Decay.
Decay in photograph can be seen in various different ways, decaying buildings that aren't in use anymore, objects that are old, foods, people, destruction such as fire or breaking objects and obviously death itself. Due to the lack of opportunity during quarantine, taking pictures of fire were one of the easiest options I had to explore the idea of decay in photography. Furthermore, other ways in which decay can be explored in photography could be the use of old photographs, time itself decays, and so in a way old photographs are a way of showing decay.
Paul Graham: “Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult”.
What is "easy" about photography? What is "difficult"?
Photography is just looking at things, which is something we all do. It's a simple way of recording what we see. Point the camera, and press a button. However, it's equally as difficult because it's everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now, as you are reading this.
What does Paul Graham value about photography?
If it’s everywhere and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? Photographs that are pre-visualized, photos that are dry, a lucky random moment, an expression of intelligence or years of understanding photography is what makes a photo value.
What advice does Paul Graham offer us about what to photograph?
You can photograph everything. Just because something is stopping you, that something shouldn't become an obstacle. Just "relax, it’s everything and everywhere. You will find it, and it will find you, just start, somehow, anyhow, but: start."
How much planning should we do before getting started?
The more pre-planned it is the less room for surprise, for the world to talk back, for the idea to find itself, allowing ambivalence and ambiguity to seep in, and sometimes those are more important than certainty and clarity. A photograph shouldn't be expected. You are free to make any choice weather it makes sense or not, as you are also free to not make sense.
What makes photography "beautiful"?
Because it's your creation that was worth spending the time making, because it is something real, that didn’t exist before you made it exist: a sentient work of art and power and sensitivity, that speaks of this world and your fellow human beings place within it.
Photography is just looking at things, which is something we all do. It's a simple way of recording what we see. Point the camera, and press a button. However, it's equally as difficult because it's everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now, as you are reading this.
What does Paul Graham value about photography?
If it’s everywhere and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? Photographs that are pre-visualized, photos that are dry, a lucky random moment, an expression of intelligence or years of understanding photography is what makes a photo value.
What advice does Paul Graham offer us about what to photograph?
You can photograph everything. Just because something is stopping you, that something shouldn't become an obstacle. Just "relax, it’s everything and everywhere. You will find it, and it will find you, just start, somehow, anyhow, but: start."
How much planning should we do before getting started?
The more pre-planned it is the less room for surprise, for the world to talk back, for the idea to find itself, allowing ambivalence and ambiguity to seep in, and sometimes those are more important than certainty and clarity. A photograph shouldn't be expected. You are free to make any choice weather it makes sense or not, as you are also free to not make sense.
What makes photography "beautiful"?
Because it's your creation that was worth spending the time making, because it is something real, that didn’t exist before you made it exist: a sentient work of art and power and sensitivity, that speaks of this world and your fellow human beings place within it.
Alec Soth.
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In the interview, Soth begings to talk about how he did not start having an interest in photography with the intention of making a living form it, and was interpreting it from a fine art perspective, however, he has been able to make a living from it for 15 years. He began working in darkrooms, as it was one of the areas of photography that he was skilled at, but he would pressure himself into always getting work done, and if not, it would add to the challenge of creating work. Despite it being undermined in the interview, I think this is something crucial that he mentioned. Pacing yourself, working at your own pace is better than not working at all. If you focus on your project and take your time, beautiful images may emerge from that patience. Sloth also mentions that it is often not easy to get a start in a photography career, when you do not live in a large city. He says it is very difficult now, to distinguish yourself in the internet, among many other photographers as there are millions of people skilled in various different ways, manipulating their images digitally and physically. Whilst the internet can be a great tool for photographers, it can also make it more difficult to make a living in photography.
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Joel Meyerowitz.
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Photography is about movement and your perspective of it. Walking down a street and watching the daily routines of people going about their day can be dull, but once you begin to focus of the small details of their movement, the movements in the street become dynamic and alive. A normal movement such as calling for a taxi can transform into a poetic movement, it can be seen differently in someone else's eyes, such as the movement of a spear being thrown even though it is just a hand attached to an arm. Once this revelation is made clear, the world will begin to inundate you with the potential that the most ordinary and casual things, can be seen as something different and beautiful.
