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Project 4: Developing Practice and Research, Exercise 1: Looking at artistic practice and research

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Brief

The main focus of Project 4 is developing your own work. In support of that activity, use the Source Text and Case Study examples to further your practice and research as you develop your understanding and awareness of complex boundaries of artistic practice and research themes and genres. 

Start by browsing the four sources below before returning to two of these in more depth.

 

Notes on Source 1, Colin Pantall – The Way We See, Where We Look and What We Show

Very useful source in relation to my current interest in Landscape and The Sublime. The picturesque sitting between The beautiful and The sublime and idealised views of land that ignores the more brutal and not so “pretty’ aspects. Landscape being instrumental in the creation of parks and used for survey and potential for human habitat. I hadn’t thought about landscape being referenced so may ways. I suspect it is something that we take for granted that we don’t consciously think of as “Landscape. Climate and environment are typical subjects that use Landscape images to get messages across. For example Cat Hyland and her photographs of lithium and Ester Von  Plom and her images of dying glacier.

Notes on Source 2, Stacey Tyrell, Self Portraiture and the Colonial Gaze

This could be a very useful source for future projects although perhaps not for this one. I am going down the path of Landscape/Still life but I can see how there could be a cross over with Landscape and Portraiture. There was a great deal of research in Staceys work and I suspect all the better for being such a personal subject matter to her. I was also interested to see that I great deal of the creation of the personas and sets were created by her with not much help.

Notes on Source 3, Chris Coekin, Backwards and Forwards in Time

Another very relevant source. I was particularly interested in ephemera ( items that are useful or important for a short period of time. This was something that also came up in source 4. and something I am thinking about testing out for this project. The case studies were very helpful and I noticed a personal theme running through them which made them far more appealing to me.

Notes on Source 4, Andy Hughes, Hermosa Beach

My interest in landscape and still life had started to take shape in the previous project so this source was full of useful information. I picked out and copied below the paragraphs that I thought were the most useful to me if I am to explore this type of image making. References to Ed Ruches work and his use of normal everyday products (Fig.2) and that of Stephanie H. Shih (Fig. 3) were also inspiring as they were normal everyday objects.

The lighter looks like it is the size of a phone box, in fact from a distance that is exactly what it looks like. The theme I am picking up with this ad Ed Ruschas work is “taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter” 

Fig.1 Andy Hughes Hermosa Beach2004

The connection between this photograph and Hermosa Beach are obvious. Connecting the land with an object is not particularly unusual, what Hughes image connects  found  object to waste and energy in terms of its function as a lighter and the plastic it is made from. The French philosopher Michel Serres describes waste matter and pollution in a unified theory. His idea that is that animals, including humans, use pollution to mark, claim and appropriate territory through defiling it.  For Hughes the lighter serves as a form of  territory marking set in and against the landscape.

Hughes’ photographic work encourages viewers to question the nature of materiality in relationship to waste. Hughes’ work challenges the agency of waste by various visual means and juxtaposition. His work attempts to reveal ‘thing-power’, a topic explored by political theorist Jane Bennet. The subject matter of his photographs often contains plastic, coffee cups, rubbish bins and other unknown throw-away items, the objects come alive; they seem to speak to each other and to us. He is interested in radical conceptions of materialism and the implications this has for politics, ecology and the everyday way we think of ourselves, others, and the world

“Many contemporary artist are interested the possibilities these ideas present, specifically these ideas have relationship to wider ecologies, the Anthropocene  (or Capitalocene) and global heating. The image in this case study is directly associated with such topics and shares a common thread with the subject matter of still life (or still death) more widely”

There are many examples of works of art that combine the still life and landscape together. In one of Dora Maar’s early photomontages, she created an uncanny and mesmeric image of a woman’s hand in a shell. The shell rests on the sand with a rolling sky looming ominously, over and above in the background.

Hughes work refers loosely to ideas contained within ‘memento mori’, in one sense many of the objects depicted in his work warn against the perils of increased consumption and desire, while seemingly celebrating plastics magical properties.

In Hughes’ hands, the familiar beached flotsam takes on a strangely monumental identity, not entirely unlike its precursor in Haacke’s monument to beach trash (Fig. 8). Looming large in the frame, and exquisitely lit, these cast-off commodities become ironic monoliths of this age of humanity, the plastic era. As if seen from the distant future, Hughes depicts them as melancholy relics of a lost culture that consigned itself to doom through overproduction”.

Dr Abigail Susik – Convergence Zone: The Aesthetics and Politics of the Ocean in Contemporary Art and Photography

Hughes often refers to works of science fiction, in particular to Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001 A Space Odyssey. As the story begins (set in prehistoric times) a strange tall black object is discovered by a group of hominids. Somehow this object triggers a considerable shift in evolution, starting with the ability to use tools and weaponry. Later in the year 2001, just below the lunar surface, another monolith is found on the earth’s moon which is beaming signals toward Jupiter. Astronauts are sent to explore the signal. At the film’s conclusion, a monolith looms again, when the ship’s sole survivor, Dave Bowman, witnesses the eclipse of human intelligence by a vague new order of being.

Given the obvious visual similarity between the cigarette lighter and the monolith, Hughes uses scale and composition to draw a parallel to the monolith in 2001.

 

Fig. 2 Ed Ruscha

There are things that I’m constantly looking at that I feel should be elevated to greater status, almost to philosophical status or to a religious status. That’s why taking things out of context is a useful tool to an artist. It’s the concept of taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter.
—Ed Ruscha

Stephanie H. Shih is a Taiwanese American artist exploring concepts of home—not just as a physical place, but also as cultural, generational, and emotional spaces we inhabit. Through the lens of the Asian American kitchen, her ceramic sculptures reflect the diasporic nostalgia and material lineages of migration and colonization.

Fig.3 Condiments rendered in beautifully detailed ceramics by  artist Stephanie H Shih. Photograph: All images copyright of Stephanie H. Shih

“Shih’s food products speak to a seismic shift in America’s demographics that began to take place around the time of the Civil Rights movement… [The] work is both aesthetic and political, a commentary on assimilation as a process in which one’s national origin is not forgotten or erased.” 

Bibliography

Andy Hughes Hermosa Beach
Available at: https://learn.oca.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=278#section-4
[Accessed 18/11/2022]

Project 3: Shifting Boundaries, Assignment 3: Mapping Territory

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Brief

Create a visual working map or diagram of the theme you are exploring. This is to help you visualise the shifting boundaries, the connections, the overlaps and historical territories. You will map how contemporary practitioners are expanding or shifting the boundaries and consider sub categories within genre classifications.

