Whilst researching for this assignment, I came across a series called “On the Bench” by a Ukrainiun photographer Yevgeniy Kotenko. The images taken over a 10year period of people on and around a bench located outside his parents house. The series was unplanned.
“I wasn’t thinking of making a series or a project,” Kotenko told Colossal. “I didn’t select any particular time frame or set of situations to capture. Not until 2012 did my friends tell me that I should put together an exhibition of these photos” kotenko, Y (2018)
“I never invested the photos with any particular intention or idea of what I wanted my audience to see,” Kotenko says. “They will see what they want to see. These photographs are more like a documentary.” And they document everything under the sun (and moon), showing what Kiev life is like from day to day and season to season” Kotenko, Y (2018)
Fig. 3 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 4 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 5 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 6 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 7 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 8 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 9 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 10 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 11 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 12 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 13 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 14 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 15 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 17 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Fig. 18 Kotenko, Y (2007- 2017)
Kotenko says “they will see what they want to see” and there is so much one could infer from the images. Some of them make me feel sad, some are just interesting and make me want to know more about the people/person.
With the situation in the Ukraine and the bombing of Kiev, I do wonder what is the situation for the people who live there and those who used to frequent the bench. I wonder if the bench is even still there? I did find the location of the bench but can’t find any information about where the Russian bombs have fallen in Kiev since the start of the war.
It might be worth looking at something like this for a future project. I found the series very powerful – perhaps even more so because of the situation there, but they would still have been very powerful, perhaps just in a different way.
I very much want to stay with the idea of people rather than having actual people in the images.
This part of the course is all about “Removing the Figure” and by doing so it leaves us with a notion of what was there, what should be there or indeed in some cases what will be there. It can fire our imagination with something exciting or something sinister. What is not there is often so much more than what is!
An empty park bench is something that can be all of those things. Someone has sat there, someone will sit there again. Why is no one there?, what happened to the person or people who were sitting there? The plaques that are often placed on these benches can be sad, funny and sometimes confusing, but often tell us something about a person that we never knew, will never get to know but have something in common with – the bench or perhaps the view?
What do these pieces of furniture tell us about people? Many photographers have taken images of furniture to say something about “People” or human nature or the way in which we leave traces of ourselves once we are no longer there.
Both Tracy Emin and Barbara Taylor used unmade empty beds.
Barbera Taylor:
Taylor who was born in New York graduated in Brighton in 2003 with an BA in editorial photography.
“The unmade bed carries the memory of what happened before. The crumpled sheets hold the imprints of the passion.” Taylor 2010
Fig. 1 Barbara Taylor “Beds” (2010)
Tracy Emin:
Tracy Emin born in 1963 is a British artist working in both sculpture, painting and drawing, film and photography. One of her most famous pieces is “My Bed” (1998). Inspired by depression and what she had accumulated after staying in bed for four days drinking alcohol and not eating.
“It remains one of contemporary art’s most striking depictions of vulnerability, a self-portrait that doesn’t veer from the messiness of depression and heartbreak. In particular, it appealed to viewers who connected their own painful experiences to those implied by Emin’s installation” Cohen (2018)
Fig. 2 Tracey Emin My Bed (1998)
Public benches seem to be quite a common photographic subject. Both from a historical and human perspective.
Where does that leave the photographer? As storyteller or history writer?
Do you tend towards fact or fiction?
How could you blend your approach?
Where is your departure from wanting/needing to depict reality
Make some notes on these questions in your learning log.
William Eggleston’s series Memphis doesn’t seem to tell you a great deal about Memphis itself. Without the text it would be difficult to judge where the photographs had been taken. They become quite generic as far as mid west America is concerned. So perhaps they say more about the mid west in the late 60s early 70s which would include towns like Memphis. The photograph used in the student notes is from the Memphis series and is of a child’s tricycle outside a house on what looks like a suburban street (Fig. 1)
The way the shot has been taken makes the tricycle appear very important. It is shot from below and from a perspective that makes it look imposing against its background. The car in the background looks very small and inisignificant in comparison. When I first saw this image I imagined that the child who owned the bike had abandoned it to go in for their lunch or dinner. and that this was a working-class neighbourhood who were not badly off. Looking more closely at the bike it is a bit worn out and rusty so maybe my initial thoughts were a bit off. But why has it been made to appear so important? Is it telling me something about the location? That this is very much a neighbourhood that values family and in particular the children or that the bike has been thrown away and abandoned. For me this image is telling a story and giving some historical information at the same time.
