The photos I have chosen to be my final ones, create a storyline. They represent freedom and how the subject is finding and accepting her identity. Each photo has a shadow, which almost looks like a soul, leaving the subjects body, and as you go down the photos, the soul becomes further and further away from her body. This symbolises the subject letting go and accepting who she is.
Virtual Gallery
If these photos were to be put in a gallery, I would want to present them as either one of the virtual images below.
Final Photos
In this image, you can see how the subject is holding her arm up, almost shielding herself. This shows how she doesn’t want to accept her identity and wants it to stop.
Here you can tell how the subject is slowly giving in and letting herself go.
This image represents ‘question of self’ as she is facing herself, almost questioning herself and what her identity is, but also accepting it.
Set 2
In this final piece, These photos show the subject’s identity as a dancer. The facial expressions in the images show how happy she feels when dancing. The double exposure images shows how the subject moves and captures her dancing more.
Virtual Gallery
This is how I would want my photos presented if they were to be put in a gallery.
Final Photos
These images give an angelic effect to the subject’s identity. The double exposure shows the movements and emotion being put into the images.
Evaluation
How successful was your final outcome?
I would say that my final outcome was successful, although i could have done better and taken some more photos in various different areas with different angles of the subject. I think I did well with what I had. I got a story across to the viewers and I believe my images represent that story and ‘finding your identity’ quite well.
I intended to capture the subject’s emotions and movements using a slow shutter speed and a long exposure from the beginning, what I did not intend to do is create a storyline from it. I was halfway through editing before I had realised that these images would work really well together and that’s when I decided to create the storyline.
I did make a few references to Francesca Woodman‘s technical aspect of her images as I used a long exposure but I used the flash and I relied on a high contrast to make my images look interesting which she did not.
Francesca Woodman’s images were all in black and white, whereas mine are in colour, although, the form and the pattern of both of our images are quite alike.
Some of Francesca’s photos represented ‘isolation’ and ‘questions of self’ which my images can represent as well, because mine indicate letting go of past self and accepting who you are.
I think, if i had the chance, I would change the outfits to something a bit more flowy to get more dimension in the images and really capture the slow shutter speed that I used. I would also change the setting of the images to somewhere more open and outside with nature. A different setting would allow the subject to express herself more as the studio didn’t have enough room for that.
First, I cropped the photo to square, and then I selected what I wanted to remove from the photo and selected ‘generative fill’ which then edited it into just a hand without holding anything.
I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.
I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.
After that, I modified my exposure and gamma correction.
Then I decided to change the vibrance of the image.
I then moved on to switching up the hue of the image, just slightly, to give the photo some dimension.
The three images were all edited the same way so that I could guarantee that they work well and look good together.
The femininity images had the same concept to editing except different settings.
I cropped it to square and modified the brightness and contrast, increasing both of them to brighten up the image.
I then moved on to adjusting the exposurewhich I reduced, and the gamma correctionwhich I increased. This gave a more eerie effect to the image, while still keeping the pink tint.
I then increased the saturation which brought back more of the pink colour that I lost when doing the gamma correction and exposure.
I started off with this photo.
I then decided to add on another image on the top and blend them together by reducing the opacity on the top layer.
pped the image to get rid of negative space and so that it is square. I also flattened the image to make it all one layer.
After that, I adjusted the brightness and contrast to make it a little darker as it was too light.
I decreased the exposure and increased the gamma correction to improve the quality of my image and also give it an angelic effect.
I modified the vibrance by increasing both the vibrance and saturation to give it a little tint.
I then adjusted the curves to adjust the contrast and the lighting of my image.
Before and After Editing
With these images, I brought up the brightness and contrast, exposure, vibrance and the gamma correction to create this soul effect. I reduced the hue only slightly to make the image look more like fire. I cropped it into a square with the subject in the middle of the image.
In this set of images, I went for the theme of femininity. I increased the brightness, contrast, gamma correction, vibrance and the saturation. I reduced the vibrance saturation, and the exposure. I cropped two of them to squares and one of them to get rid of negative space throughout the image.
With these images, I increased the brightness, contrast, vibrance, saturation and gamma correction and reduced the hue saturation slightly.
Presentation
This is how I would want my final photos to be presented.
In my photoshoot, I started off with 102 photos, using black or white backgrounds and a slow shutter speed. Most of these photos are 1/2 body photos or 1/4 body photos. I then took another 215 photos using a black background but with pink studio lighting, still using a slow shutter speed. I ended up with 317 photos in my contact sheet.
