Ideas for my Final Project

After I did a bit of researching, I began to think of ideas for my final project that will be due in at the end of the year. Because I love Jill Greenberg's photos of crying children, I am interested in taking photos of children myself. I know that this could be challenging, but if done right I think my phots could be quite beautiful.

Firstly I started to think of children I knew that I could ask to be photographed. I have:
- Aaliya who is just 2 months old
- Sisters Aerika (5) and Taylah (7)
- Suzannah (10)
- Sara (14)

I like the fact that these children (and teenager) are all at staggered ages, so if I chose to photograph all of them I could use my photographs to kind of tell a story ofver the years. However I will have to ask their permission, and their parents permission before I settle on who will be on my final list.

The idea that I have come up with could be a bit controversial, which I will need to describe to the parents of my models. I would like to focus on the theme of children, more importantly girls, growing up too fast these days. It makes me sick to see ten year olds wearing makeup and getting piercings, or 13 year olds having their first child. To put across this message I would like to photograph girls being subjected to certain situations, however do it in post-production so I am not being the cause of such destruction. For example, I would like to photograph the 5 year old reading a book that is titled something like, "Dressing for your body type." I would give her a book with a blank cover for the photograph, and manipulate it later on to include the title. I think this theme could work really well with the lighting effects that I have seen in some of my research, such as the lighting that Jill Greenberg uses. This idea would involve taking photos in the studio with props or photographing individual environments to bring in afterwards.

I have not yet thought of the different scenarios that I would like to play my models in, but this will develop over the course of this year as I learn more about photographic techniques.

Reseach: Blink

These two photos were taken by Abelardo Morell. The first image is Camera Obscura Image of a Building Inside St. Panoras Chambers Room, 2001 and the second image is Camera Obscura Image of Umbrian Landscape Over Bed, 2000. His photographs feature themes such as science, art, topography, landscape, architecture and now in more recent works, colour.

"The initial idea for the work came out of Morell's demonstrations to his photography students at the Massachusetts College of Art in the mid-1980s where he turned his classroom into a Camera Obscura. The exercise was designed not only to elicit a sense of awe and wonder, but also to connect students to the precursive roots of the medium. It was not until 1991, however, that Morell decided to document the process on film, and he began by taking pictures in his own house in Brookline, Massachusetts. In order to capture the elusive projections, the exposures had to be about eight hours long, but the initial results charged Morell with possibilities. The play between the inside and outside world, the tension between the right way up and upside down, the surreal contrast of buildings and beds, trees and walls, formed a miraculous and original vision of a magical but still real world."

I really love how the two different types of images in his photographs merge together to become one. It almost makes you question which part is reality and which has been projected. It is interesting that the projected image is upside down, so you almost want to flip the picture upside down to see if you have it the right way up. Nice attention to light and contrast.

* quote from blog titled "The Year in Pictures" by James Danziger.
http://pictureyear.blogspot.com/

These two photos are by Jean-Pierre Khazem and are from the East of Eden series created in 2000. These photos feature models wearing oversized 3D masks and creates a somewhat childlike fantasy experience.

I couldn't find much information on this photographer, most of it was in foreign languages. I think these photographs are really eye-catching, in a kind of spooky way. The masks make the models look almost demonic and unstable, however there is something quite pure and innocent about them.

These photos are by Fran Herbello and are from the series A Imaxe E Semellanza (In Our Own Likeness) 2000. His work plays with themes of consumerism, fashion and advertising.

"I like to play with everyday elements creating new situations that break the usual way of seeing the familiar. I carve on the skin, I make ephemeral interventions which I document with truthful, scientifically rigorous black and white images."

"There is the possibility of moving through virtual spaces with an adopted and idealized body.
The reflexive verbs which describe actions made on the body itself lose their quality.
It is no longer I the one who moves my body, the one who moves."

I really like his work. We have a man's back that is transformed into a t-shirt, a chest into a zipped top, a foot into a shoe and a hand into a glove. They look so realistic; they really look connected to the skin. I think this approach is a really unique way at looking at his themes. I like that these images are in black and white, a good way of merging the human skin with manufactured object such as clothing tags and zippers. Really nice dramatic contrast.

