What is the grey area?
In every day life the grey area is an area intermediate between two mutually exclusive states or categories, where the border between the two is blurry, it is a topic that is not clearly one thing or the other and is open to interpretation. However in photography, I believe that taking photographs in the grey area is taking images of the undiscovered and or unknown by the eye of the public and bringing light to those subjects. Which is what photographer Jack Latham does in his project Parliament of Owls. Latham describes his practice as operating in the "grey area between fact and fiction". His photographs are part of a long documentation of photographs. However, he recognizes that photographs might not be as reliable or trustworthy nowadays as they appear, thus leading Latham to operate in the space between fact and fiction, clarity and ambiguity, believability and doubt.
Jack Latham - Parliament of Owls.
In his new series and publication, Parliament of Owls, he targets and investigates the mystery and theories of the Bohemian Grove “Bohemian Grove is shrouded in secrecy, it doesn’t share with the public its events, membership list or lakeside talks,” Which is what drove Latham to photograph what occurs around and in the club to show the public, the whole project presents a conspiracy theory and the mystery behind each image brings some of the club's truth to light and lets the viewer create their own opinion of what they see. A key idea of the project, which is why it is called Parliament of Owls, is the owl itself as it is the club's mascot. “I would imagine it was chosen because it has historically been associated with wisdom and intellect.”
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Latham's photographs are a mix between portraiture, landscapes and other abstract images which make up the Parliament of Owls collection. For example, the image of the owl is a kind of portrait, not of a person, but of an animal, the owl and the other image is also a portrait of a woman in the woods. The black and white filter on both of the images creates an ominous and enigmatic feel, making the viewer uncomfortable and question the meaning of the photographs. The image on the right is focused on an old woman with a mask, the mask she is wearing intensifies the enigmatic feel of the images. The woman is surrounded by old statues and fences, suggesting that the woman potentially lives in the woods and the old statues can signify the history the old woman contains. The setting of the image, also intensifies the mysterious feel of the images as the forest is vast and it is unknown what is beyond what we can see.
Documentary Photography.
Documentary photography is all about chronicling significant historical events which is used usually in photojournalism or reportage. However documentary photography can be used to influence the public's political or or other opinion and view of the world. It is constantly used in media for politicians to get more votes as they choose what is seen by the public and this can come across as fake news which can make photographs an unreliable source of evidence due to people using it to create a better image of themselves.
Response to Jack Latham - Grey Area.
A lot of the photographs that I took for this photo shoot were from a straight and average angle and point of view with the camera, however, too many photos that look the same gets boring and repetitive so I attempted to take photos from different angles and perspectives, from low to high, sideways and upside down, changing the perspective of multiple photos. Plenty of the images were taken from a low field of view, which creates a sickening and nauseating due to the low field of view used to take these photos. Furthermore, the location was new to me, unexplored, making it a grey area of a location for me, somewhere new that i discovered to take photographs, and because of the angles they we're taken in, the location itself is unknown to the person viewing the photographs, creating a mysterious feel to the photos and make the viewer wonder where they were taken, only slight areas of the sky in only some of the images is visible which isn't enough for someone to know the location. Furthermore, the black and white filter was also used by Jack Latham, and it creates a mysterious and ominous feel towards the photos themselves as not only do you not know the original colour of the objects and also because of the symbolism behind the colour black, death and decay, all emphasise the feeling of discomfort and mystery. The symbolic meaning of decay also goes along with the actual decaying building the pictures were taken in and it contradicts with the thriving wild life and plants inside the broken building, just like the white, and its symbolism, contradicts the black on the filter.
Response To Aaron Schuman - Slant.
The Viper of Kidbrooke Lane.
