#reflectivetext

Reference:

Reading, Anna (2009). ’Mobile Witnessing: Ethics and the Camera Phone in the ’War on Terror’.’ Globalizations vol. 6 no. 1 (March 2009), pp61-76.

SUMMARY OF YOUR CHOSEN TEXT

I felt a connection between my personal project and this text as the writer refers to the camera phone as a “DANGER”: “Drawing on a range of studies on mobile phones […] the danger of mobile camera phones is developing new languages and practices within visual culture […] extending and modifying media languages […] Phone developed into a handy multimedia computers that is effectively personal […] virtually unique and wearable multimedia functionality  […] it lives with us and on us.” All of these phrases are, in a way, expressing the meaning of my project. Though my critique/observation is addressed to the people who, being so busy with the speed in which they scroll images on mobile phones, are forgetting the depth of them, therefore it doesn’t matter how much effort, time, planning and commitment the photographer invest into taking photographs because the will still be scrolled in a frantically and accelerate timeframe.

The approach used in my project is similar to that used by Anna Reading when she talks about “the velocity in which the mobile witness image traveled from the realm of private experience into public virtual space”, and “The speed with which mobile image can travel and transform is significant here, enabling the rapid translation of a private sensory experience into a public mediated record”, in her case is the mobile phone and in my project is Instagram.

Anna Reading also uses the term “Mobile Phone Penetration” meaning that almost 100% of the world population own mobile phones with a camera in it. This is having a huge impact on photographers as well as on the way in which people look at photographs and only those who really care about photography can recognise and appreciate a good photograph. (the meaning of my project)=

CAMERA

Every week I used a different medium to demonstrate the effort that photographers put into creating an image.

Digital ( My Canon 6D and Canon 5Ds) Medium Format ( Digital PhaseOne and Bronica) 35mm Canon A1 (Black&White and Colour Films) Large Format, Phone Photography, and Screen Shot from a Video Camera.

This has also helped me understand which medium I feel more closed to, what medium to use in order to achieve the result that I am looking for and what is more suitable for my taste and needs.

I am very impatient, therefore I don't particularly love using the large format, although I absolutely love the quality of the images that can be produced from it.

The medium format PhaseOne camera is my favorite in terms of image quality and result, yet it is limited in terms of speed of processing images.

The point of the project is, however, to demonstrate that it does not matter what medium photographers use because from the moment that the picture gets uploaded on Instagram becomes ephemeral, immaterial, an “information” on the computer.

PRODUCTION & PRESENTATION

The presentation will be a recorded video projected onto the wall.

Simply because I wanted to explore diverse ways of presenting images that were not the typical prints hanged to a wall.

I have also used material objects such as eyeless and brainless ceramic dolls to represent humans while using phones.

In addition. created an Instagram account under the project’s name where every week I would upload all the images created.

Ultimately, I have made 3 metal stands in the 3D workshop to support the dolls.

The fact that the video will be on loop with no sound makes it feel like a “meditation”, where you just look and reflect. The dolls are symbolising people too.

My initial idea was to place a phone connected to a projector at the exhibition for people to play with, but I thought just a projection would be better for people to just watch and reflect as the phone can be distracting if people start just playing with it.

What techniques you use to produce, display, or disseminate your images (fine printing? Instagram? Digital postproduction? Fly-postering?).  How does the presentation play into the meaning of the work?

COMMUNICATION

Emotionally, my project communicates my feelings towards the changing status of photography and the role of the viewer as well as the fact that we are slaves of it.

Mine is MEDITATION to what’s happened to photography in the 21st century, more specifically to the speed in which images are consumed, forgetting about the depth of them.

It does not matter how much effort, time, planning and commitment the photographer is investing into making a photograph, using the most expensive and sophisticated medium or model or setting or equipment or concept, because when uploaded on Instagram, the pictures will all be looked at roughly the same way.

The viewer will stare at the soundless video and “meditate”, also will look at the dolls and realizing that those are there as a “comparison with us human, they represent us,

We are becoming brainless and eyeless creatures since technology is having such a strong impact on social development.

The experience  :

SUBJECTIVITY

As photographer I am expressing my personal feelings towards what is happening, I am my self producing those images with these magnificent pieces of equipment, I am even making the metal stands, I am my self investing so much of my time and creativity in planning, producing and processing these images that will be then “scrolled” in quick and effortless way.

I am also putting my self in these images in a very intimate and vulnerable way to see if the viewer will notice that or will simply “scroll” through.

IMAGES OF MY WORK

(Screen Record of Instagram Scrolling - Will be projected on the wall) and ( Ceramic dolls on stands made by me )

‘This work is dealing with my own frustration I have been experiencing working in restaurants.  Struggling to come to terms with my own identity and dealing with thoughts such as “I am only a waitress”, I felt like this presentation of the unavoidable ( as I have to deal with people whether I like it or not) will transform my perception to (hopefully) unconsciously create a more positive outlook on the disadvantages of my job. Every workplace has its psychological drawback, which can cause great impact on one’s mental well-being - dealing with it in an uplifting mode will might be beneficial turning attitudes around.

