Covert and Obscured
BrainstormAs part of the initial brainstorm process, I took the words covert and obscured and free associated those words with other thoughts and created a wordle. The images are a range of photographs taken by Paparazzi photographers, portrait photographers, natural history photographers and movies. I started with the Paparazzi and thought about "gutter press", hunting Britney spears until she has a breakdown in a most public way. How banks of photographers wait for celebrities, taking part in an increasingly cruel game of capturing someone famous doing something they would not want made public. I also thought about it as something basically voyeuristic which comes across in Alison Jackson's work. So I am thinking at this stage about what approaches the paparazzi use that can be incorporated in this work - long lenses, stealth, street photography.
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Wildlife Photographers use Hides to capture images of animals in a natural setting. In this what interests me is the fact that the photographer is hidden and that the animals are seen in their natural form and reveals a side to us that is normally covert and hidden to us. Sometimes this can be more violent than we expect.
Portrait photographers seek to to tease out and represent the true nature of the person depicted. In Sam Taylor Wood's series of images of crying men I am struck at how these men are normally associated with macho male roles in films and in life and her portraits reveal another side to them. Lewis Morely 's intimate shots as well as Sally Mann's extraordinarily candid pictures of children in adult presentations are memorable. The quest for hidden objects in film is particularly striking in the Blair Witch project where the use of a home movie camera and shaky urgent camera work and editing added to the tension and 'reality' of the film. It came across as a film that had been made by the characters as a home video which made it feel like it was real footage. This is something I may explore in my project - how to create a sense of reality and tension with technology.
Portrait photographers seek to to tease out and represent the true nature of the person depicted. In Sam Taylor Wood's series of images of crying men I am struck at how these men are normally associated with macho male roles in films and in life and her portraits reveal another side to them. Lewis Morely 's intimate shots as well as Sally Mann's extraordinarily candid pictures of children in adult presentations are memorable. The quest for hidden objects in film is particularly striking in the Blair Witch project where the use of a home movie camera and shaky urgent camera work and editing added to the tension and 'reality' of the film. It came across as a film that had been made by the characters as a home video which made it feel like it was real footage. This is something I may explore in my project - how to create a sense of reality and tension with technology.
Artists Analysis
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson was born in September 5 1933 and raised in Illinois. My favorite series by him is where he takes shots on the subway around Harlem and Illinois, at this time in the 1980's the subway was poorly run, poorly lit, covered in graffiti and was considered quite dangerous. Davidson went out to capture the gritty nature of the subway with different filters, flash and many other technical methods; making every picture unique in its own way with a story behind them
"I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day." - Bruce Davidson
The New York magazine presented Davidson with the offer to go on the tube with a group of undercover police officers and just by chance a man attempted to steal his camera he managed to capture the movement and chaos of the undercover policeman, billy, arresting the criminal 'its really not what it looks like, but its what it feels like.' i get the sense that Davidson really captured the state of law around Harlem and Illinois, and expresses the amount of criminality that goes on in these areas. This would be quite overwhelming especially on the underground.
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Alison Jackson
Alison Jackson’s work explores our obsession with celebrity that she feels started with Princess Diana and in particular after her death. Initially in her work she wondered if you could erase the image of Diana but was quickly intrigued by the persistent mass voyeurism then wondered if she could replace her. She started to create images that portrayed something that existed in the public imagination - but not in real life. She created the image of `Diana and Dodi at the time with their child. Had the princess survived, what would their child have looked like ? the intimacy of their heads close together make it look like any other studio shot of two adoring parents like millions of pictures in our homes making it all the more credible. Her work makes reference to the media by adopting some of their own techniques – shot through doorways, grainy quality with the intention of bringing our attention to our own voyeurism. The shot of the queen on the loo makes reference to this. Made as part of a sequence of images, Jackson often tries to titillate by shooting through doors and windows giving a glimpse of something illicit. Also particularly interested in how you cannot rely on your own instincts and perceptions. This apparently is an image of the queen, but it is not. Jackson is fascinated in how what you think is real and it is not – the camera can lie. She works on how photography seduces us and removes us from the original subject matter. Her photographs are designed to titillate and leave you wanting more of something you can never have because it is not real.. Often we are fooled and think it is real and she explores how celebrities enter our collective conscience .
