Friday 18 March 2011

Exhibition review - 'Stonehenge' at the Manchester Museum

Stonehenge: henge diggers

An exhibition by Bill Bevan

When researching information about the Manchester Museum for a current module brief, I was excited to discover that a photography exhibition depicting the work of an archeology site at Stonehenge was on display. I have a great interest in British history and I think the work of archeologist's is incredibly important in uncovering our past, therefor I was curious to see how a photographer would portray this incredibly skilled profession.

http://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/stonehengehengediggers/

The exhibition was located on the fourth floor in a small area which may unfortunately be overlooked by the general public. In his images, Bevan tries to capture the pace of an archaeological dig - The slower speed necessary in exploring the site and the decisive moments that happen on digs. Bevans images however surprised me in their simplicity. The light is flat in almost every shot and bevan shoots from mostly the same viewpoint. His images depict in a very clear way, exactly what is happening in a documentary style - shooting exactly as the scene appears.




I was surprised by the lack of interest both myself and fellow students had towards Bevans work. The images themselves did show in a very exacting way the work of the archeologist's, however the lack of any lighting techniques left the images looking a little bland and static. There was some depth of field used in some images however they had little impact on the effect of the overall shot. It would have been interesting if Bevan would have chosen to capture the emotions of the archeologist's on site as I believe this would have lead to a more exciting collection of images. Also some shots were very slightly out-of-focus throughout the whole image (in a way that was not intentional I believe) This lead to Bevans whole collection feeling somewhat amateur. The idea behind his images was very interesting, however I felt that a lack of technique lead to the exhibition lacking in creativity and interest and the shots started to look very static and flat. It would be interesting to look at Bevans previous work to establish whether this is in fact his style, or something he felt he wanted to capure on this particular shoot.

Tuesday 15 March 2011


In Focus: Still Life is a selection of photographs from an installation of wonderful still life photographs presently on view at The J. Paul Getty Museum Center for Photographs. The collection presents a survey of some of the innovative ways photographers have explored and refreshed this traditional genre. During the 19th century, still life photographs tended to resemble still life paintings, with similar subjects and arrangements. Beginning in the 20th century, still life photographs have mirrored the subjects and styles that have more broadly concerned photographers in their time.
In addition to early experiments of pioneers of the photographic medium, some of the works that have been newly acquired by the Getty Center are presented here: Still Life with Triangle and Red Eraser (1985) by American Irving Penn, Lorikeet with Green Cloth (2006) by Australian Marian Drew, and Blow Up: Untitled 15 (2007) by Israeli Ori Gersht.  Gersht loosely based his Blow Up series on traditional floral still life paintings. His arrangements of flowers are frozen and then detonated; the explosion is captured using synchronized digital cameras, with the fragmentary detritus caught in remarkable detail.  This contemporary approach to still photography belies the notion of still life as something motionless, as it explores the relationships among painting and photography, art and science, and creation and destruction.
This piece also presents the experimental video Still Life (2001) created by the English artist Sam Taylor-Wood, a three-minute short film that focuses on a classically composed bowl of fruit as it decays. Also, there’s a pen. Still Life has been said to be one of the most classical works in contemporary art, carving a permanent record for itself in art history with hardly any commentary. This is not just a Still Life; it is based upon a particular type of still life painting that developed during the 16th and 17th centuries in Flanders and the Netherlands, part of a classical genre that contains symbols of change or death as a reminder of their inevitability. Its focus was upon confronting the vanity of worldly things through often subtle signs of elapsing time and decay.
Sam Taylor-Wood’s film represents yet another step in that direction: the image, beautiful as ever in Taylor-Wood’s universe, decomposes itself. By the end of the short film, nothing is left but a grey amorphous mass. But upon closer inspection, one detail distinguishes this picture from its predecessors. The plastic ballpoint pen, a cheap contemporary object. One that doesn’t seem to decay and doesn’t seem to be a part of the universal process of self-disappearing life. Is this what is really left here to stay after we are gone, this nothingness, this ridiculous attribute of ourselves?

