Mon 20th January Group 12B MVT / JAC Photography Room
Tues 21st January Group 12E MVT / JAC / LJS Photography Room
Print Folder Deadline Wed 22nd January
We have included a mini-unit to help you explore creative opportunities with 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 :
Blog Post 1: Define ‘identity’, “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.
Blog Post 3: Optional PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Clare Rae
Blog Post 4: MINDMAP/ MOODBOARD: Add a mind-map and mood-board of ideas and associated visual stimulus. This is very important for this project, because it will steer your individual photoshoots…. E.g:
Blog Post 5: Artist reference 2 (Student Led) – Choose from a range of photographers that you feel explore themes of femininity, masculinity in relation to gender, identity or ‘self’. Include a detailed analysis and interpretation. This artist/s should influence your final outcome. Click here for a library of artists / photographers…. When choosing your artist/s… think about why / what / how – consider how you want to convey identity through photography.
Blog Post 6: PHOTO-SHOOTS: focused photoshoots exploring your ideas
Blog Post 7: EXPERIMENTATION: development of a number of final ideas
Blog Post 8: FINAL PHOTOS: Virtual gallery and evaluation
EXTENSION >THEORY/ CONTEXT: (If you complete this extension, back date it to make it an earlier blog post that comes at the start of the project). Make a blog post and write 300-500 words expressing: – What is identity politics – Make reference to culture wars. – 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 identity politics and include images. – Try and frame the debate both within a global and local perspective.
1. THEORY > CONTEXT
What is identity politics?
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. It emphasizes the distinct experiences and challenges faced by these groups and advocates for policies and practices that address their specific needs and rights.
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.
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.
A “culture war” signals much more than disagreement. It describes a sense of conflict between two irreconcilable worldviews in what is “fundamentally right and wrong about the world we live in” (1991).
What are some of the positives associated with Identity politics?
Identity Politics is responsible for raising concerns areound things like racism, gay rights, gender identity rights, and so on. With some progress made on these issues in the past few years…
Tribalism
How can tribalism contribute to a negative example of Identity Politics?
Tribalism A tribe is defined as “a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.” When we hear the word tribe, we may think of Native Americans, but in modern usage the term can also refer to people who share common ideas and allegiances. Tribalism is defined as “behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group.”
Tribalism can have very negative consequences when it is used to exclude individuals or groups or to take away their rights, status, and/or independence. These negative aspects of tribalism are often fueled by competition and the perception of a common threat. They promote fear, anxiety, and prejudice, all of which make us more susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and conflict. Tribalism can take many forms in our modern society. One prominent example of tribalism is individuals’ strong affiliations with sports teams. These affiliations are often built on regional identities and promoted through the use of symbols. We frequently see deep bonding between fans of a particular team who identify strongly with each other and against fans of opposing teams.
What other examples of tribalism can you find?
Mindmap and moodboard: -What does Identity mean to you?
Grayson Perry:
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?
Grayson Perry. The American Dream. 2019
This map of the US reflects a battle-torn landscape where nuance, compromise and empathy are casualties in the culture war
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.
ARTISTS:
Claude Cahun
CASE STUDY: Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob
(born October 25, 1894, Nantes, France—died December 8, 1954, St. Helier, Jersey) 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.
Look at Gillian Wearing – Clare Rae – Cindy Sherman
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.
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?
Claude CahunGillian Wearing
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 .
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 (between us): 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.
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
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.
3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image..
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman, A selection of images from her film stills
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.
Some of her latest images using digital montages
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
1910’s – The Suffragette1920’s – The Flapper1930’s – The Wall Street Wife1940’s – The Riveter1950’s – The Movie Star1960’s – The Super Model1970’s – The Hippie1980’s – The Business Woman1990’s – The New Wave Feminist
Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations
Students response ^
Cindy Sherman’s photo ^
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.
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.
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).
Susan’s Sleep
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 Beside
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.
Casa Susanna
Casa Susanna: A series of polaroid portraits found at a jumble sale about 20 years after the images were originally taken in the 1960s. This was a place where men who enjoyed female dress and transgender women were able to fully be themselves without judgement. It was a kind of holiday place but with an extremely strong community that cared for one another surrounding it.
Lissa Rivera.
Lissa Rivera. In Beautiful Boy (a chaptered series) the photographer makes images of her effeminate male partner, they have an interesting story on how he had felt so free during his time in college to dress and act as he felt confident but in the greater outside world he has reverted to sticking to the status quo and blending in as felt that he wouldn’t be accepted otherwise.
Walter Pfeiffer – Carlo Joh.
Walter Pfeiffer – Carlo Joh. A collaboration between photographer and the subject where the subject brought in their own props and was involved in the creative process of how they wanted to be represented..
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.
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, 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.