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Masahisa Fukase.
One artist that I am interested on and have researched his work before is Fukase. One of his photo books that I've previously researched "Ravens" Fukase focused on the world around him, the people in it and obviously Ravens. All of the pictures in this book are black and white. This book is focused on Fukase's preoccupation with his motif all throughout his work. It was a reflection of his angst throughout his life and he identified himself artistically as a raven and eventually he went mad. When his wife left him in 1976, Fukase began drinking heavily and suffered bouts of debilitating depression. In the immediate months after her departure, he photographed ravens he saw at train stations on his way home. In Japanese mythology, ravens are disruptive creatures, omens of turbulent times, but here they are symbols of lost love and almost unendurable heartbreak. " Fukase became the singular raven frozen by his camera and immortalised on the cover of his most famous book." Ultimately Fukase was taking pictures of how he saw himself, as a Raven that is solitary and lost so these pictures aren't just random pictures that he decided to take and make a book out of it, this book depicts Fukase's emotions at the time and how he thought of himself. Before taking pictures of ravens on his way home, Fukase's wife was the main subject of a series called "From Window" that Fukase made in 1974. "From Window" series seems almost like a set of snapshots, with his wife pulling faces, posing or simply shouting up at him from below as she leaves their apartment. For Fukase, the camera may have been a way of attempting to keep control of his wife, as well as the world around him. His desire driven to the point of obsession is a clear sub-theme in both photo books which potentially not even Fukase was aware of, however, this obsession was one of the things that lead his wife to leave him. The two books together reveal a narrative of Loss and Love, but most importantly, they reveal his state of mind. His photo books are almost a projection of how he was feeling, images that communicated his emotions. Fukase went into a coma after falling down the stairs of his favourite bar in 1992, and was in it for 20 years. In 2012 he tragically passed, but throughout those years his wife would come visit him, heartbreakingly however, he was unable to feel her presence, which to me is almost like the books came full circle. A depressing reality of what Fukase was undergoing, however his past love with his wife made her come back to visit him.
Dafna Talmor - Constructed Landscapes.
Dafna growing up did a lot of moving around places and travelling but she always took her camera with her because it was a way to keep memories of every place she has been to with her to the point that she had piles of boxes filled with photos that she was not satisfied with that were neglected from any artistic function. However what she thought was initially the idea of frustration and disappointment led to the idea of creating and joining different places with a certain personal meaning to create an "idealised and utopian landscapes" She describes constructed landscapes as Constructed Landscapes transforms colour negatives of landscapes initially taken as mere keepsakes through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs allude to an imaginary place, idealised spaces or as Foucault states, “a virtual space that opens up behind the surface”. '
One artist that did similar work to Dafna's constructive landscapes work was Gustave Le Gray. One of Le Gray's images was The Great Wave. He took a picture on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier. At the horizon the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print making it similar to Dafna's constructive landscapes pieces because they are both made of two separate images or more joined together to make one singular image.
Collages, Deconstruction and Corruption.
With the initial idea that I had of using old photographs, I used some older family photos I had laying at home and began experimenting with scratching the images, although simplistic, I think the images came out quite successful. However, the simpleness of the photographs was something that bothered me, I wanted to do more, and so I attempted to do some collages.
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I got other family photos and began to cut, burn and rearrange people and clothing, trying what I thought would look good to come up with ideas. After making the cuts I then printed the images of the fire that I had taken and placed them behind each of the cuts. The bright orange of the fire jumps out from the pictures as it is a lot more vivid due to the quality of the cameras used at the time. The two ideas together are two conjoined ideas of decay in photography and I overall think they were quite successful.
Luke Saxon.
In this project, Luke Saxton explores the contrast of ethnicity and class in Northern Britain. They are a series of images that are collaged in such way to depict social/cultural diversity. Prominently the use of rubbish, people or manmade structures and objects are often collaged with animals or plants, creating a juxtaposing idea between nature, people and their creations. Furthermore some of the images also compare two different lifestyles. For example the image with the rundown street, becoming overgrown by nature, the image collaged on top gives a glimpse of something that is in good condition and unbroken.