Margaret Watkins (web: traditional still life approaches)

Margaret Watkins
(web: traditional still life approaches)

Margaret Watkins was born in Canada in 1884. When 25 years old, she moved to New York the centre of artistic life. She had her own studio in the 1920s and studied photography and later was a teacher at Boston's Clarence White School of Photography. She had students like Margaret Bourke-White. It has been said that she was half in love with Clarence White and, when he suddenly died in 1927, Watkins organised a memorial exhibition for him. She displayed some of his major pictures, which he had given to her in lieu of salary. White's widow sued Watkins for ownership and she had to sell her the pictures back. With hurt feelings Watkins decided to move to Scotland to look after her four aunts. Slowly all her relatives died, and the second world war started. Even though she didn't have any reason to stay longer, she couldn't go back then because at those times you could only cross the Atlantic if you really had to.
She continued to take pictures, but never like earlier in her life. Watkins never went back to New York, she stayed in Glasgow. Before she died in 1967 she gave her neighbour Mulholland, who was a journalist, a box of most of her work on a strict promise not to open it before she died. When Mulholland went in to Watkins house to look for more pictures, he found her suitcases still packed with passport ready to go back to New York.

When he opened the box he found a jumbled archive of thousands of contact sheets, negatives and photographs, documenting an incredibly accomplished career spanning the early part of the 20th century. Even though they were really good friends, Watkins had never told this part of her life to him.


Margaret Watkins took some very powerful still life images using ordinary household scenes. These include Domestic Symphony, which features three eggs, perched on the edge of a smooth, sculptural surface and The Kitchen Sink, a composition consisting of a ceramic sink containing a grubby milk bottle and other household paraphernalia.
Both of these images were featured in Vanity Fair magazine at the time.
Her subject matter for this photograph, a kitchen sink was shockingly revolutionary for a work of art. Watkins was the one of the first to turn aspects of female household responsibility, into a still life. The way she composes the objects, creates abstract patterns, shadows and reflects light.
The Kitchen Sink image was quiet popular and some say the most famous domestic photograph. It looks very simple but still it is not an image that just anyone could have composed to give such a strong impression.

Why didn't she go back? Did she feel like her work wouldn't be good enough after all those years? Maybe she had her bag packed to prove that she could go back if she wanted to, but she chose not to. She hid her early life from Mullholand and chose the relative simplicity of Scotland over the glitzy life of New York. Was she rejecting the sophisticated, prefering the beauty of ordinary life? She elevated the mundane, giving beauty to everyday objects. Her work is in one way very realistic, but also creates a world full of shape and form.


http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/In-pictures-The-hidden-world.5866312.jp

http://hiddenlanegallery.com/exhibitions/margaret-watkins-exhibition-1884-1969/

http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=16402

Photography and Everyday Objects

PHOTOGRAPHY AND EVERYDAY OBJECTS


Why photograph inanimate objects, which neither move nor change? Many of the earliest photographs were still life of necessity: only statues, books, and urns could hold still long enough to leave their images on paper. But with the still lifes of Roger Fenton introduce a new note: the dusty skin of a grape, a flower petal curled and darkened at the edge. Photographic still life is about our sensual experience of everyday objects, and the inevitability of decay.


The nineteenth-century art critic Théophile Thoré objected to the French term for still life, nature morte, proclaiming, “Everything is alive and moves, everything breathes in and exhales, everything is in a constant state of metamorphosis… There is no dead nature!” The Czech photographer Josef Sudek tersely echoed this thought when he said that to the photographer’s eye, “a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings.”

André Kertész



In 1928 Kertesz photographed a fork, or rather the idea of a fork - a fork that represented the idea of form and the idea of light; light gliding perfectly over an object, which then transcends its usual practical function and becomes a vehicle for deeper thoughts.
Kertesz was not trying to create an abstract, but to reveal the beauty hidden within objects.