* quotes from the artist himself on http://www.alternativemuseum.org/ 2009.

These two photos are by Naoya Hatake Yamas and are from the Underground series of 1999. These photos were taken on the photographer's journey below the surface of the city following the route of a hidden river beneath Tokyo.

I didn't manage to find any information on this photographer. However, I really love these images: the colours, the reflections, the pure black areas, the shapes created by the light. They almost look like a painting.They are simply beautiful.

These photos of the famous model Kate Moss, were taken by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott who worked together on this series called Satin Doll, March 2001.

Mert and Marcus, as they are more commonly known, are famous fashion photographers who are well known to to Hollywood. They have shot many celebriteis, such as Natalie Portman, Madonna, and here, Kate Moss.

I have never really been a big fan of Kate Moss, but I think these photos are really edgy and have creative angles which make them really dynamic. I like how the lighting is used to capture her bright blonde hair and how her body complements the environment. I also think her clothing supports this. These photographs remind me that clothing, makeup, etc is very important to the overall look of the photo. This is definately something I will go over when shooting people, if I choose to.

(all of these images are from Blink: 100 Photographers, 010 Curators, 010 Writers. Phaidon Press Limited, 2002.)

Research: David Burdeny

"David Burdeny’s photographs play with time and scale. His imagery suggests a formalized landscape where perspective scale and time momentarily become intangible.The viewer sees repeated dualities of stillness and movement, intense detail with blank atmospheric abstraction, man made objects found in ocean horizons, black and white images printed on colored paper, all reduced to present to the viewer a sublime experience."

I really love the isolated feel, contrast and sweeping skies that are featured in his photographs. In many of his photos, the shapes within the scenery become a huge part of draing your eye in or creating an interesting composition. Alot of his work is in black and white, which I think is really suited to the subject matter. I also like some of his coloured work, where subtle, natural colours bring through the character of the landscape.

I think that the key to the dynamic nature of these photographs is the darkening and highlights that are applied to give the images depth.

* quote from "David Burdeny." www.kostuikgallery.com

Research: Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg is a photographer that I was introduced to in Art History last year. We were read an article about the controvesy that surrounds her work and saw a video which featured some of her photo shoots. Greenberg is best known for her photos of crying children and animated animals. She has a style that is repeated throughout her work - carefully lit faces with glistening tears and dark backgrounds with a 'halo' of light around their heads. I really like this style which she describes as a "flattering frontal light, so the subject doesn't have to have any actual shine on his or her skin to appear shiny." She also said that "none of the kids had any makeup on and I also work on that shiny quality in postproduction." I also like how she crops into just the portrait for most of her photos to draw you to the childrens/animals faces.

Greenberg has been criticised for some of her photos because people claim that it is child abuse to make a child cry in the name of art. Greenberg would make the children cry by giving them something, such as a lollypop, and then taking it away. However, some children would just cry on their own. Greenberg said, "We would book 12 or so for one day, and see who we could make cry. At the end of the day I was not in a good mood. I don't like making little kids cry."

Although her photos are beautiful pieces of art, they also have a political statement behind them. When she was photographing her first crying child (the inspiration for this group of work), she began to think of a caption for the photograph, "Four More Years" which was associated with George Bush's re-election. She wanted to show the "current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country" and even said, "Sometimes I feel like crying about the way things are going."

* quotes from "Crying Babies" by Jeffrey Elbies. June/July 2006. www.popphoto.com

100 Photos of Chaos

cha-os
1. a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organisation or order.
2. any confused, disorderly mass: a chaos of meaningless phrases.
3. the infinity of space or formless matter supposed to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe.
4. (initial capital letter) the personification of this in any of several ancient greek myths.
5. Obsolete. a chasm or abyss.

Our task is to take 100 photos of chaos. Here are my ideas for the subject of my photos:
- construction site
- rubbish tip
- tagging
- traffic jams
- children running around
- mess
- busy streets/town
- animals fighting over food

I decided to take photos of vandalism around Christchurch. I took photos at two different locations - around Papanui and around the train tracks by Polytech. Here are a few of my favourite shots: