Colour Pinhole.

This was my final photo for my Representation project, I wanted to include it as I feel like it's one of the stronger pieces of work I've made recently. Our theme was portraits, I wanted to try to represent how I've been feeling since being here, and away from home. It's a self portrait, I took it in my bedroom at uni, as this is my own personal space in Southampton. I wanted to get across the feelings of vulnerability and a sort of loneliness. I'd been looking at the work of Francesca Woodman, and her self portraits, she used long exposures to distort and confuse, also to hide the identity of the subject.

My own, 2012

I transformed the medium format camera into a pinhole camera, I wanted to try something different, and I knew I'd have to use long exposures, therefore be able to move through the frame, and hopefully create something successful. I am extremally happy with my final print, and really enjoyed working with pinhole, and colour film.

Kaylynn Deveney - The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings

I found this little book in the library, " The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings" by Kaylynn Deveney. Kaylynn moved in near Albert into a flat in Wales, she got to know him over time. She's photographed Albert's everyday life, him baking scones, going to the shops, and visiting friends. Albert's then hand-written notes to go with each photo. Some photos don't show him, but just scenes from round his house, and around his garden. 

Kaylynn Deveney, 2007

Kaylynn Deveney, 2007

I think using text with photos in this situation works really well, and you get to know the subject alittle more, as he's the one whose written them. It gives you a better idea of how he sees everything, and of how he goes about his life.

Kaylynn Deveney, 2007

The book also contains old photos of Albert and his wife, whose now passed away. Also hand drawings and poems by Albert, . It really gives you another way to look at him, when you see photographs of him as a younger man, and how he used to be.
I find some of these photos to be quite quirky, but you also get the feeling of loneliness and you see the life of this elderly man living by himself, all alone.

Photographs scanned in from book: The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings, Kaylynn Deveney and Albert Hastings, 2007

Orlan

I understand the idea of body modification, but don’t always feel it’s necessary, especially when it’s taken to the extreme lengths of trying to make yourself resemble historical figures. Although I believe it’s Orlan’s body and she may do what she pleases with it. What I’m not so comfortable with is her sharing her surgery with everyone else. I understand her curiosity of what was happening to her body whilst undergoing operations and from my own experiences I can see it would be intriguing to see what was going on. I just think it should be something more so for herself and for her to experience, rather than a public event.

Orlan - Before

Orlan - After

Photographs: http://theirishcritic.com/new-york-theatre/feminism-and-representation-an-interview-with-orlan/
http://thestylectures.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/gaga-vs-orlan.html

Sunset at the Docks.

My own, 2012

Last night I went for a walk down to the docks with some friends, it was just at sunset, and the sky was beautiful. I took a few photos, and I feel that this was the best one. I was aiming to get the red line in the middle of the sky, in the middle of my frame, as this is reflected into the sea it becomes bolder, and stands out more. I haven't edited this photo at all, and I'm really happy with the mix of strong colours I managed to get. I wanted to horizon to go straight across the middle of the photo so you could see the same amount of each side, and I like it to look symmetrical. I chose this photo rather than others as I felt the clouds had a better composition in the sky, therefore making the reflection stronger.

Elina Brotherus

Elina Brotherus - Le Miroir, 2000

This series of the photographers reflection slowly appearing is really intriguing. At first I thought they were all the same photograph, but then realised the condensation on the mirror disappears. Alot of Elina's photographs explore female, and male form, and how they appear in their surroundings. 

Elina Brotherus - Nu Endormi, 2003

I think this is a really strong portrait, the way she is lying naked, natural, in the rolling natural landscape, although these things fit together, I feel as if there is still contrast, in her bold image at the bottom of the photo, then the landscape fading away behind her. To me it also shows how small we are compared with the massive world we live in, I get this from the amount of landscape you can see, and then Elina lying there, looking as if she's asleep, calm.

Elina Brotherus - Horizon 8, 2000

Elina Brotherus - Horizon 7, 2000

In the book there are then a series of landscape photographs, these ones are about half sky, some of them are only showing a small slither of land at the bottom on the frame. These photographs are pretty bleak, but the textures are really incredible. At first glance these two photos look of similar material, although the top one seems to be a soft mossy, grassy area, and the other a hard rocky, sandy beach. I really like how the second photo just fades off into the distance, I'm not sure if it's the sky or the see.

Photos: Scanned in from book: Elina Brotherus, The New Painting, Next Level & Creative Scape 2005

Tom Hunter - Recreating Paintings.

