Controlled Conditions : Jan Mon 22nd, Tues 23rd, Wed 24th

• Mon 22 12 C      JAC in photography Room
• Tues 23 12 A      LJS in Photo / Media
• Wed 24 12 D      MVT in Photography Room

Print Folder Deadline Wed 24th Jan

We have included a mini-unit to help you explore creative opportunities with self portraiture in photography based around themes of femininity and masculinity. We will spend time looking closely at this and discussing ideas for you to produce a number of potential outcomes that will be the culmination of your module on portraiture. We are expecting that you will continue to develop your portraiture skills and use lighting creatively both in the studio and on location outside or inside relevant to your ideas.

Binary opposition

The themes of ‘FEMININITY and MASCULINITY’ are a binary opposite – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.

Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics (scientific study of language) According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within.

Watch this film and discuss the way in which artists tackle identity…

Blog Posts to make :

1. THEORY/ CONTEXT: Make a blog post and write 300-500 words expressing your view on identity politics and culture wars. How does it impact society? Describe some of the positive aspects of groups harnessing their shared identity and political views as well some of the dangers of tribalism dividing communities. Provide examples both for and against, reference sources used and include images. Try and frame the debate both within a global and local perspective.
   
2. THEMES: Define “femininity” and “masculinity” and explain how identity can be influenced by “place”, or belonging, your environment or upbringing with reference to gender identity / cultural identity / social identity / geographical identity / political identity / lack of / loss of identity / stereotypes / prejudices etc.
   
3. MINDMAP/ MOODBOARD: Add a mindmap and moodboard of ideas and trigger points.
   
4. ARTISTS REFERENCES: Choose a range of photographers that you feel explore themes of femininity, masculinity in relation to gender, identity or ‘self’ and create at least two ARTISTS CASE STUDIES (detailed analysis and interpretation) that must include Claude Cahun and then compare Cahun to your chosen artist reference (that will have an influence on your final outcomes re : MOCK EXAM)
   
5. PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Clare Rae inspired SHOOT (OPTIONAL)
   
6. PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 2: 3-5 “selfie experiments” (OPTIONAL)
   
7. PHOTO-SHOOTS: focused photoshoots exploring your ideas
   
8. EXPERIMENTATION: development of a number of final ideas

THEORY > CONTEXT

IDENTITY POLITICS is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor form exclusive socio-political alliances, moving away from broad-based, coalitional politics to support and follow political movements that share a particular identifying quality with them. Its aim is to support and center the concerns, agendas, and projects of particular groups, in accord with specific social and political changes.

The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent 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: Black Lives Matter movement.

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CULTURE WARS are cultural conflicts 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 is seen.

The term is commonly used to describe contemporary politics in western democracies  with issues such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, pornography, multiculturalism, racial viewpoints and other cultural conflicts based on values, morality, and lifestyle being described as the major political cleavage

Grayson Perry’s: Big American Road Trip. Artist and social commentator Grayson Perry crosses the US, exploring its biggest fault lines, from race to class and identity, making art as he goes along. Click here to watch Episode 3 where he travels to the Midwest and finds folk bitterly divided over identity politics and hot issues like abortion and vaccination. What causes such ‘culture wars’ and how can they be overcome?

This map of the US reflects a battle-torn landscape where nuance, compromise and empathy are casualties in the culture war

RESOURCES: For more information about different identity groups in Jersey go to Liberate Jersey, Black Lives Matter Jersey. XR Extension Rebellion Jersey and The Diversity Network – Jersey and Red Rebels

Read article here Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left by Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, USA.

Read interview with transgender author Juno Dawson here about her new book Wonderland: Welcome to the Party.

Read article Culture wars risk blinding us to just how liberal we’ve become in the past decades, that argues more people in Britain are united than divided across cultural background when it comes to shared social attitudes.

Read article here in the Financial Times, that uses the recent debate around the removal of Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square as an example of wider discussion on Britain’s colonial past and the current government’s handling of racial inequality.

The issues above should also be viewed within a much broader historical frame work on racism and colonialism.

Claude Cahun

CASE STUDY: 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.

Here a summary of Who Was Claude Cahun?

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)

Cahun was friends with many Surrealist artists and writers; André Breton once called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”

While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today.  She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors  and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate

READ articles here in The Guardian and the BBC to learn more and use these texts for your essay. Link to Jersey Heritage which houses the largest collection of her work and an article written by Louise Downie in response to an exhibition in 2005, Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marvel Moore at Jersey Museum.

For further feminist theory and context read the following essay: Amelia Jones The “Eternal Return”: Self-Portrait Photography as Technology of Embodiment

In 2017 the National Portrait Gallery in London staged a major exhibition Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask, Another Mask showing their work together for the first time. Slipping between genders and personae in their photographic self-images, Wearing and Cahun become others while inventing themselves. “We were born in different times, we have different concerns, and we come from different backgrounds. She didn’t know me, yet I know her,” Wearing says, paying homage to Cahun and acknowledging her presence. The bigger question the exhibition might ask is less how we construct identities for ourselves than what is this thing called presence?

In Behind The Mask, Wearing is being Cahun. Previously she has re-enacted photographs of Andy Warhol in drag, the young Diane Arbus with a camera, Robert Mapplethorpe with a skull-topped cane, hard-bitten New York crime photographer Weegee wreathed in cigar-smoke. Among these doubles, you know Wearing is in the frame somewhere, under the silicon mask and the prosthetics, the wigs and makeup and the lighting. Going through her own family albums, she has become her own mother and her father. It is a surprise she has never got lost in this hall of time-slipping mirrors, among her own self-images and the faces she has adopted. Wearing has got others to play her game, too – substituting their own adult voices with those of a child, putting on disguises while confessing their secrets on video.

Read articles in relation to exhibition here

Read articles here in Aperture and The Guardian in relation to the exhibition. Cahun has been described as a Cindy Sherman before her time. Wearing’s art undoubtedly owes something to Sherman – just as Sherman herself is indebted to artist Suzy Lake. Looking back at Cahun, Wearing is both tracing artistic influence, and paying homage to it, teasing out threads in a web of relationships crossing generations.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman works play with female stereotypes. Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To create her images, she assumes the multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a blond bombshell, a fashion victim, a clown, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty-five years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture.

For an overview of Sherman’s incredible oeuvre see Museum Of Modern Art’s dedicated site made at a major survey exhibition of her work in 2012…

This exhibition surveys Sherman’s career, from her early experiments as a student in Buffalo in the mid-1970s to a recent large-scale photographic mural, presented here for the first time in the United States. Included are some of the artist’s groundbreaking works—the complete “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80) and centerfolds (1981), plus the celebrated history portraits (1988–90)—and examples from her most important series, from her fashion work of the early 1980s to the break-through sex pictures of 1992 to her monumental 2008 society portraits.