Harry Callahan
Harry Callahan would choose a subject, such as nature or city street life, photograph it in a variety of ways, and then experiment with extreme contrast, double exposure, all-white and all-black prints. His images are cool, often tough, and he never presses a personal agenda upon the viewer. He often photographed his own wife Eleanor affording him a relaxed intimacy in which she never seems to be ‘posing:. Callahan was inspire by Ansel Adams to create pictures with clean lines, a sense of purism and ‘something real’.
In response to Harry Callahan's work, I took a series of street shots in London using a Nikon D70 with a 18-50mm lens. In these shots, I wanted to capture a sense of movement in an average London day by focusing on people and traffic. I then took a photograph of a fellow student looking thoughtful and then super imposed one over the other using Photoshop. I was trying to contrast the stillness of the portrait with the business of the street. The images of people walking to the left of the shot are the clearest and so my eye is drawn to them first before you see the stillness of the face.
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Dryden Goodwin
Dryden Goodwin was commissioned to produce portraits of the staff who work on the Jubilee line. Under the title of Linear" The 60 pencil drawings of staff at work, or at moments of pause in their day, are each accompanied by a film of the portrait being made. The films include fragments of the conversation between artist and ‘sitter’, together forming a portrait of the drivers. Each 'film' reveals much more than the single image would or could. In doing so, Goodwin pushes the boundaries of portraiture - combining film, drawing, sound and photography. Where the portraits were drawn is also fascinating - it seems from the films that many were drew in situ i.e.: in the cab of the train, in offices,in signalling towers which is unusual for portraits. This makes them much more personal and revealing.
Response to Dryden Goodwin
In response to Dryden Goodwin's work, I experimented with the technique of super imposing straight lines on a portrait in Photoshop. I think it looks as if someone has scribbled on the faces to obscure them and is an interesting technique that I may explore further.
In response to Dryden Goodwin's work, I experimented with the technique of super imposing straight lines on a portrait in Photoshop. I think it looks as if someone has scribbled on the faces to obscure them and is an interesting technique that I may explore further.
Surveillance Task
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle from an interview at the White Chapel gallery – talking to strangers
' Acclaimed for her photographic and film installations, Sophie Calle’s work reports on encounters and situations that she sets in motion. Whether asking strangers to sleep in her bed, or inviting an author to take charge of her destiny, she documents social interactions that require a pact of complete trust. This exhibition brings together major works from the 1980s to the present.
Born in Paris in 1953, Calle began taking photographs and making notes as she followed strangers on the streets in 1979. Image and text, presented in compelling narratives, have since formed the basis of her work. Poised between private and collective experience, they allude to journalism, anthropology and psychoanalysis, as well as to literature, the diary and the photo novel"
' Acclaimed for her photographic and film installations, Sophie Calle’s work reports on encounters and situations that she sets in motion. Whether asking strangers to sleep in her bed, or inviting an author to take charge of her destiny, she documents social interactions that require a pact of complete trust. This exhibition brings together major works from the 1980s to the present.
Born in Paris in 1953, Calle began taking photographs and making notes as she followed strangers on the streets in 1979. Image and text, presented in compelling narratives, have since formed the basis of her work. Poised between private and collective experience, they allude to journalism, anthropology and psychoanalysis, as well as to literature, the diary and the photo novel"
Response to sophie calle - surveillance task
I went into a local area of north London and took shots of strangers using my Nikon D70 with a 70-300mm macro lens, I was interested in capturing individual shots that has something obscuring the foreground. I also listened to what people where saying as I photographed them, to catch tiny moments in their lives.
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An elderly man walks into the bar looking for his friend, he asks the girl at the bar if she has arrived yet, the waitress asks him if he would like to wait inside for her he says, 'im not dressed the part' and leaves
I Discovered in taking these photos that it is difficult to keep a long enough distance to have a busy and obscured foreground without some shots coming out of focus or with motion blur.
