The definition of Origin: the point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived.
Origin can be perceived as multiple different things, however as my interpretation of origin is aiming to be looking back along my family history and look at my own origin.
Another idea might be looking back and finding out the history and heritage behind important structures such as my house
Mood board
In class in a group of three of us we went through different ideas and created a mind map which helped us all start to develop our ideas and create different aspects and perspectives of the word.
Planning my photoshoot over half term
Beforehand, I would like to conduct some research to get a deeper understanding of my own origin.
I have found old records of my ancestors from their experiences in the war and also where they lived and how they make up me today. Here below are some of the records of my grandfather when we has at school:
In the bottom left my grandads name is visible from when he went to the school Victoria College. These records shows that he attended the school and also that he was sports captain and also part of the first XI for Cricket.
During half term I am aiming to get a photoshoot done that is tailored to not just him but his parents as well. From my own research as well i have found the old house that he used to live at and also the graveyard of which his parents are buried and where he is planned to be buried.
In St Clements Graveyard, both my Great grandparents are buried and i would like to visit this plot to look more into the heritage and the connection between my family that is the reason i am here today,
What would I like to achieve during this photoshoot?
During this photoshoot my main aim is to capture the essence of how their life was and how that has had a direct impact on who i am and also how im not just directly connected to one of these people but more how i have a little piece of all of them together which makes me different to how they were but also so closely related.
Aiming to capture images of old houses that they stayed in and graveyards also hoping to feature registration cards and those who i cannot photography hopefully aiming to obtain information of them that I can turn into a small paragraph to hopefully look into sitting next to the image when displaying it and telling more of a story
BLOGPOSTS:List of work to be completed on the blog
Assessment Objectives A2 Photography: (Edexcel)
AO1 – Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
To achieve an A or A*-grade you must demonstrate an Exceptional ability (Level 6) through sustained and focused investigations achieving 16-18 marks out of 18.
Get yourself familiar with the assessment grid here:
To develop your ideas further from initial research using mind-maps and mood-boards based on the theme ‘ORIGINS’, you need to be looking at the work of others (artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers, theoreticians, historians etc) and write a Statement of Intent with 1 or 2 unique ideas that you want to explore further.
ARTISTS REFERENCES
Research and analyse the work of at least 2 (or more) photographers/ artists. Explore, discuss, describe and explain key examples of their work relevant to your project and intentions. Use these subheadings as a guide to structure your artists case study > make it insightful and meaningful!
RESEARCH > in-depth research of an artist is the first step
Always start by making use of resources on the blog produced by the teachers.
If there are hyperlinks, click on them and learn more. Explore relevant sources both on the internet and also ask teacher if books exists of their work in the classroom (often we have books of the artists we study).
Make notes of what you read, including relevant quotes and also copy hyperlink to online sources, or if a book write title, author, year of publication and publisher.
MOODBOARD > gallery of their images
Introduce an artist with a mood board showing a selection of their images in relation to theme of ‘ORIGINS’, or a particular body of work that inspires you and relates to your personal project and ideas.
INTRODUCTION > background and context of the artists work
Write a paragraph where you introduce the artist describing why you have chosen to study them and how they relate to the theme and ideas you want to explore in your project
Provide an overview of their work, including describing methods, techniques, style, approach, meaning and subject-matter (if relevant)
Also consider any personal, artistic or historical context that you read about their work that might be useful for you to include.
Incorporate quotes and comments from sources used to gain knowledge and understanding, such as an interview or statement by the artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as online articles, reviews, books, YouTube etc.
Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post.
IMAGE ANALYSIS > meaning behind images using photographic vocabulary
Select at least one image from the moodboard and analyse in depth using methodology of: TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.
Write a paragraph for each element of analysis using specific words from photography vocabulary sheet below.
Click here for a full guide to on how to produce a quality ARTIST CASE STUDY.
For more help and guidance on image analysis go to Photo Literacy
STATEMENT OF INTENT
Write a Statement of Intent that clearly contextualise;
What you want to explore?
Why it matters to you?
How you wish to develop your project?
When and where you intend to begin your study?
Make sure you describe how you interpret the exam themes; ‘ORIGINS’, subject-matter, topic or issue you wish to explore, artists references/ inspirations and final outcome – zine, photobook, film, prints etc.
AO3 RECORD IDEAS, OBSERVATIONS AND INSIGHTS RELEVANT TO INTENTIONS, REFLECTING CRITICALLY ON WORK AND PROGRESS
PHOTO-SHOOTS
Each week you are required to make a photographic response (still-images and/or moving image) that relates to the research and work that you explored in that week. Sustained investigations means taking a lot of time and effort to produce the best you can possibly do – reviewing, modifying and refining your idea and taking more pictures to build up a strong body of work with a clear sense of purpose and direction
PLANNING & RECORDING: Produce a number of photographic responses to your exam theme and bring images from new photo-shoots to lessons:
Plan at least 4-5 shoots in response to your ideas and artists references. What, why, who, how, when, where?
Save shoots in folder on Media Drive: and import into Lightroom
Organisation: Create a new Collection from each new shoot inside Collection Set: EXAM
Editing: select 8-12 images from each shoot.
Experimenting: Adjust images in Develop, both as Colour and B&W images appropriate to your intentions
Export images as JPGS (1000 pixels) and save in a folder: BLOG
Create a Blogpost with edited images and an evaluation; explaining what you focused on in each shoot and how you intend to develop your next shoot.
Make references to artists references, previous shoots, experiments etc.
EXPERIMENTING:
Export same set of images from Lightroom as JPEG (4000 pixels)
Experimentation: demonstrate further creativity using Photoshop to make composite/ montage/ typology/ grids/ diptych/triptych, text/ typology etc appropriate to your intentions
Zine design: Begin to explore different layout options using InDesign and make a new zine/book. Set up new document as A5 page sizes.
Photobook design: Make a rough selection of your 40-50 best pictures from all shoots.
Make sure you annotate process and techniques used.
EVALUATION: Upon completion of photoshoot and experimentation, make sure you evaluate and reflect on your next step of development. Comment on the following:
How successful was your photoshoot and experimentation?
What references did you make to artists references? – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual?
How are you going to develop your project from here? – comment on research, planning, recording, experimenting.
What are you going to do next? – what, why, who, how, when, where?
Photography Agencies and Collectives World Press Photo – the best news photography and photojournalism Magnum Photos – photo agency, picture stories from all over the world. Panos Picture – photo agency Agency VU – photo agency INSTITUTE – photo agency Sputnik Photos – photo collective made of Polish and East European photographers A Fine Beginning – photo collective in Wales Document Scotland – photo collective in Scotland NOOR – a collective uniting a select group of highly accomplished photojournalists and documentary storytellers focusing on contemporary global issues.
STARTING POINTS > IDEAS > INTERPRETATIONS > INSPIRATIONS < Below are inspirations and artists references exploring the exam theme of ‘ORIGINS’.
See pages 25-28 in exam booklet which provide creative starting points that may help you form ideas. Use them as a source information or produce your own individual response to the theme. Make sure you read the whole paper as any section, eg. Fine art or Textile design or Three-dimensional design may provide you with inspiration.
STARTING POINT 1:PHOTOGRAPHY & MOMENTS > pg 25 < Capturing significant and insignificant moments < Multiple truths and viewpoints
Photographers will often need to find the exact moment or location to ensure they capture a successful photograph. This can sometimes mean going to the extreme to achieve the best results. War photographers such as Lee Miller and Don McCullin were often first on the scene to bring the viewer the most authentic recording of humanity’s most challenging situations. The smartphone has meant that nearly everyone is now capable of capturing both significant and insignificant moments. This culminates in the origin of multiple truths, as different viewpoints all show slightly different variations of events. Social media as a communication tool can mean that people become entrenched in one opinion or another as they experience the echo chamber effect, consolidating their own frame of reference.
Markus Winkler: Person holding a smartphone and taking a video in China. (Source: Photo by Markus Winkler https://unsplash.com/collections/3582765/smartphone)
Lee Miller, WW II
Don McCullin, Vietnam war
Don McCullinLee Miller
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment.
“The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.”
This famous formulation of the essence of photography can be found in the introduction to Cartier-Bresson’s 1947 book ‘The Decisive Moment’. He began photographing seriously in the 1930s, influenced by the Surrealists and their understanding of the camera’s ability to create a new reality. The book is divided into two chronological and geographical sections: the first spans the years 1932 to 1947 and is made up of photographs taken in the west; the second spans 1947 to 1952 and was shot mostly in the east. Cartier-Bresson was obsessed with form and composition, with the aesthetics of photography. His images are momentary glimpses of reality but organised into a geometric pattern. This desire to organise and control has drawn admiration and
Nick Waplington’s ‘Indecisive Memento’ is a kind of document ‘An eight week journey as a work of art’ through Central and South America and the Pacific. In an introductory conversation with Mark Sanders, Waplington describes the project and his way of working:
I try to never pre-visualise what I am going to make … I work with ideas but I am conscious that they will slowly evolve through the act of taking photographs. It is that feeling that always leads me through the work. Sometimes I’m not quite sure why I have made work until years afterwards but then that is just a different way of working […] I wanted to make work that wasn’t trying to campaign for a particular issue, work that was not purporting to be the truth […] There is no doubt that the twentieth century photographically has been the century of the reportage image and Cartier-Bresson is undoubtedly the greatest reportage photographer of our time. Yet his idea of the decisive moment, in which you have one chance to capture an image and either you get it or you miss it, seems dated. We live in post-modern age where non-moments have become as relevant as moments. Everything has validity and yet this idea of the decisive moment is still given credence within photographic circles. What I am trying to do is address this preconception and say that every and any moment works. You can take a picture of anything and it still holds resonance […] There are no guidelines. Everything is open and everything is possible…
Waplington’s work is famously diverse and appears to have no signature style or subject matter. He is a painter and he collaborates with other creative practitioners, such as the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. He claims to be “interested in everything.” He does not describe himself as a photographer but as an artist. His work is predominantly photographic.
My position as photographer and artist has always been about trying to make pictures that ask questions as opposed to pictures that draw conclusions. I don’t see that I can do any more beyond that.
Nick Waplington, The Indecisive Memento
Compare & Contrast > Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Klein and their different approach to street photography which can be described as observational vs confrontational
STARTING POINT 2:PHOTOGRAPHY & ORIGINS > pg 26 < The origin of the medium < Pinhole photograph < Camera obscura
The resurgence of analogue photography reflects the photographer’s desire to return to the origin of the medium, even as we become more deeply connected to technological processes. Pinhole photography relies simply on an enclosed box and a hole for the light to enter. David Hockney believes that it might have been this approach that allowed for the great leap forward in accurately recording the human figure during the Renaissance. Vera Lutter and Abelardo Morell both use the camera obscura on an extreme scale to capture entire landscapes. Martine Marie-Anne Chartrand and Ingrid Budge use pinhole techniques on a much smaller scale, often relying on sustainable materials and hand built cameras.
David Hockney: In his joiners, Hockney’s engagement with Cubism is clearly evident, reflecting a deliberate integration of fragmentation and multiple perspectives into a cohesive visual experience. This technique allowed him to weave together distinct snapshots into a unified image that challenges and expands the viewer’s perception. By adopting Cubist principles, Hockney’s joiners break the constraints of space, offering a dynamic and enriched representation of scenes that revisit Cubism’s holistic approach to its subjects.
