#ejournaltask

These are screenshots from the video I made to accompany my series. I have produced this, alongside the series to give a kind of documentary style second view of the process which I went through while capturing and organising the shoot for my series. It is an ongoing video with no cuts of the three subjects sitting down and having their two shots taken. I have decided not to display it in the actual gallery showing due to continuity errors, the fact that it could not be displayed adjacent to the series which would take away its relevance. 

During this module I have learned a number of different skills, from practical skill based around the act of taking the photographs to more theoretical skills involved with researching photographers, artists and their and applying them to my own work. I decided to create a series of portraits because of my interest in portrait photography and the way the sitter connects with the subject. I have studied it in depth in my essays for the other modules and therefore had a good idea of the kind of project I wanted to display at the end. I chose to do them of my flatmates, which although sounds like it may not give the best results in terms of random and interesting reactions to the camera and to me taking the photograph, meant that I could feel comfortable ordering them in certain ways which in turn meant I could fully experiment with how I conducted the series. Shooting on medium format was a decision I chose to make mainly to test myself and my abilities; Other than in test shoots in and around the studios at Uni I have not yet shot a series with medium format. I also chose to use an elinchrom lighting setup as I primarily work outside of the studio and therefore have rarely used such equipment. By combining medium format and lighting, two factors I was reasonably uncomfortable with, it meant I had to do many test shoots, studying how the different lighting setups made the subjects look, finally settling on a Nadav Kander inspired setup which resulted in a kind of spotlight effect falling onto the subjects, leaving the background dark and so forcing emphasis on the subject. I am reasonably pleased with how it came out although I think that I would have got a more effective, refined effect if I had used the studios. After taking the photographs I decided that to emphasise the contrast between the subject and the background, and to make the highlights I created with the lighting setup more obvious, I would change them to black and white. I chose to do this after the photographs were taken but on reflection I would have chosen black and white film to begin with. The visit to the Whitechapel gallery to see the Thomas Ruff works had a huge influence on not just this project but my theme across all of the modules about how the sitter and the photographer respond to each other. Although I didn't end up using any of the techniques taught in the classes such as frame making and etching, they are valuable skills I have learnt that I can apply to my work in the future. A lot of the ideas and the theme of my final project came from research I had conducted myself to help write my essay on identity within portraiture, but I also took a lot of influence from the two lectures we were given on this idea that portraiture is limited in terms of really telling us about a person. I think I worked best in this sense of overlapping my ideas between each module and that allowed me to think more intuitively about the subject rather than having three or four different themes to concentrate on at once.

I have decided that for my practical project, I am going to look at how people, or subjects, react in front of the camera. I will be shooting in an isolated setting, trying to use a studio-like setup, and lighting just the subjects, leaving the rest of the picture, background etc, completely dark. I hope to do this by using the Elinchrom lights and the Hassleblad medium format camera. I will also include some kind of video of the subjects as the photographs are taken to show in more detail the way that they are reacting throughout the whole experience. I have included a portrait by Nadav Kander to show the kind of lighting that I would like to use for my portraits, although the framing of the subject will be slightly different.

Today I visited an exhibition at London’s PACE Gallery. It was called IMPULSE, and was ‘an exhibition that examines American abstract painting in the 1960′s and 1970′s’. The name refers to the highly personal, gestural expression to which the artists chosen made their work, each experimenting with new techniques at the time. It was extremely interesting, and a well written, long catalogue helped to involve the audience and explain in detail each of the works. Most interestingly, though, was the curators use of modern technology; they created a Spotify playlist, available by scanning a barcode on the exhibition catalogue, which complimented the pieces and could be listened to on the way round. Although music, and art, are subjective, the light hearted jazz of which the playlist compiled complimented the works brilliantly and made for a very unique and multi-sensory art viewing experience. 

Similar to the large portraits in which we can see huge amounts of detail in the faces of the people, but cannot actually know the character of the person in them. We can use portraiture to analyse this work, looking at how other artists use expression and lighting and scene setting to convey the character of their sitter, and the complete lack of therefore in Ruff’s work.

