Assessors

Note to Assessors:

Welcome to my blog for Level 1 Context & Narrative . I have included a navigation page within my printed documents , in brief, it is as follows:
There are three main menus above; Assignments,  Coursework , Research & reflection
Under these menus there are further sub menus which will lead you to exercises, assignments (Planning, submissions, tutor reports and re-works), Exhibitions and books.

Self Evaluation:

I have chosen to submit all of my assignments for Context and Narrative in hard copy including prints, a contents list is included with my submission.

I was slightly daunted at the start of context and narrative but I have found it has helped me to grow immensely. I have enjoyed researching more about my ideas and feeling more confident in my selections, I feel that I am starting to understand what I enjoy.

This module focused more on understanding, research and writing so I did not really see any growth technically, hopefully I will continue to improve on this in future modules. My camera has been a little more idle than usual but I can honestly say that context & narrative has really altered my approach to my way of working and opened my eyes to a deeper level of understanding.

My tutor was extremely encouraging and really helped me to be more confident with my ideas.

Technically I have not grown as much as I would have liked but the difference between EYV and C&N in my level of understanding and commitment is vast. My observation and composition have worked well in all of my assignments and I have known when to change path. I think my ideas are communicated effectively and leave a question mark so that the viewer may want to discover more.

I think I have been creative with my ideas and also with my experiments surrounding presentation.

I look forward to continued growth in my next module.

Assignment 5 – Peer feedback

After my little lenticular and overlay experiment I wanted to see what reaction it might garner. In fact after sleeping on it I decided that the overlays really were not working and If I wanted to add text I could look to a different style of presentation.

I am really excited by the lenticular idea however I hadn’t planned for it so my images are not quite right for the final outcome. Perhaps it should be a simpler portrait which is then over edited rather than a cliché pout?

Overall I think I am going to return to choosing one of my original images but perhaps consider the idea of a rework using the lenticular idea. I just need to think about how I could present it for assessment?

The feedback can be seen here:

https://discuss.oca-student.com/t/c-n-assignment-5/7504

Sleeping by the Mississippi

A romantic photographic documentary of the Mississippi River, this book screams ‘deep’ America. Full of individual characters, varying landscapes and a road less travelled. It shows me the complete opposite of ‘stereo-typical’ America and shows me ‘real’ America.

There are two essays in the book and selected notes to the photographs which add more background information to selected images. Alas there are no background notes provided for ‘Patrick’.

The images in the book flow in a photo essay style similar the that of Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’.

These images are not of one and the same place, yet they flow and tell a story.

The first image is captioned ‘ Peters houseboat, Winona, Minnesota’ the second is Charles, Vasa, Minnesota yet they seem alike, The third image is Charles Lindbergh’s boyhood bed, Little Falls, Minnesota.

The connection is not only in the place , Minnesota, but in their dreams. According to the notes Peter dreams of running water and has lived on a houseboat for over twenty years. Charles holds his model planes and looks very much like an old-fashioned aviator and in the last image we see the boyhood bed of Charles Lindbergh who completed the first solo transatlantic flight in his plane, Spirit of St. Louis. Did he dream of this as a boy? Sleeping outside looking up at the sky?

Selfie – How the West became self-obsessed

I purchased this book by Will Storr as it looked like it might add to my research on Selfies.

What a fascinating read, I started dog-earing pages of interest until I realised that I was dog-earing the majority of the book! In short the book chronicles the human self from ancient history to the present day and its connections in time with psychology, economics and culture.

Interestingly it seems that according to this book our Westernised Self can be traced back to the early Greeks and Romans. The closest thing that the Greeks had to heaven was Elysium, invitations to Elysium were based on status and not self worth. They saw themselves as individuals rather than part of a connected whole much as we do today. We are tribal and we have a sense of working towards our own personal goals, there is hierarchy and as Aristotle believed it is natural to be competitive and it is natural to move towards perfection.

In the East however they are moulded from the era of Confucius, the belief being that the superior man has nothing to compete for, he is not boastful but conceals his virtue. The superior man allows for equilibrium and group harmony to exist in perfection. Confucius expected people to do the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do, not for award or praise.

Interestingly the book points out how much of these ancient beginnings are still evident today, and how differently the East and West think about the world around them. The book mentions showing Westerners and Easterners pictures for 3 seconds, the Westerners would look at the main object and only occasionally drift out to the context. The Chinese looked constantly back and forth between object and context. In another study they looked as news reports of mass murderers, the Western press would blame flaws in the killers character whereas the Chinese press focused on contributing external factors.