Fig. 1 William Eggleston, Memphis (c.1969-70)
In the past I would very much be drawn to create images of everyday things that were hard to identify. I often created aesthetically pleasing images of things that were generally not seen as being beautiful. So Im drawn to fiction but am happy to take images that portray fact too. I think I may already be blending my approach to fact and fiction in my photography and certainly in the last assignment there was an element of both which I hope to expand on.
This course has really helped me to understand more about the power of the image and the power to affect the viewer, their emotions and what they see. I very much want to continue pursuing this approach as I move forward.
Create a series of work (aim for 7–10 images) which in some way reflects upon the ideas surrounding identity and place that you’ve looked at so far in this course. Use the written word to play a part in its creation.
You may be inspired by a poem, song or a novel or decide to write your own fictive piece. You may draw upon other people’s words via eavesdropping or another source or use extracts from journals. You might find interesting textual accounts in archives in libraries that could inform this assignment. Allow your creativity to be spurred on by spending time with these words and reflecting on them.
Be wary of illustrating your text with pictures and vice versa. Allow for the viewers’ interpretation to be opened up rather than shut down by the pairings. You may decide not to include the actual words in the final production; that’s fine, as long as they have in some way informed the research and development of the concepts and have pushed the imagery further as a result.
● Write a short reflective commentary (around 500 words) describing how your chosen ‘words’ have informed your series of images and make this available to your tutor alongside your images.
The idea for the Assignment came from noticing how the city I live in was expanding and how I seemed to reach it much earlier than I used to 20 years ago, when traveling back from any direction, I can’t a remember exactly what the houses, offices and all the other buildings have replaced but I suspect it was farmland and countryside. I wondered if I could find a poem or a piece of written work that fitted with this observation. I was rather stunned to find Philip Larkins poem “Going Going” seemed to fit very well with my thoughts, although having been written in 1972 it does sound very much out of step with todays thoughts on the planet and climate change. I found a youtube video of Larkin himself reading the Poem and loved his beautiful clipped english accent. This wonderful English upper class accent is also being lost in the same way the the countryside is being taken over so I thought it would be very apt to use his actual recording.
Having spent a couple of years in an out of lockdown through the pandemic, and having lost a few close family members in that time, I really didn’t want to put myself through a project that was all “doom and gloom” and “end of the world climate change” centric. I wanted to be positive and optimistic about the future, and although Larkins poem isn’t particularly optimistic, neither is it “we are all going to die and there’s no future” He does see a future. I wanted to try and get across a feeling that we are losing something but what that is being replaced with isn’t all that bad sometimes. We do have to look after the planet but we do have to expand and those ideas can work together. I wanted to make sure the the poem did not describe the images as they appeared, but through looking and listening that a general idea of change, but not all bad, was gained by the viewer/listener.
I wanted the images to give a sense of the countryside in harmony with man made buildings and objects and for them to be pleasing to the eye and not be viewed as “eyesores”. Listening to the poem without the images, there is quite a pessimistic feel to it, particularly towards the end. Viewing the images without the poem leaves you with a set of 9 pleasant images that perhaps give a sense that these man made objects can be viewed in a positive way. The poem defiantly gives the images context and helps to balance the pessimistic and the optimistic.
I took the majority of the images whilst on a journey from the UK through France and into Italy over a three day period. I keept the poem in mind, listening to and reading it on a regular basis to try and influence the shots that I took. Some of the shots were taken from the car whilst we were moving.
Creating a movie was something I had never done before and it really worked well for this project. Any other way of presenting would not have allowed the viewer to look and listen simultaneously, and in sequence.
