Author: tim512301

Research Point: Places and Spaces

How often do you see people walking and reading their texts or on the train and reading their tablet rather than enjoying the view? What are they missing?

I’ve become quite cynical on this topic, and so I’m only briefly going to say enough to tick the box. The advances in technology are wonderful, but it seem to come at a heavy cost. People not enjoying the view from the train is only one part of our unhealthy obsession with our phones and tablets. I’ve noticed for a long time in my workplace, that many of my colleagues would much rather bury their heads in their phone than interact with their fellow employee. I’ve witnessed the children of friends that are developing poor social skills, with reduced use of their imagination and the constant demand for stimulation from technology. Who’s to blame? Their parent, who are probably as bad, although their brains were fully developed before they began their relationship with tech.  If people happen upon something of interest or an occurrence that breaks from the norm, now their first instinct is to reach for the phone camera, rather than enjoy the moment for what it is.

Recently, I struck up a conversation with an American tourist in a bar, asking him where and what in Ireland he had seen so far on his trip. Unable to tell me anything, even in simple and general terms, the guy produced his phone and was able to show me all the pins he’d dropped and the photographs he’d taken in each location. The guys seemed to be more concerned with the number of pins he was racking up than the experience of a foreign country.

It’s a pretty sad state of affair when getting ‘an Instagram like’ is put in the same category as taking drugs or drinking alcohol for the production of dopamine (pleasure) levels in the body.

Reference   

Parkin, S. (2018) ‘Has dopamine got us hooked on tech’, The Guardian [online], 4 Mar, available: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has-dopamine-got-us-hooked-on-tech-facebook-apps-addiction [accessed 23 Aug 2018].

Yates, E. (2017) ‘What happens to your brain when you get a like on Instagram’, Business Insider UK [online], 25 Mar, available: http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-your-brain-like-instagram-dopamine-2017-3?r=US&IR=T [accessed 23 Aug 2018].

Exercise: 5.1 Still Life

Create a set of still-life pictures showing traces of life without using people.

You could do this with your camera phone to reflect the vernacular and transient nature of these moments or you could choose to use high-quality imagery to give these moments gravitas, like Nigel Shafran. Your technical decisions should back up your ideas, so write a short reflective commentary detailing these decisions and the reasons for them.

This exercise required me to shoot a series of images which show traces of life without using people. I decided early on that I wanted to focus on still life scenes in the natural state as they are found without me adjusting them or moving them around for a more favourable composition. I did obviously move myself and the camera in order to gain the best composition. I chose to use the phone camera, as I wanted a vernacular treatment of the scene. My intention was to photograph single or very small groups of items as the main subjects within the normal environments of their use. I also wanted the items in someway to build up a picture or partial picture of the type of person that lives in the environment.

Still Life

This was an interesting exercise. Once I knew what I was trying to achieve, I really started to enjoy searching for still life scenes in my own home. I feel that I achieved a level of success as the images are quite consistent in terms of tone and composition. They also work together to flesh out some details about the person who’s belongings are being photographed.

 

 

 

Nigel Shafran

Nigel Shafran began his photography career in the fashion industry. He later realised that fashion was not what he ‘wanted to pursue, because of the way it depicts women, and the aspirational values it promotes, suggesting you shouldn’t be happy with what you have’.

Shafran’s work mainly draws on elements from his personal life. He uses his wife’s whereabouts and a series which features stacks of washing-up with accompanying text listing the foods eaten to highlight how we organise and arrange our domestic surroundings. ‘What interests me isn’t grand themes, but the everyday. It’s the side of our sink, which is where we keep food waste and packaging before they are put on the compost heap or stuck in the recycling bin. It’s lit by the kitchen light.’

Nigel Shafran – Washing up 2000
Nigel Shafran – Washing up 2000

‘My work is about a build-up of images, often in sequences. There is a connection between them all. Basically, I’m a one-trick pony: it’s all life and death and that’s it.’

Shafran’s images are autobiographical, recording a series of trivial events in his life, the same routine events that most of us carry out daily but, never really consider. Shafran’s images reveal the facts of the meal/washing up events rather than the emotion surrounding it. He approaches his subject with a degree of detachment, in a manner similar to William Eggleston who records the banal and ordinary of everyday life.

Nigel Shafran – Washing up 2000

By excluding people, Shafran has allowed the viewer to create their own narrative and meaning. He has chosen a very effective and subtle approach. Through the image and text, Shafran reveals the details, while the circumstances are left to the viewer. The inclusion of a person might, through body language, gesture and facial expression, channel the viewer towards a particular narrative.

 

Reference

Boothroyd, S. (2015) ‘Still Life with Nigel Shafran’, WeAreOCA, 7 May, available: http://weareoca.com/photography/still-life-with-nigel-shafran/ [accessed 20 Jul 2018].

Philips, S. (2010) ‘Photographer Nigel Shafran’s best shot’, The Guardian, 21 Apr, available: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/apr/21/photography-nigel-shafran-best-shot [accessed 21 Aug 2018].

Shafran, N. (2015) Nigel Shafran [online], available: http://nigelshafran.com/ [accessed 21 Aug 2018].

Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky early photographic series, Venus Inferred, features images of couples being intimate as well as scenes of their domesticity, revealing how people in relationships connect and interact behind close doors.
Untitled (Laura and Eric), Venus Inferred series, 1993
Letinsky mainly works within the genre of still life. Her image are generally recognizable as traditional still life with a consistency in term of colour and tone. Her photographs of tables immediately after and between mealtimes are often composed diagonally and with large areas of space adding emphasis to the subjects. Precarious placement of props towards the edges of the tables “within the narrative of domestic life, suggests fraught emotional states, ending and falling apart” (Cotton 2011 P. 132).  
“I began to think about the idea of leftovers. It became important for me on a number of levels, because it has to do with what you do after the promise, when you realize the promise is not possible. This is fundamental to any utopian notion – the promise and its demise. You can’t have utopia without its loss” (Letinsky).
Untitled #40, Hardly More Than Ever series, 2001
Untitled (Laura and Eric), Venus Inferred series, 1993
 “If you look at one part of the picture in relation to another part, things are slightly off. That’s why it’s so important for me that the photographs hover between being painterly – in the sense of light, color, composition, and plasticity – and being insistently photographic” (Letinsky).
 
 Reference

Cotton, C. (2009) the photograph as contemporary art, new ed. London: Thames & Hudson. 
 
Farstad, J. (2004) ‘Laura Letinsky’, mouth to mouth [online], Spring/Summer, available: http://www.mouthtomouthmag.com/letinsky.html [accessed 21 Aug 2018]. 
 
Letinsky, L. (2009) Laura Letinsky [online], available: http://lauraletinsky.com/photographs/hardly-more-than-ever/ [accessed 21 Aug 2018].

Sam Taylor Johnson

Sculptor, photographer, artist and film maker, Sam Taylor Johnson is probably most recently known as the director of Fifty Shades of Grey, the highly-anticipated adaptation of the best-selling novel. The film is Universal Pictures’ highest-grossing R-rated international release, and it’s release also marked the biggest opening in history for a female director. Interestingly, Sam Taylor Johnson was awarded a Golden Raspberry Award (worst in film) in 2016 for her direction of the movie, an accolade which was probably awarded for the film as a whole rather that any directorial demerit.

Sam Taylor Johnson – A still from ‘Still Life’

Below I’ve included two films by Sam Taylor Johnson. The first was recommend by the course text, the other I discovered through my research. Both films are made by compiling hundreds of still images that were taken over a prolonged period. Still Life features a bowl of fruit presented in the classic style of still life painting. The colours are subtle and understated. The film is essentially a study of the transience of living things, put simply, life and death. The decaying fruit is juxtaposed against a Bic ballpoint pen, which remains unblemished throughout. The lighting changes across the film in a manner that emphasizes the decay, and the shift in mood from a scene of calm to a sense of doom and anxiety.

The second film entitled, A Little Death, works very much the same way, but features the body of a decaying rabbit juxtaposed against a piece of fruit. Whether the piece of fruit is real or not, I do not know, but both film are a very interesting take on the classic still life.

Reference

Taylor Johnson, S. (2018) ‘Sam Taylor-Johnson’ [online], available: http://samtaylorjohnson.com/photography [accessed 21 Aug 2018].

Bright, S. (2010) ‘Auto Focus: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography’, London: Thames and Hudson.

Research Point 1: ‘Something and Nothing’

Read Chapter 4 ‘Something and Nothing’ in Cotton, C. (2014) The Photograph as Contemporary Art (3rd edition) London: Thames & Hudson. You will find this on the student website named PH4IAP_Something and Nothing.

To what extent do you think the strategy of using objects or environments as metaphor is a useful tool in photography? When might it fall down?  Write some reflective notes on these points in your learning log.

Chapter 4 in Charlotte Cotton’s book, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, raises some interesting points on “how non-human things, often quite ordinary, everyday objects, can be made extraordinary by being photographed” (Cotton 2009). To answer the question as to whether a subject is worthy of photographing or not, Cotton (2009) states that the subject must have some significance (no matter what it is), as the artist has designated it significant by photographing it, and the viewer must then determine a significant for themselves.

Objects can evoke greater meaning than the mere definition of what the are i.e. shapes, colours and textures. Referencing Richard Wentworth’s image, Kings Cross, London 1999 (below), Cotton suggest that the image could, for example, be viewed as a metaphor for “the drastic, desperate measure taken to solve car-parking problems in a busy city” (Cotton 2009).

Richard Wentworth – Kings Cross, London 1999

Jennifer Bolande’s series, Globe Sightings, feature globes stored on window ledges, photographed from street level. Her photograph’s show “how partial our perspective is, framed as it is by the window out of which, and into which, we look. ….a sense of constrained human understanding is visualized through simple and subtle observations” (Cotton 2009).

Jennifer Bolande – Globe Sightings: St. Catherine St, Montreal, 2000
Jennifer Bolande – Globe Sightings: West 37th St, NYC, 2000

The strategy of using objects or environments as metaphors in photography can be a very useful tool. However, it relies heavily on the viewer’s familiarity with the objects and their understanding of the possible connotations necessary to heighten the meaning. That said, it may still be possible for the viewer to enjoy and derive meaning from photographic work on the denoted level. Thus, photographic work cannot rely solely on connotation in order for it to be successful. Without getting into specifics, I believe the work must also demonstrate some form of visual or aesthetic merit.

Reference

Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text, translated by Heath, S., London: Fontana Press.

Bolande, J. (2018) ‘Jennifer Bolande’ [online], available: https://jbolande.com/portfolio/globe-sightings-2000/ [accessed 21 Aug 2018].

Cotton, C. (2009) the photograph as contemporary art, new ed. London: Thames & Hudson.