Major Project 1

This project initially started out as a way to celebrate the everyday objects around us in an abstract way. To start with I wanted to create a typically abstract piece in the style of Uta Barth, her work is full of soft focus photography with subtle colours, I find very aesthetically pleasing and wanted to bring that to work but with bolder colours and patterns. As time went on this idea changed and molded in to the work that I have created now, that I feel is even better as more thought has gone into the concept and the research behind it.

When starting this project I wanted to base my work in a theory and that is when I found Object Oriented Ontology (OOO). This is a theory about objects and their power over humans and other objects, whether or not they have something to say that is above human comprehension. One artist in particular created some work that I found very influential, an artist called Niels Betori Delhii who made two video pieces called THE HEAT / scene 1 and THE HEAT / scene 2 that created another object, the desire towards the torsos. I wanted to bring this into my work by creating a new object, the disgust the audience would feel when looking at my work. I think that I did this quite successfully because when I have shown several people my images they have all expressed their disgust at the content of the images.

From there I went on to look at Bill Brown’s Thing Theory, this theory claims that an object becomes a thing when it can no longer serve its common function. I think that my work questions this; are the objects I have used functional as the objects that I am choosing to pair them with? I do not think so, to me, is a success in that regard.

After I experimented with my initial idea with the soft focus on an everyday object I then went on to try multiple objects together in a pile like Lorenzo Vitturi in his series entitled The Dalston Anatomy. I gathered objects that I consider to be every day things and piled the up, I wanted them to be in a surrounding that was also everyday so I chose to shoot it in front of a window, this had the natural light coming in but it was also muted because I decided to pull the curtain behind it, this is because I did not want any distractions behind the objects to draw the eye away. I do not think that this shoot was successful because it did not really have the sense of “thingness” that I wanted to capture overall.

I then went on to looking into product photography and carrying on the idea from Object Oriented Ontology about the new object being the feeling the audience gets from looking that the photograph (the disgust from the rotting fruit in Vitturi’s work), all the while still combing it with the concept of Thing Theory. What I came up with was to combine everyday objects to create new things that were gross. I experimented with wrapping hair around a fork to look like spaghetti; I stuck with the food idea because I think that it creates a bigger reaction because then the audience can actually relate to it. Who hasn’t found a hair in their food?

If I were to carry on this project I think that I would make sure that the line of the background paper was flat to the ground. I could do this by gluing them down or using blue tack, this is defiantly something that I would change if I could either go back and redo them or carry the project on. I think that I would also take more care and attention to how straight the lines are on curtain bits of the image, this is because a few of them are a bit wonky. I would also like to, if I had the time, have explored the egg and nuts and bolts image because I did not feel that that one fit in to the theme with the others. I think that it has got more of a surreal feel to it and it does not really capture the aim of this project.

Faith James

Things (2016)

Nakeya Brown is an american photographer. her work draws attention to beauty rituals, specifically around hair, it speaks to the politics and identity surrounding black women. Brown photographs hair and people, her photography is inspiring because of the way she uses hair in combination with food. 

Unlike my work, Brown’s work contains a human element in it. This is because she is conveying how society has a narrow view on beauty. Brown explains “during the turn of the 20th century, we internalised the idea that straightened hair was crucial to attaining beauty, social mobility, and economic prosperity. It resulted in African Americans inventing various ways to manipulate our hair to mimic straightened types” in an interview for the website Infringe. 

In her work hair symbolises experiences around blackness and womanhood. Society has a history of setting beauty standards relative to whiteness. Brown feels that her work is significant because it attempts to negotiate new meanings and representations from our collective memories. 

Nakeya Brown’s work has a lot of colour in it, her backgrounds are mainly block colours. I feel like this gives her work a sense of universalness, that these photographs could be anywhere around the world because this is a message that needs to be shared and embraced.