I wanted to start thinking about the text before the images for this Assignment and options about how to present the text and what that might mean. I really hadn’t thought of handwritten text as making a great deal of different, but there is no doubt it does. I don’t know if I will use this method but it is certainly something I will keep in mind.
Duane Michals and Jim Goldberg
I came across these two photographers during my research and realised even more what a difference text can have on how an image is perceived. I also released that how that text is presented can have a huge influence on the feelings they elicit.
Duane Michals, an American photographer born in 1932 is well known for images that incorporate text.
I was interested in comparing the image without text, with text but printed not handwritten and hand written. I took one of his well known images and removed the text (Fig.1) I then added the text but in print rather than “hand written” (Fig.2) and compared them to the original with “hand written text” Fig. 3
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3 (Michals, n.d.)
For me, and I suspect others, Fig. 3 elicits a greater emotional response. You can almost see the boy sitting at a desk with his head in one hand as he writes the words after his fathers death. Fig. 2 Seems colder because the text is not handwritten. It still elicits an emotional response but in a different way. It almost echos the coldness of the boys father. Fig. 1 is now an image that can be interpreted in many different ways and the amount and sort of emotions that it might elicit would be very much down to the viewers own thoughts and experiences.
Jim Goldberg, an American artist and photographer born in 1953 created the series Rich and Poor between 1977 and 1985. After interviewing then photographing people in their homes he asked them to comment on the image in their own words and hand. The words, the grammar the writing style and punctuation all add extra dimensions to this work which would be impossible to get any other way.
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
One image that is an example of how there are extra dimensions at play here is Fig. 5. The words tell us a story but the hand writing is potentially telling us another story. It is a very “fancy” script, and if we chose to decide that this person is an alcoholic stuck in a hostel we might want to ask ourselves what part of the story enabled him to write in this unusual way. This would be completely lost if the text had been printed and not hand written.
Create a series of work (aim for 7–10 images) which in some way reflects upon the ideas surrounding identity and place that you’ve looked at so far in this course. Use the written word to play a part in its creation.
You may be inspired by a poem, song or a novel or decide to write your own fictive piece. You may draw upon other people’s words via eavesdropping or another source or use extracts from journals. You might find interesting textual accounts in archives in libraries that could inform this assignment. Allow your creativity to be spurred on by spending time with these words and reflecting on them.
Be wary of illustrating your text with pictures and vice versa. Allow for the viewers’ interpretation to be opened up rather than shut down by the pairings. You may decide not to include the actual words in the final production; that’s fine, as long as they have in some way informed the research and development of the concepts and have pushed the imagery further as a result.
● Write a short reflective commentary (around 500 words) describing how your chosen ‘words’ have informed your series of images and make this available to your tutor alongside your images.
The idea for this assignment came about whilst driving in my local area. The city I live in sits within a triangle, with the triangle being a motorway bypass. When I first moved to the area the city seemed to be quite a long way away from the edges of this triangle but 20years on it has crept closer and closer and is now sitting only a few hundred yards from that border in some places along the road. I have been doing quite a lot of wandering in my local area for a previous assignment and I think this is causing me to pay more attention to my surroundings. It is very similar to Exercise 5 but the idea behind it is very different.
It made me wonder how much farm land, trees, hedges and how many fields have been sacrificed to enable this growth. This is not to say that it wasn’t necessary. I am not disputing the need for housing and growth. I wanted to highlight this this creeping expansion and what it is replacing somehow using text and images.
After a bit more research into images and text (Links) I decided I wanted to create images of what has replaced the countryside with text about the wonderful countryside. I want both the images and the text to be equally in what they are saying. I don’t particularly want to give the impression that I feel very negative about the expansion. I also don’t intend to create a piece of text to go with each individual image but rather like Diambra Mariani and Maria Teresa Salvati series “This is the only way of love I know” (link to research) I want the series to use the text and the images simultaneously allowing for something additional to be added. The text and the images should be conveying the same feelings. I will also experiment with writing the text rather than typing (print) it to try and elicit and convey a more personal viewpoint such as Salvati’s text and the series “Rich and Poor” by Jim Goldberg and in Duane Michals “A letter from my father” (research link)
Whilst researching text, I came across a poem by Phillip Larkin called “Going, Going” that I had never heard of. I really was a bit astounded by the words! I was also astounded that I came across it so quickly. It reflects perfectly my own thoughts, even down to wondering if it’s old age making me wonder about this kind of expansion. And perhaps strangely similar to me, not seeing it in a complexity negative way, perhaps more lamenting its loss. Although this poem is reflective of many my feelings there are references to the treatment of the earth which of course we know so much about now. When Larkin wrote the poem there was much less known about the damage we were doing and how critical it would become.