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Luke Saxon did an interview in which he was asked specific questions, we were asked to interpret these questions as if they were being asked to us.
Growing up in London do you think this has strongly affected your photography? Or has other people/places influenced the direction it has moved towards?
I think the place someone is based in will influence on what or how they take photographs. London is huge, and I try to take photographs of things that interest me, trying to take different ones every time, different angles or lighting, making each of them interesting. I moved to London when I was 9, and I think if I still lived in Portugal my photos would be completely different potentially more green for example, as London is a very Grey and industrialised city.
Corruption comes across very prominently in your work, is photography your sole background or do you have other influences?
I try to take aspects of different things to influence my photos which is why I experimented with collaging and editing. Photography is an art, and a photo can look however you want it to.
What inspires you to shoot?
Multiple things inspire me to take photos. Other artists and photographers, music, social media, fashion, movies and shows, mental health and emotions etc. I think that all these things also affect what my images look like.
Growing up in London do you think this has strongly affected your photography? Or has other people/places influenced the direction it has moved towards?
I think the place someone is based in will influence on what or how they take photographs. London is huge, and I try to take photographs of things that interest me, trying to take different ones every time, different angles or lighting, making each of them interesting. I moved to London when I was 9, and I think if I still lived in Portugal my photos would be completely different potentially more green for example, as London is a very Grey and industrialised city.
Corruption comes across very prominently in your work, is photography your sole background or do you have other influences?
I try to take aspects of different things to influence my photos which is why I experimented with collaging and editing. Photography is an art, and a photo can look however you want it to.
What inspires you to shoot?
Multiple things inspire me to take photos. Other artists and photographers, music, social media, fashion, movies and shows, mental health and emotions etc. I think that all these things also affect what my images look like.
Lorna Simpson.
Simpson uses pools of ink and watercolour that spread onto the page like ink spills, and collaging to create colourful and eye catching images. She takes portraits of women and men cut from vintage Ebony and Jet advertisements. She cuts the hair of each and replaces it with words, other images from magazines and newspapers or ink and watercolour to create these "daydream like" wigs. They smile and stare at the viewer, full of colour and a message. "watercolor and ink is used so richly that the women are rendered pelagic deities, their hair black Medusa snakes, or electric-blue jellyfish, or flame-yellow coral."
My collages.
Taking inspiration from Lorna Simpson and also Luke Saxon I created these corrupted images, by cutting my own photographs, images from a family photo album and using mixes of ink to create the same effect of Simpson's collages. I scanned and printed both my images, and the old photographs and began cutting and rearranging. The ink was placed and spread across on separate pieces of paper, I then cut the shapes of the ink, and made an outline of the cut-out on the image, creating the same shape of the ink. I then placed the ink under it and stuck it on with tape. The cut-outs of the objects and buildings were stuck on with a glue stick, making it easier to place them on top of the image. Once I scanned the images to put on my website, the images came with a white border. They were all smaller than A4 paper, and so when scanned, the empty space was filled with the light of the scanner making the rest of the image white. The blank space makes the images seem like they aren't entirely rectangular or square and are different shapes and sizes.
Original Images.
Most successful collage:
The reason I think this collage in particular turned out the best is because the way it is constructed. It's like the image is showing a brand new building is being built, and so there is a warning sign warning you to stay back. The practice in itself is a construction of sorts, which is another reason why I think the sign makes the image so interesting. I destroyed some images to create a new piece. I used three different images to create this piece, the first being the one with a sort of castle structure, one with half of the houses and the sky, and obviously the image with the construction sign. I cut the corner of the castle and moved it down, placing the house on top of it using tape in the back, I then placed the sign over the four women walking in the image, covering their faces. This whole image is a form of corruption. Corruption of the past, present, the people in the image but also of the picture itself. I have alternated an old image, cut it and added images to it to create something new, I have cut a recent image and joined it with others, and I covered people's faces with a sign, hiding their identities. All of this has created a corrupted image that has been edited and changed.
