Evaluation of Prep Work

My ideas have changed allot over the course of the project from wanting to do something simple as hidden identity and candid photography ive developed my ideas to exploring the hardship and sensitivity of my final outcome theme Domestic Violence.My Final outcome reflects the exam theme 'Covert and Obscured' Because of this whole idea of living a personal and exclusive life no one truly knows or understand what goes on behind closed doors we close our doors to Obscure the world from our personal and individuality lives.
The photographer that inspired my work in the end has to be a cross between Rankin and Sally Mann because abit of my final piece is all about looking into the life of this young girl who is being abused and exploiting personal lives is more  Sally mann's style. Other parts of my final piece where i have sown into my pictures have been inspired by the Rankin destroy project but instead of destroying the picture to convey her personality i'm destroying the picture to convey her struggle hurt and finally desperation.
The different experiments we did throughout the year got me comfortable with the experiments and allowed me to make a few experimentation of my own.I did many darkroom technique such as inserting a shape to the image, Overexposing and underexposing to get the print a certain vintage look,handmade negatives.I also did quite a few experimentation's outside of the darkroom such as tamper-age with the print like cutting, weaving, sowing,and collaging. 
Overall i found the project fun a well as interesting the exam theme was slightly difficult to come up with a range of different ideas at first because of the formally of the words but then after breaking down the meaning and looking through a thesauri ideas began to come to me.Honesty i think i will be very pleased about my final outcome because i know that alot of practice and hardworking went into creating it to the quality that it is.

My ideas have been strongly influenced by Matt Winiewski and Sally Mann. Matt because of his ability to obscure portraiture with nature such as trees and the sea and Sally Mann because of the way she almost intrudes into her families personal life and capture images that would of otherwise been unknown to the human eye.
The trip to the exhibitions inspired my work in a sense they reminded me that in order to get a good photograph you've got to enjoy taking it or find a interesting subject matter and capture it in your best interests.For example In the Juergen teller exhibition he had pictures of his children these weren't posed shots he didn't pend money and time into getting the child in the right position no, these are candid pure shots of life as they happen.


The handmade negatives experimentation was my favorite experimentation because i love the effect a bit of Vaseline and salt can do to a picture it completely transformed it as well as obscures its natural form.The experiment that influenced my final piece most was the out of the darkroom techniques such as the owing and weaving of the prints.

Sigmar Polke Analysis

Polke was Born in 1941 he studied from 1961 to 1967 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy where he helped launch an art movement known as Capitalist Realism, which mined popular culture and advertising for its pictorial language.He first took up photography in the 1960s using a handheld 35mm Leica camera. The  camera with a silent shutter gave him the ability to record "found" still lives quickly.

Polke also began to experiment with printing techniques in the darkroom to transform the raw material of his negatives through the process of photochemistry.

In this print he has combined both overexposed and underexposed prints together as well as positive and negative printing to create as he called 'enigmatic narratives' whereby the viewer draws up his/hers own questions about the piece.The combination of the curtains a blacked out figure and a silhouette of a  hand creates mystery and suspense about what is actually happening in this shot.

At times Polke placed two negatives in the enlarger to introduce context and narrative into the final layered image. In this image, he used double exposure to embed shoppers carrying umbrellas  and a photography that looks like a shower to illustrate to the audience that the story of this was to show shoppers carrying umbrellas as they navigate a flooded street. My first reaction to this piece was that it looked complicating and confusing but when i actually analysed it a little more I began to pull out the meaning of it.

Polke also taught himself to develop his own negatives and enlarge prints. From the beginning, he viewed the darkroom as an arena for developing prints and experimentation and seeing images emerge led him to disregard standard procedures that determine the length of time a print is to remain in each chemical bath and the sequence of those baths. He made up his own "rules" of the darkroom which often resulted in scratched negatives, under- and overexposures, and prints that further obscured details to create visually disorienting compositions.

 This photograph is of two skeletons leaning against a wall. One has a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and the other stares out of the corner of his eye socket at him, although they are both deceased they look at each other as if they are sharing a joke. The yellowy paper suggests this photograph is very old what's interesting about this piece is that the skeleton on the left appears much lighter that the one on the right this can suggest many things for example because the skeleton on the left is holding a cigarette this could suggest this was the cause of his death which would explain why his bones look rotten, another reason could be simply that the skeleton on the left has only been decreased for a little while whilst the other has been gone a long time.The lighting in this looks like it could just be natural daylight as there is a miniature shadow over the left skeleton.The background space resembles stone, but the hunched shoulders of the figures suggests they are sitting down.I think this piece was a organised photo shoot as skeletons are normally buried underground so for this piece i think sigmar dressed up the skeletons this way deliberately to make it look like a candid shot. This piece ha inspired me to play around with surrealism when creating photo shoots and to go with something strange and unusual.