I found a youtube recording of Larkin reading the poem and wondered if audio be something to consider? I would of course, lose the idea of the handwritten text. The audio version would make it more personal to Larkin than to me but his voice and wonderful clipped British accent is something to behold! and harks back to a time gone by which resonates with the idea behind the project. I am a bit concerned how long the text is and how it would sit with the images. The images could be viewed whilst listening to the poem and this might be a more effective way for the viewer to create their own connections and emotions.
Going Going by Philip Larkin (1972)
I thought it would last my time – The sense that, beyond the town, There would always be fields and farms, Where the village louts could climb Such trees as were not cut down; I knew there’d be false alarms
In the papers about old streets And split level shopping, but some Have always been left so far; And when the old part retreats As the bleak high-risers come We can always escape in the car.
Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about; Chuck filth in the sea, if you must: The tides will be clean beyond. – But what do I feel now? Doubt?
Or age, simply? The crowd Is young in the M1 cafe; Their kids are screaming for more – More houses, more parking allowed, More caravan sites, more pay. On the Business Page, a score
Of spectacled grins approve Some takeover bid that entails Five per cent profit (and ten Per cent more in the estuaries): move Your works to the unspoilt dales (Grey area grants)! And when
You try to get near the sea In summer . . . It seems, just now, To be happening so very fast; Despite all the land left free For the first time I feel somehow That it isn’t going to last,
That before I snuff it, the whole Boiling will be bricked in Except for the tourist parts – First slum of Europe: a role It won’t be hard to win, With a cast of crooks and tarts.
And that will be England gone, The shadows, the meadows, the lanes, The guildhalls, the carved choirs. There’ll be books; it will linger on In galleries; but all that remains For us will be concrete and tyres.
Most things are never meant. This won’t be, most likely; but greeds And garbage are too thick-strewn To be swept up now, or invent Excuses that make them all needs. I just think it will happen, soon. Larkin, P (1972)
I am trying to pin down what it is I want this project to do. It is something that I tend to forget about. I always seem to end up with something that doesn’t seem to anchor itself to anything meaningful.
I don’t want it to piece of work that is trying to “highlight climate change”, “the destruction of the planet” or the “loss of nature and countryside” I do feel strongly about all these things but there is a place for growth and expansion as long as these aspects are considered at the strongest level. I just want a peaceful, accepting bit of work that says, we are expanding, we have to expand, we will expand, it’s not great but it’s not all bad. I, along with a great many people have had a pretty tricky time over the last few years and am feeling a bit emotionaly spent. I really want to try and veer away somewhat from the deep doom and gloom and try to be a bit optimistic about the future – what ever that might look like. I’m not sure if Larkins Poem is perhaps a bit too pessimistic but it does feel right for this project. Perhaps the fact that he wrote it in 1972 before we realised what we actually were doing to the planet makes it a little less desperate and hopeless in places.
As far as the images are concerned, I don’t want pictures of ugly concrete structures , I want to show that what we replace some of the beautiful countryside with can also be seen as beautiful. I want the images to soften the parts of the text that are a bit harsh and visa versa. They should be working together to get across my message!
I realised that leading up to the assignment due date I would be traveling by car to and from Italy with a couple of weeks in Italy in between. I decided to take plenty of shots during the three days on the way down and see how they turn out.
I ended up with quite a number of shots. Some I took on the move from the car! I spent a few days going through them whilst listening to Larkins poem and reading again and again what I wanted them both to say. I star rated them in Adobe bridge, cutting them down bit by bit.
