Make do and Mend
Covid-19 has effected me and what I do in many ways. But I think that it might be able and has made my photography better in some aspects. I could take pictures of something trapped or isolated to symbolise how we were not allowed to leave during quarantine. I could take pictures of different objects with masks on them. Or I could look around my house for more things to photograph. Either way, I think that these restrictions have made me more creative in a lot of ways.
Instructions for a basic photo:
- Always have a subject
- Decide a camera (e.g. Camera or phone)
- Pick an Aspect Ratio
- Have a suitable distance between you and your subject
- Move the subject to an appropriate or fitting background
- Position yourself around the subject
- Give it better lighting or a filter
- Give it a more flattering angle
- Choose what to focus on
- Make sure there is nothing else to draw viewers attention away from subject
- Take the photo
My Instruction:
As a class we had a homework too write instructions on a peice of paper then get given a random one and whatever it says on that paper slip, we must do that over the weekend (No matter how vague or detailed they were). My instructions were:
"Go outside at 12 am and take a picture of the moon and stars." Simple enough, right? Wrong. I got up at 11:50 went down stairs, woke up my dog, made a coffee, waited for midnight, laid down on the wet grass and took a picture of the moon and stars... Except there weren't any stars and the moon wasn't visible from my garden at that moment. But, hey. What can you do?
|
Marcel Duchamp & The Readymade:The most famous painting in the world... We all know the famous painting Mona Lisa but in 1919 a French artist purchased a postcard with the painting, gave it a moustache and a goatee. Marcel Duchamp wrote a vulgar and secret message: "L.H.O.O.Q.". These letters are code for the phrase: "She Has A Hot Ass". Seeing this I decided to try my own form of Readymade. And I took inspiration from Marcel's rude message to do something rude myself.
|
Kesuke Koike:
With Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. in mind I also looked at the works of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese surrealist artist, who uses old pictures and postcards and distorts them in his studio in Italy. Koike inspired me to take an old photography that I have not taken, and change it in an unique and outstanding way. Here are my top 8 of his works:
My Readymade Experiments:
WWW: |
EBI: |
Hannah Höch and 'Das Schöne Mädchen':
In this collage I can see a pocket watch, various parts of the female human body (e.g. Hand, legs, torso, face, eyes, hair, arms), but other than that I can see many parts of machinery from cars. When I close my eyes then look at the picture, the first thing I see is the wheel. But I don’t know why (maybe because when on a bus, they go round and round) or what it would signify. The non-human parts of the picture are made up of a disassembled car, presumably a BMW as there are many (MANY) logos belonging to BMW cars.
The title, ‘The Beautiful Girl’, is a confusing title because there is indeed a girl, or many parts of a woman’s body seen but nothing I would typically describe as beautiful.
Three adjectives to describe ‘The Beautiful Girl’ are:
If Hannah Höch walked into the room today I would ask these three questions:
1) How did you know where to position things?
2) What was the inspiration behind this?
3) Do you regret anything?
The title, ‘The Beautiful Girl’, is a confusing title because there is indeed a girl, or many parts of a woman’s body seen but nothing I would typically describe as beautiful.
Three adjectives to describe ‘The Beautiful Girl’ are:
- Confusing (When I first saw this picture, I was not sure what I was looking at)
- Unnatural (Nothing in this picture looks like how it's supposed to)
- Challenging (‘The Beautiful Girl’ challenges my understanding of what is real and what is fake).
If Hannah Höch walked into the room today I would ask these three questions:
1) How did you know where to position things?
2) What was the inspiration behind this?
3) Do you regret anything?
Matt Lipps:
Matt Lipps is an artist who was born 1975 and lives in Los Angeles CA where he finds different pictures of historical artifacts or a material object (and others around those lines). Employing collage strategies, sculptural tropes, and theater staging, he constructs three-dimensional compositions of appropriated images.
Lipps calls his practice, being “in, with, and alongside photography."
He has many work collections of pieces such as “HORIZON/S”, “Looking Through Pictures”, “Where Figure Becomes Ground / Solve For X”, "Figures", "Soliloquies", "Home", "Library" and “The Body Wants To Live” (Examples shown below respectively).
Daniel Gordon:
Daniel Gordon is an artist who lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he creates his art. In many of his earlier artworks I can see multiple different photos of artificial lookalikes of the human form (e.g "Thin Skin II [2007]" or "Portrait Studio [2008-2009]") - Gordon probably worked with other artists to make these props or made them himself. But in this later art (2014-2020) Daniel Gordon takes a number of photos of rooms/walls with unrelated pieces (e.g. "Fruits et Riche Vaisselle Sur Une Table 1640 – 2015, Onestar Press, Paris [2015]" or "Blue Room, James Fuentes [2018]" or "Intermissions, Onestar Press [2017]"); If i could ask Gordon anything about his work, I would probebly ask why he had chosen to photograph other peoples work.