"Life is composed of such fleeting glimpses of beauty, but one must learn to look at the world in wonder in order to be able to catch these moments of enchantment before they fade away"




After his wife Elizabeth’s death in 1977, Kertesz began placing objects that reminded him of her or of their life together in front of the window of his New York apartment and shooting color Polaroids of them. The series was eventually collected in a book called From My Window. Through this same window in previous decades, Kertész had taken black-and-white pictures of Washington Square Park and surrounding rooftops with a telephoto lens. Now the city became a soft, distant backdrop for his miniature theater of memory.



Edward Weston
On 10th March 1924 Weston wrote in his diary - "What is the best use of a camera? You only have to look at the masterpieces of a great sculptor or a great painter to know that a camera should be used for the recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh." And later "To photograph a rock means that the image should be more than a rock. A meaning not an interpretation."

A few years after writing those words Weston produced a series of photographs of Peppers, in which they have all transcended their ordinary existence to become objects of muscular beauty.


(Paul - Appologies for not attending class today I am having some financial trouble and as I am home alone consequently cannot afford the journey to college this morning. This issue will be rectified soon - I hope! )

Monday 14 March 2011


Photography and Surreal Objects : Athens/Web
I tried looking on Athens but i couldnt find anything of value for this blog. So i decided to look on the web.

I started looking at Michiko Kon's work. I found a small piece of writing describing her work.
''Kon's work creates a delicious tension between the animate and inanimate. Diverse biological matter such as fish, plants and insects, are unexpectedly combined with clothing, shoes, furniture and even body parts''

From looking at Kon's work i found that the work is visually interesting to look at and also i like how the combination of the of the objects work together well.

My favourite image is the one called ''Brassiere and Gizzard Shads'' I like this image because it could be an item of clothing that could be worn and it also combines clothing with fish, which are named in the extract of writing that i found about Kon.
I found another artist called Kevin Wilson, although i couldnt find much information about him i did find a website with his images on. http://www.insomnium.co.uk/photography/

Photography and everyday objects via Athens



Anne Tallentire: This and other things.

The london based artist, Anne Tallentire has many interesting projects covering many different mediums. I do not think that her photography is her strongest area, the unremarkable objects she exposes with unremarkable lighting create images which personally i do not enjoy or find interesting but this style of image making causes the viewer to imagine what is around the photograph and also makes us want the image to be more than it is. Is this simply photographing for the sake of photographing? However, when i take away my golden section bias i can see that the juxtaposed compositions try to make statements about the things we do not notice. I think of a photograph as a moment of time in the past, wether seconds, days or years - it is always a reminiscent object for us to experience and cast our opinions . Tallentire's images go a little further than this and explain past events which have happened to the objects she captures, such as damage/discord. These ideas reveal a narrative which is prominent throughout quite a lot of her bodies of work. They leave me wondering what events had to transpire for these images to be made and i like how these are out of control of the photographer - almost natural events that she has stumbled upon.

Overall i would say that these images and the ideas behind them are growing on me and maybe have taught me to look outside my Magnum favourites and compositional comfort zone and look at images which at first do not come across visually strong yet still explain more about how they are made as they become more than the sum of all their parts - a phrase which i finally understand.


Symbolic Objects - Web

Susan Derges expressed an interest in abstract art at an early age "it offered the promise of being able to speak of the invisible rather than to record the visible" before she took an interest in photography.

She followed a different direction and use photography without a camera after experiencing frustration at the way "the camera always seperates the subject from the viewer"

Much of her later work explored both the isolation and connection within nature. Her beautiful images portray deep and often mystrical meaning.

The 1991 series The Observer and The Observed looked at the connection of viewer and object. These image appeared as droplets of water that contain faces and at the same time showed her face with droplets suspended in her view. Her photographs based around scenes of natural portray a deeper dimension that stirs the viewers imagination.
The images shown above could represent a form of symbolism in the way they tell a story. The images have a cold, unhappy yet wimsical feel about them. The water droplets gives the impression of rain on a window through which the viewer is observing the subject and the subject is observing the viewer.

You can in interpret the Arch as symbolising travelling from a dark place into light. The beautiful scenery of nature, trees, blue sky and water are all captured in the confines of the archway tempting you to walk through; but is it an illusion?