David Hockney
Learn more about Cubism here and other movements such as Dadaism, Futurism and Surrealism and other avant-garde art movements in the early 20th century.
Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura Image of Santa Croce in Office, Florence, Italy, 2000. (Source: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109HNM)
Artist Abelardo Morell reimagines scenery by turning entire rooms into camera obscuras — effectively merging interior and exterior spaces — and then photographing the results. He discusses how he developed this peculiar practice over time, and how he has found fulfillment infusing everyday environments with new enchantment.
Vera Lutter: Using the architecture of the camera obscura as her photographic mechanism, Lutter becomes the transcriber of outer architectures, facing buildings and industrial sites. Interested in places which reference particular historical moments or which have adopted an iconic stature, she transforms rooms which look upon her pending subjects into cameras, often inhabiting them during the length of each exposure. Her images often reference movement over the hours or sometimes weeks of each exposure’s duration; in so doing she speaks to the transitory nature of the built environment itself. The photographs display the microcosms of sites that are built and become altered over a course of time.
Lutter considers the original transcription of each place, which is created within the camera obscura, as its ultimate representation. She chooses this, rather than using the rendered negative as an intermediate to an ultimate positive. Her only amendment is to right each image, flipping it from its original, inverted recording. The images give a visceral sense of what it is to see the way a camera does.
Vera Lutter
Vera Lutter
Martine Marie-Anne Chartrand
For me art is a process of discovery, expression, understanding and the healing of human emotions. I have the need to assemble, cut paper, arrange objects to better represent my thoughts. I do so, because like life, not everything is black or white, there are often many nuances of grey and I represent this by the manipulation of images.
When I am not using my camera, I will be cutting paper. My collage work offers me the opportunity of complete liberties. These works happen spontaneously in different manners. To honor these reflections and thoughts, I associate no defined subject matter and it is an ongoing singular process with an open ended body of work. It is more like a collage diary, I like to call “Drôle de ménagerie”. It is where science meets religion, where animals meld into humans and are put in situations that humans put themselves and vice versa. It is where news meets fiction and the absurd collides with reality. It is also where I protest. All of the above mentioned becomes a visual cacophony, which resembles how it sometimes feels to live in the 21st century.
Martine Marie-Anne Chartrand
Martine Marie-Anne Chartrand
Ingrid Budge: from Orkney in Scotland, discovered alternative processes in the 80’s and is now working in lumen, cyanotype, wet-plate, chemigrams, pinholes and more. Explore more here on alternative photography.com
The advent of camera-less photography marked a revolutionary departure from traditional image-making techniques. Photographers from across the world have unified their creative exploration of using light-sensitive materials in a physical way.
Artists, such as Man Ray, Christian Schad and László Moholy-Nagy, pioneered this avant-garde approach. Moholy-Nagy, associated with the Bauhaus movement, embraced photograms as a means to merge art and technology.
I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.
Man Ray and his Rayographs.
Christian Schad and his Scadograhie.
It was László Moholy-Nagy who coined the term ‘photograms”
Pierre Cordier I Have A Dream, 2013 chemigram
More recently, photographers, such as Pierre Cordier, Barbara and Zafer Baran, Floris Neusüss, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Helen Chadwick, have all adopted camera-less techniques to create light-sensitive imagery, inspired by the original pioneers Anna Atkins and William Henry Fox Talbot.
Floris Neusüss
Barbara and Zafer Baran
Susan Derges
Garry Fabian MillerHelen Chadwick, The Labours IV 1986
Aomori: “It is peculiar how forests have such an affect on us,” observes Jersey-born photographer Alexander Mourant of his latest project Aomori, which was shot in Japan’s ancestral forests. “As temporal dimensions crumble, objectivity leaves us. We are found in a still, oneiric state, contemplating our own accumulation of experience.”
“Aomori, meaning ‘blue forest’ in Japanese, is a synthesis of two existential ideas – the forest and the nature of blue,” explains Mourant. “Together they create a place of high intensity, a place which questions our relationship to time, colour and self.”
“Aomori addresses the most intangible colour, blue,” Mourant says. “For an artist, an intimate investigation of one individual subject can lead to limitless fields on intertwining narratives and unseen connections. There is so much in the colour blue.”
Five Sketches Running for Two Hundred and Ten Seconds or Five Furrows, 2020
Dimensions: 5: 398cm x 39cm prints 5: 400cm x 40cm x 5cm steel trays Artwork scale: 400cm x 260cm
Cyanotype, photogram, watercolour paper Unique
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images, British Algae. Photographs of British Algae was published in fascicles beginning in 1843 and is a landmark in the history of photography. Using specimens she collected herself or received from other amateur scientists, Atkins made the plates by placing wet algae directly on light-sensitized paper and exposing the paper to sunlight. Her nineteenth-century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impressively detailed blueprints of botanical specimens.
See how contemporary artist, Tom Pope has responded to Anna Atkins plant studies and work with cyanotypes, uncovering her family links with plantation economy in the Caribbean and slave ownership during British colonial history in his ongoing research and performative work, Almost Nothing But Blue Ground
Karl Blossfeldt: Art Forms of Nature
Wolfgang Tillmans is a German photographer. His artistic work is based on an irrepressible curiosity, intensive preparatory research and continual engagement with the technical and aesthetic potential of the medium of photography. His visual language is characterized by a close observation that opens up a deeply humane approach to our surroundings. Familiarity and empathy, friendship, community and closeness can be seen and felt in his pictures.
STARTING POINT 3:PHOTOGRAPHY & FORMATS > pg 27 < Variations for the format of an image < The square format < Panoramics, diptychs, triptychs < Grids, contact-sheets < Sequencing, narrative
The potential variations for the format of an image lie at the heart of the creative process. The square has a long history in photography. It was the most practical format for the popular 120 film and helped instil a balance to the image, often removing a dominant weight to a composition. The square remained popular throughout the development of the polaroid and is now the most natural format for digital platforms such as Instagram and apps, such as Hipstamatic. Using the square format can reinvent existing photographs as its natural balance means there is no distinction between the portrait and the landscape. Different formats such as panoramas, diptychs and triptychs create different emphases. These can force photographers to abandon the rule of thirds, making them reconsider their content, approach and composition. These possibilities encourage a new way of looking.
Cameras and film formats
This article here is your guide through the diverse landscape of film formats available today. From the best-selling 35mm to the large format films, and many different instant films, each format offers its own set of advantages and artistic possibilities
Here are two photo-books shot using a square format.
William Eggelston: 2 1/4 Earthy marigold hues on a wall of corrugated iron encompass the centre of William Eggleston’s frame, its uniform surface completely obscuring any prospect of a traditional pictorial horizon. In the centre sits a creamy yellow coupé, its matte finish blending perfectly with the wall behind. Tranquil and serene, this unstirring moment of quiet urbanity broadly sums up the tone found across William Eggleston’s 2 ¼ series.
Taken in the year following his seminal show Color Photography by William Eggleston at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1976, 2 ¼ is a body of work which falls slightly outside of William Eggleston’s usual oeuvre. Showing now for the first time at London’s David Zwirner Gallery these works offer an intimate take on small town 70s’ America. Relinquishing his usual 35mm rangefinder and instead opting to shoot with the slower medium format, the photographs appear unusually staid. Eggleston’s strength lies in the fictionalising of his immediate surroundings and he has the unique ability to see things beyond how they first appear. In this series there is a particularly striking sense of quietness as the photographer’s itinerant gaze wanders from a boarded-up café to an empty parking lot. Composing his frame intuitively, he is the master of finding beauty in scenes of such ordinariness. Each photograph appears not as a Cartier-Bresson-esque moment of precise timing but rather more painterly, as though he had waited there for hours. Read more of the review here
David Goldblatt: Particulars: Following a series of portraits of his compatriots made in the early 1970s, photographer David Goldblatt, for a very short and intense period of time, naturally turned to focusing on peoples’ particulars and individual body languages “as affirmations or embodiments of their selves.” Goldblatt’s affinity was no accident: Working at his father’s men’s outfitting store in the 1950s, his awareness of posture, gesture and proportion—technical as it was—formed early and would accompany him throughout his life.
In this series using a square format we see hands resting on laps, crossed legs, the curved backs of sleepers on a lawn at midday, their fingers and feet relaxed, pausing from their usual occupations. This deeply contemplative work is framed by Ingrid de Kok’s poetry.
Polaroids and instant cameras
The Polaroid process revolutionized photography in the 1960s. Those who have used Polaroid cameras often recall the distinctive smell of the developing emulsion and the magic of watching an image materialize instantly. Depending on the camera model, some prints developed automatically, while others required the application of a chemical coating to fix the image. In this sense, Polaroids can be seen as a precursor to today’s digital photography – not in technical terms, but because of their immediate accessibility.
Polaroids are generally regarded as unique prints. This pioneering technology attracted enthusiastic users worldwide and in nearly all photographic genres – landscape, still life, portraits, fashion, and nude photography. Explore more here on polaroid.com and read about instant cameras here.
The iconic Polaroid SX-70 camera
Watch video: Brief history of… Polaroids A Brief History of Polaroids is a fast-paced, fun look at how instant photography changed the way we capture the world. From early chemical experiments and 20 minute exposures, to the invention of the iconic Polaroid camera by Edwin Land. Discover how this retro tech revolutionised art, fashion, and everyday life, and why it’s still going strong in the age of digital selfies. Watch now!
Here Magnum photographer, Jim Goldberg explains how to create polaroids with impact – see link here
Screenshot
Helmuth Newton: On March 6, 2025, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin opened its new group exhibition, Polaroids, as part of EMOP Berlin 2025. This showcase features works by fashion photographer Helmut Newton alongside numerous other photographers. Explore more here
Walker Evans: Polaroids: In 1973 Walker Evans began to work with the innovative Polaroid SX-70 camera and was given an unlimited supply of film from its manufacturer. The virtues of this camera, introduced in 1972, perfectly fit Evans’s search for a concise yet poetic vision of his world: its instant prints were for the infirm seventy-year-old photographer what scissors and cut paper were for the aging Matisse. The unique SX-70 prints are the artist’s last photographs, the culmination of half a century of work in photography. With this new camera, Evans returned to some of his key motifs -signs, posters, and their ultimate reduction, the letter itself. “Nobody should touch a Polaroid until he’s over sixty,” Evans once said. It was only, he implied, after years of work and struggle and experimentation, years of developing one’s judgment and vision, that the instrument could be pushed to its full, revelatory potential. Using the SX-70, and leaving aside the intricacies of photographic technique, Evans stripped photography to its bare essentials: seeing and choosing. The 300 images in this book, almost all of them unpublished, were selected from a total of approximately 2500 Polaroids that Evans left behind when he died in 1975.
Laura El-Tantawy: Although polaroids are still available and still used by some artists, instant photography has been usurped by the smartphone with cameras. For a contemporary use of a square and instant format see Photobook, Beyond Here Is Nothing by Laura El-Tantawy.
Beyond Here Is Nothing is a photo-book object meditating on home. A place of belonging, a tranquil state of mind; a nostalgic memory or an imaginary destination – home is a perpetual possibility El-Tantawy is journeying to reach. Her personal experience growing up in contrasting cultures is the window to an intimate and emotive visual exploration of the unsettling feeling of rootlessness, the mental burden of loneliness and the constant search for belonging in unfamiliar places. Drifting between the physical and the whimsical, the book reveals itself through layers of images and words. A mirror of dispositions. A living object harmonising with time. Explore more here.