Outcome Presentation Methods

This is my visual and text related mind map for ways of presenting my final outcome.

For my final outcome I've decided that i want to do a awareness poster informing people of domestic abuse I've chosen this idea because i think it relates closely to my them and is relevant for example you wouldn't necessarily have a picture of someone being abused on a fashion item handbag because that would seem as if you were promoting domestic abuse.
So for my final piece i will choose my  two strongest images and create a large double exposure print on large paper, I will use tracing paper and print out a slogan and a header for my piece, I aim for it to be about a A3 sheet of photographic paper and I want to window mount this.

Digital Prints for my final idea.

These are some of my digital responses to my final idea,In this picture i have transformed it from coloured to black and white and used the burn tool on photoshop to give the subject a bruised eye.In my print photographs i will have used makeup around my subjects eye to give them a beaten up look.

This is a second digital example of what will be on my final film,For this picture i again transformed it into black and white and again used the burn tool to give her a bruised eye but then i added in a secondary sourced hand and transformed it to make it look as if it was covering her mouth.  To do this in the darkroom i'd do a photogram styled print so expose my portrait of my subject and then place my hand in the way of the light so they my hand will be silhouetted onto the print.

In Depth Review Of Ideas

To come up with my final idea i first developed a range of ideas evidently on my blog my first idea was 'Costume make up' for this i would look at how some people hide behind the makeup they put on their skin and how this obscures their natural beauty. My second idea was costumes and how a costume like for example a spiderman costume can let your alter ego out and obscure your personality.Another one of my ideas were shadows and how these are covert and secret looking for example in a lot of crime-fiction programmes the suspect is represented by a shadow to conceal their true identity.Then my main potential idea was 'Hidden identity' i wanted to explore this in a wide range by for example making my models wear items on theirs heads such as bags or hoodies that cover their face to obscure their identity , i wanted to do a bit of distortion as well and make my models faces appear weird and abnormal.I was also planning on using the doge and burn technique in the darkroom to make my models appear darker and hard to make out in the photograph. However after looking deeper into this idea i discovered that i had gone for the easy interruption of the theme 'Covert and Obscured' therefore i began to think about a new idea.

For my final piece I'm going to do a piece on Domestic Abuse. I've chosen this idea because a person that is being abused isn't always obvious to notice, in fact most people who are being abused hide it behind fake smiles. I want to do a bit of narrative photography into the life of someone who's being abused and show how they obscure all of this behind there fake smile and the consequence's of them saying silent about this issue or maybe change this into a awareness campaign and create a poster for my final piece.
Im going to use the double negative technique for this idea, i will take two photographs one of my model with a fake smile on and one of them with a abused face and ill merge these together to see the contrast between them. I enjoyed this technique because you can add it to other techniques as well such as the handmade negative technique which i also enjoys and together it gives a photograph a complicated but interesting look.

For example this print was made by combining the double exposure technique with the handmade negative technique.If i was to spot this to my now theme i think it would look really good depending on which photograph i choose.

To support my piece i will research into trusted campaigns such as the NSPCC and Woman's AID as well as the NHS to draw inspiration from and also to draw facts and figures for this piece.

One strong Artist that i will look at for this will be Sally Mann most of her photography is a up close and personal in site into her family or families lives. This image below demonstrates my idea very well.

This image looks like this child has been being abused and i will sort of go for the opposite with this piece as I'm kind of doing this like a awareness campaign whereby I'm trying to convey to the audience or viewers of my work that you can't normally just look at someone and know all the ups and downs of there lives, Frankly you just don't know what happens behind closed doors of that persons live. 

The fact that the final outcome will be in black and white i think is very effective and if i get the lighting right for my scenes ill have some really good shots.

These images were photography's by Rankin, This was a campaign to ask everyone to act until women and children are safe’– that is - aadmit domestic abuse is a problem, call it by its name and talk to someone about it .The campaign uses head and shoulder portraits of famous female faces, made up to show the physical effects of domestic violence.  

The bruises on these women are fake but the picture leaves a strong message to its intended audience.

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Darkroom Experiments

These are dome of the Darkroom experiments i carried out.