Traditional Still Life approaches- Athens



Photography using a traditional Still Life approach

Imogen Cunningham

"To worship beauty for it's own sake is narrow, and one surely cannot derive from it that esthetic pleasure which comes from finding beauty in the commonest things."

Imogen Cunningham’s botanical fascination grew in the 1920s where a majority of her work showed this. This then began to develop into a great interest in the form and texture of plants and flowers. She photographed these using soft lighting to create texture and shadow.


Looking at her work ‘Black Lily’ she captures just segments of the flower using quite dramatic lighting. By doing this she shows of the texture and shape of the object. This then allows the flower to have a totally different look. It no longer looks lifeless, but has character and diminution. I believe it brings a human element to the image.



If also looking at her work ‘Triangles’, the comparison between the two is rather similar. The lily’s in the image ‘Black Lily’ almost resemble the body in ‘Triangles’. The shape of the two objects hold the same feel, even though the lighting is much harsher on the flower.

Could this have been what Cunningham wanted? Were her pictures of flowers those that were to resemble the nude body?
Flowers hold such a fragile look that it would be fair to say that this could be true. The way they form their own body that grows and ages gives them a life like qualities.

(A collection of her work can be found on the site listed above)

Web-Symbolic/Surreal

Man Ray


What could look like a simple still life photograph of an iron seems to be no challenge for Man Ray to transform. A lot of his work shows him playing with conventions and creating his own reality. I think his photography should be looked at more as a form of art in which he uses to create surprising juxtapositions and emphasize ideas that he could not paint or draw. Photography is seen to capture to the truth yet when you look at Man Ray’s work he seems to change an everyday object into something surreal. Taking the truth out of an object and inserting a whole new concept.
'Gift' 1921



I wanted to specifically look at the one photograph Man Ray took titles ‘Cadeau’ meaning gift. I love the concept he has created and how, first look this iron may look like any other you have seen, second look it becomes a dangerous object.
An iron can be seen to represent female domestic work. The fact that it is already dangerous because of the heat it produces to do its purpose is something we initially forget about when looking at it.
Now when Man Ray uses his experimental techniques and adds nails to the iron he transforms it, becoming a threatening object. Something no longer domestic but violent, this idea of hot metal and danger becomes provocative and an intense desire. He puts power into a woman’s hand.
I find this kind of vision he was able to build with still life much more stimulating and interesting to play with, taking an objects purpose and creating a new one.


Links
Man Ray photographs
Tate Modern

Surreal Objects - Journals

Michiko Kon


‘Michiko Kon's array of fish scales, feathers, eyes, heads, flowers insects, dead fowl, raw fish, and gelatinous material are all assembled in such a way as to render themselves in transformation as a new and discrete object. ‘

Michiko Kon uses the likes of raw fish, dead animals, pins and eyes in her photographic works, creating/transforming them into new more desireable objects.



I think what attracts me to Kon’s images the most is the way the elements and objects work together. Having raw fish, heads and eyes as still life objects, is recognisably a disgusting concept, however I feel these images have a certain amount of beauty in them in which the original objects would not have offered. Combining and transforming these elements into surreal objects is almost like giving them a new life, a sort of resurrection. A subject which Kon is most comfortable in - life and death.



Kon’s friend died when she was younger and since then she has been frightened and at the same time fascinated by death.  The article in Afterimage explains her curiosity about why a body that once existed eventually disappears from the earth. I think what distracts from the gruesome subject is the way the pieces of the image react to each other creating whole new rather beautiful objects.



 Although possibly uncomfortable to look at, I think there is a very thin line drawn between the grotesque and the beautiful in Kon's images.



Sources:
European Photography v. 18 (Spring/Summer 1997) p. 54-61
Afterimage 26 no1 supp 1-12 Jl/Ag '98

Photography And Still Life: Symbolic Objects - Athens

Absolute Blue.

Garry Fabian Miller was born in 1957, he has been making 'camera-less' photographs since 1985. He works in the darkroom, shining light through coloured glass and over cut-paper shapes to create forms that record directly onto photographic paper. As he says he wants to catch light, not what light catches.