Sherman works in series, and each of her bodies of work is self-contained and internally coherent; yet there are themes that have recurred throughout her career. The exhibition showcases the artist’s individual series and also presents works grouped thematically around such common threads as cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tales; and gender and class identity.

Sherman’s ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Since the early 2000s, Sherman has constructed personae with digital manipulation, capturing the fractured sense of self in modern society—a concern the artist has uniquely encapsulated from the outset of her career. As critic and curator Gabriele Schor writes on her process, ‘Sherman’s complex analysis of her face and her subtle employment of expression indicates that the working method of making up and costuming the self enables two processes: an intuitive and fluid process motivated by curiosity, and an intended process whose stimulus is conceptual and which has a ‘subject matter’.’

See and read about Cindy Sherman’s latest work here

Cindy Sherman – Hauser & Wirth (hauserwirth.com)

Further reading and context:
Krauss_Rosalind_E_Bachelors
Johanna Burton (ed) Cindy Sherman, October Files, MIT Press From

A few articles/ reviews
Hal Foster https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n09/hal-foster/at-moma
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/03/cindy-sherman-interview-retrospective-motivation

See how students in the past have responded to Cindy Sherman

Chrissy Knight portraits of Women of Yesterday

Shannon O’Donnell and her book: Shrinking Violet

Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations

Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations.

Since her A-level studies Shannon has continued her passion for photography and has recently completed her BA (Hons) degree in Documentary Photography at University of South Wales. During her 3-year degree she developed a number of projects based around gender identities and constructions. Shannon will deliver a presentation about her practice on Wed 14 Oct, but beforehand you need to do some research about her work so you can engage with her talk and ask some relevant questions. You will need to have an in-depth knowledge of her work as you are are required to write a comparetive essay between Claude Cahun and Shannon O’donnell.

Here is a link to her website, a short biography below and examples of key works:

I am an artist born in Jersey, Channel Islands. Currently based in Cardiff, Wales my practice explores themes around the gendered experience with a focus on femininity and masculinity as gendered traits. Through deep research and a sociological approach my work explores the self and identity.

​My fascination lies with questioning society and challenging traditional views of gender through my work. My work is informed by my personal experience and through interviewing specific demographics to help gage a sociological understanding of how gender is viewed or challenged within mainstream society.

That’s Not The Way The River Flows
Gender is being re-conceptualised. Our experience of gender is changing, transforming from being solely male and female, opening to a multitude of subcategories including; gender queer, non-binary, transgender and gender fluid. As we unpick the complicated narrative of gender and the generalisations that it encapsulates, we are forced to re-imagine what it is that makes us who we are and what we want or can identify as. The beginning of change starts with the self.

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.

A Short Film: That’s Not The Way The River Flows
A visual poem with word by me surrounding the claustrophobia of gender identity, while visuals poke fun at ideas of masculinity and femininity (2019).

Here They Stood
“Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us.” – Christabel Pankhurst 

The Cat And Mouse Act, formally known as the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, 1913 was formed in British Law specifically aimed at militant Suffragettes who went on hunger strike while imprisoned. The Act, passed on 25th April 1913, afforded prison guards to temporarily discharge individuals whose health was at major risk. Once in better health prisoners were informed to report back to carry out the rest of their sentence, many of whom did not conform. 

​The Cat And The Mice (2018) project, name derived from the Act of 1913, follows the path of Suffragettes and Suffragists alike around Cardiff in the early 1900s. It encapsulates historically significant places, now forgotten in modern city life. The project also aims to show how the efforts of those Welsh women within the Suffrage movement have allowed for contemporary women of Cardiff, specifically Riverside, the freedom to have a voice, to set up local peaceful organisations for change in the community, as well as a leading example to contemporary activists of today.

Susan’s Sleep (2018) is a short film that, when creating, became a form of therapy for me. It helped me to understand that I had a lot of unresolved trauma and for that reason and for my family I will not release the full short film but instead leave you with a trailer.

​This body of work explores the traumatic experience that my family and I went through beginning on the 25th December 2016 and well into the new year. My mother was ill and on Christmas day was taken in an ambulance to the hospital as she could no longer breathe for herself. On the 27th December she was put into a medically induced coma after fighting with the NIV (Non Invasive Ventilation System). Here we spent our days by my mothers bedside in an isolated room on ICU (Intensive Care Unit). This short film is about that time in limbo, waiting each day for bad news, or any news.

By Your Bedside (2018) is a series of images that I created to compliment my short film, Susan’s Sleep. The images are quite, to reflect my own experience during the time my mother was in a coma. I went mute during this time, isolated myself and kept my emotions inside. The only time that I felt able to express myself was when I was sat by my mother’s bedside. These images convey the surreal movie-like experience I felt while waiting for my mum to wake up.

Shannon’s work is influenced by a number of artists, such as Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Walter Pfeiffer – Carlo Joh, Casa Susanna, Lissa Rivera – Beautiful Boy, and Clare Rae. Shannon also recently visited two influential exhibitions held at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, Masculinities (2020) and Another Kind of Life (2018)

Clare Rae

Clare Rae, an artist from Melbourne, Australia who produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment. Rae visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme in 2017. She was researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey, as well as running workshops. 

From her research she produced a new body of work, Entre Nous: Claude Cahun and Clare Rae that was exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Australia 22 March – 6 May 2018, and subsequently at CCA Galleries in Jersey, UK, 7–28 September 2018.

An accompanying book, Never Standing on Two Feet with an introduction by Susan Bright and essay by Gareth Syvret was published by Perimeter editions in April 2018. Purchase online via Perimeter.

In her series, Never standing on two feet, Rae considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date.  Rae writes:

Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place; in these instances sites of coastal geography and Jersey’s Neolithic ritual monuments. I enact a visual dialogue between the body and these environments, and test how their photographic histories impact upon contemporary engagements. Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze in photographic depictions of the female body in the landscape. My practice is invested in the feminist act of self-representation and I draw parallels between my performances of an expanding vocabulary of gesture and Cahun’s overtly performative images of the body expressing a multiplicity of identity. In this series, I tease out the interpretations inherent in landscape photography. I utilise gesture and the performing body to contrast and unsettle traditional representations of the female figure in the landscape.