ARCHIVES > STEREOSCOPIC VIEWS
Ernest Baudoux, Stereoscopic views
Henry Mullins is one of the most prolific photographers represented in the Societe Jersiase Photo-Archive, producing over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000. The record we have of his work comes through his albums, in which he placed his clients in a social hierarchy. The arrangement of Mullins’ portraits of ‘who’s who’ in 19th century Jersey are highly politicised.
Henry Mullins Album showing his arrangements of portraits presented as cartes de visite
Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Here he would photograph Jersey political elite (The Bailiff, Lt Governor, Jurats, Deputies etc), mercantile families (Robin, Janvrin, Hemery, Nicolle ect.) military officers and professional classes (advocates, bankers, clergy, doctors etc).
His portrait were printed on a carte de visite as a small albumen print, (the first commercial photographic print produced using egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper) which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 × 89 mm normally mounted on a card sized 64 × 100 mm. In Mullins case he mounted his carted de visite into an album. Because of the small size and relatively affordable reproducibility cartes de visite were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these car.
Explore some of the ideas here in Constructed Landscape by Photopedagogy, and/ or revisit ideas and photographic tasks from Anthropocene project in Yr 12
‘The Great Wave’, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur […] At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives […]Most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure for both landscape and sky in a single picture. This usually meant sacrificing the sky, which was then over-exposed. Le Gray’s innovation was to print some of the seascapes from two separate negatives – one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky – on a single sheet of paper.
This ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations, merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing […] ‘Constructed Landscapes’ references early Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with film […] the work also engages with contemporary discourses on manipulation, the analogue/digital divide and the effects these have on photography’s status.
The Great Wave … sunlight breaks through the clouds above the waves at Sète, France, 1856–59 Illustration: Gustave le Gray
Dafna Talmor: This ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations that include Israel, Venezuela, the UK and USA. Initially taken as mere keepsakes, landscapes are merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs are a conflation, ‘real’ yet virtual and imaginary. This conflation aims to transform a specific place – initially loaded with personal meaning, memories and connotations – into a space that has been emptied of subjectivity and becomes universal.
In dialogue with the history of photography, Constructed Landscapes references early Pictorialist tendencies of combination printing as well as Modernist experimental techniques such as montage, collage and multiple exposures. While distinctly holding historical references, the work also engages with contemporary discourses on manipulation, the analogue/digital divide and the effects these have on photography’s status and veracity. Through this work, I am interested in creating a space that defies specificity, refers to the transient, and metaphorically blurs space, memory and time.
Tanja Deman is a Croation artists who was Archisle’s International Photographer-in-Residence in Jersey in 2017. Her art is inspired by her interest in the perception of space, physical and emotional connection to a place and her relationship to nature. Her works, incorporating photography, collage, video and public art, are evocative meditations on urban space and landscape. Observing recently built legacy or natural sites her work investigates the sociology of space and reflects dynamics hidden under the surface of both the built and natural environment.
Tanja Deman Fernweh
Fernweh series explores the concept of a modernist city through its extreme relations to the landscape. The images are placed on a blurred line between a past which reminds us of a future and a future which looks like a past. Scenes are referring to the modernist ideas and aspiration of a man conquering the natural wild land and subordinating it to the rational order, and the consequences of those aspirations, which switched into the longing for an escape from urban environments.
Tanja Deman Collected Narratives
Michael Marten: Sea Change Excellent use of diptych and triptych and exploring low vs high tides to see how it changes a landscape scene
Mark Power: The Shipping Forecats Intangible and mysterious, familiar yet obscure, the shipping forecast is broadcast four times daily on BBC Radio 4. For those at, or about to put to sea, the forecast may mean the difference between life and death. In The Shipping Forecast, Mark Power documents the 31 sea areas covered by the forecast,
DIPTRYCHS/ TRIPTYCHS/ JUXTAPOSTION/ PAIRING
Rinko Kawauchi: Photography is a way of seeking out what normally goes unnoticed. At first sight Rinko Kawauchi’s photographs of soap bubbles may seem ordinary. However, the combination of narrow depth of field, compositional rhythm, and the sense that there is a portal through the bubble to another place hints at spiritual possibilities, linking to her belief in Shinto philosophy.
In 2001, Rinko Kawauchi published three astonishing photobooks simultaneously—Utatane, Hanabi, andHanako—establishing herself as one of the most innovative newcomers to contemporary photography. Other notable monographs include Aila (2004), The Eyes, the Ear (2005), and Semear (2007). Now, ten years after her precipitous entry onto the international stage, Aperture has published Illuminance, the first volume of Kawauchi’s work to be published outside of Japan. Kawauchi’s work has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder via careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. In Illuminance, Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns.
Nancy Honey used the format of groups of three photographs linked by colour in her book Woman to Woman. Explore her work here
In this body of work I set out to define and separate the various strands that make up my sense of my own femininity. How does sexuality manifest itself in me and what is the difference between what I feel and the ubiquitous stereotypical mass cultural images that surround me? How conditioned are my responses? Nancy Honey.
Luke Fowler
Luke Fowler
Using two frame film / diptychs and juxtaposing images to alter the perception of your environment…Link Here !!!
See also the work by Americans, William Christenberry and Ed Ruscha’s photographic works on types e.g. Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1964). Every building on the Sunset Strip (1966). Or Idris Khan‘s appropriation of Bechers’ images.
Ed Ruscha, 26 Gasoline Stations
Ed Ruscha: Every building on the Sunset Strip
William Christenberry
German artists, Wolfgang Tillmans’ is also a prolific photobook maker and has made many (40+). One of his most celebrated is Concorde which was published by Walther König, Cologne. The photographs were taken at a number of sites in and around London, including close to the perimeter fence at Heathrow airport. consists of images of the Concorde flying over Tillmann’s home in west London. Study his series here at Tate Modern which has also been exhibited in various museums as an installation.
Michael Wolf, Hongkong books
Lorenzo Venturi: Dalston Anatomy
Lorenzo Vitturi’s vibrant still lifes capture the threatened spirit of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market. Vitturi – who lives locally – feels compelled to capture its distinctive nature before it is gentrified beyond recognition. Vitturi arranges found objects and photographs them against backdrops of discarded market materials, in dynamic compositions. These are combined with street scenes and portraits of local characters to create a unique portrait of a soon to be extinct way of life.
His installation at the Gallery draws on the temporary structures of the market using raw materials, sculptural forms and photographs to explore ideas about creation, consumption and preservation.
“No image-maker has fed on the energy and chance of the urban scene with quite the same appetite as William Klein,” David Campany in his recent book On Photographs.
In Painted Contacts (published by Delpire Éditeur on October 15), Klein upends the notion of archives as fixed and inviolable. He playfully defiles them with bright colors and graphic reframing that refocuses the viewer’s gaze, making the reupholstered contact sheet a new art form in and of itself.
During the late 1980s, Klein was commissioned to do a series of short films on photography. In a post-script to Painted Contacts, he explained his idea was to “have a camera track along a strip of contacts, stopping at the chosen image with the commentary of the photographer explaining why for him that frame was ‘successful’… As the camera moved you’d see the misses, the nothing photos and then the hit.” This approach—no… no… no… not yet… YES!—created a remarkable feeling of anticipation, in the viewer and even in Klein himself. “As the frames rolled by, a certain excitement would develop and if you knew my work you could guess what was coming and a suspense would build up,” he noted. “The red grease pencil marks started to appear and the camera would slow down and stop.”
Contact-sheets – showing a variety of similar shots, exploring different ways of framing
Ernesto GUEVARA (Che), Argentinian politician, Minister of industry (1961-1965) during an exclusive interview in his office.
Magnum contact-sheets
Niall McDiarmid: Crossing Paths, Town to Town, Via Vauxhall
PHOTOGRAPHY AND COLOUR > SHAPES > GEOMETRY
Following on from William Kleins’s Painted Contacts and Niall McDiarmid’s street portraits colour as a focus could be explored further in the urban environment.
Sigfried Hansen: Hold the Line Street photography exists as a genre in incredibly many facets and manifestations. It is always about the right time to release the shutter, at a moment that captures and accurately reflects what is fleeting and coincidental. For Siegfried Hansen, street photography is not so much in the nature of reportage and documentation. What he is interested in is graphic elements, shapes, interwoven lines and structures that, when harmoniously related to oneanother, yield an abstract image. Whereas in the photographs of such prominent role models as Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Kertész people play a major role, in the works of this Hamburg photographer faces and people are only suggested and are at best only dimly visible. No more is shown than is needed to create an interesting and balanced combination of people and objects.
Ricardo Cases:el porque de las naranjas At first sight, reality appears chaotic and anarchic. If events have any kind of logic to them, it lies well hidden behind an overlay of banality so thick as to make it invisible. And yet, at certain exceptional moments, life slackens and reveals itself. The automaton allows its innards be glimpsed, and its mechanism becomes momentarily evident as the logic of chaos.
In his new work, El porqué de la naranjas, Spanish photographer Ricardo Cases does not document the surface symptoms of reality, but instead renders the non-visible, the mechanistic. In his immediate surroundings – the fertile region of Levante in Spain – the photographer reveals ephemeral moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. Out on the streets he sets out to make visible the laws that regulate the universe, hunting down the elementary participles in the same vein as a nuclear physicist attempting to identify the Higgs particle. Cases uses the landscape as a laboratory, a place where these mechanisms can manifest themselves freely. The work is not a portrait of Levante itself, but of the spirit of Levante, and thus of the spirit of Spain as a whole.
Historical context: In the 1948 Danish photographer Keld Helmer Petersen published his ground breaking photobook 122 Colour Photographs. A decade later Saul Leiter roamed New York streets and made iconic colour photographs often exploring reflective surfaces. Later in the 1970s William Eggleston in Memphis and Stephen Shore on numerous roadtrips across America made colour photographs that were to influence a whole new generation of photographers, such as Joel Sternfeld, Richard Misrach and Martin Parr, one of UK’s most celebrated colour photographers exploring British culture.
Keld Helmer Petersen: 122 Colour Photographs
Ray K Metzker – graphic monochrome street photography Metzker was born in 1931 in Milwaukee and attended the Institute of Design, Chicago–a renowned school that had a few years earlier been dubbed the New Bauhaus– from 1956 to 1959. He was thus an heir to the avant-garde photography that had developed in Europe in the 1920’s. Early in his career, his work was marked by unusual intensity. Composites, multiple-exposure, superimposition of negatives, juxtapositions of two images, solarization and other formal means were part and parcel of his vocabulary. He was committed to discovering the potential of black and white photography during the shooting and the printing, and has shown consummate skill in each stage of the photographic process. Ray Metzker’s unique and continually evolving mastery of light, shadow, and line transform the ordinary into a realm of pure visual delight
Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, Warhol responded to mass-media culture of the 1960s. His silkscreens of cultural and consumer icons—including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and Brillo Boxes—would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do,” he once explained. Born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, he graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. Moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration, the young artist worked for magazine such as Vogue and Glamour. Though Warhol was a gay man, he kept much of his private life a secret, occasionally referencing his sexuality through art. This is perhaps most evident in his drawings of male nudes from the 1950s, and later in his film Sleep (1963), which portrays the poet John Giorno nude. In 1964, Warhol rented a studio loft on East 47th street in Midtown Manhattan which was later known as The Factory. The artist used The Factory as a hub for movie stars, models, and artists, who became fodder for his prints and films. The space also functioned as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. During the 1980s, Warhol collaborated with several younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. The artist died tragically following complications from routine gall bladder surgery at the age of 58, on February 22, 1987 in New York, NY. After his death, the artist’s estate became The Andy Warhol Foundation and in 1994, a museum dedicated to the artist and his oeuvre opened in his native Pittsburgh. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.
