Component 2
Layers
I chose the theme of layers as I thought I could be able to use both photoshop and practical collage. My initial ideas are making digital images of landscapes with physical layering and digital editing of pictures I've taken but I might also want to focus on some portraiture with innovative or abstract use of the concept of layers.
'Disavowed Confessions' by Claude Cahun
This image is one piece from Cahun's 1930 collection of pictures. In this image I can see many body parts cut out and attached to the dark background, these limbs include hands of varying size, full pair of legs, half a face, knees, and the reflection of a mans face seen in the iris of and eye. There are also objects seen such as what could be a large magnifying glass and paper folded into sharp corners. These subjects seem to be to be taken from other pictures and glued down to the background as they all seem to have differing scale to them that contrasts the real proportions of these objects. When I look at this picture, first my focus is directed to the large eye in the bottom third of this picture. Then it shifts to the magnifying glass that circles the covered face and hand. My eye then moves to the other details surrounding the image and this is where I now have the full image. After research into the curation of this work, I discovered it was actually made by Cahun's partner called Marcel Moore based on Cahun's design for her autobiographically inspired poetry. With this information, it's safe to assume that the large circular object could be a mirror as if reflecting Cahun's past onto us as they look back on themselves. The other sections of the photos are probably in this exaggerated scale this to create a sense of abstraction in the work.
The composition of the picture reminds me a lot of the cover of the book called, 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka; a book about a man who is arrested and tried for a crime he is never told the nature of. In my head, this creates a sense of mystery to the picture and my interpretation of how it's composed. Though I know this is not a purposeful decision made by the artist, it still effects how I see the image and what feelings it creates. In this case there is a sense of mystery to it. The folded paper with text almost takes the shape of two arrows leading the focus the picture around the frame. Also in the top right of the image there is what seems to be the silhouette of a hand with a outstretched finger towards the mirror in the centre .
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This type of layering is called a photomontage. The Tate website defines a photomontage as 'a collage constructed from photograph' and later on the pages goes onto detail the use of a photomontage as historically political originating in the first World War. This brutal and serious past of the medium reinforces the drama that is presented in Disavowed Confessions' withered aesthetics.
Studio response to Claude Cahun
When I took these pictures I originally meant to print them out and cut the different sections of the portraits and layer them on top and over each other like how the piece I'm responded to was made but after taking the pictures I thought I'd put them in photoshop and resize and add layer effects to each of the pictures to head in a more modern approach layering.
Giacomo Costa and Paul Citroen
Giacomo Costa is an Italian collage artist who works with landscapes and digital collaging. While researching his work and this picture I discovered a famous image called Metropolis by artist Paul Citroen - a kaleidoscopic collage of built up of hundreds of newspaper images and postcards.
Giacomo Costa response
I went to London over the weekend to take pictures of buildings and create a response inspired by Costa's work. His picture looks as if it was made on photoshop so to differ myself from his process I wanted to actually collage the image similar way to creating a modern response to an outdated process, I wanted to do the reverse while responding to a modern piece with a traditional medium of collage. After looking over all my pictures I decided how I would compose my picture by drawing out all buildings on the back of the A5 sized paper I had cut. On the other side I started to glue down the building I had cut out with a scalpel.
Pep Ventosa
Pep Ventosa is a Spanish photographer who focus' his work on 'playing with the perception of reality. His work constantly breaks down parts of similarly composed pictures then digitally sowing them back together again. Ventosa's art is in his ability to deconstruct and reconstruct the objective aesthetic of an image to then create a very obviously layered and collaged frankenstein-esque interpretation of famous landmarks. When interviewed for a photography based magazine, Ventosa said "we trust our senses and assume that what we see in a photograph is generally real, so why not create something that doesn't exist to the naked eye." This is obviously a ideology that is very visually apparent in his work - Anyone can tell you that the picture on the left is of the Eiffel Tower in central Paris, but no one has ever seen it in person than they have in this picture as it's impossible. Ventosa uses his process to make the visually impossible easily visible.
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Pep Vendosa Response
I responded to is work in these by taking these around the school - a large majority of Ventosa's known work is of famous places in varying cities that are easily identifiable but as I don't have the money nor time to travel for this response my work is based around my journey walking one loop around the school. To take enough images for I took about 40 to 50 pictures at varying angles of each frame I chose, then importing them into a canvas in photoshop. I went through all the pictures and adjusted the opacity setting to about 5% to 10% so by the end I had these images that I think capture the same structure as Ventosa's work.
This is my favourite picture that I took as it looks similar to Ventosa's work but it feels personal to me as instead of several images of a famous place with lots of bright lights and recognisable infrastructure; it's a grey building site next to a place that is personal and relevant to my life that I see close to everyday. That being said I still think it's an impressive picture that is more interesting than a lot of the things I have made.
Portrait Response Experiment
A wise man once told me something along the lines of boredom is essential for creativity and so when I was bored in a different lesson I opened the the photo-booth app and took 25 really embarrassing photos. I then went on to open photoshop and layer them on top of each other like I did with my landscape photos.
I wanted to follow through with this idea into my next lesson where I went to the studio with a camera and took around the same amount of images as I did for the landscapes. While I was in there I used the coloured film over lights to give different shadows and saturation to the images.
The black background conflicted with what I was trying to make as the darker parts of the layers covered the ones underneath until it was barely visible so for these three I tried moving some of the bolder pictures to different parts of the canvas to stand out while the others layered over eachother.
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Re-visiting Kensuke Koike
Kensuke Koike is a Japanese artist who I studied in Year 9. Ever since then I have followed his work on social media and his website because I've found all his processes interesting and innovative. I wanted to use his technique of collage and layering to distort normal portraits. Koike's work is always precise. and more often than not there are symmetrical and clean lines - Every cut has a purpose and a story behind it. The pictures Koike uses are often donated and not his own, so instead of making picture to then distort in this project, I want to go back and select 6 already taken pictures that I can then cut and morph or alter in some way.
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I want to make a physical altered version of these portraits but first I'll make a mock in photoshop for each image which I'll try to carefully and precisely recreate with smaller A5 versions of the pictures. I think for some I will merge them to one picture and others I will try to create some geometric and trig-angular patterns on people faces.
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My favourite
3D Kensuke Koike experimenting
Planning for the making day
Make a clean looking 3 layered A3 board Kensuke Koike response using a pre taken picture. Take it to varied locations to use different coloured lighting and photograph it focusing on the depth of the foreground, midground and background. Then I want to print the best 3 pictures from my photoshoot each over 12 sheets in portrait format that I can stick them together on a wall outside and take pictures a series of pictures of people looking at the mural.
What I need:
Boards to cut and stick the sheets on. (around three A3 sheets worth)
Spray glue
A scalpel, ruler and cutting board
camera and darkroom.
Boards to cut and stick the sheets on. (around three A3 sheets worth)
Spray glue
A scalpel, ruler and cutting board
camera and darkroom.