You might choose to build this map/diagram on a large sheet of paper, or on smaller sheets of paper which can be added to as the territory you explore grows. It might be done in digital mapping software, or as a web page. It might look like a venn diagram of overlapping connections, or a series of interconnected lines and words. The key is to find a mapping method that works for you – how you work and think and begins to allow you to share this with others.

To begin this diagram you can use your broad theme research, glossary and practice activities and add in terms, practitioners and ideas of interest.

I have created a mapping diagram using a Padlet (see link below)

Padlet Link

I have still not quite decided on a “theme” although it seems to be evolving as I add more to the padlet. I am interested in “The Sublime” both through the  historical and contemporary expressions, “Memory”, “fact/fiction” and Constructed images. I initially had some of these categories as separate items, but as I read more and think about where I am going with this I realise that they are very much connected in my head and thought processes and in the wider context of photography.

I’m exploring a couple of “themes”. “Sublime” through the memory of photographs of past events, creating images that are appealing and appear benign but in fact have a depth that is quite dark. This idea has come out of thoughts surrounding “beautiful images of entities / events that are not beautiful.

“In the early eighteenth century Jospeh Addison described the notion of the sublime as something that fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror” (Morley 2010)

Often there is a sense of guilt from getting pleasure from something that is far from beautiful. The amount of information relating to “The Sublime” is vast and too vast for me to cover in detail at this stage of the course. I have created a separate blog post (LINK) and pallet (LINK) to cover some of it’s history and to help me get a deeper understanding of its complexities and what areas might be of interest to me. (See research into the sublime Padlet below)

Padlet Link

 

I am also exploring still life relating to household objects that are important but perhaps don’t last very long and have an ironic status in relation to the environment.

Bibliography

Morley, S. (2010) Staring into the contemporary abyss The contemporary sublime, Tate.
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-20-autumn-2010/staring-contemporary-abyss
(Accessed: November 12, 2022).

Project 3: Shifting Boundaries, Exercise 4: A variety of individual work

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You will need to ensure you have produced a variety of work for this project which includes:

  • Reading with reflective notes about your responses.
  • Wider research about theories, conventions, practitioners and their work with critical analysis.
  • Personal reflections about your own relation to the ideas covered.
  • Practical experiments and images that respond to your reading/research and help you to develop your own response to genre conventions whether to uphold them or challenge them in some way.

My first go to when reading is to jot down notes by hand. In the past I have transcribed them into a blog, but have decided that it would be a better idea to scan them in. The majority if the reading I have done for the project has been the resource material. This led me to look further at some of the practitioners, including Hiroshi Hamaya and Paul Seawright. I also found Simon Morleys essay “Staring into the contemporary abyss The contemporary sublime” very interesting. I am  interested in images that can be seen as “beautiful” or aesthetically pleasing at first glance, but relate to uncomfortable or sometimes horrific subjects.

I have created a specific blog and padlet dedicated to “The Sublime” as places to hold information that I have found on the subject. The padlet is more of a summary and the blog post to hold a bit more detail.

Blog Link

Padlet Link

I was interested to revisit the work of Chloe Dewe Mathews and Jeff Wall in relation to memory and constructing images. This is something that I find really thought-provoking and want to research and discover more. I started to muse about memory in relation to real events that I witnessed and remember, events I have seen images (photographs) of.

I got a great deal out of experimenting in the previous exercise with the photograph layered version of Van Gochs clogs. And found myself using portraiture conventions for a still life to try and make the objects the focus of the frame.

 

The Sublime! “an agreeable kind of horror”

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This word “sublime” is beginning to fascinate me and started to dominate the mapping Padlet I am creating for Assignment 3. I keep finding more and more information regarding the phenomena and then to question what I thought this word meant for me. I have created a specific padlet on the subject  to hold a summary of some of the background.

Padlet Link

The quote by Addison in the 17th Century ” an agreeable kind of horror” really caught my eye in relation to the way I have felt about images in the past.

“The theory of sublime art was put forward by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. He defined the sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling. He wrote ‘whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime’. Tate (nd)

It seems that in the 18th century it was often used to describe paintings that were aesthetically pleasing but with a twist. This idea is one that I have always enjoyed expressing in photographs, but perhaps not always with the horror part!

“In the early eighteenth century Jospeh Addison described the notion of the sublime as something that fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror” (Morley 2010)

Artists such as William Turner, John Martin snd Casper Friedrich explored this idea of the sublime through paintings such as The Snowstorm (fig.1) and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (Fig.2)

My own thoughts on what it means are quite different to the above and are probably more in line with the current definition of:

  • elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.
  • impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.: Switzerland has sublime scenery.
  • supreme or outstanding:

My only addition to the above definition as far I as I have understood it up till now is to say that the word seems to have an air of “decadence”. Perhaps that’s because the word was and is more likely to be used by people of a certain “class”. I do however prefer the eighteenth century definition with its twist. The twist as far as the the early painters were concerned was a breathtaking perhaps overwhelming image with a feeling of terror or unease for either the viewer or for the viewer via the predicament of any subjects portrayed in the work.

With the nineteenth century came a move from the religious and moral messages and more emphasis was placed on nature and its hostile side.

“Nineteenth-century images of the Arctic suggest that the sublime had lost its religious and moral dimensions”

Human subjects and animals were now being seen in paintings, suggesting a fight for survival in a hostile geography .

A modernist idea of “The Sublime” started to emerge

“In 1886 the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared the sublime out of date. A number of artists of early and mid-twentieth century continued to engage with concepts of the sublime, though often in ways that led ultimately to these ideas being questioned, mocked or spurned. However, it remains possible to locate a distinctively modern sense of the sublime”

“In the modern era, the sublime took on new meaning, going into the territory of the infinite and the unknowable, working in what Cézanne called ‘iridescent chaos’. (Shaw)

Artists of the Late nineteenth century seems to have difficulty shrugging off the past expressions of the sublime

modern artists struggled with the persistence of Romanticism. In their attempts to reformulate an idea of the sublime object, artists as varied as Whistler and Malevich, Cézanne and Duchamp, found themselves engaged in dialogue with their Romantic forebears. (Shaw)

Contemporary

“Contemporary artists have extended the vocabulary of the sublime by looking back to earlier traditions and by engaging with aspects of modern society. They have located the sublime in not only the vastness of nature as represented in modern science but also the awe-inspiring complexity and scale of the capitalist-industrial system and in technology” Tate (nd)

It seems that the Contemporary insists that “size matters” as Julian Bell suggests when writing about his work Darvaza,