Andy Warhol
Robert Rauschenberg
MONTAGES
More recently, Anastasia Samoylova constructs intricate installations from images of nature. Have a look at her Landscape Sublime and read an interview here where she talks about her new work. Check out some of her other work on her website too.
10 questions with Anastasia Samoylova Anastasia answers questions and discusses her project, Floodzone.
Anastasia Samoylova moves between studio practice, observational photography, installation and public art projects. Although her work takes many forms, a central concern is the place images occupy in our understanding and misunderstanding of the world. The epic project FloodZone, photographed in the Southern United States, reworks our expectations of coastal paradise into a psychological portrait of communities faced with rising sea levels.
STARTING POINT 4: PHOTOGRAPHY & TRUTH > pg 28 < False narratives vs ‘the camera never lies’ < Manipulated photography < Generative Artificial Intelligence
Taken in the early 19th century, View from the Window at Le Gras by Nicéphore Niépce is widely regarded as the world’s first photograph. It accurately documents a rooftop, emphasising the sharp triangular shadows. However, it was not long before photography began to create false narratives, which belies the adage ‘the camera never lies’.Hippolyte Bayard’s Self Portrait as Drowned Man is considered to be the first staged photograph. This paved the way for an endless stream of manipulated photography, from the Cottingley Fairies, to Stalin’s erasure of Yenukidze, right up to the birth of digital image deception, driven by ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence.
The Origins of Photography
To remind yourself of the origin of photography, watch the documentary on ‘Fixing the Shadows’ from BBC Genius of Photography, Episode 1 again.
Revisit the blog post: The Origins of Photography and the essay you wrote in response showing understanding of the origins of photography. Here is a reminder of some the major developments and practices that were covered in the documentary above.
Origins of Photography: Study this Threshold concept 2: Photography is the capturing of light; a camera is optional developed by PhotoPedagogy which includes a number of good examples of early photographic experiments and the camera obscura which preceded photography. It also touches on photography’s relationship with light and reality and delve into photographic theories, such as index and trace as a way of interpreting the meaning of photographs.
Photography did not spring forth from nowhere: in the expanding capitalist culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, some people were on the look-out for cheap mechanical means for producing images […] photography emerged experimentally from the conjuncture of three factors: i) concerns with amateur drawing and/or techniques for reproducing printed matter, ii) light-sensitive materials; iii) the use of the camera obscura — Steve Edwards, Photography – A Very Short Introduction
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, French (1765 – 1833)
View from the Window at Le Gras by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827
Debates about the origins of photography have raged since the first half of the nineteenth century. The image above left is partly the reason. View from the Window at Le Gras is a heliographic image and arguably the oldest surviving photograph made with a camera. It was created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827 at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France. The picture on the right is an enhanced version of the original which shows a view across some rooftops. It is difficult to tell the time of day, the weather or the season. This is because the exposure time for the photograph was over eight hours.
Robert Cornelius, American (1809-1893)
Robert Cornelius’s 1839 photograph of himself. The back reads, “The first light picture ever taken”. The Cornelius portrait is the first known photographic portrait taken in America.
The Cottingley Fairies were a series of five photographs taken between 1917 and 1920 by cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in Cottingley, England, which claimed to show fairies and gnomes. The images, staged using paper cutouts and hatpins, famously fooled many, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as evidence of the supernatural. The hoax was not fully confessed until 1983, although the cousins maintained they actually saw fairies
Yury Li-Toroptsov: Fairyland. The Cottingley Fairies was a starting point for Yury Li-Toroptsov, who spend 6 months in Jersey in 2014 as international artist-in-residence and produced Fairyland.
Watch an introduction to the project by Yury Li-Toroptsov
Julia Margaret Cameron, British (1815 – 1879) She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature.
Much of her work has connections to pictorialism and even movements such as The Pre-Rapahelites, and often had a dream-like, constructed quality to the images.
Stalin’s erasure of Avel Yenukidze: Now you see him—now you don’t. Compare a photo taken in the 1930s of five Communist Party officials in the USSR and you’ll see Avel Enukidze, photographed next to Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov and others. But during Josef Stalin’s Great Purge, the onetime member of the Communist party’s highest governing body was deemed an enemy of the state and executed by firing squad.
Then, he disappeared from Soviet photographs, too, his existence blotted out by a retouched suit on another official from the original photo.
Enukidze’s erasure was the product of a real conspiracy to change public perception in the USSR during Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. Stalin’s commitment to censorship and photo doctoring was so strong that, at the height of the Soviet Union’s international power, he rewrote history using photo alteration. The stakes weren’t just historical: Each erasure meant a swing of Stalin’s loyalties, and most disappeared subjects also disappeared (or were killed) in real life, too. Read more here.
PHOTOGRAPHY & TRUTH
Explore this blog post: Truth in Photography where you can find other examples of images (both historical and contemporary) that ‘lied’, or was ‘altered’. Also read this text, Is it Real? by Susan Bright from Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.
Can a photograph lie?
Robert Capa, Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936
Are all photographs reliable?
Joe Rosenthal, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945
A photograph is a certain delivery of facts?
Jeff Wall, Mimic, 1982
Claims of truth that most people take for granted?
Tom Hunter, Woman Reading a Possession Order, 1997, after Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, 1647-49
You often hear a photographer saying: ‘the camera was there and recorded what I saw’.
A common phrase is to ‘shed light on a situation’ meaning to find out the truth.
‘A picture tells a 1000 words‘, is another aphorism that imply images are more reliable.
Picasso famously said: ‘We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.’
Magritte’s painting La Trahison des Images in which he painted a picture of a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (This is not a pipe) goes some way towards an explanation.
GENERATIVE AI
AI EXPERIMENTING > Using your images produce a variety of AI generated images (at least 10 variants) using Photoshop AI, DreamStudio or Midjourney. Generate AI images inspired by street photography and Cartier-Bresson’s theory around the decisive moment. Either ‘train’ AI on your original images or recreate street photographs using relevant text prompts. For example,use key terminology, such as specific words and phrases linked to subject matter, capturing moment, locations & places, points of view, approaches, composition and formal analysis, camera handling and techniques.
ARTISTS REFERENCES > INSPIRATIONS
Philip Toledano: I’ve noticed a lot of work uses ai to recreate photography as it is now-some sort of reflection of reality -but what’s utterly intriguing is that AI has its own voice. For instance, this image of the two men fighting I would argue is much more interesting than the one I posted yesterday (can you see what’s different ?) because (metaphorically) I allowed ai to have a say -now this image asks more questions (which is ALWAYS a good thing in art)
I’m also surprised to see how it handles the animal images I’ve been doing -especially the monkeys and apes-the images have such emotion in them -and finally, I’m very much enjoying the way in which you can abstract the human form …
From his series, another America …
Photos courtesy of the latest version of Midjourney, an AI program which generates realistic deepfakes – Copyright Reddit – Twitter. Read article here
AI-created images of Donald Trump, shared by @EliotHiggins’s account. – Twitter – Midjourney
AI-created images of Donald Trump, shared by @EliotHiggins’s account. – Twitter – Midjourney
David Fathi: False image generated by photographer David Fathi via Midjourney showing Emmanuel Macron in contact with police officers. Credit: David Fathi / Midjourney
AI Image generating software: DreamStudio, Midjourney, DALL-E 2, Dream by Wombo, Craiyonand new version of Photoshop with AI
Photoshop AI
A general tip in Photoshop is just to get familiar with Layers, Selections, Masking, and Groups. Almost every complex task just involves being better at these and most problems proceed from small misunderstandings in them. There are free videos explaining any of these, for people who want targeted learning there is a short video on every tool available on Phlearn. The site will try and get you to pay for Premium Content, but there’s loads of free stuff.
For example, these are all free/quick, the presenter is great, and most contain free sample files to practice on.You can teach yourself a good standard of Photoshop just by following along. Click here for tutorials.
Introduction from Adobe to Photoshop AI: Nearly three and a half decades since we first brought Photoshop to the world, we’re writing a new chapter in our history with the integration of Generative AI and Adobe Firefly into Photoshop. Today we deliver an incredible new capability into creators’ hands that empowers them to work at the speed of their imagination while fundamentally transforming the experience into something more natural, intuitive and powerful.
Generative Fill – Adobe Photoshop Quickly create, add to, remove or replace images right in Adobe Photoshop with simple text prompts powered by Adobe Firefly generative AI.
https://youtu.be/Sp6K3qpVFO0Learn the basics of Generative Fill that is now integrated into the Beta version of Adobe Photoshop. This technology allows you to write simple text prompts to enhance your own images directly in Photoshop.
What’s new in Photoshop
The new features introduced to Photoshop are designed to accelerate everyday creative workflows, streamline complex tasks, and reduce clicks.
Adjustment Presets
Adjustment Presets are filters that speed up complex tasks by enabling you to preview and change the appearance of images in just a few steps to achieve a distinctive look and feel, instantly.
There are 32 new presets in the Adjustments panel that you can hover over to see what your image would look like with each preset applied before selecting it. Once a preset is selected, it can be further refined by editing the automatically created adjustment layers in the layers panel.
Neural Filters is a new workspace in Photoshop with a library of filters that dramatically reduces difficult workflows to just a few clicks using machine learning powered by Adobe Sensei. Neural Filters is a tool that empowers you to try non-destructive, generative filters and explore creative ideas in seconds. Neural Filters helps you improve your images by generating new contextual pixels that are not actually present in your original image.
Click here for a tutorial on how to use Generative Fill
Gradients update
The Gradients feature has been significantly improved, and the workflow has been expedited.
The feature enables you to create gradients in just a few steps and now includes new on-canvas controls which help you have precise controls over many aspects of the gradient in real-time. A live preview that’s created automatically shows you instantly how the changes you make affect your image.
You can now also make non-destructive edits to your gradients, which means you can go back and make changes to your gradient without permanently altering your original image.
The Remove Tool is an AI-powered feature that enables you to replace an unwanted object by simply brushing over it, preserving the integrity of nearby objects and providing an uninterrupted transition on complex and varied backgrounds.
The Remove Tool is particularly powerful when removing larger objects and matching the smooth focus shift across the image. For example, the tool can remove an entire building or car from an alpine landscape image while seamlessly maintaining the fidelity of the progression from meadow to mountains.
Use the Remove tool for:
Big objects
An object near other objects
An object on a varied-focus background
An object with structure behind it (think lines, like a fence or horizon)
The Contextual Task Bar is an on-screen menu that recommends the most relevant next steps in several key workflows, reducing the number of clicks required to complete a project, and making the most common actions more easily accessible.
For example, when an object is selected, the Contextual Task Bar appears below your selection and suggests actions for selection refinement that you might want to use next, such as Select and Mask, Feather, Invert, Create Adjustment Layer, Fill Selection, or generate something with the new Generative Fill capabilities.
The revolutionary and magical new suite of AI-powered capabilities grounded in your innate creativity, enabling you to add, extend, or remove content from your images non-destructively using simple text prompts. You can achieve realistic results that will surprise, delight, and astound you in seconds.