See this blog post Photography, Performance and the Body for more details and context of the above artists work

Inspirations: Photography, Performance and the Body

Clare gave a artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare also discussed her photographic methodologies and practices, providing an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.

PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Homework

Here is the task that Clare Rae asked participants to respond to in a workshop she delivered while in Jersey in 2017.

Untitled Actions: exploring performative photography

Outcomes:

1. Produce a self-portrait, in any style you like. Consider the history of self-portraiture, and try to create an image that alludes to, (or evades?) your identity.

2. Produce a performative photograph, considering the ideas presented on liveness, performance documentation and Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. ‘Captured’ vs. pre-meditated?

3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image..

Francesca Woodman

Another site of influence to Clare Rae is Francesca Woodman. At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self-portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just 22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.

The very first photograph taken by Woodman, Self-portrait at Thirteen, 1972, shows the artist sitting at the end of a sofa in an un-indentified space, wearing an oversized jumper and jeans, arm loosely hanging on the armrest, her face obscured by a curtain of hair and the foreground blurred by sudden movement, one hand holding a cable linked to the camera. In this first image the main characteristics at the core of Woodman’s short career are clearly visible, her focus on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the acting subject behind the camera.

Woodman tested the boundaries of bodily experience in her work and her work often suggests a sense of self-displacement. Often nude except for individual body parts covered with props, sometimes wearing vintage clothing, the artist is typically sited in empty or sparsely furnished, dilapidated rooms, characterised by rough surfaces, shattered mirrors and old furniture. In some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or blending into the background, wallpaper or floor, revealing the lack of distinction of both – between figure and ground, self and world. In others she uses her physical body literally as a framework in which to create and alter her material identity. For instance, holding a sheet of glass against her flesh, squeezing her body parts against the glass and smashing her face, breasts, hips, buttocks and stomach onto the surface from various angles, Woodman distorts her physical features making them appear grotesque.

Through fragmenting her body by hiding behind furniture, using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself, or by simply cropping the image, she dissects the human figure emphasising isolated body parts. In her photographs Woodman reveals the body simultaneously as insistently there, yet  somehow absent. This game of presence and absence argues for a kind of work that values disappearance as its very condition.

Since 1986, Woodman’s work has been exhibited widely and has been the subject of extensive critical study in the United States and Europe. Woodman is often situated alongside her contemporaries of the late 1970s such as Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke, yet her work also foreshadows artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Nan Goldin and Karen Finley in their subsequent dialogues with the self and reinterpretations of the female body.

Here is an article in The Guardian and another in British Journal of Photography

MASCULINITIES: LIBERATION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY

MASCULINITIES: LIBERATION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the exhibition brings together over 300 works by over 50 pioneering international artists, photographers and filmmakers such as Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and Catherine Opie to show how photography and film have been central to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture. The show also highlightslesser-known and younger artists – some of whom have never exhibited in the UK – including Cassils, Sam Contis, George Dureau, Elle Pérez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hank Willis Thomas, Karlheinz Weinberger and Marianne Wex amongst many others. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is part of the Barbican’s 2020 season, Inside Out, which explores the relationship between our inner lives and creativity.

In the wake of #MeToo the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, tenderness and the family, the exhibition shows how central photography and film have been to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture.

Here is a downloadable teaching resource that includes information, activities and tasks that will help you develop ideas.

Key Focus Areas and questions in relation to the exhibition and the concept: MASCULINITIES

1. What does it mean to be male?

2. What overarching themes do you associate with the words masculine, masculinities or male? What would you classify as hegemonic (ruling) masculine values or traits, particularly historically – e.g. power, leadership, strength, dominance?

3. What would you say are the assumed norms of masculinity today? Think of examples of what breaks or subverts these norms and find examples in the exhibition.

4. Compare expectations and perceptions of masculinity through time, society and place – where are we now and where have we come from? Look at the variety of masculine identities encompassed, often complex or even contradictory, shaped by culture and society. In addition, you could consider the word femininities in just the same way and compare commonalities or differences.

5. How much are we conditioned by the society or culture in which we live, in terms of our gender identities? Consider gender expectations from birth onwards – what messages do we receive about who we are or are supposed to be and accompanying notions of equality? Do you feel there is still pressure put on young boys to be a certain way or to conform to some perceived gender norm?

6. Consider too, the word liberation in the context of the title – how and if photography is a liberating force for the subjects of the camera’s gaze

7. Do you think photography such as that seen in the exhibition can help to pave the way for new attitudes and choices? Discuss using examples you find in the exhibition.

In 2018 the Barbican staged another ground breaking exhibition; ANOTHER KIND OF LIFE: PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE MARGINS. Touching on themes of countercultures, subcultures and minorities of all kinds, the show featured 20 photographers from the 1950s to present day, reflecting a more diverse complex view of the world.

Another Kind of Life followed the lives of individuals & communities on the fringes of society from America to India, Chile to Nigeria. Driven by personal and political motivations, many of the photographers sought to provide an authentic representation of the disenfranchised communities with whom they spent months, years or even decades with, often conspiring with them to construct their own identity through the camera lens.

Featuring communities of sexual experimenters, romantic rebels, outlaws, survivalists, the economically dispossessed and those who openly flout social convention, the works present the outsider as an agent of change. From street photography to portraiture, vernacular albums to documentary reportage, the show includes the Casa Susanna Collection, Paz Errazuriz, Pieter Hugo, Mary Ellen Mark, Dayanita Singh, Teresa Margolles, Katy Grannan, Phillipe Chancel, Daido Moriyama, Seiji Kurata, Igor Palmin and many others.

NARRATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY > TABLEAUX PHOTOGRAPHY

Narrative photography, also referred to as Tableaux photography often have an element of performing for the camera. See artists such as, Duane Michaels, Tom Hunter, Anna Gaskell, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Philip- Lorca diCorcia, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg. Read also page 26 in exam booklet that lists other artists, Sandy Skoglund, Carrie Mae Weems, Deana Lawson and Laurie Simmons who are using photography to create complex narratives using staged events and artificial set ups. The historical context of this type of photography is Pictorialism – make sure you reference this in your research and provide examples from this period of photographic history and experimentation.

Duane Michaels: photo-stories eg. The Bogeyman, The Spirit Leaves the Body.  A self-taught photographer, Duane Michals broke away from established traditions of the medium during the 1960s. His messages and poems inscribed on the photographs, and his visual stories created through multiple images, defied the principles of the reigning practitioners of the form. Indeed, Michals considers himself as much a storyteller as a photographer.

