Transition Project
Sebastião Salgado
Genesis
This exhibition showcases the results of an eight-year long project that saw photo-journalist Sebastião Salgado discover landscapes, wildlife and communities around the world that have been untouched by modern life. The exhibition features over 200 black and white prints which show the day to day life of a tribesman in the amazon and hoards of animals at their most destructive. What i found most inspiring about Genesis is the way Salgado captured the most beautiful and amazing moments in parts of the world that i have never seen and may never see in my life. In each of Salgado's photos he captures the most striking moments that make the viewer feel as if they are there with him, some of his pictures are even so extraordinary you get a feeling that the images are animated, that there too good to be true.
Summer Task A2
Journey Task
"To me photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way to see them ". Elliott Erwitt.
The summer is made up of movement and transition. As photographers we are in a position to see the world around us and capture reality as it unfolds. Document a journey you make over the summer.
Use your camera as a window to the world and capture the journey as it unfolds before you.
For this task, I took the idea from Erwitt that photography is about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I took a day trip to Bournemouth. Due to the traffic conditions, I spent hours in the car coming home. I documented the changing typography and tried to capture the things that you would see out of your car window and perhaps not think twice about. I tried to capture something extraordinary about the very banal and ordinary - a long car journey. I chose to not feature my family members, limiting the images to the buildings, landscapes, locations and traffic we passed. I used and IPAD instead of camera. I wanted to experiment with the idea that the moments were transitory, images grabbed by what I had to hand. The IPad has become as ubiquitous as the mobile phone for capturing instant images - so I felt it was an interesting medium to explore.
The summer is made up of movement and transition. As photographers we are in a position to see the world around us and capture reality as it unfolds. Document a journey you make over the summer.
Use your camera as a window to the world and capture the journey as it unfolds before you.
For this task, I took the idea from Erwitt that photography is about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I took a day trip to Bournemouth. Due to the traffic conditions, I spent hours in the car coming home. I documented the changing typography and tried to capture the things that you would see out of your car window and perhaps not think twice about. I tried to capture something extraordinary about the very banal and ordinary - a long car journey. I chose to not feature my family members, limiting the images to the buildings, landscapes, locations and traffic we passed. I used and IPAD instead of camera. I wanted to experiment with the idea that the moments were transitory, images grabbed by what I had to hand. The IPad has become as ubiquitous as the mobile phone for capturing instant images - so I felt it was an interesting medium to explore.
I also shot most images with the exception of the beginning of the journey home, from the moving car. Using the car interior as a framing device - trying to reinforce the idea that this is my POV - my journey.
Story Telling
The task is to tell a photographic story based on the lyrics of a song. The song I decided to explore was the one suggested, Lana Del Ray's song 'Will you still love me when I'm young and beautiful'. The photographers Ihave taken inspiration from are Tim Walker and Miles Aldridge.
Tim Walker
'The camera is simply a box between you and what you want to capture'. Tim Walker makes what he produces, sound very simple, but his work is anything but. He creates extraordinary and fantastical worlds, mainly for fashion shoots and is one of the most sought after fashion photographers in the UK, but as shown in his exhibition 'Story Teller' on at Somerset House, his work also tells striking and detailed stories , captured in a single image. The essence of photography - he tells a different story in each picture for the viewer to interpret, Walker has been said to shoot scenes worthy of fairy tales.
'The camera is simply a box between you and what you want to capture'. Tim Walker makes what he produces, sound very simple, but his work is anything but. He creates extraordinary and fantastical worlds, mainly for fashion shoots and is one of the most sought after fashion photographers in the UK, but as shown in his exhibition 'Story Teller' on at Somerset House, his work also tells striking and detailed stories , captured in a single image. The essence of photography - he tells a different story in each picture for the viewer to interpret, Walker has been said to shoot scenes worthy of fairy tales.
In this picture a model has been set up to look like she is working at a desk. Her make up, clothes and the key in her back make her look like a wind up doll. I interpreted this picture as a metaphor for how people repeat the same hard working day 5 times a week, like a doll repeats its movements when wound up. I think the blank white colour scheme links to this metaphor.The heavy make up on her face and her perfect hair , reminiscent of the masks worn by mime artists and 17th century aristocracy,makes it look like she is wearing a mask, linking to the metaphor this could be to hide her emotions.
In this second image called giant doll kicks Lindsay Wickson, Walker's childlike fantastical and grotesque world plays with scale and perspective, creating a grotesque and giant baby doll, bearing down on a 'live' model who is about to be crushed. It isn't clear in the picture if the doll has been photoshopped or is really that big, which is disconcerting. The pose of the human model is more like a doll and the doll has an expression of grim determination. The baby blue colour theme throughout reinforces the childlike and playful essence of the photo, with sinister edge as the doll is aggressive. There is also a filmic quality about this image, the pose of the model is very like the lead in Hitchock's "The Birds' - her look is that of the iconic model Marilyn Monroe and the doll too is dressed is the style of a 1950's doll that a child might own. It is this filmic quality that I am interested in taking further in my response. That and his creation of artifice and construct in the photographic image.
|
Miles Aldridge
Miles Aldridge's work gives us an intimate look into his point of view, his work often depicts women in a stereotypical surroundings e.g. the kitchen, supermarket. The most common themes of his work are beautiful women and bright colours but when looking at the images a viewer gets an unsettling feeling, like there is deeper meaning in the image, whether that is to do with sexism or women's rights or any other reason is for the viewer to interpret.
