Landscape as a Political Background.

Eversince I first looked at Paul Grahams 'Troubled Land' I have really liked it. He showed how the Northern Ireland landscape was shaped by political events but in a subtle way.

Whilst I was searching for John Davis, I started reading about Simon Norfolk, who is known for his large-scale landscapes. He has also photographed trees with a backdrop of artificial smoke.

 Norfolk shot the images at night with smoke and lights to seperate the oaks from the rest of the landscape. To him, "they look like the last men standing at a fire and brimstone battle."

“Oak trees are part of the British cultural identity,” says Norfolk. “Three thousand years of war has shaped the way we look at ourselves.”

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/profile/2072021/-changing-story-interview-paul-graham

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/project/1650104/simon-norfolk-trees-blenheim-palace

Copies, Codes and Patterns.

Loretta Lux.

Loretta Lux began photographing in 1999. Her portraits are mainly of children, often dressed in vintage clothes and sometimes Lux's childhood things. The main feature of the images are the digitally adjusted subjects.

"Elongated limbs, oversized heads, and eyes spaced just a little farther apart than average contribute to the strange mystique found in their cool gazes and isolated locations."

-www.mocp.org.

She also merges the subjects with their surroundings. They are either painted by Lux or taken from her photographs of landscapes and interiors.

http://www.lorettalux.de/

Aziz and Cucher. 

Aziz and Cucher focused on the representation of the body in relation to new technology. This type of exhibition showed a new age of digital manipulation.

This kind of digital manipulation allowed people to create surreal images. For example, "The Fabulous Beast." Which is a digital composite of all the dictators at the time. It was also used for political reasons or in the news like the photo of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on Time magazine.

Google images.

The Abject Body.

The Abject Body.

Abject photography/art is an unconventional way of showing certain subjects.

In 1945, painter Jean Fautriers exhibition ‘Hostages’ was one of the first examples of a new artistic direction. Faurtrier had produced a series of heads and torsos ‘morbidly inspired by sounds from the surrounding woods where the Occupying forces regularly tortured and executed prisoners.’

 

This work shows informal and formlessness with the body. The most influential informal artist was Jean Dubuffet. His work focused on the abject bodily image - ‘the art of children, the untrained and the insane.’

 

“Who's That Girl?: "Alex Eats," A Case Study in Abjection and Identity in Contemporary Fashion Photography.”

One example of abject photography is the fashion shoot ‘Alex eats’ by Anthony Gordon which was published in an issue of ‘The Face’ magazine. It features the model “in a series of tableaux that graphically portray her fetishistic involvement with food.” Abject images of the female body are graphically portrayed in this series of photographs.

Abject imagery can be shown through real life events/tragedies that happen around the world. After the earthquake in Haiti, on January 12^th 2010, newspapers like the ‘Washington Post’ and the ‘New York Times’ ran ‘gruesome and violent images of the event.’

“the Washington Post ran an image by staff photographer Carol Guzy, showing a man emerging from a thin gap in the rubble. Next to him a schoolgirl is seen from behind, apparently bent over and kneeling. A first, cursory reading of the image suggests that perhaps she is praying. A second glance makes it obvious that the head and upper torso of "Ruth," a student at the Ecole St. Gerard, have been crushed by a slab of falling concrete.”

During the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, images of the wounded and dead were too graphic and ‘politically volatile’ for the media, it’s hard to believe that a mainstream newspaper ran such an image just 3 days after the disaster.