It took me a long time to finish one of the books of our reading list (and I've quite a few to get through yet!) the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton covers an enormous amount of work and so can only ever say very little about each photograph or artist. Because of this it rattles through, or at least it felt like that to me, without ever offering much to grab hold of apart from facts which presumably to save time and words, are given in what also seemed to me quite a pedestrian manner. I appreciate how much work there was to discuss and see that it's a comprehensive book that gives a beginner a lot to take in.
Although it took me a long time to read, due to my interpretation that it was a quite a dry book, I did enjoy learning about different styles and approaches. The section I felt most compelled by was Intimate Life, probably because I had heard of many of the photographers there but also because I am fascinated by these sorts of photographs even though I don't really take them myself. The lives depicted are often quite extreme such as Corrine Day's or Nan Goldin's and far removed from my own but nevertheless fascinating and horrifying at times. There are also more sedate moments and lives depicted but I suppose similar themes; the difficulty of life and managing aging, loss, love for instance. I like the tenderness, boldness, honesty and bare emotion that many of the photographers in that section explore.
Although I relate to the intimacy of the photographers I mention above I was also taken with the Something and Nothing chapter. I find these little moments of humanity just so interesting and telling about who we are. I particularly liked Wolfgang Tillman's Suit, a photograph of a boiler suit hanging over the door like a skin that has been shed.
It was interesting to read about many of the photographers discussed even though if only briefly and the book is I'm sure one that I will return to. Even now as I flick though though it while I am writing this I am drawn in to read about some of the ideas behind the work I'm looking at.
I guess Cotton's book opened my eyes further about photography and art - as opposed to photography as merely a good way of recording moments. There is something so profound in many of the photographs discussed, and deeply moving. Having just made my way though Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (which I will write up over the next couple of days) I see the little stabs of poignancy or recognition that are so difficult to express any other way, and which he discusses throughout his book. It's very exciting for me to be delving into this - I wish my time were less limited although without my full, busy, sometimes rather trying existence I might not feel the need to find a way to express myself or learn about how others have. (Incidentally, I am fully aware that most people's lives are pretty trying and much worse at times and it's not just me who finds it a bit of struggle! Photography does seem to explore modern lives in a way which questions all of that quite profoundly I think.)
I'm glad to have finished the book and am sure it will be be used as a reference throughout the rest of my studies and beyond.
the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton, New Edition, Thames & Husdon World of Art, 2004 and then 2009.
Thursday 28 August 2014
Wednesday 27 August 2014
Colour relationships
3 photographs for the first part and 3-4 for the second part.
Part 1
Produce one photograph for the combination of primary and secondary colours with proportions as close to those listed by German poet, J.W. Von Goethe
Red:Green 1:1
Orange:Blue 1:2
Yellow:Violet
The photos I am using for this first part are not the ones I planned at all. I took several on the beach and while they are OK apart from the Red/Green one which was a complete flop, I was happier with other photos that I took during the same week. Although these were not my planned photos I did have colour relationships on the brain much of the time.
Red Green 1:1 - This was taken on my phone and processed using various apps to enhance and bring out the colour, plus blur the background. Not sure if this is acceptable but it's the best example I've got with these colours and proportions. I know you can sort of see the seams as the editing I used for blurring is new to me and I've not done it in a very sophisticated way.
Orange Blue 1:2 - I have actually increased the blue here to make the most of it and bring proportions in line with the list using Lightroom but feel that would be OK since filters or Lightroom are reccommended at the beginning of the Colour section. The first time I processed this image was rather more green to be honest. I didn't take it with the blue-orange relationship in mind but saw it when I loaded the images onto my computer and felt it was a strong image that showed the relationship well.
Yellow Violet 1:3 - This tent is so strange. One minute it looks blue then it looks purple. In the bright sunlight it looked purple but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, there is some yellow in the back ground and I have made the whole image have a violet hue to try and convince myself that the tent is not at all blue in the slightest. How tricky colour can be!