The reason I think this collage in particular turned out the best is because the way it is constructed. It's like the image is showing a brand new building is being built, and so there is a warning sign warning you to stay back. The practice in itself is a construction of sorts, which is another reason why I think the sign makes the image so interesting. I destroyed some images to create a new piece. I used three different images to create this piece, the first being the one with a sort of castle structure, one with half of the houses and the sky, and obviously the image with the construction sign. I cut the corner of the castle and moved it down, placing the house on top of it using tape in the back, I then placed the sign over the four women walking in the image, covering their faces. This whole image is a form of corruption. Corruption of the past, present, the people in the image but also of the picture itself. I have alternated an old image, cut it and added images to it to create something new, I have cut a recent image and joined it with others, and I covered people's faces with a sign, hiding their identities. All of this has created a corrupted image that has been edited and changed.
Least successful collage:
This was my first attempt from the new collages, I was still unsure of how to make them, what cuts to do, how to add the ink splashes, how to manipulate it, therefore coming out, in my opinion the worst. Although I like how I placed the train, and the buildings with the train lines on the side, the ink splash doesn't look as good as the others. I traced the shape of the ink splatter onto the image and then cut around the outline, leaving the shape of the splash. I then placed the ink behind it which is why I think it doesn't look good, it looks fake, the splatter doesn't look natural which I don't like. If I was to redo the
image, I would experiment with placing the ink on top of the actual image and see how it turns out.
This was my first attempt from the new collages, I was still unsure of how to make them, what cuts to do, how to add the ink splashes, how to manipulate it, therefore coming out, in my opinion the worst. Although I like how I placed the train, and the buildings with the train lines on the side, the ink splash doesn't look as good as the others. I traced the shape of the ink splatter onto the image and then cut around the outline, leaving the shape of the splash. I then placed the ink behind it which is why I think it doesn't look good, it looks fake, the splatter doesn't look natural which I don't like. If I was to redo the
image, I would experiment with placing the ink on top of the actual image and see how it turns out.
Odette England.
Odette England uses photography, performance, writing, and the archive to explore autobiography, gender, ritual, place, and vernacular photography. In her project "thrice upon a time", the main focus was home, with memory and forgetting being the contrasting aspects. Her photographs are a temporal space as each photo tells a story of the past, present and future. In taking these photographs she explored her identity and the unstable nature of time and relationships. In 2005, England returned to her childhood home, a dairy farm in Australia and photographed the locations at which her parents had photographed her as a child. In 2011, her parents revisited the farm every month over the course of a year, walking the land with the negatives taped to their shoe, creating rips and scratches all over them. and covered in dirt. The negatives were then returned to the photographer, destroyed, and so she put them together with tweezers.
On the series of images named "Photos of me without me", England recreates her family album and cuts herself from her personal original snapshots and realigns the cut images so she disappears, only leaving a silhouette and at times, no one is visible. "The works are more than altered souvenirs of my childhood; they are gestural, spatial re-recordings." By her scissoring herself from the photographs, it allows her to re-imagine her past, creating a new image of before.
Corrupting my Collages Further.
For these images I took inspiration from Odette England's project "thrice upon a time" in which she strapped her images to the sole of her parents feet, damaging them. Instead of walking on my images, instead I sprayed bleach on each of them creating almost this firework effect on the images. The images which have the ink are even more prominent than before as the ink did not lose its colour when i sprayed it because it was dry, and because the paper around it lost some of its colour, the ink is what stands out the most. However I don't like how most of these turned out. The bleach took away big parts of the image, and although that allows the viewer to imagine what could the white marks be covering, they become more enigmatic. Overall, I think it makes the images less successful.
Bringing the War Home - Martha Rosler.
Martha Rosler created Bringing the War Home during a time of increasing tension between Vietnam and the USA Military. Cutting images of Vietnamese citizens affected by the war published in magazines, specifically "Life Magazine" and juxtaposing them with the extravagant lives of some Americans in luxurious houses, from the magazine "House Beautiful". Mixing the two created a literal "living room war", also because the news of ongoing carnage in Vietnam filtered into tranquil American homes through television reports. These photo collages communicate how war is corrupted by the media.