Tom Hunter: Headlines, Life and Death in Hackney
Since 1997, Tom Hunter has turned his camera on his surrounding neighbourhood of Hackney, showing empathy without being polemic. He is known for a remarkable blend of political commentary, history of art and the technicalities of photography. Working to create photographs that are the result of an exaggerated link between newspaper headlines, paintings from The National Gallery’s permanent collection and Hackney lifestyle, Hunter often seems to ask more questions than he can answer visually.

Read more here about Tom Hunter’s work in The Guardian

Anna Gaskell crafts foreboding photographic tableaux of preadolescent girls that reference children’s games, literature, and psychology. She is interested in isolating dramatic moments from larger plots such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, visible in two series: Wonder (1996–97) and Override (1997). In Gaskell’s style of “narrative photography,” of which Cindy Sherman is a pioneer, the image is carefully planned and staged; the scene presented is “artificial” in that it exists only to be photographed. While this may be similar to the process of filmmaking, there is an important difference. Gaskell’s photographs are not tied together by a linear thread; it is as though their events all take place simultaneously, in an ever-present. Each image’s “before” and “after” are lost, allowing possible interpretations to multiply. In untitled #9of the wonder series, a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor. In untitled #17 it appears again, forced into a girl’s mouth, with no explanation of how or why. This suspension of time and causality lends Gaskell’s images a remarkable ambiguity that she uses to evoke a vivid and dreamlike world.

PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 2: Selfie Experiments

Choose 3-5 of these ideas below to explore and produce a range of outcomes. Remember to create blog posts that clearly show your process and where the ideas come from…

Other possibilities

Shooting through materials

Dino Kuznik shares how he shoots through household materials like grease and broken glass…See what transparent materials or objects you have lying around and see if you can use them to throw light and create a visually compelling creative self-portrait.

Always explore, describe and explain :

LINKS to high scoring A GRADE exemplar EXAM PROJECTS 

CHARLIE CRAIG YEAR 13

TOM WEBSTER YEAR 13

STANLEY LUCAS YEAR 13

NICK GALLERY YEAR 13

ORLA WORTHINGTON YEAR 13

Micah De Gruchy Year 12 Identity Unit

Lawrence Bouchard Year 12 Identity Unit

Oliwia Florence Year 12 Identity Unit

Thinking about your project in stages…

1. Developing and planning ideas
2. Taking the photos
3. Selecting and editing the photos
4. Printing the photos
5. Adjusting the prints
6. Displaying the prints

Presentation and display of your final images…

Juxtaposition / two frame arrangements

The daily grind can be a test of endurance. In Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf recorded the extreme discomfort of Japanese commuters pressed up against windows dripping with condensation on their journeys to and from work.

In Harlem Trolley Bus, Robert Frank showed the divisions within American society in the mid-20th century. Dryden Goodwin took pictures of exhausted travellers on London night buses and wove a protective cocoon of blood capillaries around them.

Connections with film making…

The idea for this project comes from Luke Fowler‘s series of half-frame photographs recently published in the book ‘Two-Frame Films‘. The project is intended to encourage students to concentrate on the editorial aspect of photography, the selection and juxtaposition of photographic images and how this might affect the ways in which a viewer engages with the work. Fowler is better known for his work in film but has used a half-frame camera as part of his practice. This work explores the relationship between two juxtaposed images. A half frame camera exposes two shots on each 35mm frame. A roll of 36 exposures therefore produces 72 images in pairs. The resulting diptychs are still images but reference the theory of montage, first articulated by Russian film makers in the 1920s, specifically Sergei Eisenstein

MOCK EXAM PREPARATION: Final prints by Jan 24th 3.30pm

We expect see a selection of final outcomes from various portrait tasks and assignments. Ensure that your final images are a direct response to your chosen photographer(s) and show a clear visual link

• 1-2 environmental portraits
• 3-4 studio portraits showing different lighting techniques etc.
• 1-2 self-portraits from Masculinity/ Femininity

Add your images to the print folder here:

M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\Y12 Portrait Prints Jan 2024

CONTROLLED CONDITIONS : Essentials

You will have one full day = 5 hours to complete this unit so make sure you use it productively

PREPARE AND SAVE IMAGES FOR PRINTING:

File Handling and printing...

• Remember when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to 1000 pixels on the Short edge for “blog-friendly” images (JPEGS)
• BUT…for editing and printing when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to Short edge for “high resolution” images (JPEGS) like this…

• A5 Short Edge = 14.8 cm
• A4 Short Edge = 21.0 cm
• A3 Short Edge =29.7 cm

This will ensure you have the correct ASPECT RATIO

Ensure you label and save your file in you M :Drive and then copy across to the PRINT FOLDER / IMAGE TRANSFER

M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\Y12 Portrait Prints Jan 2024

For a combination of images, or square format images you use the ADOBE PHOTOSHOP > NEW DOCUMENT + PRINT PRESETS on to help arrange images on the correct size page (A3, A4, A5)

You can do this using Photoshop, Set up the page sizes as templates and import images into each template, then you can see for themselves how well they fit… but remember to add an extra 6mm for bleed (3mm on each side of the page) to the original templates. i.e. A4 = 297mm x 210 but the template size for this would be 303mm x 216mm.

Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop

Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…

…or using online software

How I did it:

Step 1: Go to www.artsteps.com

Step 2: Sign in / up.

Step 3: Create.

Step 4: Create your own location or choose a template.

Step 5: Upload your images, put them in your exhibition, name it and give it a description.

Step 6: Present / view your Exhibition.

Always ensure you have enough evidence of…

1. moodboards (use influential images)
2. mindmap of ideas and links
3. case studies (artist references-show your knowledge and understanding)
4. photo-shoot action plans / specifications (what, why, how, who, when , where)
5. photo-shoots + contact sheets (annotated)
6. appropriate image selection and editing techniques
7. presentation of final ideas and personal responses
8. analysis and evaluation of process
9. compare and contrast to a key photographer
10. critique / review / reflection of your outcomes

INDEPENDENT, READING, RESOURCE

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

Below are some INSTRUCTIONS AND INSPIRATIONS for your headshots in the studio. We will be experimenting with both continuous lights and flash lights using 1, 2 and 3 light sources 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 3 portrait shoots in the studio and consider the following:

1. Lighting: soft, hard

2. Framing: Headshots

3. Focusing: focus on the eyes

4. Expression: Explore different moods and emotions.

5. Pose: Manner and attitude. Use hands too…

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

Camera settings (continuous lighting)
Tripod: recommended to avoid camera shake
Manual exposure mode
White balance: tungsten light (3200K)
ISO: 400-1600 – depending on how many light sources
Exposure: Manual 1/60-1/125 shutter-speed > f/4-f/8 aperture
– check settings before shooting
Focal lenght: 50mm portrait lens

DUE DATE FOR HEADSHOTS PROJECT = Fri 15th December

BLOG

In addition to complete the work listed in Exploring Lighting  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 contact-sheet, select and adjust your BEST 3 IMAGES in Photoshop 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.