Philosophy is largely undefinable but essentially means to look into, and analyse questions in depth and largely over and over without a solid answer, against philosophical values to get more insight into why something is, rather than what it is. While philosophy plays a huge part in photography, we try to break it down into a few main points to which we can analyse imagery with. Ontology studies the essence of something. “what is there?” by applying this to photography we can try to define photography as a medium. What defines the practice of photography? Is there certain aspects which we could list which apply to all forms, and therefore defines, Photography? There are, in short, things which we could put into this list, using a lens, using some kind of light responsive media or technology. There is though, especially as the medium moves with technological advancements and artistic practices, less things we can use to plainly talk about photography as something which is black and white. This ontological way of looking at photography can, strangely, create the exact opposite in a photographical response; people using blur and manipulation to question exactly how much we can use ontology as a way of explaining an art form which is ever evolving. Another form of philosophy is Ethics. There is a lot to say about the ethics of photography, some very obvious points like whether it is ok to directly photograph somebody in despair, such as a homeless or extremely vulnerable injured person. Ethics in photography often have to be analysed subjectively, looking into each picture individually and trying to decide whether the photographers actions are meant to help or not. There are two different ways to look at ethics - consequentialism and deontology. These are very different, opposing views and illustrate how philosophy can be continuous, depending on the subjects both studied and studying. Lastly, we could use Aesthetics. This is possibly the most common form of analysing the arts, particularly photography. It can be done simply by looking at the piece. It is a formal discipline and can be explained more obviously than other branches of philosophy. It relies on formality, composition, colour and other things which are reasonably easy to define and to use when looking at an image. it is also about how our senses interpret it; how looking at, or experiencing the piece causes certain emotions.

Images, or more specifically, photographs, can be presented in many different ways. Through editorials, slideshows, newspapers, or in a gallery to name a few examples. Each different method of presentation can be manipulated to make the audience read and interpret it uniquely. For example, a picture of the devastating Grenfell fire ablaze was, the day after the disaster, used on the front page of many of the newspapers accross the nation. Exactly the same photograph was printed by each newspaper, but the presentation of it varies, and makes a huge difference to how it is received. The Sun and The Guardian are very different publications and therefore use very different methods of presentation. The Sun uses a cropped, badly printed version of the photograph edited to make the flames brighter and more vulgar. It uses it in conjunction with a large, inconsiderate headline and put a small image in the corner of two silhouettes in the window waving for help. The intense and ethically questionable nature of the this presentation makes the evaluation of the news it shows very quick and very one biased. The Guardian however, use it alongside a detailed article, headed up by facts, and a much darker, more detailed print of the image. These methods of presentation are juxtaposed to fit in with the style of each of the newspapers. Photographs and the way they are presented can be analysed in various different ways. Each will carry its own methodology; the way in which the audience interprets the image using things like History, Philosophy, Globalisation Theory or Photography theory. Looking at Eddo Hartmann’s ‘Setting The Stage: Pyongyang, 2015’. A series of images captured by Hartmann as became one of the first photographers allowed to document the extremely private country of North Korea. This set of images becomes much more important when analysed not just aesthetically, but with a methodology, and more specifically with History. The country has been a huge talking point in the news for a long time, known for its privacy, eccentric and questionable leaders, and its lies. When applying this to the series, it starts to change the way that we analyse them visually as well as contextually. The images reflect this sombre tone that seems to resonate from the country. They show little of the people, and the exceptions are made using techniques like slow shutter speeds to mostly blur the people out and leave a strange, ghostly mist where they would have been. It is obvious that, like is rumoured that anybody that visits the country is, Hartmann was escorted around and following a strict set of ground rules to present the country in a good light. When applying this to the analysis of the pictures, it shows Hartmann has cleverly shot many images to do this, but to also highlight the strange communist regimes. The picture of the leaders on the tube systems, for example, slyly shows the eerie signs of the totalitarian dictatorship while not obviously painting it in a bad light, and therefore being allowed to release them. It shows that photographs can be deeply analysed using various methods unique to each print, and that many are contextually much richer than an audience may first think.