This is a handmade negative, i made this by cutting a small piece of acetate the size of a negative so it could fit inside the carrier.I then placed some Vaseline and table salt on top of the plastic layer and exposed it for approximately 6 seconds.

This is a handmade negative combined with two of my own negatives. I did the exact same thing with my handmade negative but before placing it inside the negative carrier i placed my two negatives down firs, this way the Vaseline and salt wouldn't spoil my own negatives.I like this photograph because its quite illusive in the sense that you cant tell which image is the original.

This print was made with a handmade and my own negative combined,To do this i placed the acetate on top of my negative and carefully stylised where i wanted the salt and Vaseline to be placed.I chose to obscure the face in this piece because i was working on the theme of 'Hidden identity' and i thought by covering the face this idea works quite well.

This is a photography from my first film. It features my model covered in a white sheet with a wig and necklace placed on top for added character. Again i chose to place the Vaseline and salt around the figure to give it a ghostly sense since my chosen theme at the time was 'Hidden identity'.

This photograph is from the photography trip, to do this effect i cut out a x shape from a piece of black card and kept the cut out pieces.I then placed the black card over my photographic paper with the cut out x in my desired place and exposed my picture for 6seconds.I then placed the cut out x in the same place and removed the black card (being very careful not to move the paper) i then exposed it for another 6seconds and i was given this outcome.

Juergen teller inspired photos

These are some of my  Juergen teller inspired photographs that I've taken.

'Hide and Seek'

 'Brushing his teeth'

 

'Sleepyheads'

National Portrait Gallery : Man Ray Exhibition

Man ray Portraits

This exhibition was a display of man rays photography work and his journey in his career from and 1916 and 1968 in both America and Paris. There wasn't just photographs in this exhibition it also includes some photograms but my most favourite piece of all is the one directly below in which I have analysed.

I chose this piece to analyse because its the one that fits into my sub-theme the most. The piece is called 'Le Violon d’Ingres'. To create this piece he first took a normal photograph of this woman from the back he then manually painted in a f-hole onto her back to make her resemble a stringed musical instrument. After doing this he re-photographed the picture to create a final piece.

The meaning behind the piece is actually a pun Man ray created this piece to show the similarities  

between the shape of a woman' s body to the violin. Ingres's well-known passion for the violin created the colloquialism in French 'Le Violon d’Ingres' which means hobby in french.

The reason i chose this piece to analyse is because i think it links into my chosen pathway the most, my chosen pathway being hidden identity. The way the figure is placed from the back allows the audience to pull out certain aspects of information and try to come to a conclusion of what they believe this piece symbolises and who this figure is.

This picture looks like it has been set in a bedroom and the figure is sitting on a bed, The way the head is turned could suggest wealth, as most wealthy people tend to pose in a way that shows they are better than everyone else she does this with her head positioning. Although i said that this may be set in a bedroom the background is black so this suggest a black area in which this was taken.

Juergen Teller Woo!

Juergen Teller born in 1964 in Erlangen, Germany is an artist and fashion photographer.The exhibition was held in the ICA gallery. The exhibition was a journey through his landmark fashion and commercial photography from the 90s he had images of celebrities such as Lily Cole, Kurt Cobain and Vivienne Westwood, as well as some landscapes and family portraits.

Overall i didn't fully enjoy his work I personally thought most of his pictures excluding the nudes were quite simple it didn't really seem like a great amount of time and effort was spent on producing them. Also a few of his pieces appeared slightly pixualated and it was clear that this wasn't part of the overall look, I don't think he was really a photographer that went out and planned shots excluding the nudes most of his pictures were quite candid. 

The photograph is called motor head ed  i think this links into the t-shirt the baby is wearing. the baby is the pieces subject matter he looks slightly frightened in his face and only clothed in a blue babygro with the words motor bean written on them. The meaning of the piece is open to interuptation i cant really see a specific meaning to it it could he conveying fear or maybe innocence. The picture could convey a life issue such as the artists social life which would be his family. The photography is completely realistic it seems to be quite candid as well as I'm sure he didn't  ask this baby to pose for him.The photograph links to the theme covert and obscurced because this is a side of a photographers life we hardly see its the personal side of his Life.the photograph has taken up all of the frame of the picture the frame is quite narrow as the artist probably wanted to make the main focus the image, the image is in colour but I appears slightly blurry like he was using a bad quality camera maybe just a mobile phone, I think the photographer has used a focus technique because you can really see the inside of the babies eyes maybe the slightly blurred picture was intentional for this feature
the characters facial expressions capture the mood of the baby it's not clear weather he is upset scared or about to cry but it's certainly not a cheerful mood.
When I first saw this photo it appealed to me straight away because it was placed in this room with pictures containing nudity and randomness and the baby picture just kinda screamed out normality. There are quote calm colours used in this piece such as yellow and white in some respect they could be seen as baby colours pure and innocent. 

