Montage Theory.
So we could further learn of method photography we were shown a video of method photography, explaining its roots and purpose and how it changed not only film, but photography also, it was an editing style that collaged multiple different shots and added a new sophisticated element to cinematic language. After WWI, Russia was torn apart from years of civil war and so the first task of the ruling party was to consolidate and to communicate and they did so through film and used it as a mass communication medium, and thus the Moscow Film School was born in which students were made to create films for the political parties, agitprop (agitation + propaganda). However the school was also interested in the theory of film and not only propaganda, which lead Kuleshov to bring new insight into the psychological workings of motion pictures. This lead to the exploration of film, looking thoroughly at each shot and rearranging them to explore the impact that different edits had, the Kuleshov effect. "The meaning of film was not only in spatial composition, but in the arrangement of shots." One of Kuleshov's students, Eisenstein, developed montage through theory, he did so to break the confines of space and time to make film a unique language. Eisenstein saw montage as a process which operated the same way as a Marxist Dialectic, a way of looking at history as a perpetual conflict in which a thesis (force) collides with an antithesis (counter force) to create a synthesis. The idea of having a shot of film and placing next to a conflicting shot would create a different synthesis which would then become its own thesis, and this would continue infinitely driving the emotion towards the shots forward, only building on the complexity of the previous shots.
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William Henry Fox Talbot - The Pencil of Nature.
The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist's pencil.
Talbot in a sense, was competing against artists and art itself by being one of the pioneers of photography, creating images without painting or drawing, but instead using light, hence the name of the project, The pencil of nature. Talbot's pencil would've been his photographic methods that created his images. Another outlook of the title could be that the pencil of nature is the light that develops the images which comprise the book. The Pencil of Nature contained twenty-four plates, a brief text for each, and an introduction that described the history and chemical principles of Talbot's invention, the Calotype. The book consists of rare prints and manuscripts, recording portraits, inventorying possessions, representing architecture, botanical prints and art.
Anna Atkins - Photographs of British Algae.
Shortly after William Henry Fox Talbot announced his invention of photography, Atkins began to experiment with the medium by using the cyanotype process to publish her collection of native seaweeds. Photographs of British algae is the first book to be illustrated by photography and the earliest sustained application of photography to science. Similarly to Talbot, Atkins photo book consisted of botanical prints, however Talbot also included different objects and places rather than just plants. Atkins published her book first, and seen as she was the first to publish a photography book, Talbot could've been inspired by her images, which is why he included botanical photographs in his book.
Walker Evans - American Photographs.
Walker Evans, in making American Photographs, he was the first photographer to have a book published. It broke from convention to create a new type of collection, in which how the pictures were laid out, as much so as the order of words in a sentence, gave the work its meaning. The simplicity of each photograph emphasises the complexity of how society was at the time and how people lived. He showed the reality of America and not the idealised 'American dream land' that some people might believe it is, it was two contrasting realities that lead to the creation of the project and book itself. Sympathy with the poor (thesis), Ideological American dream (antithesis) and the photo book itself (synthesis).
“After looking at these pictures with all their clear, hideous and beautiful detail, their open insanity and pitiful grandeur, compare this vision of a continent as it is, not as it might be or as it was, with any other coherent vision that we have had since the war,” |
Contemporary Zines.
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What is a Zine?
A zine is a small printed publication, made with cheap materials, made due to self expression, out of boredom, to show passion towards something, to document or even raise awareness. It doesn't matter. They originated with Sci-Fi fan zines in the 30s, but the didn't become a real thing until the 70s with punk culture, they were usually made using printers as it was easy, cheap and DIY. However in the 90s, with the popularisation of the internet, people started creating blog and websites to get their work seen by the public and thus lead zines to stop being made as often. |
Twister Town - Matt Martin.
Twister town is composed of multiple photographs of tornadoes around America. Although the zine was created by Matt Martin, the pictures in the zine itself are not his. This exemplifies the idea of what a zine is, its purpose, a zine can be composed of whatever the artist wants it to be. However, some of the images were different to others, some covered two pages, some only covered one, and some were multiple images in one page making it almost like a collage of tornadoes. I found the cover the most interesting part of the zine however. It is made of different images of tornadoes in the front and the back cover, however, contrastingly to the images in the zine, these have colour. They were made into duotones due to the colour of the paper. Furthermore the colour of the paper can also be symbolic of the tornadoes itself, red, gives the sense of danger and caution, just like a tornado. However the colour of the zine is what attracts attention to it, it' makes it stand out and makes you want to approach the zine which is contrasting to what you should do in the area of a tornado.
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Peckham Gothic - Lewis Bush.Peckham Gothic is a play on words, the name and the photographs themselves are inspired by the famous painting "American Gothic" of two farmers. This is clearly presented throughout the book, pictures are taken of a man gardening, however it is mostly visible in one image in which the man stands next to a woman, maybe his wife, which is almost identical to the painting and a clear reference is made. Furthermore, the "gothic" aspect is literally explored by using a monochromatic filter for all of the images in the zine.
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Lewis Bush Visit.