Miles Aldridge's work gives us an intimate look into his point of view, his work often depicts women in a stereotypical surroundings e.g. the kitchen, supermarket. The most common themes of his work are beautiful women and bright colours but when looking at the images a viewer gets an unsettling feeling, like there is deeper meaning in the image, whether that is to do with sexism or women's rights or any other reason is for the viewer to interpret.
The viewer instantly links this picture to the film 'The Stepford Wives' which uncovers a whole other meaning and story to the picture. The message of The Stepford Wives is that the wives in the film may be submissive robots created by their husbands. This opens up many undercover messages of the photo e.g. Women's rights, gender stereotypes and the position of women in particular cultures.
This is another of Aldridge's photos which I think also links to The Stepford Wives. A beautiful woman, perfectly made up, is stabbing a birthday cake she has presumably made. She appears to be going made although her face is blank, which adds to the disconcerting nature of this image. A lot of Aldridges' pictures feature women with apparently perfect make up and hair in a pastiche of vibrant modern looking surroundings. They appear to come across as if they have a perfect lifestyle but like in the film there is a greater underlying message - their lives are far from perfect or happy perhaps. I am very interested in Aldridge's choice of colour in his photographs. He chooses colours that are opposite each other on the colour spectrum. I explored what the meaning of this might be by looking at Colour Theory in Photography. |
Colour Theory
The use of colour in Aldridge's photos, I feel, is significant. He chooses colours on opposite sides of the colour spectrum - red and green, blue and yellow. Their juxtaposition creates a contrast, each enhancing the other and reinforcing the mood and impact of the images. They are not complimentary, which creates a feeling of calm and well being - they clash. Yellow is the brightest colour and demands our attention - it's used for warning signs. Red is intense. Universally it is a warning colour and again hard to ignore. Blue is a calming colour, there is little of it in these images. Colour theory in Art first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti (1435) and the note books of Leonardo Da Vinci (1490). By the 18th century Isaac Newton had developed the theory of colour and the nature of so called primary colours - red, blue and yellow - three pigments that are the basis of all other physical colours. Photographic processes have challenged this idea, meaning that cyans, greens and magentas can be used a primaries. These colours are also found in Aldridge's photos. I have decided to play with this idea of the role of colour in my photographic response by experimenting with filters held over the flash gun as I photograph my scene.
|
Brainstorm
In response to the brief, I listened to the song and read the lyrics carefully. I feel the song speaks of the hedonism of youth, how easy it is to be in a relationship when you are young and beautiful 'He's my sun, he makes me shine like diamond". The intensity of love and passion is easy , but It feels though as though it is a song filled with anxiety. behind the beauty and the stage presence , is the fear that their aching soul will not be loved for what it is ? Once the exterior beauty has gone and their skin is wrinkled - what is left ?
I thought about this in terms of a mac miller music video that I really like. One of the techniques they use us to blend two profiles in silhouette to create one image - showing two sides of one face. I explore whether I can produce a two sided image to convey the ideas of youth versus age, beauty and love versus ugly and unloved. I am not sure this is sustainable and think about an image that will convey this sense of loss in one picture like Tim Walker and Miles Aldridge.
|
Then I thought about the iconic image of Miss Haversham from Great Expectations. Dicken's tormented character who lives her entire life stuck on her wedding day that never happened because she was abandoned by the man who loved her. Haversham is the ultimate beauty who is not loved when she is old. Images from films create a magical, decaying scene like a cross between something Walker would create. Miss Haversham for me speaks of loss, decay, narcissism and ageing alone with nothing but an illusion of beauty.
In my photographic response, I decided to pay homage to the image of the decaying Haversham at her table with rotting food and set up a contemporary scene of post hedonism partying. At the centre of the image, the iconic wedding cake shape is replaced by a tower of beer cans. The woman in the image is beautiful, but post party and lone, the emptiness of her life is apparent in her solitude in the picture and reflective pose. I attempted to recreate the style of Miles' Aldridges' work by using garish and complimentary colours and high saturation photographs. I shot these images with a cannon 60D, using acrylic filters held over the flash gun. I used the flash gun on some images to create a harsh, unforgiving light.
I took the photos on a Canon 60D with a flash gun, I also used a series of acrylic filters I held over the flash gun to create a coloured flash this added warmth to the picture and changed the whole mood of the photo.