This picture from New Canvas, James Fuentes (2017), to me, is very confusing. From the moment I saw it, I was posed with the question of what it is.
At the very first glance, it's a picture of a room with art on it. But so many questions followed that statement, like: "Why this room?" ; "Did he make those pieces of art?" ; "If he did, why not focus about on the paintings?" ; "If not, why take the pictures of other peoples art? Boredom? Laziness?".
At the very first glance, it's a picture of a room with art on it. But so many questions followed that statement, like: "Why this room?" ; "Did he make those pieces of art?" ; "If he did, why not focus about on the paintings?" ; "If not, why take the pictures of other peoples art? Boredom? Laziness?".
Collaborative Instruction-Based Photo Collage
During this, I
- Cut or tear out 5 pages from your magazine. Choose pages with interesting images.
- Make a pile of these 5 pages on your desk.
- Take the top page and cut a hole in it (Note: it doesn't have to be perfect).
- Pass this cut out image to your neighbour (the person sitting nearest to you in class).
- Put the page with the hole in it at the bottom of your pile.
- Take the (new) top page and tear it in half. Pass one half to your neighbour (the same one as before) and put the other half at the bottom of your pile.
- Take the (new) top page and cut out a shape (Note: you could cut round an object or simply cut a random shape of your own choosing).
- Keep the cut-out shape, putting it at the bottom of your pile, and pass the page that remains to someone 3 places away (Note: make sure you don't end up with your own page).
- Take the (new) top page and tear a strip from the (top or bottom) edge. Keep the strip and pass the remaining page to someone else in the room.
- Place the A3 sheet of cartridge paper in front of you (portrait format).
- Without altering them, arrange the pieces of paper from your pile on the A3 sheet to create a pleasing collage. Carefully photograph your first arrangement.
- Again, without altering them, repeat this process, re-arranging the various elements on the A3 sheet until you are happy with the results. Photograph carefully.
- You may now swap 1 or 2 elements with your neighbour. Make a new arrangement and photograph carefully.
- You may now adapt the pieces in any way you like - cutting, tearing etc. Make a new collage, this time sticking them to the A3 sheet of cartridge paper.
- Photograph your finished collage carefully.
Here are a few of the images I used:
Prison Photography
Prison's may want their inmates to have access to photography and other art workshops as it can be quite theraputic and calming. The benifits of this are that they would be more calm and have something to focus on in their spare time. Challenges for the workshop leaders is that inmates could see it as pointless and a waist of time.
Klavdij Sluban's prison photography workshops:
Klavidij Sluban is a photographer who goes into prison's and gives the teenage inmates camera's to lets them take photos with. While people say that there would be nothing to take pictures of, Sluban takes it apon himself to show them that this nothingness can be turned into art. This is a video about what he does.
|
The photographer might have wanted to work with teenage inmates so they can create a connection to photography in the earlier years of their life. Sluban teaches his students that you can make art anywhere. He probably thinks that photographing "nothing" is creative and trhat you can take nothing and create something powerful or impresive.
|
Nicoló Digiorgis' 'Prison Photography'
Nicoló Digiorgis was a photographer who from 2013 to 2018, visited Bolzano-Penal Institution in Trento, Italy.
He made the results of his students' work into a book which he published as 'Prison Photography'. Though he was limited by the prison authorities, Degiorgis allowed the prisoners to explore different well known genres commonly seen in photography (e.g. fasion, landscape, travel, portrait).
20 picture prompts
I used this list as prompts in lesson for some photos:
- The view through a window
- Your reflection in a shiny surface
- The back of someone’s head
- A small object shot from a low angle against a plain background
- The palm of someone’s hand with the word ‘help’ written on it
- A smile
- A plant growing in the wrong place
- A cracked paving stone
- A pile of clothes
- The creases in a bed sheet shot from above (with nothing else included)
- A close-up photograph of a computer, phone or television screen
- A map
- The spine of a book
- The inside of a fridge
- The sky
- Part of a fork
- The sole of a shoe
- The ceiling of your bedroom as you are lying on the floor
- A photograph of a photograph
- A glass of water
Bora Bora Field Trip
As a class we were asked to decide on a place that we would visit the next lesson frough google maps. The final vote decided that place would be Bora Bora. We all took screenshots of vartious locations on the island and editted them to send to the teachers.
These are some of mine.
These are some of mine.