My Digital ideas

This is a Matt Wisniewski inspired print, to create this effect i first took a normal picture of my brother and then inserted a wave picture on top of his face and played around with the opacity so that some of his facial features were present but the rest were obscured.

This picture was a voyeuristic picture that i took when i was on the train the person photographed had no idea that i was taking a picture of him which makes it quite covert. To get this theme on the picture afterwards i edited it on photoshop 

These pictures were taken at Westminster , they are also voyeuristic but i developed a technique with it i pretended to take pictures of the big ben while also getting people in swell. The first picture was taken on my mobile of people exiting the tube station i took it because the identity of these people is anonymous and it links in nicely to the them obscured.

Matt Wisniewski Analysis

Wisniewski has created a particularly successful iteration by overlaying portraits with organic patterns—from flowers to jagged peaks to a Rorschach blot. He came to the combination through experimentation. “It just sort of clicked,” he says. “Natural elements tend to be a little simpler and fit together a bit more obviously with the portraits than urban elements.”

I really like the way Matt experiments with a range of different materials and the images I've chosen obscure the subjects face which i also really like.

He mentions in one of his interviews that he takes his portrait pictures first and then experiments with different textures and finds a texture that co responds with the portrait.I like this because its like he is reading there personality from the inside and trying to convey that on the outside.

The first picture is of a chic looking kind of girl i can tell this by the leather top and the quiff in her hair and Matt has tried to convey this by collaging her with coral over her hair and part of her face this could indicate that she's a kind of hard girl strict and not sensitive.

I like the second picture the best because of the contrast of the black and white to colour i love this kind of idea, The fact that Matt has used blue and hints of yellow paint suggest peace and tranquillity so maybe this person is a really peaceful one and humble.

These two pieces would effectively look really cool together because of the way they are set up the woman figure is turned different way to the male. The fact that the connotations of the woman are not sensitive and quite hard and the male is calm and peaceful immediately creates a binary opposition between the two.

Overal i think these pieces are composed really well and link in perfectly to the exam theme 'Covert and Obscured".

My Ideas for the theme

For my theme I've come up with 4 different but closely related ideas
my first inner theme will be Contemporary Hidden identities this will include me hiding the identities of my subjects with maybe newspapers over there faces or distorting them somehow using inspiration from Frederique Daubal who cut out magazines and placed them over his subjects.

My second idea for my film will be a Costumes satirical hidden identity theme where ill be quite exaggerated and put makeup on my subjects maybe go for the superheros theme, inspiration will be from Cindy Sherman she poses in a range of self portrait pictures dressed up as different people.

My third idea is to use my spy pen and take quite sneaking voyeuristic pictures of people or if not successful i will still take pictures of people with my SLR camera maybe on a busy street in London.

My fourth and final idea is to do some mixed media pieces in the style of Matt Wisniewski such as below. I think these pieces will look really good with the contrast of black and white to colour opt if i decide to take them digitally it could work quite well aswell.

Candid Photography (Digital)

Candid photography referes to taking a picture of your chosen subject without there knowledge, this is most commonly done. It links into the theme because to take a picture of someone without them knowing you would probably have to hide the device you are taking there picture with. Which links well with covert.

This is a photography taken by the artist Jason Martini its a candid shot and i think it was taken with a film SLR. From the position of where the photograph is taken it looks as though he took this whilst crossing the road and to capture a portrait picture as still as this his camera must have been on a fast shutter speed setting.The setting of this picture looks like it was set in america because of the iconic skyscrapers and streetlights. The black and white colo makes this photograph look as thought it was set in the past with the little snippet of the car on the right side this adds to my theory.

To take this picture i sat down and pretended to eat my lunch whilst being on my phone and i quickly took this. The blurring on this woman shows how fast she was walking its a good effect to convey movement. 

Taking Candid photography is quite fun and tricky but it could also be risky if i did it in a urban area some people might catch me taking a picture and be slightly alarmed and maybe aggressive but overall i ha no problems in doing it and i enjoyed it.

Shadows

Another idea for the theme could be shadows,Shadows obscure the identity of a person as much as masks and costumes do. But not only the identity of the person is obscured also the complicated shapes and details of that person.