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 cartes 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. Another popular form of commercial portraits in the 19th century were vignette portraits which is a portrait that has its edges bleaches out only to reveal the face (see below)

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:

BACKGROUND:

Photos must have a background which:

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.

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.

UP CLOSE

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.

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.

EXPERIMENTATION

TASK

You must produce minimum of 3 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: 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.
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.

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 is 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.

DUE DATE FOR HEADSHOTS PROJECT = FRI 15TH DECEMBER

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

Make sure you ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS IN YOUR BLOG

• Why do we use studio lighting?
• What is the difference between 1-2-3 point lighting and what does each technique provide / solve
• What is fill lighting?
• What is Rembrandt lighting, Butterfly lighting, Chiarascuro ? Show examples + your own experiments

Independent Study

1. You must complete a range of studio lighting experiments and present your strongest ideas on a separate blog post
2. Remember to select only the most successful images
3. You should be aiming to produce portraits that show clarity, focus and a clear understanding of a range of lighting techniques
4. Editing should be minimal at this point…we are looking for your camera skills here
5. But…be creative and experimental with your approach “in camera”…extremes, uniqueness and possibly thought provoking imagery that will improve your ideas and outcomes.

To get you started we are going to learn some more studio methods…using a variety of simple lighting techniques.

Watch : Rankin on “beautiful portraits”

Studio Lighting

Exploring Technique

In most cases we can make use of natural or available / ambient light…but we must be aware of different kinds of natural light and learn how to exploit it thoughtfully and creatively…

White Balance (WB) and Colour Temperature

Artificial / Studio Lighting

Using artificial lighting can offer many creative possibilities…so we will explore :

Butterfly lighting is a type of portrait lighting technique used primarily in a studio setting. Its name comes from the butterfly-shaped shadow that forms under the nose because the light comes from above the camera. You may also hear it called ‘paramount lighting’ or ‘glamour lighting’.

What is butterfly lighting used for?

Butterfly lighting is used for portraits. It’s a light pattern that flatters almost everybody, making it one of the most common lighting setups.

Butterfly lighting was used to photograph some of the most famous stars from classic Hollywood, and that’s why it’s also called Paramount lighting.

With it, you can highlight cheekbones and create shadows under them as well as under the neck – which makes the model look thinner. 

Lighting: Butterfly lighting requires a key light that can be a flash unit or continuous. If continuos, it can be artificial or natural. In other words, you can use strobes, speedlights, LEDs or even the sun.

A butterfly lighting effect refers to the setup and not to the quality of light – it can be soft or hard light depending on the effect you want.

If you want to create a soft light, you’ll need to use modifiers. A beauty dish is perfect for glamour photography as it distributes the light evenly and smooths the skin. You can also use a softbox or an umbrella.

Instead, if you want to have hard light, you can leave the light source as it is. Alternatively, you can use grid spots to direct it and create different effects – check out MagMod gels for some creative options and examples of what hard light is used for.

Experimentation: Once you have the key light set up, it’s time to fill the shadows. You can use a reflector to bounce the light back up and soften the shadow under the chin and the one from under the nose.

To do so, position the reflector under the subject’s face. Start at waist level and see how it looks. If the shadows are still strong, move it closer to the face and so on.

Experiment with different positions to achieve different effects. You can also change the colour of the reflector. A white one will give you a neutral tone, while a golden one gives a warming overcast.

Once you’re happy with your butterfly lighting, direct the model to have a striking fashion pose or whatever the desired pose or expression you’re looking for.

Just keep in mind that the subject’s face needs to be towards the light in order to have the butterfly shadow under the nose.

CHIARUSCURO

A visual element in art, chiaroscuro (Italian for lightdark) is defined as a bold contrast between light and dark). A certain amount of chiaroscuro is the effect of light modelling in painting where 3-dimensional volume is suggested by highlights and shadows. It first appeared in 15th century painting in Italy and Flanders (Holland), but true chiaroscuro
developed during the 16th century, in Mannerism and in Baroque art.

Dark subjects were dramatically lighted by a shaft of light from a single constricted and often unseen source was a compositional device seen in the paintings of old masters such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

Chiaruscuro in film: Film noir (French for “black film”), is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

Chiaroscuro in photography: Chiaroscuro using one key light and a variation using a reflector that reflects light from the key light back onto the sitter.

Have a look at the work of Oliver Doran a studio portrait photographer in St Helier, Jersey

Using Flash

Above : An example of “bouncing” the flash to soften the effects and create a larger “fill” area…try this wherever there are white walls/ ceilings

Flash units offer a range of possibilities in both low and high lighting scenarios that you could explore such as…

Evidence of Your Learning

During this unit we would expect all students to complete 2-3 blog posts  detailing how you are experimenting with various lighting techniques eg REMBRANDT LIGHTING / BUTTERFLY LIGHTING / CHIARUSCURO

Add information / links showing how Chiarascuro has been used since the Renaissance in painting…but also how it used now in photography and film

You must describe and explain your process with each technique…add your images to your blog as you progress, print off your successful images and evaluate your process using technical vocab and analysis skills. Think carefully about the presentation of your ideas and outcomes…compare your work to relevant portrait photographers as you develop your studio portraiture – see below

INSPIRATIONS: PORTRAITURE

Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Rankin, Nadav Kandar, Richard Avedon, Yousef Karsh, David Bailey, Mario Testino, Steve McCurry, Jill Greenberg, Nick Knight, Tim Walker, Corrine Day, Jane Bown, Rineke Djikstra, Thomas Ruff et al…

Annie Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses.

Read this article Lighting Like Leibovitz – The One Light Challenge and learn how to be creative with only one light.

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique.

John Rankin Waddell, known as Rankin, is a British photographer and director who has photographed Kate Moss, Madonna, David Bowie and The Queen. The London Evening Standard described Rankin’s fashion and portrait photography style as high-gloss, highly sexed and hyper-perfect.

Watch film where Rankin photograph a group of GCSE students and talk to them about his career and beauty in photography

https://youtu.be/tWPTrYnRVnw

Nadav Kander is a London-based photographer, artist and director, known for his portraiture and landscapes. Kander has produced a number of books and had his work exhibited widely. 