Once again I realised that some of them had sneaked in just because I liked them and not because they fitted what I wanted to say. I guess this will always be the case, and I’m just pleased that I can recognise it now.
I cut them down to between 20 and 30 (Contact sheet 001, 002) and then left them for a day or so.
Contact Sheet 001
Contact Sheet 002
I went back after a day with fresh eyes and cut them down some more. Once again a kept revisiting my aim. (Contact sheet 003, 004)
Contact sheet 003
Contact sheet 004
I kept going through this process until I had shortlisted down to 10 possible images. (Contact Sheet 005)
Contact Sheet 005
After leaving them for a day or so again, I decided to remove image 566. It wasn’t really adding anything and wasn’t interesting or attractive enough (in the right way) to be included.
Possible Final Images
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
I left them for another 2 days and coming back to them, replaced image 4. I had not been happy with it but wasn’t sure why. Coming back to it I still feel the same. It’s a bit blurry and not very clear. It also doesn’t really have anything to contribute to the aim of the work. Looking back through the images Im decided to try a few of them to see how they would work. I replaced image four with image 4a and feel that it works well within the series. There appear to be layers of rural through to industrial.
4a
Now that I have the final images, I have to decide how best to present them with the poem. I certainly cant present them as they are above! They look like the images you click when you’re trying to prove that you’re not a robot!!!
I decided that they would be best presented one after the other with the poem being read in the background. I tried using PowerPoint which was OK but didn’t quite give me what I wanted. After a rather brutal, frustrating and long introduction to iMovie I managed to create an Mp4 that did just what I wanted.
It took a bit of time to decide the order of the images. I wanted them to flow, I wanted them to gel with the words but not describe them. I also realised that a couple of the images may be hard to decipher and although it’s not necessary to know exactly what each image is of, but for some of them, a bit of context might be useful. For example, I placed the image of the pylons after the image of the electric wires.
I hadn’t anticipated creating a movie for this assignment so the image ratio was not correct for wide screen. This wasn’t such a big problem but is does mean that the images don’t completely fit the screen in the movie.
Find words that have been written or spoken by someone else. You can gather these words from a variety of means – interviews, journals, archives, eavesdropping. Your subject may be a friend, stranger, alive or dead. Select your five favourite examples and create five images that do justice to the essence of those words.
You may choose to present your images with or without the original words. Either way, make sure that the images are working hard to tell a story. If you decide to include the words, ensure that they add to the meaning rather than describing the image or shutting it down. Try to keep your image-and-text combinations consistent – perhaps they are all overheard conversations on a bus or all come from an old newspaper report. Keep them part of a story.
Consider different ways of presenting the words. Audio or video might lend itself well to this kind of work, or a projection of images using voice-over. Experiment.
I decided I wanted to try putting some images together with words that had come from “evesdropping” I had started to gather bits of conversations that I heard while out and about when I heard something that reminded me of a covert photo I took for a previous exercise.
The words I heard were “yes, we are OK. I’m taking Dad to see the consultant this afternoon and hoping for the all clear” I wasn’t really sure how I felt about writing these words down. Up till then all the snippets I had heard were pretty banal. I felt a bit guilty, not because I overheard what the person said, but the fact that I was listening to their conversation in the hope of getting a snippet that I could use.
I looked through the covert images I had taken for Part 3 of this unit and there were a few photos that seemed to gel with those eavesdropped words. Perhaps not the spoken words exactly but more the thoughts of the individuals. Would the images take in a very different look when matched with thoughts taken from those eavesdropped words. Because many of the images are close up shots, they are often being viewed out of context. This makes it quite easy to overlay a meaning that has come from a complete unrelated (as far as I know) source.
I came up with a few sentences based around the original words
“I hope dad is going to get the all clear this afternoon. Perhaps we can have a bit of a celebration”
I wonder if Bill and I will be able to do this together next year. I hope he gets the all clear.
I am so relieved that Dad got the all clear.
I wish they would let me know if Dad has got the all clear yet.
I then went through the original set of images and selected those that might fit (contact sheet 001)
Contact sheet 001
I then selected the ones that would work best with the text.