Distorted Faces
Gordon Magnin
Gordin Magnin is a Los Angeles based artist which is reflected in his work which explores our interpretation of celebrity, advertising and consumer based images. He does this by using a series of photographic and collage. He forces us to rethink our perceptions of celebrity by using 'found images' of famous people, originally intended to control the public's perception of them, and then distorts them to create a sense of ambiguity and doubt. The affect on these four pictures is that we think we know who is in the picture and we think we should know but it is actually very difficult to tell, which leaves the observer feeling uncomfortable and confused. Magnin's collages are very specific and share similarities from piece to piece (use of geometric shape). He also records what he does so you can see the distortion happen.
I explored Magnin's technique with a series of portraits of fellow students, although the technique is interesting and i would like to expand it further by recording the changes I make, some of the sub text is missing from these shots.
Maurizio Anzeri
Maurizio Anzeri makes his portraits by taking vintage photographs and sewing directly onto them, his sewing looks like elaborate costumes or a tribal mask and also remind me of a peacock. The use of combined media, the old photograph and the new stitching give an effect of history and present coming together in these two images the stitching on the right creates a bird like effect, with the precision of the stitching giving a sense of geometry there is something very ordered abut the way in which these images are obscured. I find them disconcerting.
Photographers gallery exhibition
"Collage is more than just an art style. Collage is all about bringing different elements together. Once you form a sensibility about connection, how different elements relate to each other, you deepen your understanding of yourself and of others" - Bryan Collier.
I went to an exhibition at the photographers gallery featuring eight different artists approach to collage
I went to an exhibition at the photographers gallery featuring eight different artists approach to collage
Exploration of HDR
High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is a technique that allows a greater dynamic range between light and dark, colourful and dull areas of images.
Distorted Portraits
I have decided to come bad to the distorted faces found this the most interesting work I have looked onto, I attempted to distort the faces in a more random method, i found the way you can still recognise features on the models face. I am hoping to create more intricate and interesting distorted faces, possibly looking into collage.
Wes Naman
Wes Naman's scotch tape series features his friends and family wrapping their face in scotch tape, this distorts their face in a humorous way. He came up with the idea when he applied tape to himself while testing the set-up of a light rig. These distorted faces have no particular meaning behind them besides the humour factor.
Cut-Out Portraits
Lucas simoes
In all Simões’s many constructive experiments and heavily layered, distorted works, his intention is to intervene in the original meaning of an object or image and create a new representation that oscillates between beauty and strangeness, movement and depth. ’There is a kind of perversion in it, to take the meaning out of place,’ he says. ‘Strangeness is something that fascinates me, and to make it beautiful is even better.’
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Lucas Simões is an independent artist based in São Paulo, with a background in architecture and design. His experiences of training as an architect redefined his perceptions of art and opened new paths of discovery. In architecture, he says, ’a drawing is more than a drawing: it is the intent that something concrete will materialize through the construction process’. This outlook has influenced his drawing process and his constructive approach to his work with collage and sculpture.
With great inventiveness Simões uses source materials such as maps, books and photographs, which he then folds, cuts and deconstructs into new forms. ‘In my work’, he explains, ’the materiality of the supporting medium is important. The process of making the support a part of the work is achieved through the experiences it is subjected to, such as burning, cutting, distorting or diluting, which, at its most extreme, can destroy the subject.’ - Lucas |
Development
I started to explore cut out techniques and layering in my final piece. First I took eight portraits of a young man - each with a slightly different expression and each with a slightly different edit to create contrast. I chose to grade some of them green so that when the images came together background and foreground would merge .
I decided to focus on cutting out geometric shapes in each photo, so that when all the faces where superimposed some sense of the original face would remain even though it would be heavily distorted. As I was cutting I realised I did not have enough photos and needed to increase the amount of layer up to 13 photos to get the effect I was looking for.
I continued to experiment with collage using the same portrait I used the way each shot had a different expression to my advantage. Using the excess cut outs from the first piece I created two collage pieces that i found represented the emotion in the young mans pictures a lot clearer.
This is what I want to do for my final piece. I will hopefully be to make three collages, but considering how long the one above took I will be pressed for time in the exam, here are some pictures I took in preparation for the exam. I am planning to combine the cutting technique I used in this exercise, but introduce more fluidity that follows the contours of the face like Ryuta Lida did below.