Since seeing Tom Hunter's work in the Charlotte Cotton text we read, I really like his work and wanted to look further in to it. This first photo being the recreation of 'Ophelia'. His photo is titled 'The Way Home'. I get the idea this young lady must have been on the way home, when something bad happened, but you're given any clues as to what. It's as if you just see one clip from a story, and it's left to you to decide what going on. You can tell from looking just over the hedge that it's been taken recently, he wasn't tried to hid the houses, or what looks like a metal fence, it's not like he'd tried to make his photograph look old fashioned.

Tom Hunter - The Way Home, 2000

John Everett Millais - Ophelia, 1852

The next photograph by Hunter is 'Woman Reading a Possessions Order', there is a baby lying on the bed, she's stood in front of the window.This is a recreation of Johannes Vermeer's painting, 'Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window', this two girls are stood in the same position, and the surroundings are pretty similar, although in Vermeer's painting, there is no baby, just a basket of fruit on the bed.

Tom Hunter - Woman Reading a Possessions Order,  1997

Johannes Vermeer - Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,  1657-9

You know the girl in Hunter's photo is reading a possession order, but it's unknown to us what the girl in Vermeer's painting is reading, perhaps a letter from a loved one.



Photographs:
http://www.point8.org/4_Articles/53/tom-hunter-performative-portraits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophelia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

Two Photographs I Took Today.

A friend of mine and I were looking to find some sort of beachy area around Southampton, I went online, and found this place called Weston Parade, so we took a picnic, went over the Itchen Bridge and went to see what it was like.

My own - Slipway, 2012

Throughout the day I took quite a few photographs, and we found lots of pretty shells. This was one of my favourite photos, luckily there weren't many people around, so I didn't have to worry if anyone got in the frame. I really like the diagonal of the slipway stopping in the middle of the frame, and how the clouds seem to have a diagonal line down the middle, I like how the sunshines coming through the clouds, and the different tones of orange and green amongst the beach. 

My own - Seagull, 2012

I also captured this photograph of a seagull, I love the clouds come in from one side, and he's flying between the clouds, not on top of them. I like the softness of the blue and the white, and then the boldness of the almost silouetted seagull.

Alex and Ben - My First Colour Prints.

At college I'd used and printed with medium format film, but I'd never printed colour film before. I was really looking forward to it, as I prefer to work with film than digital from what I've done so far. I set the camera on a tripod in my bedroom at halls, and used the daylight coming in the window. I photographed some of my  friends, I wanted them to look natural so tried to keep talking to them to take their attention away from the massive camera pointing in their faces.

Alex, 2012, 10x12in

Being in the colour darkroom is very weird, I couldn't see a thing for about twenty minutes. You just have to keep making noise so no one walks into you and vice versa. But after several test strips I started to see people coloured people.

Ben, 2012, 10x12in

I'm very very happy with how these have come out for my first go. The only thing is they don't seem to be completely in focus, I think this is because I wanted it to look natural after I'd focused the camera, they'd move slightly, moving out of focus.

Photos: My own

Sarah Moon

I found this book containing photographs by Sarah Moon, she's a French fashion photographer and film maker, but has moved away from fashion photography. I particularly like these two photographs, you cannot see either of the models faces, but just what they're wearing. They're bold and well contrasted in black and white.

Chanel, 1993

Dior, Marie Claire Bis, 1990

I think her work is more about the moment thats captured rather than the subject, or the identity of the subject, alot of the photographs are a little out of focused, blurry and layered up as the image has been caught. They all seem to have parts cut off, peoples face, the top half of they're bodies, half of animals as if the indentity isn't ment to be known, they're all very mysteryous.

I find Sarah's work really beautiful, and I can't wait to discover more in the future.

Photographs scanned from book: Sarah Moon, Thames & Hudson Photofile, 2009

Railway

My own - Railway, 2012

I love taking photos in the dark, the artificial lights give photos some unusual tones. There's also the element of mystery, of what you can't see. Other than the symmetrical railway, platforms and lights, you can just see a blue light on a train disappearing in to the distance, no people or movement.

Shilpa Gupta

Whilst at the Arnolfini gallerey we also saw a series of works by Shilpa Gupta. The first being 'Someone Else' a collection of steel cast books, the books have been selected due to the author, they're all authors who used a pseudonym, or wrote anonymously. The books contain their origonal titles, but then the reason for the authors anonymity. 

Shilpa Gupta - Singing Cloud

 This is the second piece of work on display, 'Singing Cloud'. It's an installation piece, made of 4000 microphones, but rather than the mics picking up the sound, they're emitting audio. The track made up of fragments of speech, designed to sound like singing. 

I

This next work was in the same room as 'Singing Cloud', he's a video I took of it, you can almost hear the soundtrack from 'Singing Cloud' in the video. It's been created using a flab-board. Lines of text were created every few seconds, this were then transformed by half the sentence changing, then the next half, or maybe just one individual word each time. 