Anna Gaskell
Jeff Wall
Gregory Crewdson
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Sam Taylor-Johnson
Tracy Moffat
Untitled – May 1997 1997 Hannah Starkey born 1971
Vibeke Tandberg
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
Luis Cobelo
Hans Peter Feldmann – identity, status and gender
John Coplans Self Portraits 1984
Alicja Brodowicz
Hassan Hajjaj -culture clash- Moroccan Pop ArtKensuke Koike – reconstituting found portraits to create new / possible identities
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.
Dino Kuznik
Always explore, describe and explain :
who (is in the photo / took the photo)
what (is the photo about?)
why (has the image been made / displayed / connected to other images or text)
where (was the photo taken)
how was the photo taken (technical attributes)
when (was the photo taken)
LINKS to high scoring A GRADE exemplar EXAM PROJECTS
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
An example of two frames from Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Battleship Potemkin’, 1925
Thinking sculpturally / 3-D options
Sculptural images – using print-outs – student example
MOCK EXAM PREPARATION: Final prints must be added to the print folder !!!
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:
CONTROLLED CONDITIONS : Essentials
You will have one full day = 5 hours to complete this unit so make sure you use it productively
Complete and publish relevant blog posts as per Checklist above/ Go4School Tracking sheet and comments from teacher. BLOG SIZE images = 1000 pixels on SHORT EDGE
Produce mock versions of your final prints and describe how you wish to present them
later on…
Complete mounting all final prints and include label and velcro
Produce a virtual gallery and write an evaluation, comment on:
– How successful was your final outcomes? – Did you realise your intentions? – What references did you make to artists references – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual? – Is there anything you would do differently/ change etc?
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
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…
For the 5 x weeks leading up to the Year 12 PHOTOGRAPHYCONTROLLED CONDITIONS you will need to refer to this resource pack for ideas and inspiration… “SELF -PORTRAIT and IDENTITY JAC PDF” (to find it just copy and paste the link below into the top bar of the folder icon on your screen) M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsResourcesPortraitureTO DO
Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :
Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
Below are some INSTRUCTIONS AND INSPIRATIONS for you to experiment with creative portraiture outcomes.
YOUR BLOG POST/S
Create a Blog Post called ‘Creative Portraits‘ and complete the following:
Choose a 1-2 styles from the below experiments.
Research the inspiration behind the particular style and….
Recreate your own edits in the style you have chosen (using or existing portrait photos or take some more).
Experiments:
DOUBLE/ MULTI-EXPOSURE: layer or merge two or three images into one portrait- View Tutorial Here
JUXTAPOSITION: Place two images together to show contrast / similarities / symbolise something. This can be two portraits or a portrait juxtaposed with an object / environment / abstract image
MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of portraits and create a montage of layered images in Photoshop as an A3 document.
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, but also by erasing through parts of layers to reveal parts of other images.
Artist have used these techniques to explore Surrealist Ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.
Man Ray:
Alexander Rodchenko:
Claude Cahun:
Idris Khan:
Idris Khan, Every…Bernd And Hilla Becher Gable Sided Houses. 2004 Photographic print 208 x 160 cm
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.
Lewis Bush, Trading Zones:
Tiffany Sutton:
Michael Betzner:
More ideas:
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.
LIBERATION / OCCUPATION newspaper 25 April 2020
FUTURE OF SY HELIER newspaper 18 Sept 2019
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.
Nikita Pirogov:
Alicja Brodowicz:
Unknown artist…
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.
Try using textures and frames to add to your process ; you can find some pre-saved examples here
M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Frames and textures PHOTOSHOP
The roots of this process is in Dadaism and political artists such as Hannah Hoch…Known for her incisively political collages and photomontages (a form she helped pioneer), Hannah Höch appropriated and recombined images and text from mass media to critique popular culture, the failings of the Weimar Republic, and the socially constructed roles of women. After meeting artist and writer Raoul Hausmann in 1917, Höch became associated with the Berlin Dada group, a circle of mostly male artists who satirized and critiqued German culture and society following World War I. She exhibited in their exhibitions, including the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920, and her photomontages received critical acclaim despite the patronizing views of her male peers. She reflected, “Most of our male colleagues continued for a long while to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status.”
Russian Constructivism
El Lissitsky
Russian Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art period to flourish in Russia in the 20th-century. Looking back in 1924, the painter Kazimir Malevich wrote: “We have drawn two conclusions from Cubism, one is Suprematism, the other Constructivism…” Like Suprematism, Russian Constructivism was formed in 1914, before the October Revolution in 1917…
John Stezaker :
Mask XIV 2006
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
Kensuoke Koike:
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.
Jesse Draxler:
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.
In addition to complete the work listed above, you are expected to show evidence of the following three EEEs on the blog for the work on Creative Portraits
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 2 out of these 3 experiments on DOUBLE/ MULTIPLE EXPOSURE, JUXTAPOSITION, 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:
Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :
Mood-board, Mind-map of ideas (AO1)definition and introduction (AO1)
Statement of Intent / proposal
Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