There is also no word for individualism in the Chinese language, the closet to it would translate to selfishness.

Our Western selves have hero’s and villains, we have happy endings to our stories but in easterner stories known as kishotenketsu you are meant to find harmony in the story and the ending is left open for you to ponder, you have to find the answers for yourself.

I found this difference , an East /West divide interesting. Suicide was another statistic explored and again there is a difference in that suicide in the western world is more about the individual whereas suicide in the Eastern world is to protect others or the group, to bring harmony.

I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am – Charles Horton Cooley (Sociologist)

From the age of 2 we start interacting with others and forming groups, to participate you need a sense of self, you start developing prejudices and biases, you develop hierarchies in your groups.

if others believe we are fancy and great, our looking-glass self interprets that as evidence that we ARE fancy and great. We’re self-conscious. we use clues from out there to tell us who we are in here.

We crave good reputation and feeling good, we are motivated by positive feelings and avoid the negative. We work to earn a living, to satisfy our basic needs of food and shelter but after this we need validation and self-worth. We continually adapt and change depending on the people that surround us or the situations we are in so we are not truly ‘one’ person but a fluid individual.

The Western Self  moved on through the ages, through the Christians struggle with the inner self, Freud and many others all leaving their mark on who we are today. The period of ‘Self-Esteem’ which  meant that no one fails, there were no winners in school races and the dreaded red pen used by teachers was replaced with a more placid green.

The current stage we are in is the age of Perfectionism, we have gone full circle back to out ancient Greeks. We tend to judge people more including ourselves, we are strong yet sensitive at the core. suicide rates are rising as more people fail to achieve their sense or perfect. Money and status are important and consumer consumption may be at the heart of it.

We live in an age of information, it is everywhere; in the shops, on tv, in the papers telling us we can loss weight, have nicer smiles, drive fancy cars, help ourselves to succeed in life… does this all really stem from the Ancient Greeks? Is it really because they believed that being physically beautiful equated to being ethically good and being physically ugly was the same as being bad, the word for this is kalokagathia (Kalos means beautiful, Kai means ‘and’, and agathos means good)?

Well this book has curtained made me understand more about the evolution of our ‘Self’ as well as understanding the differences between the East and West self.

 

 

The Theory of Lacking

Reading around the subject of semiotics I came across a paragraph which was looking at signs in magazines. Images in magazine attempt to show us our future ‘selves’ , we would look better in this, happier if we owned this. It centres around the nation that we are lacking something and we desire to be more perfect selves. A French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that a human child is born into a lack in being, a wanting to be. Throughout that child’s life they attempt to overcome this lack, this apparently stems from when the child was connected to the mother and it lacked nothing. Once the child was born it would continue to replace this feeling of something lacking. Lacan described this by giving an account of early child development.

A child thinks of themselves as an individual between the ages of 6-18 months, at a point known as the ‘mirror stage’. When a child sees themselves in a mirror image, the image in the mirror feels more whole than they themselves feel. The child is narcissistic ; admiring themselves and desiring to be the better more coordinated self in the mirror. once the child realises that they can be an image that can be seen. This theory is supposed to then also explain why we identify with pictures of other people, like magazine images of models. the images represent the better self which we desire to become.

Basically in short this theory of  Lack gives rise to desire.

So when we take selfies  at contorted angles and then edit and filter them are we simply replacing what id lacking in our self-image? Are we striving to ‘be’ desired?

Photo London

I had a last-minute opportunity to visit Photo London. I had hoped to be taking my images for my final assignment for context and narrative but alas my model (My daughter) decided to work instead! So instead I hopped on the train to visit Photo London. I’m so glad I did, such a variety of work all in one space, so much inspiration. I was particularly drawn to the various styles of presentation and framing as well as a few creative ideas.

I took so many photos for future inspiration but here are a selection from the day:

These images have provided some ‘food for thought’ around my ‘Selfie’ assignment. The first two are the most interesting with the images of narcissus and then the reflected self-image.

These two images have made me reflect back on my ‘photographing the unseen’ Perhaps I could present a montage of hands?

The work I had recently seen at The Photographers Gallery was also at Photo London.

Some Vanitas style photography which relates to some of my research around Vanitas for assignment 5.

Inspired by textures and ideas around found photographs.

Creative framing

The use of lenticular was an interesting choice.

The use of layers within glass create an interesting 3D sculpture and wires painted with the image give an amazing effect in this gas station image.

A Helen Levitt! I do love her images.

Different yet the same… food for thought on a future idea.

Sometimes a bad angle can create a thing of beauty, very Salvador Dali in style. My eyes are drawn up the image from the oversized hand and thigh.

 

So inventive, if you read the book titles from left to write it reads out a short story, the clarity and colours of the digital print image lend it a realistic quality.

 

And finally a little something from the Fox Talbot exhibition.

Another Kind of Life

Prior to Desert Island Pics I was able to visit the ‘Another Kind of Life, Photography on the margins’ exhibition at the Barbican Centre.

The exhibition focuses on photographers who have captured images of people who live on the margins of society, people or groups that are not considered ‘main stream’.

Interestingly there were images which related to cross dressing which tied in with the exhibition I had seen just a short while before at The Photographers Gallery. ‘Casa Susanna’ is a collection of found images, magazines and cards which provide an insight into the cross dressing lifestyle of a resort ion New York between the 1950’s and 60’s.

 

Alec Soth’s work was also present, ‘Broken Manual’ explores those individuals that have sought to hide away from society.  The images also explores the contrasts with what we perceive as the ‘norm’. It leaves questions around whether the work is as it is found or if it has been constructed such as the disco ball in the middle of a forest, Did Soth place it there or did he find it there? Who does it belong to? Do they dance under it or is it to scare animals away to maintain survival

 

There was one piece of work which really moved me and left me feeling tearful, the work of Jim Goldberg ‘ Raised by Wolves’. An extremely emotive piece of work, He had spent six years alongside a group of homeless teenagers on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The work was presented in a mixed media style with film, maps, writing, cutting and artefacts alongside the images. The images themselves were also mixed in style with some cropped tight, some grainy which all together give a strong sense of authenticity as well as a feeling for the people he was documenting. It felt chaotic and ‘jumpy’ looking around at the diverse mix of styles but this helped to bring a ‘feeling’ to the work.

It made you stop and consider that these teenagers had been dealt a bad hand in life. They had reasons to run away, society had failed them in the first instance and then society continued to push them to the side-lines as if their existence was of no consequence. I wonder if society had intervened and supported them at their first ‘bad hand’ in life what would have become of them then? They still had hopes and dreams despite the knock backs in life. The title ‘raised by wolves’ makes me wonder if this refers to their parents? The other children that they live on the streets with like a ‘pack’ or the people would abuse their vulnerability?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographers Gallery Visit

I’m a little late in making notes on this visit, it was a very quick visit before I attended Desert Island Pics with Alec Soth at the Barbican Centre.

Deutsche Borse:

Four shortlisted photographers works were on display across two floors. They varied greatly and my interest was piqued when I looked at the work of Mathieu Asselin who explored a global biotech company Monsanto. He documented the growth of the company, its power and the devastation it has caused with its genetically engineered seeds.

What interested me most was the lengths he had gone to in researching the topic and presenting it in a mixed media style. Something that I am learning during context & narrative is the importance of research from a variety of sources to help make well-informed work.

The ‘auto portrait’ work by Luke Willis Thompson sounded interesting but it did not captivate me. I do not really respond well to video formats in art, I prefer to let me eyes do the work and rest where they want to rather than look at a moving image.

I also enjoyed the work of Batia Suter, the presentation of the images caught my attention and the title ‘parallel encyclopedia’ made me think of the old encyclopaedia Britannia’s that used to sit on my parents shelves, the pages yellowing yet smooth, the images in black & white.

Under Cover: A Secret History of Cross Dressers:

I found this exhibition fascinating and it tied in well with my earlier work in ‘two sides of the story’.

The exhibition explored cross dressing from the 1880’s to the 1980’s. It shows that cross dressing goes beyond the clothes we wear, it also relates to body language and behaviour. Cross dressing also has an effect in society and culture. Assumptions are made based on appearance, again something I explored with my ‘Shoe Diary’. The work sets out to ask if identity can be freed from the codes that are bestowed by society and culture?

The historical information presented alongside the images was fascinating , the examples from the 1880’s to present day really did make me think more about social ‘norms’, coding and consumerism.

 

 

Print Sales Gallery

I quick drop in to the print sales gallery introduced me to two new artists of interest:

Jessa Fairbrother’s ‘Dragonfly’ images are simply stunning, they are silver gelatin prints which have been intricately pin pricked with a needle to leave an imprint. In ‘Dragonfly’ the imprints are on/ in the skin of the model, it leaves me with a feeling of delicacy and fragility.