We had the opportunity to meet Lewis Bush and work in a workshop with the photographer. He brought some of his photo books and his work including one which still hasn't been published.
Lewis Bush - Shadows Of The State.
After the end of the cold war in 1991, spies still communicate using short wave radio broadcasts, using strings of numbers from Number Stations. These radio signals had codes that indicated certain things in certain locations, and using those codes you could see the areal view of these locations on google maps, however some of these locations have been tampered with and edited digitally to disguise locations or buildings. Furthermore some of the images in the photo book are radio and sound waves that were converted into images using computer software's. The radiation in radio signals is analogous to the radiant energy in photographs (just not so visible) and so therefore radio signals can be seen as a type of photograph.
Lewis Bush - W v.B (not yet published)
Werner von Braun was both a high ranking Nazi rocket scientist during the second world war. After the Germans lost the war, some of the German soldiers including Werner von Braun were offered to live in the America if they worked for the government, and he became a hero of the United States space programme became. Some of the rockets that he invented, used to kill and destroy areas during the war, were the rockets engineered to explore space. Furthermore, rather than the book taking a chronological approach about his life (1912 he was born, 1945 the war and 1977 he dies) the events of his lifetime are juxtaposed, (an image celebrating heroic status in both Nazi Germany and the U.S.A.) the Rashomon effect; a situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved.
Lewis Bush - Metropole.
Lewis bush in the shooting for his photo book "metropole" he wandered the streets of London taking series of multiple exposure, high contrast black and whiter prints of London's new high rises and modern buildings, which he believes are causing his city to "slowly fade away". He describes his images as dreamlike and also nightmarish. The photographs were intended to highlight how large swathes of the city are being developed so quickly that they have become unrecognisable causing perspective and orientation are lost in the process, emulating the sense of loss that many Londoners now feel.
I decided to look into "Metropole" as similarly to some of my images, the photographer decided to create high contrast black and white prints, however, in his project it is used to create a feeling of dullness and repetition, and in mine is to explore light by using lack of.
I decided to look into "Metropole" as similarly to some of my images, the photographer decided to create high contrast black and white prints, however, in his project it is used to create a feeling of dullness and repetition, and in mine is to explore light by using lack of.
JH Engström - Tout Va Bien.
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"Tout Va Bien“ does not handle a concrete subject in the traditional sense. The Swedish photographer JH Engström intends his project to be seen much more as visual poetry, a photographic narrative with strong autobiographical elements. Despite this, it does not exclusively depict aspects of his own life. "Tout Va Bien“ is a sequence of widely differing images. The photo book includes not only portraits and landscapes, but also bizarre snapshots like the photograph of the birth of his twins. Furthermore, Engström also uses photos with colour and black and white, playing with contrast, Engström leaves it to the viewers to interpret each photo and reading them in which ever way they want.
This was the book that gave me the very first idea of what to do for my own photobook. I liked how the contrasting images throughout the book created a narrative for the persons interpretation and so I decided to follow the same concept, using contrasting images, black&white and coloured, to create a range of different prints. |
Ron Jude - Nausea.
Initially I was extremely confused about the meaning or what idea the photo book was trying to get across, however, once I started looking into the book and doing further research I began to understand it further. The book focuses on the idea of moving through spaces that represent not only the premise of learning, but also its diametrical opposite, an amalgam of utter boredom and anxiety, brought on, to a large degree, by the spaces themselves, the images themselves all have a connection and have some sort of narrative, however, the idea behind each image is juxtaposed by itself. On the spine of the photo book, it reads the name of the book "nausea" in the font inspired by the book written by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book concerns a dejected historian, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea, this correlates to the meaning of the photo book, "an amalgam of utter boredom and anxiety, brought on, to a large degree, by the spaces themselves"
Meaning Between Photographs.
Beginning to Experiment.
Exploring the idea of light, by lacking of it is an apparent theme of my photography. I think I'll be continuing with the idea of taking images that lack of light which creates a main focus on a certain subject, however, I want to explore the idea of exploring light but using more of it, creating a contrast between the two series of photos which can potentially be included in the book, the two ideas presented together will oppose themselves creating a certain conflict. The lack of light creates a feeling of wonder. There is so much to be seen behind the subject of the photograph but it's blocked out by darkness and this is apparent in every image, but in some, rather than the background being engulfed in darkness, the main subject becomes a silhouette, again creating a feeling of wonder, as you can't clearly tell what is in front of you. However, the negative space, the darkness, makes what is light become the focus and viewed more intently.
Book Cover / Book Name.
As a big majority of my book is exploring light by using little of it, i decided for my cover to be lightning. Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions in the atmosphere or ground temporarily equalize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of as much as one gigajoule of energy. In other words, a lot of light. The high in contrast image blacks out the background, backing it non visible and so that the only thing that does show is the subject, the lightning, just like in the photos I've taken. Furthermore, the black and white high contrasting image also represents the contrast that there is in the book itself of monochromatic and highly saturated images with bright colours. Furthermore the name of the book "Adversus" is latin for adversary, or opposite, in a way the title describes what the book itself is composed of.