Shilpa Gutpa - There Is No Border Here

Then there was this piece, a flag almost drawn on the wall of the gallery with yellow tape. Within the flag words were written with the tape, they read:

"I tried very hard to cut the sky in half, one for my lover and one

for me, but the sky kept moving and clouds from his territory

came into mine. I tried pushing it away, with both my hands,

harder and harder but the sky kept moving and clouds

from my territory went into his. I brought a sofa and placed

it in the middle, but the clouds kept floating over it. I

built a wall in the middle, but the sky started to flow

through it. I dug a trench, and then it rained and the sky

made clouds over the trench. I tried very hard to cut"

Shilpa Gupta - There Is No Border Here

The tape also had words on it, reading "THERE IS NO BORDER HERE". The flag is usually associated with counties, borders and nationality.

I really enjoyed seeing all these pieces together.

Photographs and video taken by me at the gallery, 2012.

Sophy Rickett - To The River

After we had been to Bath on Monday we then got back in the coach and drove to Bristol, to the Arnolfini gallery. Here we saw an exhibition by Sophy Rickett, called 'To The River'.

Sophy Rickett - To the River

This is a video installation piece with 12 channels of sound. It was filmed near the Riven Severn in 2010 during the spring equinox, crowds of people are gathered waiting for the Severn Bore to pass. The footage was projected onto three large screens, each screen showing clips of different men, woman, and even a dog, all waiting in the dark. As you stand in the dark you can hear the sound of the water throughout the room. There are then several audio tracks of people chatting whilst waiting, these were played one by one, rather than over the top of each other.As they wait you hear snippets of their conversations, some of these are about them waiting, other are completely unrelated. 

Sophy Rickett - Framed archive

When we went upstairs there was a room containing 55 archive framed works. This is Ricketts reserch that she's pulled together, including texts, diagrams and photographs. You can see how Rickett's looked into the Bore, and that she's used a lot of archival material to achieve this installation piece.

Sophy Rickett - Framed archives

Photographs: Top photo: scanned in off gallery leaflet, others: taken by me at the gallery, 2012

The Art of Arrangement

Leaflet from show - Art of Arrangement

On Monday we went to Bath to The Holburne Museum, to see 'Art of Arrangement- Photography and the Still Life Tradition'. Unfortunately we weren't able to use our DSLRs to take photographs, we were only allowed to use phone cameras. I don't have a camera on my phone, it's a phone, so I've scanned in the leaflet and the postcard I brought of Frederick G. Tutton's 'Dessert, 1923'.

Frederick G. Tutton - Dessert, 1923

When we got there we were shown a huge still life painting to consider before we started to look at the photography. It all started as black and white still life images, of things such as fruit, fish, skulls and flowers. It then went on to more modern and colour photographs. One that particularly stood out to me, is 'Dali Atomicus' a 1948 photograph by Philippe Halsman.

Philippe Halsman - Dali Atomicus, 1948

“On the count of three, his assistants threw three cats and a bucket of water into the air; and on the count of four, Dali jumped and Halsman snapped the picture” (Luhring, 2008)

This happened twenty eight times; after each photo had been taken Halsman would go into the dark room and develop the 5x4 negative to see if he had achieved the desired effect.  They counted each other in as a method of keeping things in time, each time. Dali jumps and the photo is taken just after the water and cats are thrown in. so that the water had time to make its way across the frame, and the cats would have had a chance to move slightly so they look a bit more natural and not like they had just been tossed in the air. In the instant the photo is taken I think you get a clear, honest shot of the subjects character.


Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salvador_Dali_A_(Dali_Atomicus)_09633u.jpg

BRANDON LUHRING cited by ARCHIE TECHNE. (2008) “Dali Atomicus” by Philippe Halsman. Available: http://culturalshifts.com/archives/217. 

David Cotterrell - Monsters of the Id.

We went to David Cotterrell's exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, on the Southampton Univerity site. We've been asked to wirte a 200 word review in the style of SOUCE Magazine. I read through some of there reviews before starting mine to get an idea of their review style, and the structure they've used.

David Cotterrell is an installation artist, who works with many different mediums, from photography, to audio, to interactive technology. The John Hansard Gallerey in Southampton held his exhibition ‘Monsters of the Id’. Cotterrell wanted to show art in a different way, a way that hasn’t been done often before, but through technology. ‘Monsters of the Id’ comes from the artists journeys to Afganistan.

The first piece of work is called ‘Observer Effect’, it’s a large curved wall with a projection shone on to it. As more people enter the exhibition space, more people appear in the projection. The area in which the people appear is representing Afghanistan. The next piece of work is called ‘Search Light 2’ In the middle of the room, a bumpy terrain like area is covered with little any like people, again this reacts to people viewing the exhibition, and as more people fill the space, move ants will appear, and move across the hilly terrain. The whole exhibition shows representations of war, but not what you expect when you think of war, but more so the way it makes people feel. 