Read this interview Advice for Portrait Photographers: Learning from Nadav Kander.

Watch interview with Nadav Kander where he discusses his approach to portraiture and photography in general.

https://youtu.be/bP4twN7187g

For further inspiration see a current exhibition at the International Centre of Photography: Face To Face: Portraits of Artists by Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe and Catherine Opie organised by writer and curator Helen Molesworth

As Molesworth notes, “Each of these artists has engaged portraiture—a genre of image-making as old as modernity itself—as a means of connecting themselves to other artists. The results are three bodies of work that play with the historical conventions of the genre while nibbling away at its edges.”

https://youtu.be/27qU0GvLwDk

Aneesa Dawoojee – Gloves off: The Fighting Spirit of South London
A diverse London based community bonded by strength, hardships and determination. With an underlying theme of life’s struggle and overcoming it. The journey of real Londoners bonded by a sport that sees no colour. Each person stripped away from their environment and placed against a fine art backdrop in order to take away judgements and let them speak as one voice. Compassionate visual stories that offer hope.

Portrait of Britain vol. 5
Portrait of Britain returns this year with images that define contemporary life in Britain. Alongside the many events that have shaped 2022 – the outbreak of war, record-high inflation, soaring temperatures, and the death of the Queen, to name a few. This year’s winners provide a snapshot of a frenzied year through 99 compelling portraits. Designed to illustrate the diversity of life in modern Britain, the award invites us to reflect on the multiplicity of voices and stories across the country, forming a precious historical record of British life. 

Published by Hoxton Mini Press – Explore more here

Expected Final Outcomes

Show you can provide evidence of head shots, cropped head shots, half body, three-quarter length and full length portraits.

Show that you can employ interesting angles and viewpoints…

Make sure you ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS IN YOUR BLOG

Independent Study

1. You must complete a range of studio lighting experiments and present your strongest ideas on a separate blog post
2. Remember to select only the most successful images
3. You should be aiming to produce portraits that show clarity, focus and a clear understanding of a range of lighting techniques
4. Editing should be minimal at this point…we are looking for your camera skills here
5. But…be creative and experimental with your approach “in camera”…extremes, uniqueness and possibly thought provoking imagery that will improve your ideas and outcomes.

https://www.wefolk.com/artists/nadav-kander/information

“People and Places”

Always follow this 10 step process to ensure that you are covering all areas of study for this unit…

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1) re : environmental and candid portraits
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1) and show analysis of at least 1 of your images
10. Evaluation of your images, process and Critique of your final outcomes(AO1+AO4)

Always refer to this to help you with image analysis, knowledge and understanding etc

Resource Packs are stored here…

M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsResourcesPortraitureTO DO

and here : M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsPlanners Y12 JACUnit 2 Portrait PhotographyINDEPENDENT, READING, RESOURCE, TASK

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

Use this simplified list to check that you are on task. Every item on the list represents one piece of work = one blog post. It is your responsibility as an A-level student to make sure that you complete and publish appropriate blog posts each week.

Homework and due dates will be listed / issued as necessary…

WEEK 1: 19th Feb

1. Intro and examples of landscape

2. Image Analysis + Artist Reference

3. Romanticism

4. HW Photoshoot due in

WEEK 2: 26th Feb
1. Romanticism – Ansel Adams
3. Photoshoot based on Ansel Adams

WEEK 3: 4th March
1. Select and Edit images
2. natural / romanticised
3. Complete blog posts

WEEK 4: 11th March
1. New Topographics -intro

2. Artist Focus / Case Study
3. Photoshoot

Havre Des Pas – Harbour : Photo-Walk

WEEK 5: 18th March
1. Typologies – intro

2. Artist Focus / Case Study
3. Photoshoot HW

4. The Land and Us Arthouse

WEEK 6: 25th March
1. Select and edit New Topographics images
2. Complete blog posts

3. The Land and Us Arthouse

EASTER BREAK

Week 7: 15th April
1. Introduce Anthropocene
2. Complete blog posts

Y12 AL mock exams run Thursday 18^th April to Wednesday 24^th April inclusive. Y12 will be on study leave for these days so you can sit the mocks in blocks and experience a ‘real life’ exam season.

Lessons as normal Mon 15 Tues 16 Wed 17 April but you will not return to the classroom until Tue 7 May !!!

Week 8: 22^nd April
1. Photo-assignment 1 ANTHROPOCENE

Week 9: 29th April YEAR 13 EST week
1. Develop and expand Anthropocene
2. Photo-assignment 2

Week 10: 6^th May
1. Develop and expand Anthropocene

2. Initial image edits

Week 11: 13th May
1. Anthropocene
2. Final image selections and edits
3. Blog Posts

Week 12 : 20th May

1. Complete Landscape / Anthropocene Project
2. Final Prints must be ready by Friday 24th May

HALF TERM

Week 13: 3rd June Frame, mount and print Landscape / Anthropocene Prints

Week 15: 10th June Frame, mount and print Landscape / Anthropocene Prints

Week 16: 17th June Start Y13 Program

Week 17: 24th June

Week 18: 1st July PHOTOG MOCK WEEK

Week 19: 8th July Week 20: Page Spreads

15th July End of Term !

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

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Studio set-up and Lighting arrangements

1,2,3 point lighting

Flash setting

Static / continuous lighting

Copy-stand

Infinity Screen

Coloured gels / filters

Camera settings + exposure values

Focal Length

Aperture

Shutter Speed

ISO

White Balance

Adobe Lightroom Library Mode Contact Sheet and Selections

P + X (select + discard)

Star Rating

Colour Rating

Generic editing / batch editing

Adobe Lightroom Develop Mode Deeper Editing and Image Enhancement

Before and after image comparison

Exposure values (dark – light) over, under, balanced

Colour adjusments

Saturation

Tone

Contrast

Cropping

Pre-sets and filters

Use this simplified list to check that you are on task. Every item on the list represents one piece of work = one blog post. It is your responsibility as an A-level student to make sure that you complete and publish appropriate blog posts each week.