“there was an awareness that I was due to exhibit in a largish public gallery. I needed a painting that would make a firm, strong impact on anyone who entered the room, before they turned to other works of mine with other agendas. Showmanship, in other words, gets inextricably bound up with an artist’s desire to deliver the sublime. This is hardly novel – think of the legendary attention-seeking of J.M.W. Turner, not only blasting his Royal Academy competitors into insignificance with the final varnishing-day touches to his marine spectaculars but giving them titles that insisted (probably falsely) on their own eye-witness status” Bell 

and when discussing Anish Kapoors installation Marsyas

“in other words, he proposed giant mouths to swallow all that surrounded them: and then, in an inspired firming up of the metaphor, he employed blood-red elastic sheeting to swoop from one steel ring to the next, evoking an eviscerated throat. The radical disorientation thus effected struck at the dwarfed viewers by analogising their own bodies with the Turbine Hall and seeming to empty out both. To what end? To deliver the sublime for the sublime’s own sake, if we are to go by Kapoor’s comments: the work, he said, was ‘all about fear and vertigo and being confronted by something which one immediately has to recognise is bigger than oneself – bigger than one’s imagined self, even” Bell 

Something that surprised me when looking into this idea of the Sublime has been that if an image has been labelled “Sublime” then it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is “beautiful”. Of course it doesn’t but I’ve never questioned this before now!

The sublime forms a “fashion that has persisted uninterruptedly into our own time from the beginnings of modernity. … it has always been a fashion because it has always concerned a break within or from aesthetics …it has been a kind of defiance with which aesthetics provokes itself ̶ “enough beauty already, we must be sublime!” (1993:25) 

and Phillip Shaw observed that:

“if beauty relates to notions of unity and harmony, then the sublime refers to fragmentation and disharmony” (Shaw, 2017)

Bibliography

Morley, S. (2010) Staring into the contemporary abyss The contemporary sublime, Tate.
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-20-autumn-2010/staring-contemporary-abyss
(Accessed: November 12, 2022).

Sublime
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/sublime
[Accessed 12/11/2022]

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3,4,5
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/diana-donald-the-arctic-fantasies-of-edwin-landseer-and-briton-riviere-polar-bears

Philip Shaw, ‘Modernism and the Sublime’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, January 2013,
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/philip-shaw-modernism-and-the-sublime-r1109219,
[Accessed 15 November 2022]

The modern sublime’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, January 2013,
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-modern-sublime-r1109223,
[Accessed 15 November 2022]

Figure 6
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-modern-sublime
[Accessed 14 November 2022]

Figure 7
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/ian-patterson-wild-geese-over-the-mountains-melodrama-and-the-sublime-in-the-english
[Accessed 14 November 2022]

Contemporary Sublime
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-contemporary-sublime-
[Accessed 15 November 2022]

Figure 8,9
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/julian-bell-contemporary-art-and-the-sublime
[Accessed 15 November 2022]

Nancy, J.L. (1993) ‘The Sublime Offering’, in Of the Sublime: Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey S. Librett, ed. Jean-Fraonois Courtine, Albanyy: SUNY Press.

Shaw, P. (2017)  The sublime. London: Routledge, pp. 208.

Project 3: Shifting Boundaries, Exercise 2: Reviewing your a broad theme

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Brief

Begin by browsing the Source Texts and Case Studies and make notes of at least 5 broad themes you can identify that interest you. Identify at least 2 source texts or case studies that you can work through to help develop your own practice and have these ready to support your Project 4 work. List other possible broad themes that you think could have potential for yourself, your peers or other practitioners that interest you.

Make notes in your learning log. 

You can also share ideas with peers in the Mapping Territories Forum.

Broad Themes:

  • Geography and Place
  • Fact/Fiction
  • Absence
  • Memory
  • Beauty
  • The Sublime

Source texts or case studies:

  • Staring into the contemporary abyss – The contemporary sublime
  • Landscape as a call to action
  • Backwards and Forwards in Time. Chris Cookie
  • Removing the Figure
  • Documentary Deconstruction
  • Andy Hughes, Hermosa Beach

I am drawn to many different photographic practices including constructed images, like those of Jeff Wall (Fig.1) and Gregory Crewdson (Fig. 2) and . Walls series of images, constructed from memory, I found quite odd but I was also caught by the idea that an image could be constructed from the memory of a real event or perhaps even from a photo of a past event. Chloe Dewe Mathews and Paul Seawright, use the locations of past events and photograph without focussing  entirely  on the event. If you read the text for Seawright images for example, you start to get an idea of the locations history. Mathews visited sites where military personnel had been shot for “crimes” such as desertion during the war.

The beauty of some images that are actually portraying awful events, is one that I find hard to come to terms with for a personal point of view. I have found myself marvelling at the beauty of an image and simultaneously feeling guilty for the same reason. I do think however that if we can be drawn to an image by its beauty then we are more likely to remember its message. We are also more inclined to turn the page and move away from images that we find unsettling or uncomfortable. I have still yet to find a photographer that can create images of war in the way Anja Neideringhaus did. They are “sublime”. (Fig. 8,9,10)

 

Bibliography

Figure 1
Available at: https://gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall/
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Figure 2.
Available at: https://gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Figures 3,4,5
Available at: http://www.chloedewemathews.com/shot-at-dawn/
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Figures 6,7
Available at: https://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Figures 8,9,10,11
Available at: https://www.anjaniedringhaus.com/tagged/Exhibition
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Project 3: Shifting Boundaries, Exercise 1: Select a Broad Theme

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Brief

Select a broad theme as your individual starting point and research how it is expressed photographically through different genres by different practitioners.

Some examples of broad themes include (but are not limited to):

  • The Body
  • Identity
  • Friendship
  • Systems
  • Home
  • Environment
  • Anthropocene
  • Power
  • The Gaze
  • Materiality
  • Otherness
  • Time
  • Family

You can choose one of these, a variation, or something else. Assignment 3 is designed to help by making connections within your analysis.

I decided to go with Politics as my theme.

I came across this really interesting paragraph whilst researching:

“Politics, per definition, is the art or science of influencing people’s beliefs on a civic or individual level. That’s what photography in essence is about: conveying a certain interpretation of a reproduced reality that we take for real” (Theme, 2014)

I created a padlet to help me organise my information and research Link can be found here: https://oca.padlet.org/janet522497/5ew4mwhn9yyd207k

The word Politics is normally associated with the running, or the way in which a Country or State is run by those people who are deemed to be in Government either elected or otherwise. It is also sometimes used in a business, ie. “office politics”. The people whose lives are embroiled in the world of politics; particularly at a high level, have to be some of the most photographed people in the world.

For the majority of these “leaders” the way in which they are portrayed is of immense importance and is often influenced by the then current political situation, or for them personally.  Often if the person is gaining a reputation for being a particular personality type that is causing negativity, then portraits would be aimed at trying to reduce this by creating a more positive image for them. The same practitioner may be asked to create very different portraits of the same person.