Festival in a Box.
Due to the Virus this year we were not able to visit the Photography festival in Brighton, so we did it in class. We got this box with various works of different artists. The festival came to us in a box. A Festival in a Box. The theme was "Propositions for Alternative Narratives" and we set up the images in the back wall of the room in various different ways. We turned one of the images into a flag, set up one on the floor and laid out images on the wall in different patterns.
Photography Theories.
At this point in my investigation I decided to research some well known photography theories This research can be found on the following page:
Michal Macku.
Michal Macku uses the human body, including his own in is own images. Through his own photographic process of Gellage. The images of concrete human bodies are compelled to meet with abstract surroundings and distortions.
"This connection is most exciting for me and helps me to find new levels of humanness in the resulting work."
He places his body images in new situations, new contexts, new realities, causing their "authentic reality to become relative." by enlarging shadows or bodies, duplicating and cutting, etc. "I am interested in questions of moral and inner freedom. I do what I feel, and only then do I begin to meditate on what the result is."
My Attempt:
"This connection is most exciting for me and helps me to find new levels of humanness in the resulting work."
He places his body images in new situations, new contexts, new realities, causing their "authentic reality to become relative." by enlarging shadows or bodies, duplicating and cutting, etc. "I am interested in questions of moral and inner freedom. I do what I feel, and only then do I begin to meditate on what the result is."
My Attempt:
This was the most uncomfortable set of images I have EVER taken. Although I think they came out successful I had to really get out of my comfort zone to take these. Before the second quarantine began, I looked for models online who were available and would agree to take some images focusing on the details of their body, I managed to find two who accepted my offer and allowed me to take some pictures. The first word that comes to mind when looking at these is intimacy. If I didn't say these pictures were taken of people in which I have to connection with, you would never really know. However, compared to the first set of images that I took with the link to Corruption of the Mind before doing any research on artists, this was a lot more successful. I feel like these images actually have a meaning. They also are contrasting of the others as they are in black and white so that the details of the body are more prominent, but also there is an actual body or a person present. In the others there was someone under a black cloth and you can't visibly see anyone.
Further development on "Corruption".
I began to take a different approach towards corruption. I began to think about how an image can be unreliable, trustworthy, and how people may interpret an image differently. Usually when a photograph of a person is taken, you can guess how they feel through their facial expression, most importantly their eyes, as the eyes are the "window to the soul". However when their face isn't visible, this becomes a challenge, an image of someone smiling could be interpreted as happy, however if their eyes aren't visible the image's meaning can suddenly switch and become more disturbing. This lead me to explore this idea of covering someone's face, however as my subject was completely covered, I projected images behind them which would lead the viewer to develop a feeling towards the photo through the colours and imagery visible.
To me, this image had a sense of anger or annoyance due to the connotations I have with the warm colours, but also the movement captured in the image has a sense of disturbance. However, when presenting the images to the class, a lot of them thought differently. To some the image was calming, dreamlike and peaceful, and some had the same thoughts as I did. However the multiple opinions that everyone has of the photos further emphasises this idea of unreliability and corruption as everyone has a different opinion of the photo. Nobody's opinion is wrong or doesn't make sense, the whole point is that people are influenced by the colours or objects rather than somebody's face telling them what to think of the image.
Experimenting with repetition:
As I developed my images further, I began to take a different approach towards corruption once again. Rather than seeing it as a way of destruction, I began to look at it as change instead, manipulating my images, cutting, burning, stitching and making them different to what they used to look like. The idea was that along with the colour, the physical "corruption" of the images would change someone's perspective on the images themselves.
The Palms.
During the Half Term, I watched the video "The Palms" by Alec Soth, in which he takes images that he bought and or found, and presented them in various different ways while music played in the background. He would throw a dice and change the images through chance, stack them on top of each other or he would place them in bleach, damaging the image.
