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
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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