Homework and due dates will be listed / issued as necessary…

STILL-LIFE

WEEK 1: 5 – 10 Sept
1. Quiz
2. Formalism: Image analysis
3. Summer Task

WEEK 2: 11 – 17 Sept
1. Still-life: history & theory
2. Still-life: introduction studio-lighting
3. Still-life: photoshoots own objects
4. Camera Skills (aperture, shutter speed, focus)

WEEK 3: 18 – 24 Sept
1. Still-life: photoshoots own objects
2. File Management
3: Adobe Lightroom
4: Still-life editing

WEEK 4: 25 Sept – 1 Oct
1. Formalism/ New Objectivity
2. Artist study: Walker Evans / Darren Regan-Harvey
3. Single Object photoshoot
4. Single Object editing

WEEK 5: 2 – 8 Oct
1. Final photo-shoots: still-life/ single objects
2. Editing: still-life / single objects

WEEK 6: 9 Oct – 15 Oct
1. Photo-montage: history & theory
2. Photo-montage: experimentation
3. Adobe Photoshop

Week 7: 16 Oct – 20 Oct
1. Final images: still Life / photomontage
2. File-handling
3. Review and refine blog posts
4. Virtual gallery and evaluation

Half Term

PORTRAITURE

Week 8: 30 Oct – 5 Nov
1. Environmental portraiture: mind-map > mood-board > definition
2. Artists references: Environmental portraiture
3. School-assignment: environmental portrait of a student
4. Homework assignment: plan and shoot 3 different environmental portraits: outdoor > indoor > 2 or more people
DEADLINE: Mon 6 Nov

Week 9: 6 – 12 Nov
1. Environmental portraiture: editing and experimenting
2. Environmental portraiture: final outcome and evaluation
3. Compare and contrast your best environmental portrait and its inspiration (artist reference)

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)

MY FAMILY: Explore your own private archives such as photo-albums, home movies, diaries, letters, birth-certificates, boxes, objects, mobile devices, online/ social media platforms and make a blog post with a selection of material that can be used for further development and experimentation using a variety of re-staging or montage techniques .

Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future. See more Public/ Private Archives

For example, you can focus on the life on one parent, grand-parent, family relative, or your own childhood and upbringing. Ask other family members (parents, grand-parents, aunties, uncles) if you can look through their photo-albums too etc.

TASKS STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE: 

1. Either scan or re-photograph archival material so that it is digitised and ready for use on the blog and further experimentation.
2. Plan at least one photo-shoot and make a set of images that respond to your archival research. This can be re-staging old photos or make a similar set of images, eg. portraits of family members and how they have changed over the years, or snapshots of social and family gatherings.
3. Choose one of your images which relates to the theme of family (e.g. archive, family album, or new image you have made) and destroy the same image in 5 different ways using both analogue and digital method techniques. Eg. Reprint old and new photos and combine using scissors/ tearing and glue/ tape. In Photoshop use a variety of creative tools to cut and paste fragments of images to create composites.
4. Produce appropriate blogposts with both family research, archival material and new photographic responses and experiments.

Extension: Choose a second image and destroy it in 5 new or other ways.

Jonny Briggs: In search of lost parts of my childhood I try to think outside the reality I was socialised into and create new ones with my parents and self. Through these I use photography to explore my relationship with deception, the constructed reality of the family, and question the boundaries between my parents and I, between child/adult, self/other, nature/culture, real/fake in attempt to revive my unconditioned self, beyond the family bubble. Although easily assumed to be photoshopped or faked, upon closer inspection the images are often realised to be more real than first expected. Involving staged installations, the cartoonesque and the performative, I look back to my younger self and attempt to re-capture childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes.

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.

Veronica Gesicka Traces presents a selection of photomontages created by Weronika Gęsicka on the basis of American stock photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Family scenes, holiday memories, everyday life – all of that suspended somewhere between truth and fiction. The images, modified by Gęsicka in various ways, are wrapped in a new context: our memories of the people and situations are transformed and blur gradually. Humorous as they may seem, Gęsicka’s works are a comment on such fundamental matters as identity, self-consciousness, relationships, imperfection.

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

There are different ways artists and photographers have explored their own, or other families in their work as visual storytellers. Some explore family using a documentary approach to storytelling, others construct or stage images that may reflect on their childhood, memories, or significant events drawing inspiration from family archives/ photo albums and often incorporating vernacular images into the narrative and presenting the work as a photobook.

Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom)  vs Laia Abril (The Epilogue)> artists exploring personal issues > vernacular vs archival > inside vs outside

Carole Benitah (Photo Souvenirs) vs Diane Markosian (Inventing My Father) > family > identity > memory > absence > trauma

Ugne Henriko (Mother and Daughter) vs Irina Werning or Chino Otsuka > re-staging images > re-enacting memories

Read article in The Guardian

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: Mon 23 Sept

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. 

 ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAITS usually depict people in their…

• working environments
• environments that they are associated with…

“An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography”

TASK 1 Introduce and define Environmental Portraits

1. Choose a range of portraits to develop a grid of images (minimum of 9) to show your understanding of what an environmental portrait can be…
2. You must include a range of approaches to the portraits in your mood-board…

We will be studying the history, theory and concept of environmental portraits…their purpose and role in our day to day lives too.

1. Design a mind-map / mood-board / spider-gram / flowchart of environmental portrait ideas
2. Think about the ways in which we use these portraits, and what they can say about us / reveal / conceal
3. define what an environmental portrait actually is
4. Add your mind-map to your blog post
5. Choose a photographer from the list below to research and write about…include specific examples of their work and show that you can analyse and interpret their image(s).

>>You can find resources here<<

M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsResourcesPortraitureTO DO

and here : M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsPlanners Y12 JACUnit 2 Portrait Photography

August Sander – The Face of Our Time

One of the first photographic typological studies was by the German photographer August Sander, whose epic project ‘People of the 20th Century‘ (40,000 negatives were destroyed during WWII and in a fire) produced volume of portraits entitled ‘The Face of Our Time’ in 1929. Sander categorised his portraits according to their profession and social class.  Sander’s methodical, disciplined approach to photographing the world has had an enormous influence on later photographers, notably Bernd and Hilla Becher. This approach can also be seen in the work of their students Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff. Other photographers who have explored this idea include Stephen Shore, Gillian Wearing, Nicholas Nixon, Martina Mullaney and Ari Versluis.Read this article about by Hans-Michael Koetzle about Sander’s epic project.

The art of Photographic Typologies has its roots in August Sander’s 1929 series of portraits entitled ‘Face of Our Time’, a collection of works documenting German society between the two World Wars. Sander sought to create a record of social types, classes and the relationships between them, and recognised that the display of his portraits as a collection revealed so much more than the individual images would alone. So powerful was this record, the photographic plates were destroyed and the book was banned soon after the Nazis came into power four years later.

The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher began documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’. Stoic and detached, each photograph was taken from the same angle, at approximately the same distance from the buildings. Their aim was to capture a record of a landscape they saw changing and disappearing before their eyes so once again, Typologies not only recorded a moment in time, they prompted the viewer to consider the subject’s place in the world.