Mars

I went back to Cornwall to see my older sister for her birthday, unlike Southampton you can see the stars in Cornwall, we have barely any light pollution. My dad had spotted both Mars and Venus in the sky over the past few days. So we went out at two am this morning with my tripod and things to see if I could get a photograph of it. My sister also has a telescope, the original plan was to set it up so my DSLR was looking through her telescope, to get a decent photo. Unfortunately she wasn't able to set it up properly, I think something was missing. 

My own - Mars, 2012

 I set my camera up on my tripod, with a standard lens, and used my remote so I didn't move the camera. It was tricky, as it was dark I needed to use a longer exposure, but then the planets and stars would leave a trail, I was surprised at how quickly you could see them move, considering. I managed to get a few photos, although it would have been better if I'd used the telescope. I'm just really happy with the fact I've got photos of Mars, even if they're not brilliant quality. 

Semiotics.

Today in our seminar we spoke about semiotics, the study of signs and symbols. Semiotics consist of the Signifier, what it is you can see/hear, and the Signified, the thing you think of or about, the mental meaning that goes with the signifier. It's not always a specific sign or shape that will create these mental links, colour coding also triggers thoughts, where you see red and blue, you automatically think of red being hot and blue to be cold, just because that's the way your brain has learnt those things.

Charlotte Cotton Text.

For this weeks text we had a look at Charlotte Cotton's "The Photograph as Contemporary Art". We all had parts of chapter 2, 'Once upon a time'. This photographs all seemed to be slightly if not very staged, made up by the photographer and strongly connected to the narrative. Some images that particularly stood out to me were:

Wendy McMurdo - Helen Backstage, Merlin Theatre 1996

This is a photograph I've seen before, I think it's really clever, like meeting yourself for the first time, I never really do any editing but I think this works really well, I would like to try something similar to see what I could create.

Tom Hunter - The Way Home 2000

Tom Hunter's recreated old paintings through photography, this is a take on John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia'.

All the photographs in this chapter seems to be dream-like, maybe a bit twisted. You don't expect to see what you're seeing, almost like it's fantasy. They all tell stories. 

Photos:
http://www.cork2005.ie/programme/strands/architecture/lookingglass.shtml
http://www.point8.org/4_Articles/53/tom-hunter-performative-portraits

John Berger, Ways of Seeing.

We were given a pictorial chapter from 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger, and a set of questions to keep in mind. At first I watched the four part BBC series by Berger, this was then transformed into the book. I felt this would help me understand the idea of the book a bit more. I found this on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfB-pUm3eI. We also had a seminar discussion on the text to share every ones opinions.

Gustave Courbet - Woman with White Stockings, 1861

Gustave Courbet - Young Woman by the Seine, 1856

This chapter of Berger's book is made entirely of pictures, with no text at all. I think that a lot of these pictures and paintings are strong enough by themselves, therefore don't need words to go with them. I feel like Berger many have left them text-less so that the text wouldn't take you away from the picture, or give you a different opinion on what you see for yourself. These paintings would have been originally hung on a wall, everything around it would have made up the picture and made it feel a different way if it was viewed somewhere else, this could of changed the meaning of the image. They would also been unique to one place, paintings lost something once cameras made them reproducible. 

William Blake - Europe Supported  by Africa and America, 1796

William Blake - Mildew Blighting  Ears of Corn

William Blake - Pity, 1795

The paintings in this chapter are from 1790-1890 most of them are portrait paintings of women. Showing feminism, the female form, and the roles of woman in the early 19th Century.

Images scanned in off hand out.

Blogging

I've used a blog before to present some of my own photography work, but I've only ever followed other peoples blogs for things like craft and cooking tutorials. Our tutor has given us some blogs to have a look at to give us some ideas. Here are my favourites:

1000 Words Photography is a contemporary photography on-line magazine, it's a good site for finding contemporary photographers, and exhibition info. 

Cup of Pea is a blog by photographer Rasmus Vasli, within this blog he photographs strangers, and writes a small paragraph about there meeting. I find this work really interesting, and love how his blogs just his own work.

Little Brown Mushroom's blog explores photobooks. They're always reveiwing new books and it's a really useful site to find new photography works and phototgraphers.

Welcome to my new blog.

I have set up this blog for our Visual Exploration project at uni. We've got to write an exhibition review and create a blog, both worth 50% of our grade. I'll use this blog to show my research and what I've found about reviews, also a week by week of what we've covered in our lectures/gallery visits.
 Please feel free to comment, your opinions are more than welcome. (: