Myth, Fantasy, Ritual and Stones. - Journals

Thomas Joshua Cooper,

Image 1

After trying to find an article from the British Journal of Photography in the library on him I turned to the internet and found the article I was looking for on the British Journal of Photography website.
Before reading the article I had know nothing about this man and his Photography, but after reading it I found myself knowing a lot more about him and his work than I would if I had read in a book or looked at his work in a book or on the internet, this article, published 07 April 2010

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/profile/1650318/picturing-earth

Cooper, has done many photographs, of which he has travelled across the world  by any means he wanted with an Archaic 5 x 7 camera dating back to 1898 and will only take one photograph when he has reached his destination, if he does not see what he likes he turns around and heads back. he has travelled around the world and to reach the edges of the world and photograph them. if he does not like what he sees before taking the picture he will not capture it, To me travelling and only taking one photograph is a very brave thing to do he must plan and sit and see what he wants and for this day and age where photography is taken lightly in some cases and people and photographer go out and take hundreds maybe thousands of photographs to get the perfect image, he has stopped that and made time for it and looked an thought about what he wanted to accomplished, this for me can be found in his work from the way his work is lit to where the camera is placed and what is in the picture and what is not.
In his images, i have found looking into them and seeing a different land from which we live on they look almost peaceful and mysterious, they engage my attention but also take it to a different place at the same time.
He is renowned for his landscape photography but also does not wish to use the word landscape as the article says …

“Cooper doesn’t find the word “landscape” useful. Instead he uses a phrase referring to that which is outside the home, “outdoors”, implying he is exploring the edges of his personal knowledge.”

 This intrigued me, from what I have read about him, he like many of the old well known painters and photographers, seems to take the work he does and make it his own, he gets inspiration from other peoples work but he molds it into his own in very subtle ways, his work to me seems as though in the future he will be an iconic photographer who has changed the way we look at photography and how we perceive the world through a lens. I for one have found that in just looking at his photographs that I like them but then to have found out how he does it, I want to become more like him, take the time and slow down and enjoy the scenery then when the time is right for me stop and take a picture.
From just reading this one article I know there is a lot more to be known about Thomas Joshua Cooper and I know I will be reading it in the future.

Image 1 - From Eye of the Water, 2005. Thomas Joshua Cooper.

All Information i used is from The british Journal of Photography. Link is above.

Truth and Fiction - Web

Truth and fiction- web

Rachel Dickinson

First I started looking on the web for truthful and fake pictures and the amount that I came across was astonishing to me and I did not know where to start, there where recent pictures old pictures and a mixture of old integrated in with new, that where obviously fake. But seeing all the images on the web, I did not know whether to believe they were fake or real, the Internet is and easy source for fake and incorrect information to get out.

After looking at the fake photograph “camera found in world trade centre” 

This photograph was not edited or thought of very well and has a whole range of things incorrect about the day. weather, plane type, view, position 

I started looking at fake photographs around the whole subject of 9/11 and military photographs and I found videos photographs documents, this is one subject in which once one fake photographs gets out made by someone within a day it will go viral, 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgq1yoiiDRc&feature=related

This video of a plane hitting the trade centre at the beginning must be real but as you get it enhanced you can obviously tell that it is fake, 
After watching many videos and looking at a fair few photographs i have found that looking at my related topic on the Internet is harder because they can look real at first but pictures go viral in minuets and fake ones are all over so like the conspiracies behind 9/11 it is hard to know what is fact and what is fiction.

Christian Boltanski - Book Stock

Rachel Dickinson

Christian Boltanski – book stock

As I started to read ‘The impossible life of Christian Boltanski’ (Lynn Grumert, flammanion) I started to think he was a complex character, he uses his own live story as a theme a lot of the time and he also without directly linking it uses the holocaust as a theme, his work has been described as “merry and morbid and often both at the same time” when looking at his work you can see this applies.