This photograph is a print made by Lukas Vasilikos the piece is called 'Shadows'.
I really like the way he has composed this piece with a load of people walking down a street and there shadows being shown.The way he has shown the actual person and the shadow could contradict my theory on how shadows obscure a persons identity, but the people shown are blacked out this could also create a good theme responding to the exam theme. I don't think this piece was unedited i think most of the shadows in fact most are edited in using photoshop, this is done well but it then lacks realism which is what i really want to convey.

This is my attempt of trying to do the shadow technique. I found this really difficult to achieve because you can't use a flash camera because of course the image won't show and you can't use a particular normal camera because it will come out too dark. So to achieve this outcome i had to set up a desk lamp on a table opposite a wall, it was then really easy to capture. I took this photograph from profile because  i wanted to get some detail in the piece detail meaning some eyelashes and lips and facial features i wouldn't have achieved if the picture was just from the front.

This is another picture i took, The big ben is completely blacked out. This was actually taken with flash on i think this is why the building is so dark. I like the detail in this print as being the opposite to my first print the fact that it was taken in daylight makes it more effective. The strongest bit in this photograph i think is the clouds they really work with the context of the photograph.

Overall i found that to capture shadows is going to be very difficult especially if i was doing it with a SLR film camera and taking Candid shots, its much easier just to take the pictures and then edit the shadows into it. 

Moodboard

This is my mood board of ideas which i could do for my final outcome. Most of these pictures are from artists included in the exam. These images are from the artists:
Sally Mann
Wes Naman
Danny O Connor
Lucas Simoes
Natalia Pereira
I really like the idea of obscuring a persons identity or distorting it.The Artistes that do this well are My own researched artists which are Natalia Pereira, Lucas Simoes and Danny O Connor.
The image with the string tied around the models face is really strong it hints distortion as well as discomfort i think this particu;ar image would include a lot of health and safety precautions.

Covert and Obsured Exam Theme

This is my mind map of potential ideas responding to the title "Covert and Obscured'

Final Evaluation

The theme for this project was named 'The light Project'. Our brief explained that though out this project we would be looking at different ways you can use light in photography whether that's light painting or just dramatic lighting, also this project would enable us to use digital cameras as wells film SLR's if we preferred. To come up with ideas for this project I produced a mind map and took inspiration from other photographers

For my final outcome I produce a range of different darkroom prints of a model I had token using dramatic lighting. 

My range included solarisation, reversals and a reversal of a solarisation as well as original un-tempered with prints. I produced 4 large A4 prints of my final outcome and on the side did a little photography book of all my little A6 prints.

As a whole I found the whole experience temperamental I had a lot of problems with producing my final piece and in actual fact although I did a lot of experimentation with portraits and dramatic lighting, my actual intention wasn't to do this for my final piece instead I was planning on doing some light panting with a film SLR camera some would be in color whilst others black and white as I find the contrasty black and white more interesting than the coloured version.

As time progressed I started to experiment with this initial idea and produced some small black and white light painting experiments with a model, in the style of Patrick Rochon but they weren't successful enough to use as my final piece. I then tried to do the same idea but with coloured film these were completely unsuccessful as only one out of 30 was able to use and the one which came out wasn't at all usable so with a week until the exam I began thinking of other ways I could produce a final outcome and I began looking through my sketchbook.

 This is when I saw how successful and professional my dramatic lighting prints were and I started to look back at my analysis of David bailey and began to really get inspired by his use of dramatic lighting and his role play with he's models that links into this, so I started to experiment with some more dramatic lighting portraits and started experimenting in the darkroom with different techniques which is where I produced some solarisation’s and reversal prints.

I really liked the way David Bailey choose his lighting carefully depending on the pose and model he chose for example the image of Jean Shrimpton is really flattering he conveys style and sleekness with just using black and white film or an effect The way he has captured the light bouncing of her hair and got that jawline shadow is amazing he really motivated me that there is more to do with a SLR camera and if done well it will look really good.

To improve my final outcome I think I could of done some prints in where I put two pictures in the negative carrier this would have been successful because I could of then played with the opacity of the overlapping image on photo shop and it would of linked into Roni Horn's Clown piece from the contextual studies unit as well as been dramatic lighting so linked into David Bailey.

To conclude I found the project stressful at times but however I am happy with the choices I made regarding my final piece and I'm happy with my overall outcome. In the future I would like to pick up a technique in which makes light painting on a SLR film camera do-able.