Part 2
Produce 3 or 4 images which feature colour combinations that appeal to you. Make note of any colour imbalance. I have found Colour extremely difficult to get my head round. I can't get into my head what is complimentary and what isn't. I mean I can read in a book that colours opposite each-other on the colour wheel are complimentary but it makes no sense to me - are they, I think to myself? So does that mean that this photo where blue and green are together are not harmonious? Isn't there a silly saying red & green should never be seen? Or perhaps it's blue and green? I must say I would like to be able to put lovely colours together and create a harmonious colour palette but it's going to take a lot of getting my head round it. The storm clouds below seem very dramatic - but is that merely the colour clash - bright green and deep purple/grey or is because you can see they are storm clouds which contrast very aggressively with the sunlight buildings? The colours in the final photograph aren't really colours at all apart from the red - what do black and white come under? Yet those colours work well together and always have done...I think! I don't think I've been terribly erudite in this exercise but colour to me seems incredibly tricky.
Part 1
Produce one photograph for the combination of primary and secondary colours with proportions as close to those listed by German poet, J.W. Von Goethe
Red:Green 1:1
Orange:Blue 1:2
Yellow:Violet
The photos I am using for this first part are not the ones I planned at all. I took several on the beach and while they are OK apart from the Red/Green one which was a complete flop, I was happier with other photos that I took during the same week. Although these were not my planned photos I did have colour relationships on the brain much of the time.
Red Green 1:1 - This was taken on my phone and processed using various apps to enhance and bring out the colour, plus blur the background. Not sure if this is acceptable but it's the best example I've got with these colours and proportions. I know you can sort of see the seams as the editing I used for blurring is new to me and I've not done it in a very sophisticated way.
Orange Blue 1:2 - I have actually increased the blue here to make the most of it and bring proportions in line with the list using Lightroom but feel that would be OK since filters or Lightroom are reccommended at the beginning of the Colour section. The first time I processed this image was rather more green to be honest. I didn't take it with the blue-orange relationship in mind but saw it when I loaded the images onto my computer and felt it was a strong image that showed the relationship well.
 |
| f1.8 ISO 100 1/160sec 50mm |
Yellow Violet 1:3 - This tent is so strange. One minute it looks blue then it looks purple. In the bright sunlight it looked purple but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, there is some yellow in the back ground and I have made the whole image have a violet hue to try and convince myself that the tent is not at all blue in the slightest. How tricky colour can be!
 |
| f1.4 ISO 100 1/8000sec 50m |
Part 2
Produce 3 or 4 images which feature colour combinations that appeal to you. Make note of any colour imbalance. I have found Colour extremely difficult to get my head round. I can't get into my head what is complimentary and what isn't. I mean I can read in a book that colours opposite each-other on the colour wheel are complimentary but it makes no sense to me - are they, I think to myself? So does that mean that this photo where blue and green are together are not harmonious? Isn't there a silly saying red & green should never be seen? Or perhaps it's blue and green? I must say I would like to be able to put lovely colours together and create a harmonious colour palette but it's going to take a lot of getting my head round it. The storm clouds below seem very dramatic - but is that merely the colour clash - bright green and deep purple/grey or is because you can see they are storm clouds which contrast very aggressively with the sunlight buildings? The colours in the final photograph aren't really colours at all apart from the red - what do black and white come under? Yet those colours work well together and always have done...I think! I don't think I've been terribly erudite in this exercise but colour to me seems incredibly tricky.
 |
| Green & Blue |
 |
| Orange & Blue |
 |
| Green & Purple/Grey |
 |
| Red & Cream & Black |
Saturday 2 August 2014
Some thoughts and some reading
Having not read nearly enough for the first half of this year I am now trying to make up for it. I've just finished the Diane Arbus book; I am also nearly done with one of the books from the reading list, and mostly through a book about Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel. For some reason I have also just started Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes as suggested by my tutor, perhaps because my life isn't quite challenging enough!