The Becher’s influence as lecturers at the Dusseldorf School of Photography passed Typologies onto the next generation of photographers. Key photographic typologists such as Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand and Gillian Wearing lead to a resurgence of these documentary-style reflections on a variety of subject matter from Ruff’s giant ‘passport’ photos to Demand’s desolate, empty cities.

Typologies has enjoyed renewed interest in recent years, thanks partly to recognition from galleries including the Tate Modern who hosted a Typologies retrospective in London in 2011. With it’s emphasis on comparison, analysis and introspection, the movement has come to be recognised as arguably one of the most important social contributions of the 20th century.

Karen Knorr produced a series of portraits, Belgravia and Gentlement of the wealthy upper classes in London

Listen to Alec Soth talk about the story behind the portrait of Charles.

Vanessa Winship is a British photographer who works on long term projects of portrait, landscape, reportage and documentary photography. These personal projects have predominantly been in Eastern Europe but also the USA.

Read an article here where she discusses her best portrait below. Look up her own influences: David Goldblatt, Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Alec Soth, Fellini (filmmaker).

Read about Siân Davey on the ways psychotherapy has informed her photography here

Laura Pannack is a British social documentary and portrait photographer, based in London. Pannack’s work is often of children and teenagers. Explore more of her work here

Read Laura Pannack’s best photograph: four teenagers on a Black Country wasteland here

Alys Tomlinson is an editorial and fine art documentary photographer based in London. See more of her work here

Lost Summer: These images were taken between June and August 2020. With school proms cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I photographed local teenagers dressed in outfits they would have worn to prom. Instead of being in the usual settings of school halls or hotel function rooms, I captured them in their gardens, backyards and local parks.

Look at these influential photographers for more ideas and information…

• August Sander (1876 – 1964)
• Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)
• Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006)
• Daniel Mordzinski (1960 – )
• Annie Leibovitz (1949 – )
• Mary Ellen Mark (1940 – 2015)
• Jimmy Nelson (1967 – )
• Sara Facio (1932 – )
• Alec Soth
• Vanessa Winship
• Karen Knorr (Gentlemen, Belgravia)
• Rob Hornstra
• Michelle Sank
• David Goldblatt
• Sian Davey
• Laura Pannack
• Alys Tomlinson
• Deanne Lawson
• Thilde Jensen
• Jon Tonk
• Bert Teunissen

Key features to consider with formal / environmental portraits…

• formal (posed)
• head-shot / half body / three quarter length / full length body shot
• high angle / low angle / canted angle
• colour or black and white
• high key (light and airy) vs low key (high contrast / chiarascuro)

Technical > Composition / exposure / lens / light

Visual > eye contact / engagement with the camera / neutral pose and facial expression / angle / viewpoint

Conceptual > what are you intending to present? eg :  social documentary / class / authority / gender role / lifestyle

Contextual >add info and detail regarding the back ground / story / detail / information about the character(s) / connection to the photographer eg family / insider / outsider

Classroom activity: Environmental portrait of a student

Photo-Shoot 1 – homework – due date = Mon 6th November

• Take 100-200 photographs showing your understanding of ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAITS
• Remember…your subject (person) must be engaging with the camera!…you must communicate with them clearly and direct the kind of image that you want to produce!!!

1. Outdoor environment
2. Indoor environment
3. two or more people

Then select your best 5-10 images and create a blog post that clearly shows your process of taking and making your final outcomes

Remember not to over -edit your images. Adjust the cropping, exposure, contrast etc…nothing more!

Remember to show your Photo-Shoot Planning and clearly explain :

• who you are photographing
• what you are photographing
• when you are conducting the shoot
• where you are working/ location
• why you are designing the shoot in this way
• how you are going to produce the images (lighting / equipment etc)

More Examples

Environmental portraits mean portraits of people taken in a situation that they live in, work in, rest in or play in. Environmental portraits give you context to the subject you are photographing. They give you an insight into the personality and lifestyle of your subject.

Portrait 1: This particular image was photographed by Jane Bown of Quentin Crisp at home in Chelsea in 1978. Quentin Crisp was an English writer, famous for supernatural fiction and was a gay icon in the 1970s. This image was taken in his “filthy” flat as Bown describes. In the back ground we can see piles of books on top of the fireplace shelf which represents his career as a writer and a journalist. It looks as though he is boiling water on the stove which looks out of place because the room looks as if it is in the living room. As you would not normally place a stove in your lounge. He was living as a “Bed-Sitter” which means he had inadequate of storage space, this explains why his belongings were cramped in one room.

Portrait 2: This image was captured by Arnold Newman. He is also known for his “environmental portraiture” of artists and politicians, capturing the essence of his subjects by showing them in their natural surroundings. Here is a portrait of Igor Stravinsky who was a Russian pianist, composer and musician. In this photograph, the piano outweighs the subject which is him and depicts the fact that music was a massive part of him and his life. His body language looks as if he is imitating the way the piano lid is being held up, he is using his hand as a head rest. Another element in the photograph, is that the shape of the piano looks like a musical note which again symbolises his love of music.

Portrait 3: This photograph was also taken by Arnold Newman of John F. Kennedy, an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States of America. This pictures was taken on a balcony at the White house. Mr. Kennedy isn’t directly looking into the camera, he is looking at the view outside which suggests his role as a president because at the time he was one of the most powerful man in the world. He is looking at the scenery, people and his surroundings. The image was taken at a low angle to depict the huge building and the horizontal lines symbolise power, dynamism and control.

Ideas for your environmental photo shoot

Who

• Barber/Hairdresser
• Dentist/Doctor
• Postman
• Market trader
• Florist
• Tattooist
• Musician
• Barista
• Fishmonger
• Butcher
• Baker
• Farmer
• Cleaner
• Chef/Cook
• Stonemason
• Blacksmith
• Fisherman
• Builder/Carpenter
• Sportsman/Coach
• Taxi driver

Where

• Central Market
• Fish Market
• St Helier Shops
• Hair salons/barbers
• Coffee shop
• Farms
• Building Sites
• Harbour
• Sport centres/fields
• Taxi Ranks
• Offices

WHEN

You will have to think ahead and use your photo shoot plan.
You may have to contact people in advance, by phone, or arrange a convenient time. (Ask if you can return later in the day).

Remember to be polite and explain what your are doing and why!

It may surprise you that most people will be proud of what they do as it is their passion and profession and will be happy to show it off!

Don’t be scared. Be brave. Be bold. Be ambitious!!!

Essential Blog Posts

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Study (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)