Rather than most photographers who use light as a tool by which they make their work Fabian Miller is interested in light of itself. He uses sensitive material that holds light and makes it constant. His practice brings him closer to early history of the medium and also change thought about what photography is and where it might exist beyond the common model. Years of experiments with light, the paper and every day life objects like case a blue drinking-glass topped up with water, wooden and cardboard vanes or shutters, created his recognizable and unique style. Every time he goes to the darkroom he needs to spend 20 min in darkness so eyes can adapt and see “deposit of light directed at the place where the paper will catch it begins to emerge from invisibility.” Only now he can manipulate the image. Then the beam must be turned off and the paper positioned in complete blackout. Finally, the exposure may take as long as an hour.
The results are so unconventional that many viewers are unsure what they are seeing and how to relate to it. Miller says, “It's like nothing you've seen in the world before”



Link to Athen:
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/external_link_maincontentframe.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.44

Traditional still life approaches - Book stock

'Flowers' - Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe has aquired great fame and notoreity from his highly-stylyzed portraits of iconic celebrities and erotic images of the male form. However Mapplethorpe also spent a great many years of his working career photographing flowers. His work on this subject is somewhat 'quieter' - His images show with great photographic skill, the simplicity and beauty of these everyday natural objects.

Mapplethorpe uses classic technique and a painterly approach to his floral images - They show shape, colour and texture which are the prinicples of traditional art practice. The bold tones and colour used in Maplethorpes images create stunning and striking images which go far beyond simply a shot of a flower - the way in which he captures his images brings to light the eroticism of the organic.

"He came, in time, to embrace the flower as the embodiment of all the
contradictions reveiling within. Thier sleekness, thier fullness. Humble
narcissus. Passionate zen"
I firstly didnt see a great correlation between this collection and his homo-erotic images depicting the male body, often nude. However upon further research I began to see a direct link between the two. Although the shape and curves of the flower are softer and more subtle compared to the angular frame of the male nude, both subjects show a high degree of eroticism and sexuality. Some may argue that organic plants are the most sexualised objects on the planet - the givers of life. There is also a link between flowers and various female sexual organs (an idea explored by the work of Georgia O'Keefe)







Mapplethorpes images of flowers have changed my view of traditionalist techniques to photography - as we are almost inundated in this technological age with amateurs shooting 'typically beautiful' scenes such as picturesque landscapes and bold plant life it is easy to become almost bored by these images. However Mapplethorpes stunning images are far more than a simple shot of a flower - they represent a true appreciation for the sheer awesomness of one of the oldest living organisms on the planet and the the giver of life - The humble flower.
Book Ref - Flowers:Mapplethorpe, R: Bulfinch LTD, 1990

Photography and Everyday Objects: Books

Hans Neleman

Hans Neleman is a Dutch born photographer. However, he lives and works in New York. His more recent work for advertising campaigns are very new edge and this is the same with many of his portraits but my personal favourite image is in 'American Photography Five', and is a very warmly lit image. This image has been side lit, maybe using natural light but something has been used to defuse the light. For some reason, on my personal opinion, the phone seems to be floating which makes it stand away from the image background and look 3D. Many of his images from the series created for Data Logic are of the similar lighting but they have different subject matters, however they all tie in together and work greatly together.


Untitled

Booth-Clibborn,E (1998) American Photography Five, Twelve Trees Press


Stephen Shore

Shore is a self taught photographer from New York, but works all over the USA with his interesting concept on American scenes and objects, he was also a big person within colour photography at the time. The two images I chose to talk about are from his 'American Surfaces' series. I can't strangely talk about them much separately, but when placed together (like they are in the book) move can be said about them. They are strong images in their own right, with good uses of colour and exposure in both, but the composites work better as a pair. However strangely enough as a two they remind me of TV dinners.


Above: Springfield, Illnois, July 1972
Below: Normal, Illois, July 1972



Fried, M; Lange, C; Sternfled, J (2007) Stephen Shore, Phaidon Press Ltd, New York.