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My project started off solid I believe, I considered a lot of options to take my project in my initial research, looking at different lighting, textures and ideas along with looking at different artists and photographers like Martin Parr and Stephen Shore.

Primarily I was considering narrative photography, looking at how images could possibly tell a story or convey meaning. One of the first photographers I looked at was ‘Mr. Toledano’ with a shoot named ‘Days with my Father’. I thought the concept was intriguing, the way the old man was shown through different lighting and scenarios, yet still in the same setting while the images still held a cohesive style where you could associate the images with the other images. Inspired by this concept, I tried something similar yet with my great grandmother, I will admit it was a difficult thing to do, but maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. There was one image I particularly liked from the original by Mr. Toledano, where some flowers were in front of a bright window, which caused the flowers to become a silhouette. I thought that I could possibly recreate that, and I came up with my own version.

Another photographer I really enjoyed from the start was a guy named ‘Paul Matthews’ which I found on Pinterest. This is where my deep dislike for Pinterest began, as aside from a name and a few images, there was no other source for this Paul Matthews anywhere else, however, I still felt that I could work with the limited research, and I succeeded. This was possibly one of the best shoots that I did throughout the entire project, as I did a shoot on a disposable camera while I was on a beach. The day was bright and warm which mean the sun was reflecting on the colours making them more bright and vibrant, which made the images come out well. It is probably one of the highlights of my project and is the happiest I’ve ever felt with a shoot.

When it came to peer-analysing, I had a few photographers recommended to me, one being Jeff Wall. This is when my project started to decline. I thought that using a forced narrative insight would be easy to do, but is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever tried to shoot. I thought that possibly I just didn’t do it properly, and researched into another photographer, Phillip Lorca DiCorcia, which is when I lost any ounce of motivation to carry on with the project, which looking back I wish that I could’ve taken another way of looking at it.

The gallery situation is an event which put my project back on track. My gallery piece was originally strung out from the depths of desperation and this tragic window mount from my Jeff Wall shoot. It was tragic.

Terrible.

Awful.

Disgusting.

To put it bluntly, I was embarrassed of it, especially compared to the work of my peers. So me being last minute and all, I took the disposables from my Paul Matthews shoot and stuck them up on the wall in some random order and it made me feel proud that it was my work. There’s just something about them that make me happy and want to be like,

“I did that.”

This is where my motivation to finish the project came from. I kickstarted it with a shoot inspired from Deanna Dikeman, where I looked at the spaces I inhabited myself, and the shapes, light and shadow inside them. I was getting happier with the way my project was turning out, and decided to do another shoot with a disposable after this, after the success of my one during the summer. What I like about shooting on a disposable camera is the way the time of year is reflected through the images, compared to the blazing sun in my beach shoot, in the middle of autumn the orange, reds and browns that we associate with the season came through in the images.

Now going full force with the personal documentary idea, I found an app that lets you shoot videos with the timestamp in the corner, like an old VHS but instead on my iPhone. I was playing around with it when I realised I could incorporate it into my project, which is exactly what I did. It eventually came to be my final piece as I went through experimenting with it. First, I tried stitching the videos together kind of like a timeline, then the complete opposite, having them all jumbled. I also tried creating them into GIF’s which was successful, and then finding a way of how to present the GIFS. I put some of them by themselves, and some in different arrangements and eventually projecting them large-scale onto a wall. I think it all came out great in the end. Unless I’m blinded by my own ego, there’s always room for improvement.

MAJOR PROJECT THINGS

1.       Original research was great in the beginning.

2.       Paul Matthews shoot was successful.

3.       Forced narrative photography was NOT successful.

4.       Turned it around with the gallery.

5.       Re-hashed using disposable cameras.

untitled - abbie farmery

LAURA STAMER

THE LIGHT OF DREAMS

Laura Stamer is a Danish ‘visual’ artist and photographer who was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and also attended the University of Gothenburg School of Photography. Her main focus of photography is around her own home, the place she inhabits in a way which explores the way the light curves around the curtains, or the way a shadow forms behind the radiator.