Click here for a tutorial on how to use Generative Fill
DreamStudio
https://youtu.be/AKyOWNXWxXUTutorial as we explore the amazing capabilities of DreamStudio, from creating realistic portraits to coming up with prompts and structuring your work for maximum impact,
https://youtu.be/AEzIgDMaoiUFollow more advanced tutorial here
DALL-E and DALL-E 2 are deep learning models developed by OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions, called “prompts”. DALL-E was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post in January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images. In April 2022, OpenAI announced DALL-E 2, a successor designed to generate more realistic images at higher resolutions that “can combine concepts, attributes, and styles”.
STARTING POINT 5: PHOTOGRAPHY & HERITAGE < Personal stories, ancestry & family history < Identity & culture < Self-portraiture & autobiography
Photographers often focus on very personal subject matter, documenting familial relationships that capture the essence of human connection, vulnerability, privacy and shared experiences. From candid moments to staged portraits, photographers use the familial lens to explore universal themes of love, identity and the passage of time.
Larry Sultan’s Pictures From Home explore both the traditional perceptions of family and the deep personal connections within it. His photographs of his parents in their retirement, capture the more traditional ideas of the American Dream, but do so striking a beautiful balance between candid photography and carefully crafted compositions. The result is a collection of family moments, frozen in an instant and seemingly strange in their immediacy, permanence and location.
Other photographers who use family and the home, both their own or the intimacy found in others, are Richard Billingham, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Sally Mann, Siân Davey, Chien-Chi Chang and Olivia Arthur.
Jacqui Davies Ella Smith and Justin Salinger in RAY & LIZ, 2018
Documentary approach > recording life as it is > camera as witness Documentary is storytelling through a series of images of people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. Read more here Documentary Photography
Larry sultan vs Richard Billingham > artists photographing their parents > straight photography vs snapshot aesthetics > formal vs informal.
Larry Sultan, Pictures from Home
Richard Billingham, Ray’s A Laugh
Richard Billingham: Watch film where Sultan talks about his project Picture from Home and photographing his parents
Here are some Davey’s photography projects, most of which have been published as photobooks too.
Looking for Alice: about her daughter with Down syndrome
Martha: about her teenager daughter – see link to portfolio here on LensCulture
Her latest work, book and exhibition is: The Garden, which is currently on show at The Photographer’s Gallery in London.
Everyone has a place in our garden. I am the garden. Those who enter are the garden. Without distinction, without separation.- Siân Davey
Sam Harris, The Middle of Somewhere
Sam Harris and his project The Middle of Somewhere – see portfolio and review on Lensculture here.T
he body of work spans a twelve-year period in the life of the photographer’s family, since they have boldly decided to leave the rat race in search for a simpler existence. A Travelogue insert is included in the book from the family’s life on the road in Australia and in villages in India where they lived for several years and birthed their second daughter.
Simultaneously expressing something about the meanings of love, growing up, sisterhood, family, landscape, and the rhythm of nature, Harris’ work is at once both intimate and all embracing and is a memorable and inspiring collection of images that will both please the eye and stir the soul.
Sally Mann and her seminal work and photobook: Immediate Family
Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat’s early photographic works include the Women of Allah series (1993–1997), which explored the question of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video works departed from overtly political content or critique in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. In her practice, she employs poetic imagery to engage with themes of gender and society, the individual and the collective, and the dialectical relationship between past and present, through the lens of her experiences of belonging and exile.
How can knowledge and understanding of an artists work inform your own practice as a student of photography?
Artist case studies examine an artist’s life, process, or specific artworks, offering insights into their creativity, career, or the challenges they face.
For artists case studies and further inspiration in relation to the theme: ‘ORIGINS’ click below.
Use these subheadings as a guide to structure your artists case study > make it insightful and meaningful!
RESEARCH > in-depth research of an artist is the first step
Always start by making use of resources on the blog produced by the teachers.
If there are hyperlinks, click on them and learn more. Explore relevant sources both on the internet and also ask teacher if books exists of their work in the classroom (often we have books of the artists we study).
Make notes of what you read, including relevant quotes and also copy hyperlink to online sources, or if a book write title, author, year of publication and publisher.
MOODBOARD > gallery of their images
Introduce an artist with a mood board showing a selection of their images in relation to theme of ‘UNION’, or a particular body of work that inspires you and relates to your personal project and ideas.
INTRODUCTION > background and context of the artists work
Write a paragraph where you introduce the artist describing why you have chosen to study them and how they relate to the theme and ideas you want to explore in your project
Provide an overview of their work, including describing methods, techniques, style, approach, meaning and subject-matter (if relevant)
Also consider any personal, artistic or historical context that you read about their work that might be useful for you to include.
Incorporate quotes and comments from sources used to gain knowledge and understanding, such as an interview or statement by the artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as online articles, reviews, books, YouTube etc.
Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post.
IMAGE ANALYSIS > meaning behind images using photographic vocabulary
Select at least one image from the moodboard and analyse in depth using methodology of: TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.
Write a paragraph for each element of analysis using specific words from photography vocabulary sheet below.
Example # 1
Key Aspects of Photo Literacy
Analyzing visual elements: Understanding how techniques like camera angle, framing, subject placement, and focus contribute to the message of a photograph.
Recognizing constructed narratives: Realizing that photographs are not objective recordings of reality but are created by a photographer who makes deliberate choices about what to include and how to present it.
Understanding context: Knowing that a photograph’s meaning is influenced by its purpose (e.g., advertising, news, personal snapshot) and the cultural, political, and historical context in which it was created and viewed.
Interpreting symbolism: Identifying the use of symbolism within an image to convey deeper, often non-literal, ideas or emotions…metaphors are often used too.
Creating photographic texts: Using photography as a tool to express ideas and tell stories, thereby deepening one’s understanding of the visual language they are using.
PLAN A RESPONSE > How you will develop a photoshoot
Write a brief explanation about how this artist case study will inform your photographic response.
What aspects of their work will you focus on in your next shoot?
Plan your photoshoot: What, where, when, who, how?
RECORD> make a set of images in response to study
Produce a set of images that respond to the artist work studied focusing on specific concepts (ideas, thoughts, foundation or meaning behind work), subject-matter or theme (topic or subject explored), aesthetics (visual style and how something looks) demonstrating competent camera skills (creative use of aperture, shallow depth of field/ out of focus or shutter speed/ movement etc.), use of appropriate lighting (natural light/ sunlight = hard light, overcast = soft light, studio light/ flash/ continious lighting systems/ chiaruscuro, rembrandt and butterly lighting techniques), composition (framing, view point, balance, harmony, contrast, rule of thirds, foreground, midground, background, arrangement of visual elements), visual elements (lines, shapes, colour, tone, form, texture, space, patterns).
Select and adjust images from shoot using Lightroom and show evidence of editing process using screen grabs and annotation.
Make sure to include contact sheets of sub-selections and a final set of your best images in variations of colours and B/W versions.
COMPARE & CONTRAST > describe similarities and differences
Compare and contrast your own images with the artist case study and describe similarities and differences in approaches, methods and outcomes.
Select two key images as visual illustrations (one you have made and one by the artist) and analyse using specific photographic vocabulary: TECHNICAL > VISUAL > CONTEXTUAL > CONCEPTUAL.
Here is an example…Artist case study: Uta Barth
Understanding Utah Bath’s Journey into photography:
How did Utah Bath first get interested in using photography?
Technical Focus: Aperture and Its Effects
How does Utah Barth explore focus and perception?
How does Utah Barth use aperture in her photos?
Can you identify any examples in her work where the aperture draws attention to specificsubjects or details? How does this challenge traditional photos and perception?
Connecting to the Theme of Belonging
How could Utah Bath’s photographs explore or represent the theme of belonging?
How does the camera capture things that they eye cannot? How does this link to fleeting moments and transience in life?
What effect does soft focus have in her photos? How could this link to a sense of belonging?
Analysing one of her photos:
1. Visual :
What are the main elements you see in the photo (people, objects, colors, shapes, textures)?
How is the composition arranged? Where is the main subject placed in the frame?
Are there any patterns, contrasts, or focal points that draw your attention?
Key words for Visual Analysis of Uta Barth’s work (based on the above image):
Soft focus
Blurred background
Muted colours
Earthy tones
Green foliage
Outdoor setting
Sharp focus
Contrast
Negative space
Composition
Light and colour
Abstract Shapes
2. Technical Analysis
What camera settings can you infer from the photo (e.g., aperture, shutter speed, focus)? How do these choices affect the image?
How is depth of field used? Is the background blurred or sharp, and what effect does this have?
How does Utah Bath use light—natural or artificial—to shape the image?
Are there any notable photographic techniques (e.g., framing, angles, perspective) being employed?
Key words for Technical Analysis of Uta Barth’s work:
Shallow depth of field
Wide aperture
Natural light
Diffused lighting
Soft focus
Background
Foreground
Sharp focus
Framing
Bokeh effect
3. Contextual Analysis
What do you know about Utah Bath’s background or the setting of this photo? How might this influence the image?
Is there any historical, cultural, or social context that is relevant to understanding the photo?
Key words for Contextual Analysis of Uta Barth’s work:
Ground series
Peripheral vision
Everyday environment
Overlooked details
Emerged in late 1980s and 1990s
Abstract photography
Nature
Time / life cycles
4. Conceptual Analysis
What themes or ideas does the photo explore (e.g., belonging, identity, community)?
How does the photo communicate emotions or messages beyond the literal subject matter?
What is the photographer trying to say or ask the viewer through this image?
Key words for Contextual Analysis of Uta Barth’s work:
Perception
Memory / fleeting moments
Presence / absence
Belonging
Unnoticed details in everyday life
Here are a selection of other artists case studies…
Here is an Exam Planner that will provide you with framework for you to follow. However, it is paramount that you are proactive and make sure that work is produced on a weekly basis.
You should provide evidence that fulfils the four Assessment Objectives: AO1 Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding AO2 Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops AO3 Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress AO4 Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.
DEFINITION IN DICTIONARY: ‘ORIGINS’
plural noun: origins
The point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived.”his theory of the origin of life
Similar/ synonyms: beginning start origination genesis birth dawning dawn emergence inception launch creation birthplace cradle early stages conception inauguration foundation outset source basis base cause root roots spring mainspring well head fountainhead fountain fount head seatseed germ fons et origo commencement wellspring radix derivation provenance etymology provenience
Opposite: end conclusion termination.
a person’s social background or ancestry.”a family of peasant origin”
Similar: descent ancestry parentage pedigree lineage line line of descent heritage birth extraction background familystock blood bloodline genealogy beginnings filiation stirps
Anatomy the more fixed end or attachment of a muscle.
Anatomy a place where a nerve or blood vessel begins or branches from a main nerve or blood vessel.
Mathematics a fixed point from which coordinates are measured.
ETYMOLOGY
origin(n.) c. 1400, “ancestry, race,” from Latin originem (nominative origo) “a rise, commencement, beginning, source; descent, lineage, birth,” from stem of oriri “arise, rise, get up; appear above the horizon, become visible; be born, be descended, receive life;” figuratively “come forth, take origin, proceed, start” (of rivers, rumors, etc.), from PIE *heri- “to rise” (source also of Hittite arai- “to arise, lift, raise,” Sanskrit iyarti “to set in motion, move,” Armenian y-arnem “to rise”). Meaning “beginning of existence” is from 1560s; sense of “that from which something derives its being or nature” is from c. 1600.