Alma Haser’s portrait image made me want to start playing around with images on jigsaws! Her image is designed to question what is real and what is imagined as she has blended two images of identical twins to make one portrait , a manually assembled person that does not exist as one but if you study the image closely you can see the two real individuals that make up this phony.

Alma Haser also had her 3D plant images on show, entitled Pseudo. These were images of plants that were re-photographed and presented in 3D layers with cut away pieces so that you could see through the image. I really like this idea of creativity and perhaps it could be something I could explore with my ‘selfie’ work for part five?

 

More research papers on Selfies

(Kramer NC, Feurstein M, Kluck JP, Meier Y, Rother M and Winter S (2017) Beware of Selfies: The impact of photo type on impression formation based on social networking profiles) accessed 15.04.18

This article states:

Although producers of selfies typically aim to create a positive impression, selfies may also be regarded as narcissistic and therefore fail to achieve the intended goal.

There is the term narcissistic again! The article considers the selfie as a growing form of self-presentation and self-promotion, they are creating a positive image by expressing happiness or a positive physical appearance.

The distrust in selfie takers presumably comes from the notion that selfies can be manipulated, yet although we perceive them as negative they still generate a high number of likes on social media. Interestingly gender again strikes a difference with male selfie takers rated higher on narcissism and dishonesty than female counterparts.

INSTAFAME

(Instafame:Luxury Selfies in the attention economy: Alice E Marwick) accessed 15.04.2018

https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/27/1%20(75)/137/31071/Instafame-Luxury-Selfies-in-the-Attention-Economy

‘Attention economy’ is an interesting term and  I think in such a visually saturated marketplace and appropriate term.

Instagram is a social platform that relies on images with only a few hashtags attached,

‘value is assigned according to somethings capacity to attract eyeballs’ in a media , information rich world’ (Fairchild 2007)

Gaining likes and followers is a form of consumerism, using self-presentation and self-branding and selling your image to others Anyone can achieve instafame in a similar fashion to many ordinary people who have become YouTube megastars from the comfort of their own home. Likes and shares now act as a social currency and provide social reinforcement.

An except taken from the article:

While self-portraiture in art is not new, its prevalence as a genre of photograph is. José van Dijck (2008: 58) suggests that the primary purpose of analog personal photography was to create memory aids, to remember the way things were. Most snapshots featured people other than the photographer; Amparo Lasén and Edgar Gómez-Cruz (2009) mention a large compilation of one hundred thousand family photos taken during the 1960s, of which fewer than a hundred were self-portraits. Today, however, online, self-portraits are omnipresent. Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that 92 percent of teenagers who use Facebook upload pictures of themselves (Madden et al. 2013). Selfies are so popular with young people that they have become a genre unto themselves, with their own visual conventions and clichés. The “MySpace angle,” for instance, is the practice of taking a selfie from above, which is said to make the subject look thinner. Social media users learn and teach one another canned poses, flattering camera angles, and facial expressions, such as the pursed lips known colloquially as “duckface,” which can be seen throughout photo-sharing sites like Facebook and Instagram. As Ori Schwarz (2010: 165) writes in his study of the Israeli social network Shox, “We are witnessing a shift from photographing others for self-consumption to documentation of the self for consumption by others.” While photographs have always been able to show perspective and identity, we now use them more than ever before to display ourselves (Winston 2013: 4–5).

We only have to scroll briefly on Instagram to see the flattering camera angles and duck face pouts mentioned above,and yet another interesting thought…

“We are witnessing a shift from photographing others for self-consumption to documentation of the self for consumption by others.”(Ori Schwarz (2010: 165)

 

Editorial: Understanding Selfies – Composition

In an Editorial: Understanding Selfies ( Bruno N, Pisanski K, Sorokowska A and Sorokowski P (2018)  it mentions of a data set of selfies posted on Tinder which was exploited by Sedgewick et al to explore their composition.  Whether a selfie shows the face seen from above or below, the results revealed a difference between men and women. 50% of selfies were a neutral frontal view and of the rest men were more than twice as likely to take their selfie from below the face, whereas women preferred taking the image from above, there also appears to be a left cheek bias.

Further studies by others went on to explore the fact that the poses that were preferred were then used consistently,  and they effected the ratings of features such as facial attractiveness, helpfulness, sympathy, dominance, distinctiveness and intelligence.

Kramer et al examined how viewers perceive selfies in comparison to regular portraits, it was discovered that selfie takers were rated as less trust worthy, less socially attractive, less open to new experiences, more narcissistic, more extroverted in comparison to the same individuals when featured in a regular photo.

Interesting how the term narcissistic appears yet again!