The way Stamer works is to find a way to incorporate naturally occurring shapes into her home, whether it be light and shadows on the way the interior moulds together, she puts an artistic approach when she produces her photographs. The colour tones she uses are often very muted, yet still light and almost ‘airy’, which makes the images seem light-hearted and open to interpretation, as she states on her personal website, she is “presenting the viewer with an opportunity for interpretation through his or her own experiences and memories”.  Her images are often pre-analysed before she looks at it in an aesthetically pleasing way, to ensure she is captivating the sense of occupancy and spaces we create ourselves.

To me, this photograph stood out against the rest of her images, due to the lack of focus and the way the light is almost reflecting off of glass, it held some sort of mystery as I was questioning what it could be, possibly a light coming through onto a glass table? Or maybe the light on the window itself – with no clarification of what the image actually is it becomes a way to become creative within your own imagination.

DEANNA DIKEMAN

HOME ALONE (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY)

Deanna Dikeman is an American artist and photographer based in Kansas City, Colombia, Missouri, and has being working in art since 1985. She’s very much a documentary photographer as she has done series based on lost pet signs, and clothes she has found at a thrift store, however, has done many collaborative pieces with corporate companies.

In this series and the photograph I am analysing, she takes her images based off times when she doesn’t wear her glasses around her home, as she intends to “provide a psychological view into the spaces we inhabit”. In this photograph, above, she firstly uses a balance of focus where the foreground and portions of the background are out of focus, but at some point, during the centre of the image the door is in focus. This is to almost give an interpretation of how she can see and not see without her glasses. The sole intention of the series and image is to make everything just seem like shapes and not what it really is. Another aspect of the image I’d like to discuss is the reflection of light in the right third of the image. The light and shallow focus acts like a kind of boundary between what we see and the unknown, yet as this is her home she knows exactly what she’s looking at, but just not as it usually is.

This image makes me feel like there’s some kind of secret and mystery that I’m unaware of, as the constant unfocused elements leave it to be imagined, whereas for the photographer, its just another viewpoint of something she’s already aware of. It’s almost as-if when your in your own home in the dark you would know where and what something was, but for someone who has never been present there before wouldn’t have any memory or recollection of what it could possibly be.

STEPHEN J MORGAN

THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING (2012-2015)

Stephen J Morgan is a British born photographer who was raised in 1970′s and 80′s Birmingham with his Irish Republican father. A lot of his work is inspired by the political events in Birmingham and the UK while he was growing up, with happenings such like the Birmingham pub bombings, the British troops being sent into Northern Ireland and Margret Thatcher becoming prime minister.  His series named “The Other Side of Everything” follows a theme of a Union Jack being shown in each photograph, as on his website he claims “the St George Cross and to a greater extent the Union Jack symbolised more than a token of where you were from and where you belonged” as at the time of his upbringing it was a symbol of what side you stood politically.

In this image, you tend not to notice the Union Jack (unless you’re specifically looking at it), yet looking at the images as a series you notice a theme of it. The scale of the flags is often different within the series, yet they’re never the focus point, as in this image above, there’s a large tonal range in where the house exterior is an off-white whereas the foliage is deep and textured with many shadows. The darkness and dull-ness of the images and lack of brightness suggests that he’s reflecting on what would have been a dark and unpleasant upbringing for him, and almost a tribute to the terrible things that had occurred politically in the 70’s and 80’s.

I chose this image to analyse as it seemed to have a deeper meaning to it, as first looking at it, it almost seems patriotic to have a series intentionally involving the flag of where you’re from, however, after researching further into the actual meaning it becomes an expressive piece of art that one would usually turn a blind eye towards due to the political values attached to it.

5. ARTIST OF INTEREST - STEPHEN J MORGAN

Stephen J Morgan is a british photogrpher from Birmingham, where he shoots many of his images. He uses many flags within his work, as they have a political relevance to his upbringing within the 70′s and 80′s as he had an Irish Republican father, there was many notable events occuring around him, including pubs in Birmingham being bombed in 1974.

In his work he uses plently of personal motives to shoot in his home town, and elaborating him as a documentary photographer, also, on his website he says his first instinct was to photograph places he knew and where he was from, then followed that by an “outwards” perspective of going somewhere different, for example going to other cities such as London and Leeds.

What I enjoy about Stephen J Morgan is the way he’s never particularly looking for anything, rather he finds something and thinks to make something out of it.