“person, animal, or plant that has been in a country or region from earliest times,” 1858, mistaken singular of aborigines (1540s; aboriginal is considered the correct singular in English), from Latin aborigines “the first inhabitants,” especially of Latium, hence “the first ancestors of the Romans.” This is possibly a tribal name, or from or made to conform to the Latin phrase ab origine, which means literally “from the beginning.”
This is from ab “off, away from” (see ab-) + ablative of origo “a rise, commencement, beginning, source; descent, lineage, birth,” from stem of oriri “arise, rise; be born, be descended, receive life” (see origin).
It was extended by 1789 to natives of other countries which Europeans had colonized, especially “aboriginal inhabitant of Australia,” with capital A-. The Australian English slang shortening Abo is attested from 1922 as a noun, by 1906 as an adjective.
BINARY OPPOSITION
Binary opposition – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.
Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics (scientific study of language) According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within.
AI INTERPRETATION
Exploring the theme of origins in photography involves looking backward to understand the present, covering personal heritage, the history of the medium, and the foundational elements of visual storytelling. It can be approached through archival research, technical experimentation, and conceptual, personal projects.
As an example/ Here is a guide to exploring the theme of origins in photohgraphy based on the provided results:
1. Explore Personal & Family Heritage
Document Ancestry: Photograph family heirlooms, old houses, or landscapes that hold sentimental value, using techniques that evoke nostalgia.
Re-enact Historical Photos: Recreate old family photographs in the present day to explore the passage of time and personal growth.
Investigate Personal “Origins”: Create a self-portrait series in a location with deep personal significance, using props or outfits that represent your roots.
Use “Slow Photography”: Walk slowly around your home or neighborhood, focusing on familiar objects that tell the story of your life.
How to start
Read the Exam Paper and Exam Planner thoroughly, especially pages 4-5 and page 25-28 which details specific starting points and approaches to the exam theme – make notes! Look up the word in the dictionary, synonyms and etymology (the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.)
Brainstorm your idea and research artists listed – look also at starting points in other disciplines e.g. Fine Art and Graphic Communication etc.
Begin to gather information, collect images, make a mind-mapand a mood-board
Make plans for photoshoots and write a specification.
Produce at least ONE PHOTO-SHOOT over H-Term as a response to tasks listed below and initial research and ideas.
You must show evidence of the above on your blog– complete at least 2-3 blog posts.
Each week you are required to make a photographic response (still-images and/or moving image) that relates to the research and work that you explored in that week. Sustained investigations means taking a lot of time and effort to produce the best you can possibly do – reviewing, modifying and refining your idea and taking more pictures to build up a strong body of work with a clear sense of purpose and direction
Prior to the timed examination you must produce and submit preparatory supporting studies which show why and how the supervised and timed work takes the form it does. You must produce a number of blog posts 15-30 that charts the development of your final piece from conception to completion and must show evidence of:
Development of your thoughts, decisions, research and ideas based on the theme
Record your experiences and observations
Analysis and interpretation of things seen, imagined or remembered
Investigations showing engagement with appropriate primary and secondary sources
Experimentation with materials, processes and techniques
Select, evaluate and develop images/ media further through sustained investigation
Show connections between your work and that of other artists/ photographers
Critical review and reflection
Controlled Exam 15 hrs over three days: (Final Outcome)
This time is for you to fine tune and adjust your final images for print using creative tools in Lightroom/Photoshop and/or complete a final edit of your photobook, film or video in Premiere. Your final outcome(s) must be presented in a thoughtful, careful and professional manner demonstrating skills in presenting work in either window mounts, picture frames, foam-board, and/ or submit pdf of photobook, or embed (from Youtube upload) moving image and video based production to the blog.
BLOGPOST: List of work to be completed on the blog.
IDEAS > INTERPRETATIONS > ARTIST EXAMPLES from pages 4 & 5 in exam booklet
ALLEGORY and STORYTELLING
Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Wher Are We Going? 1897
In December, 1897, Gauguin decided to kill himself. He was sick and miserable, without enough money for medical treatment, he was in debt and abandoned by those who owed him money. His tropical paradise had failed. He wished, before dying, to paint one great, last testamentary picture, and summoning all his strength in a single burst of energy he painted this canvas his largest. The attempt at suicide failed, apparently through an overdose of the arsenic he took, and so in later letters, we have his own comments upon the picture and its genesis:
It is a canvas about five feet by twelve. The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the left, and my name on the right, like a fresco on a golden wall with its corners damaged. To the right, below, a sleeping baby and three seated women. Two figures dressed in purple confide their thoughts to each other. An enormous crouching figure which intentionally violates the perspective, raises its arm in the air and looks in astonishment at these two people who dare to think of their destiny. A figure in the center is picking fruit. Two cats near a child. A white goat. An idol, both arms mysteriously and rhythmically raised, seems to indicate the Beyond. A crouching girl seems to listen to the idol. Lastly, an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts. She completes the story. At her feet a strange white bird, holding a lizard in its claw [sic], represents a futility of words.The setting is the bank of a stream in the woods. In the background the ocean, and beyond the mountains of a neighboring island. In spite of changes of tone, the landscape is blue and Veronese green from one end to the other. The naked figures stand out against it in bold orange. If anyone said to the students competing for the Rome Prize at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the picture you must paint is to represent Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? what would they do? I have finished a philosophical work on this theme, comparable to the Gospels. I think it is good.
After Gauguin recovered, in the spring of 1898, he sent the picture on to Paris, where it was shown at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery. There it attracted considerable attention, and the critic Andre Fontainas discussed it at some length, sympathetically, but from a conventional point of view. For him the picture lacked any clear content; “There is nothing,” he wrote, “that explains the meaning of the allegory.”
In a letter of March, 1899, Gauguin took the trouble to reply at some length, writing in what was for him a very friendly tone, to explain his method and intention. After mentioning the “musical” role that color plays in his pictures (and will play increasingly in modern painting a prophetic statement), and its power of evoking “what is the most general, and by the same token the most vague in nature its interior force,” he continues:
My dream is intangible, it implies no allegory; as Mailarme said, ‘It is a musical poem and needs no libretto.’ Consequently the essence of a work, unsubstantial and of a higher order, lies precisely in ‘what is not expressed; it is the implicit result of the lines, without color or words; it has no material being.’ .
All this sings with sadness in my soul and my surroundings, while I paint and dream at the same time with no tangible allegory within my reach owing perhaps to the lack of literary education.
For example, compare Paul Gaugin’s painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897) with Oscar Gustav Rejlander’s Two Ways of Life (1857)
Oscar G. Rejlander, Two Ways of Life (Hope in Repentance), 1857, printed 1925, carbon print, 41.1 × 76.9 cm. The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Acquired with the generous assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund (RPS.1641-2017)
Seeking to elevate photography to the status of fine art, Rejlander created The Two Ways of Life in imitation of traditional history painting. His photograph illustrates the protagonist’s allegorical choice between vice and virtue, with lust, gambling, and idleness represented on the left side and righteous prayer, marriage, and charity on the right. After photographing each figure and background separately, Rejlander combined more than thirty negatives to create this complex scene. Although nineteenth-century viewers were accustomed to seeing nudes in paintings and in sculpture, the presumed verisimilitude of Rejlander’s nudes made the work controversial. His image sparked intense debate regarding the use of nudity in photography and the merits of Pictorialism’s painterly effects in comparison with more ostensibly factual photography. Despite the controversy, Queen Victoria purchased the work as a gift for Prince Albert when it was shown in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857.
Learn more the image here and a recent exhibition in Canada about Oscar Gustave Rejlander here.
IDEA > DEVELOPMENT 2: Based on the concept of allegory and storytelling, explore work by Jersey artists (and Hautlieu alumni), Layla May Arthur’s, JERSEY; MY CHILDHOOD HOME. You could respond by exploring a parish in Jersey photographing its community/ people, landscape/ place and research the origin of how it became parish and its historical link with Norman heritage.
Layla May Arthur, JERSEY; MY CHILDHOOD HOME – an immersive paper art installation2019 circumference – 754cm, height -200cm
Jersey; My Childhood Home takes the viewer on a journey through all twelve parishesin Jersey and Layla’s memories of these locations. Distinguished by their separate crests, every parish is represented on their own panel.
“Growing up on Jersey in the Channel Islands for the first eighteen years of my life, I never realised how lucky I was to experience being an islander. Surrounded by the sea, wild cliff path walks, narrow winding green lanes and diverse beaches; the waves of the sea sculpting the granite rock face. I often crave to return to my island when I think about the expanse of sand dunes in St Ouen and the sunsets after BBQ’s with my family. The vertical compositions unravel narrative imagery which extends from one panel into the next, creating a dialogue between parishes. Paper cut patterns of the sea, sky, grass and sand create unity throughout every panel, suggesting to the audience that the fundamental element of life on an island is to be surrounded by the sea.
Explore more here on her website and a recent exhibition, A Paper Artist in Progress at Capital House in St Helier here
ART and THE BODY
The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall Venus figurine estimated to have been made c. 30,000 years ago. It was recovered on 7 August 1908 from an archaeological dig conducted by Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier, and Josef Bayer at a Paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria. The figurine was found by a workman named either Johann Veran or Josef Veram and is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. It is in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria as of 2003.
Interpretation and purpose Similar sculptures, first discovered in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are traditionally referred to in archaeology as “Venus figurines”, due to the widely held belief that depictions of nude women with exaggerated sexual features represented an early fertility deity, perhaps a mother goddess. The reference to Venus is metaphorical, since the figurines predate the mythological figure of Venus by many thousands of years. Some scholars reject this terminology, instead referring to the statuette as the “Woman of” or “Woman from Willendorf”.
Very little is known about the Venus’ origin, method of creation, or cultural significance; however, it is one of numerous “Venus figurines” surviving from Paleolithic Europe.[9] The purpose of the carving is the subject of much speculation. Like other similar sculptures, it probably never had feet, and would not have stood on its own, although it might have been pegged into soft ground. Parts of the body associated with fertility and childbearing have been emphasized, leading some researchers to believe that the Venus of Willendorf and similar figurines may have been used as fertility goddesses. The figure has no visible face, her head being covered with circular horizontal bands of what might be rows of plaited hair, or perhaps a type of headdress.
Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits by women.This theory stems from the correlation of the proportions of the statues to how the proportions of women’s bodies would seem if they were looking down at themselves, which would have been the only way to view their bodies during this period. They speculate that the complete lack of facial features could be accounted for by the fact that sculptors did not own mirrors. This reasoning has been criticized by University of California anthropologist Michael S. Bisson, who notes that water pools and puddles would have been readily available natural mirrors for Paleolithic humans.
IDEA > DEVELOPMENT 3:Photography and the Body Research and respond to the work of Claude Cahun (real name Lucy Schwob) who migrated to Jersey in 1937 from France to avoid German / Nazi occupation. She explored her gender and identity through a series of self-portraits made in collaboration with her partner, Marcel Moore (real name Suzanne Malherbe). Less well known is her images interacting with the Jersey landscape, which inspired Melbourne-based artist Clare Rae to respond with a new set of images, Entre Nous, produced in Jersey in 2018.
CASE STUDY: Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. Cahun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.
In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)
Cahun was friends with many Surrealist artists and writers; André Breton once called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”
While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today. She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate
READ articles here in The Guardian and the BBC to learn more and use these texts for your essay. Link to Jersey Heritage which houses the largest collection of her work and an article written by Louise Downie in response to an exhibition in 2005, Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marvel Moore at Jersey Museum.