I then narrowed it down to 19 photos by flagging them, which will be the photos I use for my editing and some possibly for my final photos.
Francesca Stern Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred, merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.
Francesca Woodman is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence.
Meaning behind her photos
Francesca Woodman’s entire body of work was produced as a young person and created over just eight short years. Her photographs explore many themes that affect young people such as relationships, sexuality, questions of self, body image, alienation, isolation and confusion or ambiguity about personal identity.
Francesca Woodman photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility.
Why did Francesca Woodman take her photos?
Woodman knew that not showing a clear subject could be more impactful that showing it. Her photos, which already have an abstract quality due to the black and white film, present the viewer with something to interpret rather than just observe.
What was Francesca Woodman’s photography style?
Woodman applied some of the characteristics associated with surrealism to her own work. She created dreamlike environments with interesting and unusual objects, such as shells and eels, and combined familiar things in unfamiliar contexts to evoke uncanny feelings.
What is the power of identity in photography?
Defining your photographic identity will allow you to say who you are, what you want to be, and how you are to be perceived by others. This should be apparent to each viewer, regardless of whether they are a photographer or not. Your photographic identity will define how you will be perceived by the world around you.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender, and photography.
She is among the most significant artists of the Pictures Generation — a group that also includes Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo — who came of age in the 1970s and responded to the mass media landscape surrounding them with both humor and criticism, appropriating images from advertising, film, television, and magazines for their art. At the end of the century, Sherman was the artist who most effectively utilised this source. Her pictures are composed of masks and anatomical models of the body, not unlike the bashed-up dolls by a surrealist pioneer such as Hans Bellmer (1902–1975).
Sherman grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1972 she enrolled at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and majored in painting, later switching her major to photography. She graduated from SUNY in 1976 and in 1977 began work on Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), one of her best-known series.
Cindy Sherman’s work is characterized by her use of self-portraiture to create fictional characters and explore themes such as identity, representation, and the construction of femininity to portray the various roles and identities of herself and other modern women.
Her work is mostly consisting of photographic self-portraits. Started when she was only 23, these images rely on female characters (and caricatures) such as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self-identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman’s extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman’s work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century. Sherman has always been adamant that her photos are not self-portraits.
The seminal series expanded the artistic potential of the photographic medium by using image-making to engage with dialogues of feminist and postmodern theories. In this pseudo-self portrait, Sherman assumes the persona of Claude Cahun, pioneer of self-portraiture and the French surrealist movement.
Image analysis
Untitled Film Still #3
Visual:
In this image, Cindy Sherman is adopting the role of a housewife in a kitchen, as she is wearing an apron and has cooking supplies beside her it makes it easy to tell this. Sherman’s positioning in the photo makes it look like shes cramped in the frame and she’s looking over her shoulder which could mean that someone else is there or she’s deep in thought. She is holding her stomach and this could be either maternal or trying to protect herself. She looks extremely uncomfortable. Since the title is an ‘Untitled film still’ it suggests that Sherman is trying to show the typical female housewife stereotypes usually portrayed in movies.
Technical:
As the foreground objects are blurred it would suggest that the image was taken with a very large aperture. The subject in the photo is in focus so this could suggest that a fast shutter speed was used, with a balanced exposure. The angle this was taken at a slightly lower angle, this makes the viewer feel like they are amongst the setting and not outside of it. It is a half body shot so it would make it more intimate as the viewer is closer to the subject.
Contextual:
Gender roles are the roles that men and women are expected to occupy based on their sex. Traditionally, many western societies have believed that women are more nurturing than men. Therefore, the traditional view of the feminine gender role prescribes that women should behave in ways that are nurturing. Women were usually excluded and, when mentioned, were usually portrayed in sex stereotypical roles such as wives, mothers, daughters, and mistresses.
Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’ created a powerful reflection on identity representation and stereotypical femininity.
Conceptual:
Sherman is using selfies to deceive the audience.
Claude Cahun
About:
Claude Cahun was a French photographer and writer associated with the Surrealists. Her work was often in collaboration with her partner Marcel Moore, also an artist, and she is known mostly for her self-portraits which examine and challenge ideas of gender and identity.
Her work left a huge impression on photography and directly influenced contemporary photographers Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and Nan Goldin.
In early-20th-century France, when society generally considered women to be women and men to be men, Lucy Schwob decided she would rather be called Claude Cahun. It was her way of protesting gender and sexual norms.