Portraiture:

Prime Ministers and Presidents such as Winston Churchill, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump and many others, have had a wide variety of photographic portraits created both with and without their consent. Something that became apparent very early on in my research was that there was an overlap between Portraiture, Documentary and Photojournalism due to the regular inclusion of people as subjects.

The photographer Yousuf Karsh, a Canadian-Armenian photographer born in 1908, took the below shots of the then British Prime Minister whilst her was visiting the Canadian Prime minister in 1941. (Fig 1) “The Roaring Lion” was to become one of the most icon photographs of all time. As Karsh himself observed,

“I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography”

It is clear that in the then current climate, a portrait of strength and determination was very welcome. War had broken out a few years earlier and the people of Britain needed to know they had a strong leader. Another shot (Fig. 2) taken at the same time would not have had the same effect.

Expressing politics in a very different way is the artist Inna Mosina. She is a Russian artist born in 1990 and described as a feminist photographer ” whose work is inspired by the power of women, the fight for freedom, equality and inclusivity”

“I do not feel separation on the basis of gender, age, religion or nationality. I feel part and whole at the same time.
My goal is to contribute to the world with the help of creativity.
The power of women and the creation of a freedom, equality and inclusive world is the main theme and inspiration of my art, now.
Love yourself and the world, and dream, dream until the dream comes true!” Mosina (nd)

There is the suggestion of Documentary or the Journalistic in her work, but more of it is to do with expressing the political issues relating to her aims. Unlike Karsh who is photographing people of note, her sitters are not famous but the props and clothing used are used to make her view heard.

Landscape:

The first landscape practitioner that came to mind was Paul Seawright. Born in Northern Ireland in 1965, he is well known for his political and for depoliticised images.
Figure 5 from his work Fires:

“Since the mid-1980’s Paul Seawright, a native of Belfast, has made incisive photographic work about the political turmoil – ‘The Troubles’ – in Northern Ireland. Whilst his subject matter parallels that of the photojournalist, his approach is allusive rather than documentary. He does not depict easy narratives, nor record the evidence or atrocities or political unrest, but uses the camera as a tool to isolate and draw attention to detail, revealing the paradoxes and complexities that lie beneath the media-saturated façade” 

Figure 6 from his work Sectarian Murders:

“Sectarian Murder revisited the sites of Sectarian attacks during the 1970’s close to where Seawright grew up in Belfast. The texts are from newspaper reports at the time and document the murders of innocent civilians, killed for their perceived religion. Reference to Protestant or Catholic background was removed from the text.”

Seawright just leaves us with a scene, a landscape that has nothing much in it to explain what happened. Yet – it is all there!

Political Landscapes seem to be the ones that often overlap with photojournalism and documentary. Unlike Seawright where often there is little sign of something specific having happened, unless there is some text, for many landscapes that include people or obvious signs of political struggles such as war and poverty, they are moving into a different realm.

Although Anja Neidringhause was amongst other things a war photographer, the first time I saw her work, they looked like “beautiful” Landscapes. They weren’t beautiful in the normal sense because of the subject matter but they are without doubt some of the most amazing political landscapes.

Unlike Seawright there is usually something in Neidringhaus’s images that tell us more about the issues she is photographing.

Documentary:

The Tate website defines Documentary photography as:

‘a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage’

I also tend to think of “documentary” as being slightly more long term than  photojournalism  . It is of course ofter the case that photos taken by a photojournalist may become documentary photos at a later date.

One particular photographer who’s images have a strong political side of things is Martin Parr

“Martin Parr CBE (born 23 May 1952) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world”

“The Cost of Living is a reflection on the impact of a decade of Thatcherism – the rise of the middle classes. Public schools, suburban garden parties and cultural events abound in these colour photographs which reveal the absurdities in this turning point in British cultural history”

Martin Shakeshaft another British photographer, documented the miners strikes in 1984

“Inspired by the work of Jo Spence and W. Eugene Smith. Shakeshaft recognised that photography could be used as a tool for activism. “I was very political at the time… I was using a camera to record the world around me, and in a way to help me make sense of it,” he says. “I had a strong sense of justice and couldn’t understand why everyone else didn’t feel the same.”

 

Parr and Shakeshaft are very different in their approaches to the subject of politics and have expressed the problems of the time in very different ways.

Another artist working in the filed of politics is Hamya Hiroshi, a Japanese photographer born in Tokyo in 1915 and known for his photographs of rural Japan. In 1960 he published a photo-book of images he had taken during a demonstration against the revision of the US – Japan security treaty. The book entitled  “A Record of Anger and Sadness” is a reflection of his feelings of disappointment that they were not successful. Many of these images and others that he has produced may be classed as documentary but there is more to them than that. They have something else that moves into the realms of “fine art”

“Although he intended his photos to be scientific records, they also have an aesthetic rendering: Hamaya has made an art form of documentary photography”

Still Life:

Wolfgang Tillman, born in Germany in 1968.

“Tillmans’s still life pictures focus on [the] relationship between objects and the priorities and desires of the social milieu in which they appear,” Paul noted in his catalogue essay. “Like the photographs of his friends, they describe attitudes and lifestyles.” (artdaily)

Fig. 9 Wolfgang Tillman, Still Life. Tel Aviv (1999)

Tillmans series of Still Lifes are reminiscent of the “old masters” featuring both organic and man made items to represent something about the times or society.

Karen Knorr

 “born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She finished her education in Paris and London”

One of her most famous works “Belgravia  (1979-1981) highlights a political theme

“a series of black and white photographs with ironic and humorous texts that highlighted aspirations, lifestyle and the British class system under the neo liberalist Thatcher era in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Her most well known work called Gentlemen (1981-1983) was photographed in Saint James’s clubs in London and investigated the patriarchal conservative values of Britain during the Falklands war”

This political theme can also be seen in her still life that make up the series Capital. And although some of her images are also reminiscent of the old masters and “Vanitas” (fig. 10) some of them show a much more contemporary twist (Fig, 11)

 

Bibliography

Theme (2014) The Politics of Photography: Theme, THEME | More Photography.
Available at: https://the.me/the-politics-of-photography/
[Accessed: November 1, 2022]

Inna Mosina – 49 works for sale, Profile & Content on the artling (no date) The Artling.
Available at: https://theartling.com/en/artist/inna-mosina/
(Accessed: November 3, 2022).

Figure 1, 2
Available at: https://karsh.org/sittings/churchill-4/
(Accessed: November 3, 2022).

Figure 3, 4
Available at: https://www.vogue.com/photovogue/photos
(Accessed: November 3, 2022).

Figure 5
Available at: https://www.paulseawright.com/fires
(Accessed: November 5, 2022).

Figure 6
Available at: https://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian
(Accessed: November 5, 2022).