I wonder if Bill and I will be able to do this together next year. I hope he gets the all clear
I wish they would let me know if Dad has got the all clear yet
I hope dad is going to get the all clear this afternoon. Perhaps we can have a bit of a celebration
I am so relieved that Dad got the all clear
This is a bit of a follow on from the previous exercise where we looked at alternative interpretations. I find this has an extra twist with the images and the words having been taken covertly.
Create a storyboard where the image does not depend on the text and the text
adds something new to the narrative. This exercise is a light-hearted look at the role of image and text.
Aim for it to be around 10 frames long.
Draw the picture storyboard first and then add the text.Note how the story is affected when the text is added.
I went with board looking at someone stuck inside during the pandemic and not able to go out at all due to additional health complications. Counting the days, staring out of the window and finding things to do. (Apologies for my terrible drawings)
I think the board without text is fairly self explanatory. I suppose it might not necessarily need a pandemic for it to make sense as people get stuck indoors for all sorts of other reasons and illnesses. I would like to show it to someone who doesn’t know the brief and see what they make of it before I add any text. It would be interesting to do that with a few people and see what their understanding is of it and how much more or less of a difference the text makes.
Img. 1
Img. 2
Adding the next has made a difference in respect of a better understanding and also a bit of guilt coming in insertion to drinking and eating too much and not doing enough exercise. This would have been tricky to get across without the text. I feel it has also taken on a bit of a humorous feel to it with the text, providing the guilt aspect doesn’t overshadow! I think this would be interpreted very differently from an emotional perspective depending on the viewers own experiences during the lockdown and or of life in general.
Choose a day that you can spend out and about looking with no particular agenda. Be conscious of how images and texts are presented to you in the real world – on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, and online, for example. Make notes in your learning log on some specific examples and reflect upon what impact the text has on how you read the overall message.
Consider the following:
Does the text close the image down (i.e. inform or direct your reading) or open it up (i.e. allow for your personal interpretation to play a part in creating the final meaning)?
What do you think was the intention of the creator in each instance? Anchorage and relay
Whilst doing some research on billboard and bus stop adverts I came across a website that had some really creative ones. Some had text, some didn’t need text, so I stuck with a couple that had text so that I could use them for this exercise.
Fig 1. is an actual fish tank with live fish swimming around in it. Without the text I think most people would understand that it is an advert selling fish for us to eat (not as pets). The clue here is the plate and cutlery. They might think about fresh fish, but the text makes it clear that this is not only about selling fish but about how fresh that fish is. I’m assuming this was a successful campaign? Unfortunately for me and a few other people I know, seeing a live fish swimming about over a plate, knifeand fork would actually have the opposite effect, and make me think to much about the fish as a living thing that I should not be buying or eating! The text helps to close the meaning of this add down but as mentioned it could be very controversial and in fact could be interpreted in the opposite way and trying to make us feel guilty. The “Fisch Franke” fishmonger logo tends to close it down even more and helps to interpret it in the correct way. a
I found Fig.2 quite fascinating. The only sign in this image is the arrow pointing down to text. In order to read the text you have to bend down and the text then comments on the fact that you are bending down and suggests that it would attract attention all the time if your bum were in a pair of “sexy jeans” I can’t see any reference to any particular make of jeans so I can’t confirm that is is indeed advertising such. The text is obviously vital for this one to work and be understood. I imagine she people might squat to read the text, but they would still understand it even if they haven’t quite done what was expected and predicted according to the text. This one fascinated me because the text appears to know or predicted what the person reading it has done and so suddenly becomes personal. We know it hasn’t but it still works in that way. Even without any reference to particular company, this ad is still closed down by the text. It is all about wearing the right jeans.