In taking the gender-neutral forename Claude and by shaving her head, as she did often in the late 1910s, Cahun actively and outwardly rejected social constructions of gender and sexual identity. Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience. It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.
Cahun’s connection with Jersey began early, with childhood holidays spent in Jersey and Brittany. They were born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France to a wealthy Jewish family. But in their late teens and early twenties Cahun had been looking for a new, gender-neutral name for a while.
In the image, it is a self-portrait of Claude Cahun. She is sat with her legs crossed and her gaze is staring directly at the camera. She is wearing black shorts, pale tights and top emblazoned ‘I am in training Don’t kiss me’, sitting with her right leg over her left, a heart on her thigh, spherical weights to right and left. On the weights, they have the names of comic heroes on it ‘Totor and Popol’.
Contextual:
Women were expected to roll up their sleeves and keep their homes and families running smoothly – and on a budget. Women without a family – either by choice or by circumstance – were often overlooked.There were more job opportunities for women in the 1920s and 1930s due to better education. Many women found work as clerks, teachers and nurses. The nature of industries changed and new types of work emerged. Many women found work in the new light industries e.g. making electrical goods. British society remained intensely gender and class ridden throughout the 1920s. Women had only slowly, and prosaically, gained political rights in the 1920s and secured little in the way of equality of opportunity in employment and education.
Conceptual:
Through an exploration of the multiplicities of gender, works such as the self-portrait from their series I am in Training Don’t Kiss Me (1927) declare that Cahun’s gender is both allowed to be on public display while simultaneously not to be objectified and exoticized by the male gaze. ‘I am in training, don’t kiss me’ refers to a provocative phrase that embodies the surrealist movement’s emphasis on challenging norms and expectations in society and art.
Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or a group. Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life.
What is femininity?
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.
What is masculinity?
Masculinity involves displaying attitudes and behaviours that signify and validate maleness, and involves being recognised in particular ways by other men and women. Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness.
How can Identity be affected?
Identity can be affected in lots of different ways, for example:
Gender Identity:
Gender identity is defined as a personal and internal sense of oneself as male, female, or other. Gender expression is defined as the way in which an individual publicly expresses their gender, for example, through aspects such as clothing, hair, makeup, and body language.
Cultural Identity:
Cultural identity refers to an individual’s sense of belonging and connection to a particular cultural group or community encompassing the shared values, traditions, customs, language, beliefs, and behavioral norms that define and distinguish a specific cultural or ethnic group.
Social Identity:
Social identity refers to people’s self-categorizations in relation to their group memberships (the “we”). These categorisations are often assigned to us or something we are born into.
Geographical Identity:
Geographical identity refers to an individual or group’s sense of attachment to the country, region, city, or village in which they live.
Political Identity:
Political identity is how a person or group of persons think of themselves in relation to the politics and government of a country. Everything that makes up our sense of self are components of our political identity. This includes our ethnicity, religion, gender, class, ideology, nationality and even our age and generation.
Lack of/ Loss of Identity:
Loss of identity may follow all sorts of change; changes in the workplace, loss of a job or profession, loss of a role that once defined us, as a child, as a parent, as a spouse, as an employee. This leaves a gap, an abyss, an empty space.
Stereotypes:
A stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.
Prejudices:
Prejudices is a favoring or dislike of something without good reason, unfriendly feelings directed against an individual, a group, or a race. prejudice.
Creative photography contains an extra element (or elements) that are intentionally used to improve the photo from its original state.
Double/ Multi-Exposure
Double exposure photography is a technique that layers two different exposures on a single image, combining two photographs into one. Double exposure creates a surreal feeling for your photos and the two photographs can work together to convey deep meaning or symbolism.
Multiple exposures are photographs in which two or more images are superimposed in a single frame, and they’re super easy to create using your analogue camera.
These can both be achieved in photoshop by creating layers and then using blending options and opacity control, but also by erasing through parts of layers to reveal parts of other images, or by using the camera settings.
This is one of my edits that I made with two pictures of chanell. I did it so that it would look like her real emotions were coming out from the emotion that she displays on a daily basis.
Man Ray
Man Ray was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself. The influential and prolific American photographer and painter adopted the pseudonym Man Ray around 1909.
Man Ray’s exploration of multiple exposures allowed him to create images that were layered with meaning and symbolism. By superimposing multiple images onto a single frame, he constructed visual narratives that transcended the confines of linear storytelling.