My response:
A lot of the images in the video were found/purchased and then covered by other images and some were bleached, and ironically I have done similar things with my recent images. The video gave me the idea of burning the images as another form of changing them.
A lot of the images in the video were found/purchased and then covered by other images and some were bleached, and ironically I have done similar things with my recent images. The video gave me the idea of burning the images as another form of changing them.
My Personal Investigation 9-Week Plan.
Week 1:
15-19 Mar
- Lorna Simpson style images, use paint to change my images.
Week 2:
22-26 Mar
- Chemicals and bleach my images.
Week 3:
29 Mar - 1 Apr
- Polystyrene head, start sticking my images onto it.
Week 4:
5-9 Apr EASTER
- Potentially shoot a video ?
Week 5:
12-16 Apr EASTER
- Develop essay.
Week 6:
19-23 Apr
- Final touches to essay.
Week 7:
26-30 Apr
- Continuing experimenting with images – not sure what though.
Week 8:
3-7 May
- Stick final images onto the head.
Week 9
10-14 May
Making Day
- Paint or burn the head, finish the project how it started, a slight focus on the mental aspect of corruption. (before making day)
- Add everything to website and finish essay completely. (making day)
Green = Completed -- Red = Incomplete
Further Experimentation.
During the half term I decided to hang a couple of my images outside to see how they would be affected by the weather, the rain, the sun, snow, etc. However unfortunately it barely rained and so the images only lost colour and became saturated.
The images that I put outside I then sprayed with bleach to give them the same firework effect as the previous collages that I did. The bleach also added a bit of colour to to some of the images with prominent black areas in the original, turning the black into a pastel orange which integrates, in my opinion, perfectly with the other colours. The contrast between the warm and cold colours creates a subtle yet extremely appealing and colourful effect.
I then printed the images once more and sprayed all of them with different cleaning products and chemicals, some took away colour, some made them brighter and some smudged the ink of the print. The images with less brighter colours are actually the back of the brighter images, which I scanned and decided to make them individual pictures, as the colours and shapes that formed in the back were extremely intriguing, and in fact, I prefer them more than the images in the front. They became the quintessential example of what I believe decay in photography is, a meaning of change.
I took further inspiration from Lorna Simpson once more and decided to place coloured ink on top of different prints of the original pictures. In some images I tried to use complementary colours, the warm colours such as red and combining them with orange, and cold colours such as blue and combining them with green. However in some images in two of the images I did the opposite, combining red with green and yellow, blue with green and red, however they did not turn out as successful.
Taking some inspiration from the project by Eileen Agar, I decided to create a surrealist sculpture like the Angel of Anarchy. After completing the new sets of images, I believed that enough experimentation was done, and I began working on the “final piece”. I decided to get a polystyrene head, and place most of my experimentative images onto the head with pins, along with the threaded images, holding everything together, almost like a frankenstein-ish creation. The idea of exploring corruption almost went full circle, as it began focusing on corruption of the mind, into corruption being presented on a literal head. In a way, the head represents all the ways people perceive the images, not all the same, and in using all the images and combining them it suddenly creates a new feeling or emotion, therefore being the quintessential example of corruption being a form of change.
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I then further experimented with the Lorna’s Simpson ink technique, using a straw to blow on the ink and mixing different colours on the head itself. However, this time instead of creating the images, taking a photo and putting them on here, I took further inspiration from Daisuke Yokota and his live videos in which he creates and manipulates his work. I removed the original audio and used an audio that I found on UbuWeb instead. Using a random number generator I selected an audio by Henri Lefebvre from 1975, speaking about Radioscopy in french. The audio has nothing at all to do with the video itself, however it further creates an enigma, and a sense of confusion, causing the viewer's thoughts to flourish. Is the voice coming from the person placing the ink on the head? What is the audio actually saying? What does it all mean? The head further causes a sense of confusion, slightly sinister yet intriguing, and the colours of the ink allow the sculpture to become eye catching, forcing its viewer to observe and create an idea of what it means. The ink is almost like the lightning bolt, striking Frankenstein and bringing it to life, this time with colour.
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