Looking through magazines and Sunday supplements I cam across these two ads that were in the same supplement and only a page turn away from each other.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Both adds are made more attractive by the 15min reference in Fig. 3 and the 3 step reference in Fig. 4, both of which are in much larger text than the rest. The soups both look very tasty and appetising and the fact that they can be made in 15mins or in 3 steps is very appealing. People tend to want everyday meals quick and easy these days would rather not skimp on goodness or quality if they can help it. The other word that is in bold is “HERO”. Even better! not only am I going to get a delicious soup quickly and easily but if I do make it I’m going be a hero! When you read the smaller print it claims its healthy and will help the planet. I think that by having them so close to each other in the same supplement has allowed the ad to express several things including the fact that not only are these soups quick to make they are easy too, and that there is a variety. Both adds together get these things across. The text in these ads closes down the meaning.
OCA tutor Dawn Woolley wrote a regular blog on the weareoca website called ‘Looking at Adverts’. Read one of Dawn’s articles and write a blog post or make a comment on the site in response.
I found the Dawns blogs but unfortunately wasn’t able to see any of the images. I did however manage to find the image she used for the first of these blogs in 2014 on another site. (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1
I decided to list all the things I saw and how I interpreted them. While I was doing this it occurred to me that although I might have seen and interpreted similar things as I would in 2014, it is now 8 years on so some of those interpretations may be a bit different.
The overall impression is of a street party celebration and a fly past by a team who look very similar to the Red Arrows Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team. This tends to be connected to royal events such as coronations, weddings, jubilees and for the queens milestone birthdays. Certainly the text uses the word “celebrating” twice with perhaps a nod to royal milestone birthdays by stating that they were celebrating their 90th year. I certainly thought of royal jubilee street parties as the queen is celebrating her platinum jubilee this year and there has been quite a bit of information regarding the celebrations in the media. They also use the words “you can rely on” and I wonder if that is a not to the long standing reliability of the queen? It might have been a not to the reliability of the British monarchy in 2014 but I doubt that would be the case now with recent events surrounding some of the royal family. It really is quite interesting to see how differently some of these things might have been interpreted in 2014!
Although I thought of the Red Arrows when i saw the planes in the image; because of the current conflict in the Ukraine, I did think of was and air raids until I precessed the rest of the image. It proves to me without doubt that we may create an image today to say one thing but we never know when or how much that intent can get skewed by the passing of time and events.
Although the aerobatic team appear to resemble the red arrows, they are in fact green. This could just be to fit with the colour scheme of the product or perhaps they were not allowed to use them in the image. There is a great deal of “Britishness” in the image. The flags, the strawberries, sandwiches, terraced houses, clothing and bunting. Could this be another idea to make us feel like this product is reliable and sound? I’m not sure how may people would see “britishness” in this way in the current climate? The country has so many negative and positive things going on at the moment, it’s hard to tell. It’s a bit of an old fashioned perhaps arrogant way to think. I also wonder how this would be viewed by non British people?
In her blog Dawn Woolly explains that
“There are different levels of meaning – there is the literal level (called the denoted meaning in semiotics) that tells us what is in the image. In this case there is a building, a tree, people, a table, food, flowers, flags and aircraft. The second level of meaning refers to what is implied by these objects. The understanding of the objects at this level can vary depending on the existing knowledge you have and your cultural background. This is called connotation” (Woolley, 2014)
The woman in the foreground looks very much like Kate Middleton although I’m not sure how much that would come to mind for people looking at the image today. In 2014 she perhaps was more prominent in the press due to the wedding 3 years before and the birth of Prince George 1 year before in 2013. I found a couple of images that might suggest they were trying to push this particular royal angle. (Fig. 2,3)
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
There is one aspect of the image that I don’t really understand and that is why the two women on the left have really messy hair? Is this trying to point out that the woman in the foreground is wearing the hairspray and the other two aren’t, and look how good her hair looks compared to them? A bit more digging around and I found a few more images that makes me think that this was a “thing” but previously included the words “For Life’s Little Dramas” thus making it clear why the other people look a bit messy or windswept compared to the main subject. Im not sure this is what they intended but the text would help or perhaps just tidy hair!
Fig 4
For the 3 images above the text has helped the understanding of what is going on, but to be fair it probably isn’t needed. The image is quite self explanatory. However the fact that this product may help you to get through “Life’s Dramas” is a nice bit of marketing.
OCAPhotography 