The composition features a woman’s face partially obscured by the superimposition of several hands positioned in an almost ghostly manner. The interplay of light and shadow, alongside the ethereal double exposure technique, adds a hauntingly beautiful quality to the work. The melancholic expression of the face combined with the overlapping imagery creates a visual representation that evokes both mystery and introspection, inviting viewers to interpret the underlying emotions and narrative.
Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition photography involves combining two or more elements in the same picture, highlighting the interesting contrast between them, to create an eye-catching and thought-provoking image. Juxtaposition provides depth and interest in a photograph, and may also convey a message from the photographer.
Becque á Barbe: Face to Face– Martin Toft
Martin Toft is an artist and educator who has exhibited and published widely internationally. He was born in Aarhus, Denmark (1970). Self-taught in photography he completed his MA (by Project) in Fine Art at the University of Portsmouth in 2000. He moved to Jersey, Channel Islands in 2004 to take up his current post of Teacher of Photography (part-time) at Hautlieu school. He works on commissions and long-term independent and collaborative projects and his practice combines documentary and fine art approach to explore social, anthropological and cultural themes, often immersing himself in communities for long periods of time. His work is underpinned by archival research using lens-based media across photography, video, sound and text.
The Becque à Barbe project depicts human faces that are juxtaposed with “portraits” of rock faces. Martin Toft has taken images of rocks that appear similar to the native speakers due to their posture, facial features and overall silhouette. I believe that the concept of juxtaposing a portrait of a native speaker with an image of a rock face is to look at how Jérriais is used, not only to describe characteristics of people but also how it is embedded in Jersey’s native tongue in describing a landscape. Some portraits are darker than others in tone which could reflect how the language was hidden when English became the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and prohibited to be spoken in schools.
Becque á Barbe – Martin Toft
Montage
Montage work includes various types of image editing in which multiple photographs are cut up and combined to form one new image.
Aleksander Rodchenko / Russian Constructivism
Rodchenko was one of the most versatile constructivist and productivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic.
From 1918 to 1922 Rodchenko increasingly worked in the Constructivist style: a completely abstract, highly geometric style that he painted by using a ruler and compass. In 1918 Rodchenko presented a solo show in Moscow. That year he also painted a series of black-on-black geometric paintings in response to the famous White on White painting of his rival, Kazimir Malevich. That spirit of rivalry with the older generation of avant-garde painters proved an important creative stimulus for Rodchenko. As head of the group of young Constructivists, he engaged in a heated battle for “industrial art” over easel painting. The battle was won by the “industrial artists,” in the field of theory (Rodchenko replaced Wassily Kandinsky as the director of the Institute of Artistic Culture) as well as in the teaching and practice of art. In 1919 Rodchenko began to make three-dimensional constructions out of wood, metal, and other materials, again by using geometric shapes in dynamic compositions; some of those hanging sculptures were, in effect, mobiles.
Studio lighting in photography happens when a photographer uses an artificial light source to either add to the light that’s already there, or to completely light their photograph. Setups can range from using a single flash that you mount onto your camera, to multiple off-camera lights.
Why do we use studio lighting?
Shooting with the appropriate LED studio lights allows you to capture images and colours the way they look in real life, removing the need to process photos after the shoot. Most LED lights are adjustable and can be dimmed or brightened depending on what you need. Studio lights are essential tools for photographers to illuminate their images and videos. Lighting is a very important tool when it comes to controlling the image and using studio lights in an effective way is an art in itself.
What is the difference between 1-2-3 point lighting and what does each technique provide / solve?
One point lighting would involve just one light and this would be illustrated as the key light.
Two point lighting is when the light sources point directly towards each other and the subject is placed between the two.
Three point lighting is a traditional method for illuminating a subject in a scene with light sources from three distinct positions. The three types of lights are key light, fill light, and backlight.
Key Light
What it provides: Usually the key light is the main source of light and it is placed at an angle to the subject to create texture, depth, and contrast. It highlights the form and dimension of on-screen subjects and allow cinematographers to control the atmosphere of a scene.
Positioning: The key light is normally placed at a 45 degree angle to the person, it has to be only slightly above eye level and to one side.
Effect: Using a soft key light creates more diffused shadows, conveying a gentle, flattering, and natural feel. On the other hand, a hard key light generates sharp, well-defined shadows, which can be used to create a more dramatic or stylized portrait.
Fill Light
What it provides: The purpose of a fill light is to illuminate the parts of the subject that the main light cannot reach.