In 2017 the National Portrait Gallery in London staged a major exhibition Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask, Another Mask showing their work together for the first time. Slipping between genders and personae in their photographic self-images, Wearing and Cahun become others while inventing themselves. “We were born in different times, we have different concerns, and we come from different backgrounds. She didn’t know me, yet I know her,” Wearing says, paying homage to Cahun and acknowledging her presence. The bigger question the exhibition might ask is less how we construct identities for ourselves than what is this thing called presence? Read a review of the exhibition here
Claude CahunGillian Wearing
Case study:Clare Rae, an artist from Melbourne, Australia who produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment. Rae visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme in 2017. She was researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey, as well as running workshops.
From her research she produced a new body of work, Entre Nous: Claude Cahun and Clare Rae that was exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Australia 22 March – 6 May 2018, and subsequently at CCA Galleries in Jersey, UK, 7–28 September 2018.
In her series, Never standing on two feet, Rae considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date. Rae writes:
Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place; in these instances sites of coastal geography and Jersey’s Neolithic ritual monuments. I enact a visual dialogue between the body and these environments, and test how their photographic histories impact upon contemporary engagements. Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze in photographic depictions of the female body in the landscape. My practice is invested in the feminist act of self-representation and I draw parallels between my performances of an expanding vocabulary of gesture and Cahun’s overtly performative images of the body expressing a multiplicity of identity. In this series, I tease out the interpretations inherent in landscape photography. I utilise gesture and the performing body to contrast and unsettle traditional representations of the female figure in the landscape.
Clare gave a artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare also discussed her photographic methodologies and practices, providing an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.
PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Homework
Here is the task that Clare Rae asked participants to respond to in a workshop she delivered while in Jersey in 2017.
1. Produce a self-portrait, in any style you like. Consider the history of self-portraiture, and try to create an image that alludes to, (or evades?) your identity.
2. Produce a performative photograph, considering the ideas presented on liveness, performance documentation and Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. ‘Captured’ vs. pre-meditated?
3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image..
Explore other ideas in relation to FEMININITY vs MASCULINITY here.
Also, find inspiration in the latest issue Body Talk of the British Journal of Photography
In Body Talk, the latest issue of British Journal of Photography, we explore how images of the body – particularly those that depict love, desire, and obsession – challenge what Martin Jay called the “disinterested gaze”.
CASE STUDY: Anthony Gormley The Angel of the North
Is it possible to make a work with purpose in a time that demands doubt? I wanted to make an object that would be a focus of hope at a painful time of transition for the people of the North East, abandoned in the gap between the industrial and the information ages.
Anthony Gormley
The Angel of the North is a contemporary sculpture by Antony Gormley, located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Completed in 1998, it is seen by an estimated 33 million people every year due to its proximity to the A1 and A167 roads and the East Coast Main Line. The design of the Angel, like many of Gormley’s works, is based on Gormley’s own body. The COR-TEN weathering steel material gives the sculpture its distinctive rusty, oxidised colour. It stands 20 metres (66 ft) tall with a wingspan of 54 metres (177 ft). The vertical ribs on its body and wings act as an external skeleton which direct oncoming wind to the sculpture’s foundations, allowing it to withstand wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h).
IDEA > DEVELOPMENT 4:Photography and sculpture Photographing public sculptures or streets at night in Jersey.
CASE STUDY: Lee Friedlander and American Monuments
In images made in the 1970s, Friedlander complicates notions of commemoration by photographing statues and monuments dwarfed by their environment, or taking on an alternate role within their surroundings. Explore more here
CASE STUDY: BRASSAÏ Paris at Night
Brassaï’s photographs of Paris were compiled in a collection in 1932, which was published as a book titled Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night). The book caused a stir because of its sometimes-scandalous subject matter. His first book was later followed by The Secret Paris of the 30s (1976). The series captures the essence of Paris and its high and low society after dark in the 1930s. Through his lens, Brassaï depicted the city’s nocturnal world, including its vibrant nightlife, and mysterious characters. From prostitutes to criminals and madams, with scenes of private gatherings, underworld activity, and workers emerging from their night shifts, Brassaï became known as “The Eye of Paris,” a name given by Henry Miller. Miller remembered that Brassaï was “on the look-out, sniffing the air, rummaging around in every nook and cranny, his gaze always far away. Everything, literally everything, was of interest to him.”
Brassai (Gyula Halasz), Un Bar Rue de Lappe (La Bastoche), 1932, Silver gelatin photograph
Unveiling the City’s Secrets: The Night’s Influence on Brassaï
Brassaï was deeply inspired by how the city seemed deserted after midnight, how its shadows ruled the street corners, and how the people and stories of the night would emerge after everyone had gone to bed. He noted,
“Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.”
Brassaï never claimed that he was a surrealist, but he aimed to give the everyday “a fantastical slant.” His own vision and curiosity to experience and document those places that “refused to be witnessed” brought a special dimension of reality. Brassaï said,
“My only aim was to express reality, for there is nothing more surreal than reality itself. If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.”
The Big Bang Theory explains how the universe began 13.7 billion years ago. (Image credit: RomoloTavani via Getty Images)
The Big Bang Theory stands as the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of the universe. According to this theory, the universe began as an infinitely small, hot, and dense point, which rapidly expanded and continued to stretch over 13.7 billion years. This initial period of rapid inflation set the stage for the vast and still-growing cosmos we observe today.
Although astronomers cannot directly witness the universe‘s formation, much of what we know about the Big Bang Theory comes from advanced mathematical models and simulations. Evidence supporting this theory includes the cosmic microwave background, a faint “echo” of the universe’s early expansion that scientists can study in detail. While the Big Bang Theory is widely supported within the scientific community, some researchers propose alternative ideas, such as eternal inflation or a cyclical, oscillating universe. These theories aim to address questions the Big Bang does not fully resolve, keeping the debate about the universe’s origins alive and dynamic. Explore more here
This stellar landscape is reminiscent of a winter vista in a view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Chandra data (red, green and blue) punctuate the scene with bursts of colored lights representing high-energy activity from the active stars. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/G. Garmire; Infrared: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and NSA/ESA/CSA/STScI/A. Pagan
This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of M74, otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy. Webb’s sharp vision has revealed delicate filaments of gas and dust in the grandiose spiral arms which wind outwards from the centre of this image. A lack of gas in the nuclear region also provides an unobscured view of the nuclear star cluster at the galaxy’s centre. M74 is a particular class of spiral galaxy known as a ‘grand design spiral’, meaning that its spiral arms are prominent and well-defined, unlike the patchy and ragged structure seen in some spiral galaxies. The Phantom Galaxy is around 32 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces, and lies almost face-on to Earth. This, coupled with its well-defined spiral arms, makes it a favourite target for astronomers studying the origin and structure of galactic spirals. Webb gazed into M74 with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) in order to learn more about the earliest phases of star formation in the local Universe. These observations are part of a larger effort to chart 19 nearby star-forming galaxies in the infrared by the international PHANGS collaboration. Those galaxies have already been observed using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories. The addition of crystal-clear Webb observations at longer wavelengths will allow astronomers to pinpoint star-forming regions in the galaxies, accurately measure the masses and ages of star clusters, and gain insights into the nature of the small grains of dust drifting in interstellar space.Hubble observations of M74 have revealed particularly bright areas of star formation known as HII regions. Hubble’s sharp vision at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths complements Webb’s unparalleled sensitivity at infrared wavelengths, as do observations from ground-based radio telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA. By combining data from telescopes operating across
European Space Agency for high quality images here
CASE STUDY: Cornelia ParkerCold Dark Matter: An Exploded View is the restored contents of a garden shed exploded by the British Army at the request of the artist Cornelia Parker. The surviving pieces have been used by Parker to create an installation suspended from the ceiling as if held mid-explosion. Lit by a single lightbulb the fragments cast dramatic shadows on the gallery’s walls.
HOW WAS THE ARTWORK MADE?
Installing this work recreates the moment of explosion. The broken wooden fragments of the shed and the charred remains of the objects that were in the shed are suspended as if in mid-flight from the epicentre of the explosion.
Installing the work also adds new layers of meaning to it, as Parker explains:
As the objects were suspended one by one, they began to lose their aura of death and appeared reanimated, in limbo. The light on inside the installation created huge shadows on the wall, so the shed look like it was re-exploding or perhaps coming back together again. I operate very often in these ‘frozen moments’ where there’s been lots of action but this a sort of quiet corner of that…So it’s not the explosion, it’s more the contemplation, you know, the quiet contemplation of these things in the air and because the things are in the air, they haven’t got the pathos they would have had if they were on the ground. It takes away that kind of pathos, which is there when you see a lot of the debris on the ground after an explosion, well put it back in the air and it’s still got some life.
Explore more here about Cornelia’s Parker iconic work, including inspiration, the explosion, how the installation was made and excellent discussions and activities that could provide a starting point for further exploration.
Contemporary photographers who readily have access to cutting-edge technology anddigital media, often explore and experiment with the original chemicals and processesused at the very beginnings of photography
Photography and its Origin
Photography did not spring forth from nowhere: in the expanding capitalist culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, some people were on the look-out for cheap mechanical means for producing images […] photography emerged experimentally from the conjuncture of three factors: i) concerns with amateur drawing and/or techniques for reproducing printed matter, ii) light-sensitive materials; iii) the use of the camera obscura — Steve Edwards, Photography – A Very Short Introduction
Louis Daguerre and the daguerreotype
If this is an area of interest, you should revisit essay and blog post completed earlier in yr 12 on the subject of the Origin in Photography.
Also study this Threshold concept 2: Photography is the capturing of light; a camera is optional developed by PhotoPedagogy which includes a number of good examples of early photographic experiments and the camera obscura which preceded photography. It also touches on photography’s relationship with light and reality and delve into photographic theories, such as index and trace as a way of interpreting the meaning of photographs.
IDEA > DEVELOPMENT 5: Mirrors & Windows The idea of photographs functioning like windows makes total sense. Like the camera viewfinder, windows frame our view of the world. We see through them and light enters the window so that we can see beyond. Photographs present us with a view of something. However, it might also be possible to think of photographs as mirrors, reflecting our particular view of the world, one we have shaped with our personalities, our subconscious motivations, so that it represents how our minds work as well as our eyes. The photograph’s glossy surface reflects as much as it frames. Of course, some photographs might be both mirrors and windows.
Explore blog post here that also includes writing a 1000 word essay on the subject .
William Henry Fox TalbotFloris Neusüss
In the summer of 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot experimented with various chemicals to develop paper coatings suitable for use in a camera. He placed small wooden cameras that his wife called “mousetraps” all over his estate. The earliest surviving paper negative dates from August 1835, a small recording of the bay window of Lacock Abbey (left). In 1978, the German photographer Floris Neusüss visited Lacock Abbey to make photograms of the same window. He returned again in 2010 for the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A to create a life-sized version of Talbot’s window (above right).
The exhibitionMirrors and Windows, anexhibition of American photography since 1960, opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMa) in July of 1978. The curator John Szarkowski’s attempted to categorise photographers whose work largely reflected the subjectivity of the artist in comparison with those whose work largely sought to see outside themselves. Szarkowski wrote in the catalogue essay that accompanied the exhibition:
“The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half-century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugène Atget of the second. In either case, what artist could want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” — John Szarkowski, 1978
MIRRORS AND WINDOWS has been organized around Szarkowski’s thesis that such personal visions take one of two forms. In metaphorical terms, the photograph is seen either as a mirror – a romantic expression of the photographer’s sensibility as it projects itself on the things and sights of this world; or as a window – through which the exterior world is explored in all its presence and reality.