Figure 7, 8
Available at: http://www.apimages.com/Collection/Landing/Photographer-Anja-Niedringhaus/84a73761dfc64589b31f92f2a1e5738d
[Accessed 05/11/2022]

Mat Collishaw
Available at: https://artincontext.org/famous-still-life-photographers/
[Accessed 05/11/2022]

https://artdaily.cc/news/2377/Still-Life-Redefined–Wolfgang-Tillmans#.Y2ZnJi-l1QI

Figure 9
https://publicdelivery.org/wolfgang-tillmans-still-life/#His_politics

Figure 10, 11

Capital

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/documentary-photography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Parr

Figure 12,13
Available at: https://www.martinparr.co.uk/cost.htm
[Accessed 07/11/2022

Figure 14,15
Available at: https://martinshakeshaft.com/strike84/
[Accessed 07/11/2022]

Figure 16,17
Available at: https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artists/125-hiroshi-hamaya/overview/#/artworks/12278
[Accessed 10/11/2022]

Hiroshi Hamaya

Project 2: Understanding Genres Assignment 2: Analysis Through Making

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Brief

Read the chapter ‘Photography and the Art of the Past’ in Hope Kingsley, Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present (2012) Yale University Press, to read about comparisons between historical art and practitioners using Photography to offer differing challenges or explorations of art from the past.

  • Make reflective notes on your reading and the comparisons that are being drawn in this chapter – add these to your learning log.
  • Choose an image from Art History which you will visually respond to and reflect on your choice on your learning log (you might initially choose several before narrowing it down, and you can write about the choices and ideas you are considering).
  • Developing your work from Project 1, make your own photographic image, or set of images that explores, challenges, or pays homage to the conventions and visual codes of the original image.
  • ReflectionWrite a reflection on your deconstruction and analysis of images through this project. What have you learned about critical analysis and in what ways has this helped you to develop your ideas or understanding of theory, photographic meaning and interpretation?

Reflective Notes on “Photography and the Art of the Past” can be found here

Creating my own image

My first response  this assignment after reading and reflecting on the chapter “Photography and the Art of the Past”, was to spend a few hours just looking at paintings and photographs across all four genres. I decided not to pressure myself into finding anything but just enjoying, not enjoying, wondering, understanding, not understanding and just generally allowing myself time to look at other artists work.

There were several images that I looked at for this part of the assignment. Picassos still life is full of wonderful shadows, texture and shapes and has a playfullness about it. Klimt’s The Kiss is a myriad of brightness colour, romance and depth.

I found myself drawn to still life images. This is nothing new, but in the back of my mind I was aware that I still life might be less of a problem for me at the moment after suffering a few health issues including a bad couple of weeks with covid. One painting I was particularly drawn to was by Vincent Van Gogh entitles Pair of Leather Clogs. Fig.3. This painting caught my eye so strongly is very likely because of an exercise in a previous unit which I think I will find hard to forget.

Fig. 3 Vincent Van Gogh A pair of leather clogs (1888) 

I had created a series of images relating to my partner and how he lets his presence be felt by his belongings around the house. One of those images (Fig. 5) was a pair of his shoes that he had left in the hallway. When I took the image I was not prepared for the emotional response it would cause. We are both in our 60s so we are aware that time is going fast and at some point (hopefully quite a while yet) one of us will be left on our own. When I looked at this image it took me to that place, and how I might see these shoes if he was no longer with me. 

Fig. 5

I began a bit of research into the Van Goth’s painting and discovered something interesting, considering my ill health and my decision not to venture out for this particular assignment. This piece also gave some insight into the unusual perspective.

“Van Gogh repeatedly took shoes as his subject. He painted these wooden-soled leather clogs in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy. He was being treated for his psychiatric problems in a clinic and for a short period was reluctant to go outside. He continued to paint, however, as soon as he felt well enough. It was at this time that he painted these clogs” (Van Gogh Museum)

“The clogs are shown in close-up, on a rather unnaturally tilted surface. Van Gogh had employed this unusual way of handling perspective before. The meticulous pattern of small stripes also occurs in pictures painted two years previously” (Van Gogh Museum)

Whilst thinking about how to go about shooting my image I wondered if taking Inspiration from Helen Chadwicks “One Flesh”(Fig 6) would be an interesting project. I discovered Chadwicks work while reading the chapter at the start of the assignment.

Fig. 6 Helen Chadwick “One Flesh” (1985)

“One Flesh represents a madonna-like figure, a female child and a placenta in a collage of photocopies from life. The photocopies could have been produced in an unlimited number, but in this instance they have been assembled to create a unique work of art. The photocopying process has been used for the effect it creates rather than in order to produce an exactly repeated image” (V&A)

“Helen Chadwick (1953–96) One Flesh 1985 Photocopy collage 160 x 106.7 cm Museum no. Ph.146-1986 One Flesh represents a Renaissance Madonna-like figure, a female child and a placenta in a gilt-framed collage of toned photocopies from life. The photocopies make use of modern office machinery to revisit the past and liberated the artist from conventional photography. While photocopies like photographs are intended to replicate in quantity, Chadwick used them in this instance to assemble a unique work of art” (V&A)

Just as Chadwick’s technology marries old and new forms from collage to xerography, her imagery unites old and new readings of a nativity, from the traditionally draped Madonna to the modern surgical clamps for her baby girl’s umbilical cord. (Kingsley, Hope. Seduced by art : photography past and present)

I don’t intend to use the same techniques as Chadwick as such but rather just put a modern twist on it. Initially I am thinking about creating different images for parts of the image and bringing them together to create a single piece of work.

For previous exercises we have been asked to describe what is in an image then what that might mean. I found very useful in understanding what was going on in an image (Denotation / Connotation) Doing this for the Van Gogh painting before starting to shoot my own images was extremely useful.

Denotation – Vincent Van Gogh – Pair of Leather Clogs: Pair of shoes, look quite worn and old, I know they are leather clogs from the title. They look like the are sitting on a piece of tilted wood, with a plain greyish wall in the background. The majority of the painting is made up of small striped brush stokes. There is a yellow tone across the entire image, stronger on the base that the clogs are sitting on. The light is coming from the right, making a shadow  form on the base next to the shoe on the left.

  • Connotation – Vincent Van Gogh – Pair of Leather Clogs:  The yellow tone is not bright enough to stop a feeling of melancholy. Even though the image is quite bright, there is an air of sadness about it. It doesn’t look like a “sunny” brightness but this may be due ti the reproduction on screen. There is also an edge to it that I think has been conjured up by the small stripes that are making the image look animated. The movement that is being inferred is more of a shake rather than from one place to another. Is this a reference to Van Gogh’s mind and the way he was feeing at the time? They look more like work shoes of someone who undertakes manual labour, that have been taken off in the place of work. The odd perspective gives the feeling that they may have been placed on a wooden bench – ready to be put back on the next day.

My research stated that the stripes had been used in his other paintings, and there is evidence of them in a great deal of his work. They are very much something that people would recognise as one of his techniques.

At first I wondered if the shoes were representing loneliness or loss , but I’m not seeing that. There is very little space round them, they are close up. This is relieving any feeling of a void. I did wonder where and who the owner was and what they did. I bit of research found some information about Van Gogh and shoes. He would buy second hand shoes from a flea market and sometimes wear them through mud etc. to them to make them look interesting and used. I have no information however to suggest this is what happened to the clogs.

Clogs were worn by people in the UK during the industrial revolution

Practical and hardwearing, clogs were the work-a-day shoe of industrial Manchester’s women, children and men. (Belsaw, 2018)

Wooden clogs are heavy work shoes that were typically worn by French and Dutch peasants up through the beginning of the twentieth century. Known in French as sabots, and in Dutch as klompen, these sturdy shoes protected the feet of agricultural workers from mud and wet and from injury by the sharp tools used in the field. French clogs were often made from a combination of wood and leather.

and it sounds like that was no different for the poor in France around the same time.

My thoughts are turning to the shoes being placed in some sort of work like environment and using layers in photoshop to represent the paint layers, which also go a step further into modern technology from Chadwick photocopying technique. I want to replicate the stripe effect in some way but not sure how yet.

Took these shots of shoes and although I like the non leather trainer type pair, the leather ones have the same creases across the front as the original. I really want to give an impression of wear and tear so Im going to opt for the more worn out trainer type for now. After realising the power of the square format in a previous unit relating to portraiture, I have decided to use it even though this is a still life. It will literally puts the shoes at the centre of the piece, with very little interference from the background or the foreground.

I noticed a tile that had a pattern reminiscent of Van Goghs stripe effect, (img.3) Went on a search for “Van Gogh” style tiles and came up with these. I will try them out as layers once I’m ready to put the image together.

 

I started noticing stripes everywhere! This is a part of a wax painting we have in the house (Img.9)

Img.9

The background image was just a plain wall (Img.10) I brought them together to create a subtly striped background. (Img. 11)

Img. 11

Shoes: I didn’t worry too much about the perspective of the shoes when I took the shot, I can deal with that in layers in photoshop. The white base was so that I could isolate the shoes easily. (Img 12)

Img.12

Base: To go with the idea that the clogs may have been used by workers in the 1800s, I used a modern workbench (Img.13) This works with my feeling that the clogs were left in work ready to be worn the next day. Probably not true in hindsight as I doubt the person wearing these types of shoes would have more than one pair.

Img.13

Final Image

Img.13

Write a reflection on your deconstruction and analysis of images through this project. What have you learned about critical analysis and in what ways has this helped you to develop your ideas or understanding of theory, photographic meaning and interpretation?

It has become so apparent that looking at what is in the image first, before trying to work out what it means, is key. It has allowed me to start to see how images are made up. Feelings and emotions are also key, allowing the viewer the space to feel their own personal emotions is often a way artists capture their audience. I hadn’t  looked at these four genres side  by side before but it is evident that they are very different in they way they portray, feelings, emotions and meaning. It is also evident that there is often overlap and that some techniques can be used across the genres.

I don’t think I chose a very useful image for this exercise. I have concentrated more on the technique of taking an art history image and creating it using modern tools, in a similar way to Helen Chadwick. I don’t thing the image was created by Van Gogh to say something particular but it certainly does. In a previous unit I realised how much of my personality had shown up unintentionally in my images and I think the same goes for this one. The image looks very “made” and it is clear it isn’t a single photograph which was one of my aims. It isn’t quite what I imagined and I think this might be something to revisit. Im not sure where I want to go with it and perhaps a bit of “chin stroking” might be in order.

 

Bibliography

Figure 1
Available at: https://www.pablopicasso.org/still-life-with-pitcher-and-apples
[Accessed 21st October 2022]

Figure 2
Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/belvedere?hl=en-GB
[Accessed 21st October 2022]

Figure 3
Available at: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0120v1962#details
[Accessed 22nd October 2022]

Figure 6
Available at: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O71781/one-flesh-collage-chadwick-helen/
[Accessed 29th October 2022]

Belsaw, K. (2018) Tiny Clogs and child poverty in the Industrial Revolution: Museum of Science and Industry, Science and Industry Museum blog.
Available at: https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/clogs-child-poverty/
[Accessed: October 29, 2022].

Clog Background Encyclopedia
Available at: https://www.encyclopedia.com/manufacturing/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/wooden-clog
[Accessed: October 29, 2022].

Project 2: Understanding Genres, Assignment 2: Reflective notes on Photography and the Art of the Past

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The chapter revolves around the importance of past art to inform the present.
“Photography’s debt to fine-art conventions is more than imitation or homage; the past is adapted to inspire the present” (Kingsley, Hope)

This is described as Historicism
“This is Historicism: whether in architecture, the decorative arts or photography, it describes the revival of the content, materials and techniques of historical forms” (Kingsley, Hope)

An example of this being Helen Chadwicks use of modern techniques and media to re create her own version of a historical painting.

There was however some doubt that photography could be seen as “art”

“As the Athenaeum wrote in l856: ‘Machinery can copy science, – can catch shadows, and keep them when caught; – but it takes a human heart to conceive the transfiguration, and a human brain to plan the Last Judgement”

Photographic reproductions however became popular by the mid nineteenth century due to their ease of production compared to previous techniques. They were also used as ways to learn. This gave way to the idea that “then perhaps there was also a market for the photographs they inspired”

When it comes to historical paintings, we are used to seeing them painstakingly lit in galleries and museums, so it is a surprise to see the work of Jorma Puranen
“We are accustomed to seeing artworks in the even brightness of digital imaging or well-lit galleries. But Puranen’s pictures show a reflective veil of light that slides across the photographic surface to reveal something but not everything”

Puranens photograph of Goyas Duke of Wellington is see in a very different “light” suggesting that the lack of clarity gives the image to the viewers imagination.

“In the 1840s, Charles Eastlake argued that indistinctness in painting had its uses, giving greater latitude to the imagination: ‘when vision is imperfectly addressed … imagination takes its place’. In Puranen’s works, our imaginations are fully engaged”

No all photographers who produce photographs that have the feel of historical art, have done so intentionally.
“the pictures do not intentionally refer to art history, as Delahaye says: ‘it’s true that one can see resemblances and that these could be mistaken for quotations, or allusions, to certain types of paintings’. But, he believes that the resemblance to painting is the result of common artistic motifs.

Is Delahaye suggesting that we may be missing out because we are constantly trying to find a model to fit art in to?
“Artistic models may short-circuit our ability to engage directly with a work; the sources are so familiar”

Bibliography

Kingsley, H. and Riopelle, C. (2012) Seduced by art: Photography past and present. London: Yale University Press

Project 2: Understanding Genres, Exercise 2: Comparative Analysis

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Brief

 Choose 2 images to compare and contrast in a short piece of writing (500 words) or an equivalent audio/visual analysis presentation (4 minutes):

  • First, consider what the act of choosing and positioning two images next to each other ‘does’. How is each image changed by the encounter? 

  • You might refer to ideas from your unit reading so far to help support your own writing.

  • You might choose to follow the idea of taking a historical image/photograph and a more contemporary photographic image that develops, or challenges, a particular idea.

  • You might choose two images that pose a similar challenge to a particular genre convention using different visual or conceptual methods.

  • Consider which genres you are interested in and the conventions that you might explore in your comparative analysis.

  • Add the images and your comparative analysis to your learning log, this analysis will inform and be developed further into the critical review in Project 5.

 

 

The first image is of the film star Bridgit Bardot, taken in 1955 by Cornel Lucas. It looks like it was taken during the filming of the French film “A school for love”
Lucas, a British photographer born in 1920 was given his first camera, a Kodak box brownie at the age of 11. With six sisters in the house it was a bit of a forgone conclusion that portraiture would be his forte.

“During the 1940s and 1950s Lucas soon became the UK’s leading movie star photographer, capturing the great and the good of both the UK and US film industries”

The second image is of actress Jamie Lee Curtis taken in 1985 by Harry Langdon. Langdon, an American photographer, and the son of a famous film star has been taking photographs of the stars of stage and screen for over 50 years.

I chose these two particular images because I wanted to look at images that had been taken for similar reasons, but were years apart. I decided to select young female actors, to see if female stars were being portrayed any differently over the years. . This could be an interesting project going forward, which could span a great many years from the first promotional images of actors to current times.

Before I started to compare the images, I decided to describe them and write down what I physically see is in each image. I did notice something interesting when I was writing a brief intro to the images above. For the first image I described Brigit Bardot as a “film star” and Jamie Lee Curtis as an “Actress”. Both women are Film Stars and both women are “Actresses” or to put it correctly “Actors”. It appears I am indoctrinated to use the language of the time!

Fig. 1 Young woman with short hair sitting on what looks like a tiled floor with her arms wrapped round her knees and her legs drawn up. She is wearing fishnet tights and what looks like a short all in one (circus trapeze) type costume and  soft flat pumps. The subject is partially lit with a very dark background, punctuated by two low small floodlights. She is smiling with her head cocked slightly to the side. The image is in black and white.

Fig. 2 Young woman with short hair sitting on a shiny flat surface with her knees bent and her legs drown up. Her legs are bare, and she is wearing an oversized jumper. Her arms are straight out behind her holding her upright, sitting sideways with her head turned looking straight at the camera. She is wearing a pearl necklace and earrings.

Placing the two images together highlights the era in which they were taken. It is very apparent which image was taken in 1955 and which one was taken in 1985. One big clue is colour. Colour photography became more popular in the 70s. The clothing and general look of the images divide them. However, I was also surprised at how similar they were in the pose and the look, which I really noticed when they were side by side. Obviously, the way women were being portrayed in the 50s hadn’t changed that much by the 80s!

Fig. 1 Differnces

Figs 1. and 2. Similarities

Fig. 2 Differences
Black and white image Young woman in her 20s Colour Image
Legs covered (barely) Short dark hair Bare legs
Pumps on feet Sitting with legs drawn up Bare feet
Sitting on a tiled patterned floor Head cocked to the side Sitting on a plain but shiny surface
Lights, text and other objects in the background Sideways gaze at camera Plain background
Shadows in the background and on subject Showing off legs Subject and background fully lit
No Jewlery Dark background Pearl necklace and earings
Small strappy bodace / tutu / leotard Thick oversized jumper

These portraits were more than likely taken as marketing tools for the sitters and for any films or media that they were promoting. They weren’t private portraits. The photographers were both used to taking pictures of stars and both images have been produced to promote the sitters to some degree or another. Both actors were seen as “sex symbols” in their own era so it is not surprising that the images are promoting this aspect of their personas.

Photography in 1980s had become quite commercialised and clean minimalist look was very trendy. Clean neutral backgrounds, so as not to detract from the subject were becoming the norm. This is certainly the case for the 1985 image where the subject matter is Jamie Lee Curtis. The image taken in 1955, has objects in the background, lights and text. I believe this image may well have been a promotional image for a film, so it has incorporated items that are meant to represent aspects of the film that might entice people to go and see it. (Other than Brigit Bardot of course).

At the time this photograph was taken  film Perfect was released, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta. It includes the iconic exercise / dance scene with Curtis as an aerobics instructor wearing a very skimpy leotard.

“My biggest roles were to do with my body, my physicality, my sexuality” (Curtis 2022)

Both photographers were very experienced at photographing the “stars” of the time in order to promote them or their current film or TV role. Although the images are very different in lots of ways the underlying promotion of sexuality has been highlighted in very similar ways.

Bibliography

Figure 1
Available at: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw88271/Brigitte-Bardot?LinkID=mp64895&search=sas&sText=bardot&OConly=true&role=sit&rNo=1
[Accessed 20th October 2022]

Figure 2
Available at: https://i.redd.it/u9jt5d033xf61.jpg
[Accessed 20th October 2022]

https://www.cornellucas.com/about

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/15/jamie-lee-curtis-my-biggest-roles-were-to-do-with-my-body-my-physicality-my-sexuality

Project 2: Understanding Genres, Exercise 1: Part 2 Denotation and Connotation

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Brief

Part 2

  • Choose a suitable image for each of the 4 genres. 

  • From your reading of the Bate Photography Theory chapter, make your own analysis of your chosen images including both the denotation and connotations of your selected images.

Black and white photo of a hippo laid on the floor of an inclosure in a zoo in 1852 with members of the public looking at it.

Juan, Count of Montizón, Obaysch, London Zoo’s first hippopotamus (1852) Image via Wikipedia (public domain image).

  • Add the 4 images and your written analysis of each image to your preferred online work space (your learning log or padlet).

  • Reflect on this process.

 

 

It was clear that my own knowledge (either real and true or otherwise) allowed me to make much of my analysis of the images I had selected and I was surprised at how much I obviously take for granted to help me understand the world around me on a daily basis; Where I live, my age, where I was brought up and my education were all utilised in some shape or form to come up the the conclusions. For example Fig. 1, In my culture roses signify love. Fig. 2, a red carpet signifies importance and Fig. 3, mist can signify the mysterious or sinister. This is not true for many other cultures.

Still Life

Fig.1 Joseph Sudek, Late Roses (1959) © I&G Fárová Heirs

Joseph Sudek was a Czech photographer born in 1896

“Around 1940 Josef Sudek began to photograph the world through his studio window, often incorporating the windowsill as a kind of stage. Ordinary objects, as depicted here, ceased to be merely representations and became powerful metaphors for emotional states” (Getty)

Denotation
Three roses in a glass sitting in a windows on a rustic looking window sill. They are in full bloom and in what looks like a drinking glass rather than a vase. There is a shell to the left of the roses and a lid with drops of water to the right. There are also what looks like tacks lying on the window sill. There looks to be water both on the inside and outside of the window. Perhaps rain on the outside and condensation on the inside. There are rivulets of  water running down the window. The outside is blurred by the water on the windows but there is a hint of woodland and countryside. The dark frame around the window has been included in the photograph.

Connotation
The image as a whole has a sense of sadness and quiet about it. The roses which often are a sign of love may indicate a lost love in this sad scenario. The rivulets of rain, suggestive of tears could also indicate this. The drops of rain on the lid also suggesting tear drops. The seashell is perhaps a keepsake of brighter and happier times that are now gone. The image is also giving a sense of a hard life. Its a small window with rough wooden frame and window sill. The person doesn’t have a vase so has used a drinking glass. All the items have spaces between them giving the image a feeling of loneliness.

 

Portraiture 

Fig.2 Annie Leibovitz, Muhammad Ali, Chicago, 1978

Annie Leibovitz is an American photographer born in 1949

“Annie Leibovitz’s bold, posed portraits of pop cultural icons have made her one of the most famous photographers working today. Her intimate, stylized compositions and high-contrast palettes, which draw from influences including Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson, lend a mythic weight to her photographs of celebrities” (artsynet)

Denotation
Boxer and celebrity Muhammed Ali dressed completely in black, lying on his side in a relaxed yet uncomfortable pose at the bottom of a red carpeted staircase. He is on his side with one hand supporting his head and his arm draped across his body. Double large curved wooden banisters leading down onto a marble floor.

Connotation
 The red carpet is synonymous with celebrity or VIP status, and the large curved banister on the stairs and marble floor suggest luxury and money. The black clothing is suggesting some kind of Iconic strong male figure, but the pose is softer and more romantic. It has a look of the now famous scene from the movie American Beauty where the young girl is seen from above lying on a bed of red flower petals. His right arm is diagonally across his body in a protective gesture, perhaps from the camera lens or press in general. He is looking off into the distance as if he is fed up of the attention.

 

Landscape

David Brookover is an American photographer born in 1954. He uses traditional techniques and processes in his landscape, and abstract images such as platinum and silver geletin.

Fig.3 David Brookover (nd)

Denotation
A row of windswept trees showing more of the trunks than canopies. A wooden fence runs behind them. A road or path is running along side the trees with what looks like very dry grass or crop either side. There are bits of bark and twigs from the trees lying on the ground. Mist in the background blocks out whatever is beyond the path. I thought the image was in black and white at first as the colours are very muted. It looks like an image that has been taken in autumn.

Connotation
The windswept trees seem to be looming over the path making it feel like an unfriendly place to be. The mist gives the image a mysterious feel adding to the feeling of unease. The path looks sinister as it leads you into the mist with the looming trees, igniting the imagination as to what sinister scenario lies beyond. It is devoid of signs of life which along with the muted colours give it a lonely feel. The fence indicates that there is something near that needs a boundary but we don’t know what.

 

Documentary

I was very tempted to opt for an image from one of my most admired photographers, but decided it was a good opportunity to have a  look round and see what else I might be missing. I found myself being immersed in the world that is Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. I have created an additional post to reflect this research Link

“Adam Broomberg (born 1970, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (born 1971, London, UK) are artists living and working between London and Berlin. They are professors of photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg and teach on the MA Photography & Society programme at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague which they co-designed”

Fig.4 Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (2004)

Denotation
Three shirtless men in what looks like a small prison cell. One standing, leaning on a bunk bed. One sitting on the top bunk bed and one sitting on the windowsill with his legs through the bars and presumably dangling outside the open window between the bars. There is a set of bunk beds, a toilet with an old wooden cover and a sink with a couple of tiles behind it on the wall. The walls are white but marked either as decor or from age and use. It is hard to tell if the males are all white, but it looks like the one on the window sill may be black and the others white. They look about the same age. I’m guessing maybe between 20 and 30. The light is very bright coming through the window. They seem to be posed in a triangle. 

Connotation
Bright light coming through the window, highlights the fact that they are imprisoned away from the bright outside world. I wondered if the three men signified three states of mind that prisoners may go through One guy seems to be both inside and outside as he looks back into the cell from the window sill whilst his legs are outside. This could suggest the longing to be outside. One guy is sitting on the bed perhaps resigned to his fate whilst the third chap is standing between them. Not resigned but not yet longing for the outside. The fact that there are three people and only 2 beds and one toilet could give the impression that this is a crowded prison but the cell itself is quite bright and there is plenty if space between them. The lack of shirts make them seem quite relaxed.

Reflection

This was a great exercise to really allow me to experience how useful it is to describe what is in the image before trying to work out what it means. I have always tried to work out what it means before just simply recording what it there. By looking at what was physically in the images I was able to start thinking about what they might mean. So much simpler and easier and the thoughts tended to evolve rather than me trying to force them and get no where. It also added to the fact that the views one life experience makes a very big difference to what they might make of an image. What I see and feel is like to be very different from what someone else sees or feels, especial if they are from a different culture. Subsequently the photographer and his or her life experience will also make a difference in what they choose to represent an object or feeling. I spent a month in Japan, both in the cities and in the countryside and realised how much a shared culture matters when navigation the world. Of all the places I have travelled to this was the one where I was the most “culturally challenged”. More so because it wasn’t a place where I was being protected from the culture in any way , which had been the case for me on other trips that would be seen to be unsafe.

 

Bibliography

Figure 1
Available at: https://www.getty.edu/search/?qt=sudek%20late%20roses&pg=1
[Accessed 18th October 2022]

Figure 2
Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artist/annie-leibovitz
[Accessed 18th October 2022]

Figure 3
Available at: https://www.phototraces.com/
[Accessed 19th October 2022]

Figure 4
Available at: https://prisonphotography.org/2009/10/16/slow-photography-broomberg-and-chanarin/
[Accessed 19th October 2022]

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin Bio
Available at: http://www.broombergchanarin.com/new-page-1
[Accessed 19th October 2022]