Positioning: If your main light source is behind your subject, then place the fill light in front of your subject. If your main light source is to the side of your subject, then place your fill light to the side of your subject also.
Effect: Balancing the overall illumination of a scene, especially in areas with shadows or low light contrast. Its main function is to soften shadows and lessen the hardness of the key light. This results in a more appealing and balanced visual.
Back Light
What it provides: Backlight is light that hits an actor or subject from behind, typically higher than the subject it is exposing. Backlighting an object or actor from the background creates more depth and shape to a subject.
Positioning: Place the camera in the direction of the subject and position your subject in a way so that the backlight is directly behind the subject.
Effect: This will help create a light spill effect, where the light seems to spill from behind the outline of your subject.
Rembrandt Lighting
Rembrandt lighting is characterized by an illuminated triangle (also called “Rembrandt patch”) under the eye of the subject on the less illuminated side of the face. It is named for the Dutch painter Rembrandt, who occasionally used this type of lighting.
This is a photo that I took of Alef, before and after editing, using the Rembrandt lighting. I asked him to sit facing directly towards the camera and I just positioned the light to be diagonal from him but still facing his side. I used the spot healing brush tool to smoothen his face a bit and I increased the vibrancy and the contrast and I decreased the brightness and saturation.
Butterfly Lighting
Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting pattern where the key light is placed above and directly centred with a subject’s face. This creates a shadow under the nose that resembles a butterfly. It’s also known as ‘Paramount lighting,’ named for classic Hollywood glamour photography. Butterfly lighting is a popular setup because it has the effect of slimming the face due to shadows that are created on both sides of the face. This provides a flattering look that emphasizes a subject’s facial features, highlighting the eyebrows, cheekbones, and nose in a photogenic way.
Butterfly lighting often conveys a sense of classic beauty and timeless elegance. The soft, even illumination can evoke feelings of warmth and serenity in viewers.
In this photo I used butterfly lighting to make the shadow under his nose. I positioned him facing towards the camera with a light right above him. I cropped the image so that it is a square and i smoothed out his skin , increased brightness and contrast and the saturation and vibrancy.
Chiaroscuro Lighting
In photography, chiaroscuro lighting refers to the intentional employment of highlights and shadows to draw attention to the shape of the subject.
To achieve this type of lighting, establish a single, powerful light source first in order to create a chiaroscuro impression. This might be daylight coming in via a window, or it could be a studio light. To get the ideal shadow effects, position the light at an angle relative to your subject. chiaroscuro lighting is employed to heighten tension and create terrifying visuals.
This is a photo that I took of Chanell with chiaroscuro lighting. I positioned the light to be on one side of her facing her so that there is only light on one side of her face. I cropped the image so that she is centred and I turned down the brightness and the vibrancy. I increased the contrast, gamma correction and the saturation. This gave the image a more intense look.
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book Face of our Time was published in 1929. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century”.
People of the Twentieth Century
He began his decades-long project People of the Twentieth Century. Though Sander never completed this exceptionally ambitious project, it includes over 600 photographs divided into seven volumes and nearly 50 portfolios. The seven volumes Sander used as his organizing principles were The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People.
The photographs from this project are mostly black-and-white portraits of Germans from various social and economic backgrounds: aristocrats and gypsies, farmers and architects, bohemians and nuns. The portraits often include familiar signifiers (a farmer with his scythe, a pastry cook in a bakery with a large mixing bowl, a painter with his brushes and canvas, musicians with their instruments, and even a “showman” with his accordion and performing bear), but sometimes the visual clues to a subject’s “type” are not so obvious, leaving the title of the work and its placement in one of Sander’s categories to illuminate the subject’s role. The titles Sander assigned to his photographs do not reveal names, and capture one of the project’s many contradictions: Each photograph is a portrait of an individual, and at the same time an image of a type. Several subjects even reappear in different roles, which reveals an inherent flexibility that persists throughout the project.
Typologies
A photographic typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects, environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject and visually explores a theme or subject to draw out similarities and differences for examination.
Typology is a type of photograph which had its ultimate roots in August Sander’s series of portraits in 1929, titled “Face Of Our Time”. The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher began documenting old and broken down German industrial architecture in 1959.
August Sander’s typologies
Bernhard and Hilla Becher’s typologies
The artists’ most immediately recognizable work, the typologies group several photographs of a single category of industrial structure, such as cooling towers or blast furnaces. Presented together in a grid, subtle variations emerge among these homogeneous structures.