As an instillation artist, Boltanski did work in many areas. From site specific instillation to instillation work that could be moved around,
One piece in particular caught my eye when I started reading though one of his many books about him, its has got me thinking whether or not this was an art piece of its own or a genuine thing,
‘Il Faut que vouse m’aidiez… (you have to help me…), letter requesting help. Mail art, 11 January 1970.

English version.








 


after posting it he waited for their replies and then turned it into art work, but the people whom he sent it were considered in our day and age art critics and specialists, so knew his work and past pieces, so praised him, whether this was to give him an ego boost to continue along the road he was on or a specific piece of work I don’t know but it already has me asking questions about his mental health/ stability to survive.  6 months after sending the first letter he wrote to the same people but the letter this time was opposite in emotional state to the first and also had attachments to it, one in particular and his theory behind it has made me also wonder and question what he said and has a very well thought out truth behind it.

“Perceived as truthful, as a proof that the event they picture is real; they give the illusion of reality” Christian Boltanski

‘The last known phot of Paul Chaddon”
So putting the name to the photograph of the small boy in with the other things in his letter, he had changed the meaning of the photograph to create a reaction- which in itself is instillation art, he wanted to provoke an emotion of some sort.
but why change the meaning of the photograph? Was it true?
after reading his statement about putting names to photographs and changing the meaning.

Looking at his other work I found a underlining themes of children, death, clowns and after it being pointed out to me the holocaust.

L’Ange d’alliance (the angel of accord) 1986.
After looking at a lot of his images and work at this time (1985-86) it has a theme of god, life, and death going through them, this image has attracted my eye because it reminds me of  Lucifer’s fall from heaven. (The bible stories)

 



when you put these images side by side you can see how Boltanski might have got his idea for this piece of work from, Lucifer’s fall from heaven for standing up to god is a story which everyone knows and learns as a catholic child, a lot of his previous work is almost defining god and has satanic view within, Chapelle de la Salpetriere Festival d’automne, Paris, 1986. Also has this satanic/death emotion to it he has a cross in which a shadow is cast behind it looking as if it is stabbing the cross, almost like he is defying or wanting to defy god, questioning his believe almost.

In conclusion after looking at many of his pieces of work, I have found that he and his work to be very dark and have a few profoundly related themes. Death, children and god being some of them,
his work is a miss – match of photography, sculpture, made into instillation art, and always evoking an emotion of some sort out of the viewer, he wants you to think about the work and the issues behind it, but also want you to accept it for what it is. And merely nothing more, 

Evidence and Typologies, bookstock

I started looking at the book Heads, by Alex Kayser, 

In a conversation with Lyn Mandlebaum and Alex Axelrod at the begining of the book, Kayser says " this book isn't about baldness. it has nothing to do with bald people. it has to do with faces, exposed faces." taking the fascination of hair away has made all the images of the peoples heads look similar and almost identical.

In this book Kayser goes against the conventional and photographs people with bald heads, all of which have no hair, Kayser lines up the pictures of the heads in a row of four and put the similar looking people classing them into colour of their skin shapes of their head. grouping them Kayser had found they all looked similar but all bought their own aura to the picture. 

Bernd & Hilda Becher series of water towers

This image also fits into the category of evidence and typologies, all have been taken the same distance same angle and are same dimensions. 

like Bernd & Hilda Becher, has Kayser captured each person at the same angle trying to formulate a similarity in each picture focusing in and showing the comparisons between all the people. each picture has similarities e.g. the bald heads but are different people, the water towers are all water towers but are different structures.

The body as an object of medical science

I started my search by trying to find journals on the subject matter but found it increasingly difficult, 

so i moved onto trying to search on the internet for any type of information or articles on my title.

I found this image of a Malayan Male, by John Lamprey

This was recorded for medical research, At the time pigmies were as something to be owned an bought over and put into zoo's, they recorded and archived to show the evolution of man, many of the pigmies that lived in zoo's were living along side animals and were seen as freaks.

Dr Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne  (1862) The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression) 

My second image, is showing the medical purpose of shock therapy to show how different facial muscles move, each image was recorded an documented to show the progression of how medical research an science has helped throughout the years, without it we would not be where we are today in the technological advances in science.