The recent Aperture magazine no. 261 on The Craft Issue features photographers who make pictures the slow way—building camera obscuras, creating photograms, and laboring in traditional darkrooms to make handmade, unrepeatable forms. Explore link here
CASE STUDY:Peter Wiklund Pinhole photography
Screenshot
I want to evoke a primordial world, where there is a tension between humankind and the rest of nature.
Much of the history of photography has been about refining the technologies of the camera and the chemistry of light-sensitive materials so that they record the world as objectively as possible. Early photographic techniques involved many forms of manipulation to achieve a life-like result: braces to hold a person still for the long duration necessary to make a portrait; sandwiching negatives in order to render the sky and ground in equal detail…
But the very simplest pieces of equipment, while they may not capture the objective clarity we have come to expect from photography, have their own inherent qualities. Qualities that suit them to more imaginative and subjective forms of expression. One such piece of equipment is the pinhole camera. This is perhaps the simplest of all cameras: a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. There is no lens. Light from a scene passes through the tiny aperture and projects an image onto a photosensitive sheet of film or paper placed on the opposite side of the box.
A pinhole camera has its limitations. For example, the tiny aperture means that exposure times are much longer than we have come to expect in contemporary photography. But it also has some remarkable qualities. The depth of field is almost infinite. There is no lens distortion (because there is no lens) and so images remain absolutely rectilinear. And, given the extended depth of field, the film plane can be curved without loss of focus, opening up interesting possibilities for experimentation with perspective.
It is these many idiosyncratic qualities that drew Peter Wiklund to the pinhole camera as his creative tool of expression. For more than a quarter of a century, he has been exploring the imaginative possibilities of pinhole and other basic forms of camera in order to develop a personal language of visual imagining: his own creative way of seeing.
CASE STUDY: Tim Rudman and his series ‘Iceland, an Uneasy Calm’ is a series of photographs taken in Iceland over the past an 8 years period. Tim describes his fascination with the country as ‘a land of myth and magic, of fearsome subterranean power and spectacular scenery’.
‘The other worldliness of Iceland is something many have tried to capture and Tim’s images in particular capture the isolation and singular landscapes of Iceland”, says Fox Talbot Museum curator Roger Watson from the National Trust. “In Britain we are fortunate to live in many varied landscapes, but nothing is more unique in terms of scenery than Iceland.”
The photographs in the exhibition are printed in black and white and are split toned, giving the images an enhanced depth. Tim Rudman is regarded as a master printer and his skills in the darkroom, coupled with his skills behind the camera, create images with a heightened sense and unexpected depths
Charles Darwin:On the Origin of Species On 24th November 1859, ‘On The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin was published: a historically momentous publication that would change the way we view and study science for generations to come. Read full article here and a link to the original text here
Photography and heritage
The search and exploration of our own individual heritage, personal ancestry and family roots/ history have often fascinated artists across all disciplines and inspired them to produce unique responses.
CASE STUDY: Yinka Shonibare, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle
“It’s a celebration of London’s immense ethnic wealth, giving expression to and honouring the many cultures and ethnicities that are still breathing precious wind into the sails of the United Kingdom,” Yinka Shonibare
The artwork is a scaled-down replica of HMS Victory, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It was made by Yinka Shonibare CBE, a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores issues including race, colonialism and class.
His monumental piece was created for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth project. It was unveiled in the Square in 2010, standing in dialogue with Nelson’s Column.
Since 2012, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle has stood outside the National Maritime Museum’s Sammy Ofer Wing, following a fundraising campaign with the Art Fund.
For Shonibare, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle is a celebration of multiculturalism. The 823 men on board the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar came from a range of nations and regions including Brazil, India, Africa and the Caribbean
Take a closer look
Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle tackles complex themes in fresh and powerful ways. The ship’s 37 patterned sails reference Indonesian batik designs (the art of decorating cloth using wax and dye), which were mass-produced by Dutch traders and sold in West Africa. Despite their complex history, linked to emigration, industrialisation and cultural appropriation, these textiles are now associated with African dress and identity.
Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle also draws inspiration from the craft of putting ship models inside glass bottles, which grew in popularity during the 19th century. While Shonibare’s method is shrouded in secrecy, the technique typically involves tying cotton threads to the masts of a ‘flat-packed’ ship. Once the ship is laid inside the bottle, the strings are pulled to raise the masts.
“As a young woman, and a young Black artist, I felt like I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, because I didn’t quite have the assurance of success, but I had a strong desire to create.”Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson Wigs 1994. Among the subjects of Simpson’s art is the experience of African American women in contemporary American society, a topic that encompasses issues of race and gender. Since 1990 African American hairstyles, which, over the centuries, have taken on social and political implications, have been some of her motifs. Depicted here is a diverse group of wigs in an orderly presentation that suggests a lineup of scientific specimens. Many types of styles are represented, from the short, fuzzy-textured Afro at the upper left to a wig of long, silky blond hair near the upper right. Text panels interspersed among the wigs record Simpson’s wide-ranging commentary on their use by women, entertainers, and transvestites. The wig’s potential as an instrument for conformity, metamorphosis, and concealment is thereby underscored.
Simpson has used the traditional format of the print portfolio in which a sequence of images produces a cumulative, narrative effect. The images have a tactile, suggestive quality as they isolate hair as an important aspect of self-image that affects a deeper sense of overall reality.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1960, Simpson studied painting and photography. It was while traveling throughout Italy during her school years that she found the white shift dress that would become an integral part of much of her early work. The garment homogenized the different subjects of her photographs, speaking to a sense of “‘femaleness’ without additional interference from ‘fashion.’”
The plain, rough cotton also evoked clothing made and worn by enslaved Black people in the American South—clothing enabled by the cotton plantations that fueled American industry during much of the 19th century. In these early works, clothing implicitly tied Simpson’s figures to long histories of bondage, surveillance, and oppression faced by Black women in the United States. Simpson’s first solo exhibition, at Just Above Midtown Gallery in 1986, was soon followed by Projects 23 at MoMA in 1990—the Museum’s first solo exhibition by a Black woman artist. Many of the works featured in the exhibition included details of Black women’s hair, in long plaits, braided crowns, and close crops. For example, 1978-88 consists of four photographs of braided hair against a black surface. Panels with words such as “weave,” “tug,” and “part” sit atop the hair. The work names different ways hair is manipulated, but also, as evidenced by the dates that appear in each photograph, the passage of time. Braids, much like the shift dress, were a fixture in Simpson’s early works, speaking to the tension surrounding Black women’s hair and the important role hair plays in Black culture. Meanwhile, the text Simpson includes in her work is poetic in nature, playing with words to obscure meaning while giving voice back to historically marginalized subjects. Simpson describes her process, saying, “When I take a picture, I have an idea in my head, and I try to make it work. Then I play with language to get what I want.”
In combining text and image, Simpson’s work brought attention to the systems of categorization and forced visibility that served to oppress Black women. As scholar Saidiya Hartman has noted, Simpson’s work “undermines the viewer’s mastery and disrupts the power of the normalizing gaze” while laying bare the ways in which “memories of suffering are excised in the flesh.”
More recently, Simpson began experimenting in front of the camera as well. Her 2009 series 1957-2009 features a number of archival photographs Simpson found on eBay. Part of an album, the images were arranged in a grid and featured an unknown Black woman in poses recalling pin-ups. Simpson included images of herself playing the subjects surrounding her. Of this experience, Simpson said, “It’s very artificial: I was imitating a woman’s body that is different from mine, a woman’s body that is more agile.”
This investigation led her to further explore depictions of Black women in media and pop culture. In 2016, she began working with the Ebony magazine archives, collaging images from the magazine with photographs she had taken. Across her work, Simpson’s aims remain the same. “I wanted to challenge the idea of subjectivity,” she has said, “how we come to know the subject, and our desire to know the subject through details.”
Lorna Simpson Untitled. 1992 Eighteen color instant prints (Polaroids) and eighteen engraved plastic plaques
CASE STUDY:Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat’s early photographic works include the Women of Allah series (1993–1997), which explored the question of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video works departed from overtly political content or critique in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. In her practice, she employs poetic imagery to engage with themes of gender and society, the individual and the collective, and the dialectical relationship between past and present, through the lens of her experiences of belonging and exile.
CASE-STUDY: Hoda Afshar (b. Iran 1983) is a visual artist whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. She is interested in the ways that image-making can either reinforce or challenge our common sense, and the forces that shape perception. Her works invite audiences to reflect on and to rethink how and what we see, often by drawing attention to parts of the political and visible order that have previously been excluded.
Hoda’s artistic practice embraces a variety of media and approaches – primarily using photography and video, though her recent projects have involved working with archival images and other materials including text and sound elements. She has employed diverse techniques ranging from 3D photography and printing to mirror-making, and her documentary projects often involve collaborating with participants, and other forms of intervention that disrupt traditional approaches.
Also explore her latest work published as a photobook The Fold and read an interview with Afsnar here
Through critical re-appropriation, Hoda Afshar reclaims a colonial photographic legacy fixated on the veiled woman. The Fold is a critical visual and psychological investigation into the enduring legacy of Orientalist and colonialist photographic practices, and the ways in which these gazes continue to shape how bodies—particularly veiled Islamic bodies—are seen, archived, and consumed.
IDEA > DEVELOPMENT 6: Family history, heritage and ancestry Explore your own private archives such as photo-albums, home movies, diaries, letters, birth-certificates, boxes, objects, mobile devices, online/ social media platforms and make a blog post with a selection of material that can be used for further development and experimentation using a variety of re-staging or montage techniques .
Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future. See more Public/ Private Archives
For example, you can focus on the life on one parent, grand-parent, family relative, or your own childhood and upbringing. Ask other family members (parents, grand-parents, aunties, uncles) if you can look through their photo-albums too etc.
Explore link here with a step-to-step guide on how to digitise images from old photo albums and create new creative photographic responses.
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Jonny Briggs: In search of lost parts of my childhood I try to think outside the reality I was socialised into and create new ones with my parents and self. Through these I use photography to explore my relationship with deception, the constructed reality of the family, and question the boundaries between my parents and I, between child/adult, self/other, nature/culture, real/fake in attempt to revive my unconditioned self, beyond the family bubble. Although easily assumed to be photoshopped or faked, upon closer inspection the images are often realised to be more real than first expected. Involving staged installations, the cartoonesque and the performative, I look back to my younger self and attempt to re-capture childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes.
There are different ways artists and photographers have explored their own, or other families in their work as visual storytellers. Some explore family using a documentary approach to storytelling, others construct or stage images that may reflect on their childhood, memories, or significant events drawing inspiration from family archives/ photo albums and often incorporating vernacular images into the narrative and presenting the work as a photobook.
Yury Toroptsov Matthew Finn
Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom) vs Laia Abril (The Epilogue)> artists exploring personal issues > vernacular vs archival > inside vs outside
Rita Puig-Serra Coasta, Where Mimosa Bloom
Laia Abril, The Epiloque
Carole Benitah (Photo Souvenirs) vs Diane Markosian (Inventing My Father) > family > identity > memory > absence > trauma
Carole Benitah, Photo-Souvenirs
This is the closet thing I had to an image of my father. A cut out of him in my mother’s photo album.
Ugne Henriko (Mother and Daughter) vs Irina Werning or Chino Otsuka > re-staging images > re-enacting memories