4. ARTISTS OF INTEREST - PHILLIP LORCA DiCORCIA

Phillip Lorca DiCorcia is an american photographer who studied at the School of the Museum of the Fine Art, then followed that by studying at the University of Yale, recieving a master of fine art in photography.

In his work, he aims to create a truth and fiction hybrid, by incorporating an essance of documentary in his staged photographs, however, after looking at the reactions of an audience, he feels that their dissappointment is based upon the fact that they are staged images, thus being lied to.

3. ARTISTS OF INTEREST - PAUL MATTHEWS

These images I found from a guy supposodely named Paul Matthews, however after trying to research this name and also using the images to search for any sources, yet they return nothing. From this, all I can do is explain why these images are so fascinating and intriguing.

Firstly, they remind me of being 5 years old and going to the seaside for a summer holiday, or just visiting there just for a day with my grandparents, as these photographs have some kind of nostalgia and relatability about them almost.

2. ARTISTS OF INTEREST - DEANNA DIKEMAN

Dikemans style of photography seems to be primarily documentary photography, as on her website she’s got collections of work based on her family, named ‘Relative Moments’ which show her family doing stuff, and also collections such like “Home alone in the middle of the day”, where she shows her home asif she was “looking around without my glasses”.

1. ARTIST OF INTEREST: billy kidd

Billy Kidd is a self taught photographer from Panama City, FL. He is a very ‘all-around’ photographer, having worked with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s and Vogue Italia and well known personalities such like Zooey Deschanel, Matt LeBlanc and Jessica Lange.

task 2: upload and reflect

Above are some of the starting and initial images from this project, where I have decided to explore narrative and documentation within possession and storytelling, where i’m hoping to convey some trace of meaning or story within each outcome.

In this project and just kick starting it, I’m feeling a tad lost and low-key struggling on new ideas and ways to explore them, and although this means that i’m pushing myself to find new ways to explore this, it’s leaving me feeling overwhelmed and dumbfounded at the the endless possibilities which i’m lacking to pull myself around and create. 

This topic and theme that i’m rolling with is extremely versatile in the way that I could create absolutely anything yet there is some agonizing battle between the limbic system (one of the oldest and most dominant parts of the brain controlling mood and instinct) and the prefrontal cortex (much weaker, handles the way we intake information and controls decision making) which leads me to become some kind of “crisis-maker” where the thrill and high pressure of a looming deadline finally motivates some kind of productivity.

Nevertheless, this self doubt is leading me to explore new things with an open mind, I would now like to open my project to moving images by creating short films and GIFs as a way of showcasing narrative and film, I wan’t to open my mind to be inspired by everything around me and  apply it to my project.

When beginning this project, I was completely baffled and overwhelmed with ideas and concepts I could explore, (my list is here) and so I began by just shooting anything which I sought possibly interesting or could possibly turn out well. 

I had never really explored the concept of ‘narrative’, as i’ve never really understood how to approach it until I found a statement from Allen Feldman which ideally put it into context for me and the way that photographs are used to tell a story. 

 "The event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated."

At the end of my first shoot upon reflecting on my images, a few in particular stood out to me, which were a few images I had taken in my dads shed on a rainy evening, with an overhead tungsten light I would initially thought to of found in a school. However, in the concept of narrative, the dim light I found in my dads garage could tell a story, as something so almost irrelevant created something rather beautiful, within the eye of the beholder.

my lists of good subject matter that i may like, and some i won't. 

groovy stuff:

grubby streets

alleyways

architecture

people

the human condition

transportation

texture

waste

documentary

empty spaces

portraiture

light and shadow

minimalism 

repetition

pattern

street signs

surrealism

long exposures

pop culture

social issues

not so groovy stuff:

nature

food

walls

bricks

pets

animals 

public events

bugs

landscapes

technology

fashion

the weather

graffiti

symmetry

and a nice list of artists/photographers i may enjoy:

(and a few links)

mr toledano

aziz and cucher

billy kidd

david maisel

christiane siegel

danny santos

elizabeth gordon

corrie witt

deanna dikeman

nick waplington

diane arbus

dwayne michaels

erik kessels

garry winogrand

samuel fosso

stephen shore

william eggleston

mike brussell

stephen j morgan

anastasia cazabon

alex moore

matthew phypers

lucy cork

martin parr