Jane Maria Clouson, born in 1854 and died in 1871 was the murder victim and she was a maid in the house of Edmund Walter Pook. At the time of her death, she was pregnant and it was said to be his child. Edmund worked as a printer and was the first suspect in her murder. Using a hammer, the culprit struck the teenage victim up to 15 times, crushing her skull and brutalizing her face. Kidbrooke Lane has remained one of the most iconic murder sites in London and still now the ghost of Jane Maria Coulson is said to haunt the lane although it looks nothing like it did at the time. This was the one place that no one would walk in, especially at night. This was a real murder mystery and one of the first violent murders in the Victorian era. Jane was given a memorial at Brockley cemetery in eltham erected by public subscription. The monument was paid for by public money and stands alone, on the monument there is a praying child sitting on top of a pillar. Below the figure, is an inscription detailing the horrific events surrounding her brutal murder, on the inscription it says “A motherless girl who was murdered in Kidbrooke Lane, Eltham aged 17 in 1871. Her last words were, “Oh, let me die”.
I decided to learn of the murder of Jane Clouson, and take pictures of every significant location in the story of her murder, the road in which she died, the journey to the hospital and it's interior, and her final location, the cemetery in which she now lays. All the pictures that I took go along together and seem to have some sort of narrative and story to them, they show the journey from the road of the murder, to the hospital and then finally her grave.
For the final idea I want to create a book with all the pictures, as a way to present the story through an actual story book with writing. However, I do not want to include too much writing which is descriptive, I want to include vague sentences that do explain the narrative, however it leaves the viewer to have their own interpretation of the work. It will be in sections in a way, beginning (the road of the incident), middle (journey to hospital and the hospital) and end of the narrative (her death).
I decided to learn of the murder of Jane Clouson, and take pictures of every significant location in the story of her murder, the road in which she died, the journey to the hospital and it's interior, and her final location, the cemetery in which she now lays. All the pictures that I took go along together and seem to have some sort of narrative and story to them, they show the journey from the road of the murder, to the hospital and then finally her grave.
For the final idea I want to create a book with all the pictures, as a way to present the story through an actual story book with writing. However, I do not want to include too much writing which is descriptive, I want to include vague sentences that do explain the narrative, however it leaves the viewer to have their own interpretation of the work. It will be in sections in a way, beginning (the road of the incident), middle (journey to hospital and the hospital) and end of the narrative (her death).
Morgan Ashcom's - 'What the Living Carry'.
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Ashcom photographed real places in order to create an imaginary, but believable place called Hoy's Fork. We were asked to create some sort of story or a fake location like Ashcom and I had an idea of creating a fake arson and a person that was affected by it as their house was destroyed and they had to escape, and the video tells you a progressive story. The red throughout the video is symbolic of the destruction and the fire which is also shown in the video in little flickers almost. Furthermore the red is contrasting with the black and white which can be seen as representative of the past that the building and the person could've had.
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Bristol Trip.
Method Photography
During the time that we were given, which was about 3 weeks, we needed to come up with an idea, which in someway was related to the grey area, and series of photos embodying the idea. I decided to take an approach that I never have before, and taking pictures of things with a perspective that I never really had, things can look the same from the first glance but as you keep looking at things, you start realising how truly different they can actually be. I took inspiration of two people in particular, one being Peter Fraser. He believes that it's almost like he can smell a picture and he understands the connection between the senses and photography and how they are both connected to memory and how smell can remind you of things and triggers your sub conscious to remember things from the past that you aren't really sure about, deja vu, however, pictures help to remember these distant memories that aren't clear anymore, and I've tried to link this to a sub-theme that I haven't really explored. My images are usually dark with some sort of enigmatic symbolism behind them so I wanted to take a lighter approach, literally. I focused on happiness, things and moments in which I felt happy and captured them on camera, and that in itself is a grey area for me, exploring an idea that I never have before. With this idea in mind, to really capture these happy moments I decided to make sure during these 3 weeks that I was in a correlating mood to the images that I was attempting to take and I called this method photography, just like method acting in which the actors live their lives for a period of time as if they were the characters, I did the same but with the emotion and meaning I wanted to portray in my images. I also took inspiration from Paul Strand who also wanted to represent and invoke a deeper meaning in his photos that had a personal and more deep meaning to him as he would spend several days and sometimes even months in different locations before taking any pictures so he could get to meet the people in the region, and when the pictures are taken, there is now a connection between the photographer and the people.