bibliography/ night vision the art of urban exploration by troy Paiva
  
  Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video that relates to your personal study and artists references .
• Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
• It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
• Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages
• Write down page number, author, year, title, publisher, place of publication so you can list source in a bibliography

In-text referencing:

..this is the point that Manaugh makes, when he writes that, ‘Paiva shows us what historical dead ends actually look like’. (Manaugh 2008: 7)

‘We have inherited a semi-toxic world of old military equipment and abandoned shopping malls’ Manaugh in this quote is talking about the abandoned parts of Texas in the middle of nowhere. (Manaugh 2008: 7)

Bibliography

Manaugh, G. (2008).’Desert Iliad’ in Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. San Franciso: Chronicle Books LLC

• Essay question: How does Troy Paiva use the themes of isolation and loneliness in his work.
• Opening quote “I love the surreal feeling of wandering through an abandoned subdivision, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night”
• Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question? (The area of study that I am doing is abandoned things and night photography the reason I choose abandoned things is because as a child I always uses to go and explore and abandoned building and bunkers is where I would find myself exploring I use to go with friends and sometimes alone, the artist I am studying is Troy Paiva a night photographer who paints with light in his photos)
  
• Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian. (Night photography is a game of light – or, more accurately, the lack of light. Because of this, you’ll need to adjust your camera settings to capture as much light as possible. This means shooting in Manual mode and understanding the “Exposure Triangle” – the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.)
• Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
  
• Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
  
• Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
• Bibliography: List all relevant sources used

List all the sources that you have identified above as literary sources. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.

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.

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

I carefully went through my photos and began to rate them between 1-5, 5 being the best, by doing this it allowed me to work with a smaller amount of images and therefore I could edit them accordingly.

I went through all 33 of these and edited mainly the exposure, contrast and vibrancy. Unfortunately, whilst taking these photos the lighting was quite dim and harsh which made some of the images very dull. However, with some of the images it suited it to be more dark but the ones that didnt are the ones i increased the vibrancy on. I continued to then narrow down my best images from this shoot to 16 images:

In total I took around 200 photos

I will be conducting an interview with Sarah Dodge, the director of the company and daughter of the owner. She has been in the company for a few years now and during Covid-19, she took over from her dad, David Dodge, as director. With a degree in Chemistry, she loves experimenting with new products for the customers. For example, since she started, the company have started selling two new types of sourdough, a type of bread the company had never sold before then, and it is now one of the most popular products that Vienna Bakery sells, especially in the Market Shop.

Interview questions:

What is the history of Vienna Bakery?

What made Bob Dodge decide to found Vienna?

Are all the same traditional techniques used within the process of making products?

How has the company kept going over all these years?

How did Covid-19 affect the company?

What is the difference, in your opinion, between Vienna and other bakeries in the island?

For my fourth shoot, I decided firstly to focus on older buildings as I had already accumulated a large amount of modern images. I took these images in St Helier around the Jersey Museum and Art Gallery as I thought the little roads that run behind the museum are lined with old buildings that would be perfect for my personal study. I am happy with how a few of these images turned out however some were blurry.

contact sheets:

Secondly, I went up around Rozel area as there a some nice modern building up there that I thought would look good. I think that the lighting in these images are what made them look a lot better some some of my previous images. Again lots of these images were blurry so I only selected a few.

final images:

From every photoshoot I have completed in response to this project , I have manually burnt the photographs, covered them in bleach and other substances to change the colours of the images. Upon using all of these techniques I discovered and learnt more about the ink itself. I have discovered what the heat and the different amount of it can do to to the print itself. I have discovered that when gently applying the heat to the print it will slowly peel the ink from the paper. That how I was able to peel some of it off, however it was very fragile. For some of the photographs I have stuck the peeled off ink onto another photograph. For some I have left as just bleached, and for some I have scraped off the ink from the print. and sowed into the images. I mixed some of these methods to achieve different effects.

Once I was happy with the manipulation of the prints, I took photographs of them and then, cropped them. On top of cropping the images I have also edited them slightly when it comes to contrast, highlights and texture, and used the stop remove tool to remove the light bouncing of the images.

Final Images

I did this photoshoot in response to Jessas’ work, but also to show the connections between me and my mum in a more visual way.

Who is Rut Blees Luxemburg?

Luxemburg is a German photographer, known for her night photography of urban/city environments. An artist I wish to feature in my essay about my upcoming photobook. Her photos that we will be talking about and showing appear to have a sort of run down, dark and ruined aesthetic of the industrialized world.

Career

As said already, her photos are of the streets of cities at night and urban areas. Most of them have a wet rainy look, combined with light being reflected off the puddles walls etc..

Visual

Each photo above is set in a dark alleyway/street etc. and has light either reflected or casted across walls, perhaps from the street lights or car lights. I think this because most of the lighting being casted has a hint of orange, which would be the colour of most streetlights in cities like these, combined with more warm orange-red lights likely from the break lights on cars. The areas are dirty and not maintained very well given the scratched and cracked walls and grounds and they all appear to have a sort of grainy and rough texture. The edges and corners on the buildings shown create lines, which result in shaping and creating sections of the image, even more so when colors are shown to be different on each side of corners/edges, it creates more variety in the image.

Conceptual

Some elements of “New Topographics” (Robert Adams) can be seen in these images too. When it shows edges and corners on buildings being perfectly straight, in contrast to natural structures such as hills and cliffs, which would have irregular shapes and forms. Perhaps Luxemburg is trying to convey a similar message that Adams tried to do.

Response

In my mock exam, I hope to respond to this work by creating my own images in reference to the work from Blees. I can take some night photography photos around town in the various alleyways, streets, roads etc.. I can take advantage of the cameras features by perhaps changing the ISO around and the Shutter speed to low, that way I can have lights from cars going past remain on the image as strips of light. Another thing I can do is in editing, bring out more of the colored lighting by adjusting the levels and the colour balancing in Lightroom.

For this photoshoot I have followed a similar style and what I was photographing as the previous one. This is because I wanted to show the link between my mum. I have set up the camera on a tripod and using a timer on the camera I was able to take photographs of my own hands as well as some portraits of myself.

Sub-selection

Editing

Final outcomes

Rita Puig- Serra Costa , Where Mimosa Bloom

NARRATIVE, EDITING, SEQUENCING, DESIGN, FORM,

The narrative of the story is following the front papers with a hue reminiscent of mimosa, there are miniature portraits portraying her maternal family lineage, creatively framed by cut-out windows. These snapshots encompass grandparents, an aunt, her parents, and Puig-Serra Costa herself. The visual narrative unfolds further with a collection of diverse images sourced from family albums, featuring snapshots from her childhood and collaborative works with Spanish photographer Dani Pujalte during the years 2012 and 2013. Additionally, the compilation includes reproductions from her exclusive inheritance as the sole child, ranging from an entry in her mother’s initial diary to doodles, cards, and even a recipe for chicken broth. This amalgamation of various media, formats, and genres not only hints at the protagonists’ identities but also serves as a compelling testament to their profound bond. She has images exploring this through portraits, landscapes, still-life. Following different genres within those too, where within portraiture she explores; self portraits, studio portraits, environmental portraits and many more.Within landscapes she explores different settings but which revolve around natural landscapes.

EDITING

why i love the images within this book is because of the variety of the outcomes. which are also achieved through the editing process, which also, with every image varies. However throughout the book there’s a theme reoccurring, where there are many light colours and cool tones withing the images. this gives a certain feel to the overall book, for this instance this is calm and relaxed due to the colour pallet. Some images are also edited to appear more older then they are to match the other archival images.

SEQUENCING & LAYOUT

The book follows a great storyline, where it starts of with the beginnings of her life, or, before it even started, by showing her family tree. She showed this though a specific layout, where each person is cut out separately, so with each page turned, a new family member appears. other then that interesting opening to the book, the rest of the pages are of pictures printed on them. the book itself is a little bit bigger than an A5 paper.

Questions to answer:

• Book in hand: how does it feel? the texture of the paper is slippy and shiny, the pages being smooth and sleek to touch.
• Paper and ink: The ink used for the photographs is colourful. nearly all of the pictures within this book are in colour, with B&W photographs only used for older images.
• Cover: The book has a hard cover with a printed image on the cover. And the only writing of the title and by who it is is written on the books stem.
• Title: the title is both literal and poetic, “Where Mimosa Bloom” is referring to where her family tree grew quite literally and figuratively. she associates this tree with her family, especially her mother, therefore she is showing where her mum grew as well as the family tree.
• Design and layout: the sizes of the images vary through the book, with one double page spread in the middle of the book, and most with one full bleed page and the other of just the item. the pattern and alignment of these images is irregular, however some do repeat.
• Editing and sequencing: The editing of the images seem to follow a certain theme, where the images are edited to fit the same aesthetic, which are soft and warm colours. The editing process is quite natural and calm with soft tones.