The aim is not to provoke, but to create a travesty out of my own irritation with customers. Asking my colleagues to participate was an obvious choice, as we are dealing with the same emotions at the same environment - making fun of each other’s frustration, creating catch phrases for the recurring blunt situations and our aim is to create a more inviting atmosphere in a demanding work environment.

With this project I would like to provide some sort of entertainment to the viewer, to give them food for thought and the quest to find the punchline of each photos / stories. I also hope that viewers can relate to the series one way or another - either from the waiters or the customer’s point of view.

As a photographer, and as artist as well, I feel it is my primary duty to trigger emotions in people thought my work and, more important, it is fundamental that what I intend to communicate is perceived by the viewer.

Despite I have always been an expansive and extroverted person regarding my personal life, I found myself very shy when it comes to involve people in my artistic work. Last year, however, I had to deal with a project that required a deeper engagement regarding my personal experience and I chose to work around a subject which I consider to be very explicative and easy to understand: femininity. In order to better analyze my work, I will include in my discussion some references from the paper Uneasy Bodies: affect, embodied perception, and contemporary fashion photography of Eugénie Shinkle, which covers the issue of reading contemporary fashion photography images through the example of the collaboration between the photographer Juergen Teller and the model Kristin McMenamy. They produced a body of work which shows womanhood as crude and clumsy, something that became very popular in today’s fashion photography (Shinkle, 2012). As far as concern my own project, I decided to research the subject of femininity from a “gentle and delicate” point of view and I asked various girls to model for me and each of them was supposed to represent a different action of their normal daily routine. Some of them are reading, doing their makeup and nails, drinking a cup of coffee, some again are just holding a comfortable position which indicates boredom. In order to emphasize the gestures of the girls and make them stand out, I opted for a plain grey wall as background, the clothes are as simple and plain as possible and the props are very few. The repetition of some sets and poses indicates the repetition of these actions during the everyday. The only suggestion I gave to the models was not to look in to the camera and to act as normal as possible, as if they were in their own houses without any eyes on them. It has been really interesting noticing how each of them interacted with the props within the space in a different way; some of them were more shy and insecure, others were more confident and bold. On the whole I wanted to enter the personal space, the intimacy of people through the use of an objective eye: every girl has her own individuality, but at the same time can be seen as the representation of a “genre”. After the Feminist movement of the 1970s, the world understanding of being woman changed forever and, unfortunately, amongst the incredible accomplishments, some other great issues arose. As Shinkle suggests, the development of digital technologies has created a more than evident impact on our perception of body (Shinkle, 2012): fashion photography, more than anything else, represents a way through which spread a certain belief of what the ideal beauty should look like. If today’s message is that women should be perfect in every single aspect and situation, I am convinced that femininity can be found in the small and simple things, like those ordinary actions that we all do in our everyday routine. Their repetition is what makes these activities so interesting to explore and the peculiar way with which each different woman is used to do them, hyde a solemnity, an elegance that we would never expect.

For this project I decided to work in the studio in order to create a cozy and safe environment where I could build a serene and relaxing atmosphere for me and the models to work and where they could feel free to expose themselves as much as they wanted. I chose analog photography because I wanted to feel the materiality of the medium and because the waiting and the uncertainty which characterise this technique make everything more inspiring and real, in a sense. As the photographer Sam Cornwell points out in his article on PetaPixel, “it slows you down” (Cornwell 2015), the use of film somehow force you to think about what you are doing more carefully and also it allows you to take those few moments while you’re preparing and shooting just for yourself, away from the noise and the chaos of the outside world. I am constantly in hurry and I feel my head is alway full of thoughts and things to remember, therefore when I take picture (the thing that I love the most) I like to concentrate myself on just that specific place and moment and simply enjoy the experience.

Looking at an image, our brain activates certain mechanisms through which we can understand and relate with what we see. Actually not only our mind is involved, but even our body reacts in its own peculiar way. This process is called affect which by definition it means a response to an external stimulus experienced by an individual both physically and psychologically. What happens is that our conscious makes us feeling part of what we are looking at: we transport ourselves in to far away places or we could even enter the body of the people represented, replacing them and by doing so we achieve a deeper understanding of the picture that doesn’t necessarily have to correspond to what the artists wanted to communicate in the first place.

This has been my very first personal project and I tried to depict an idea to which people could easily relate, I wanted my images to provoke something that would go beyond the mere interpretation and touch the the edge of the affect process. My desire was that my photographs would document and represent an “ode” to femininity through the representation of the grace of the ordinary things.

Photography is the most powerful means through which social themes are communicated and it is crucial that the works produced result to be reach in their significance so that the audience will be capable of being emphatic towards them.