Barthes talks about the photograph being a recent 'disturbance' for civilisation to deal with, whereby the self is for the first time able to confront itself as the other. He dismisses paintings and etchings which came before. I'm intrigued by his understanding of portrait photography. I wonder what he would make of the current 'selfie' trend. Whether we take the photograph ourselves or ask, possibly pay someone else to take it for us, there is no denying the level of activity related to this modern 'disturbance' has reached fever pitch in the last decade. I recently heard on one of the many 'fascinating facts' films my eldest son watches so avidly on YouTube that we have taken more photographs in the last... now, was it two hours, weeks or years... I don't think it matters... more photos in the last tiny amount of time than have been taken in the whole history of photography. What is this desperate splitting of the self into two entities, whereby the self gets to gaze upon itself as an other so frequently and with such alacrity about?
(Splitting is an interesting phenomena in psychotherapy and one which I read a great deal about last year, which describes an individual's inability to see the self and others as rounded, mature cohesive entities or objects. So someone who is split sees only fabulous objects or disgusting objects in the self and in others for instance. A split person cannot see herself or others as good and bad at the same time. A split person is polarised as described in a book titled Splitting: (1)"..unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad, an extreme way of coping with confusion, anxiety, and mixed feelings. Splitting is especially prevalent under stress...")
I can't help but wonder what we're doing as a culture when we split our selves so regularly as we seem to do with the constant compulsion to see ourselves as an other - the beautiful, acceptable, desirable other we want the world to see as opposed to that which we'd rather the world didn't see. Are we and if so why are we polarising our Selves to such an extent - hidden, undesirable self and shiny, highly marketable other by means of images which we either take ourselves or get someone to take for us?
It has struck me as I read about and learn to market myself online (I still feel hopeless in this regard but I continue to battle one with it, even though sometimes it all feels excrutiatingly gormless and uncomfortably clumsy) that the world we live in has pretty much always demanded an an outer persona, a mask or several which we present to the world. Very few people get to know the inner world and person but in certain key relationships the outer persona dissolves to a greater or lesser extent. Yet today, people have an added dimension to penetrate if they are to get to know someone well - the controlled, self-concious online persona that so many of us now feel obliged to construct; a marketing tool which can be used to market the self just as much as it might market a business or service. Often people have websites or blogs, not to mention social networking pages that are primarily about themselves - indeed I do for work purposes as well as this blog. A portrait or several (or many, many portraits) are nearly always crucial in these presentations. Photographs of many different standards and styles, but nevertheless images of the self as other are plastered all over the internet and people, we, most of us to a greater or lesser extent, are scrambling to load more and more images that represent the online persona we wish to present to the world.
I will keep on with Camera Lucida - I have a feeling there will be much more in it to make me think about how, why, what in relation to the very modern habit of placing photographs of ourselves all over the internet. The book is extremely challenging to say the least but has already fed into some questions and thoughts that have been on my mind.
***********
I am feeling a bit lost about where I'm at with photography at the moment. I go out and take photographs of families as that is what is coming my way more often than not. I am focused on finding a voice or style but I feel at the moment I'm simply taking photographs that aren't really anything. In a way, I feel that since attempting to find a 'voice' I've got worse not better with that side of the photography I do. I imagine this is a normal part of learning and remember feeling something similar when I first started learning to use a camera in manual. I suspect it has also to do with some lack of patience I have with myself.
I recently watched a short clip online of photographer, (2) Gregory Heisler, whom I did not know. His work is very powerful and distinctive, so I'm glad I came across it. In the clip he discusses how finding a style is not an aesthetic thing - it's about how you see the world. He advises, as he was advised, to take photographs that you cannot help but take and that that more you take these photographs that you cannot help but take the closer you will get to knowing your style. In theory this sounds great - but I am just not sure what it is that I cannot help but take. I want only to take close ups of children's faces sometimes. I'm intrigued by the capacity and promise for what they might one day become that exists in their faces even when they are very young. And then I find them intensely difficult to work with and think I'd prefer never to take another photograph of a child again. Then there are times when I just want to be the master of my own mini productions with an image or series of images that explore some of the themes I touched on in my last assignment. (Pictures of self as other taken by self!) I also have found the last few months that I like landscapes sometimes - something that I had no idea about a few months ago. I think I just have to keep searching but I do wish I felt better about the family portrait stuff for now. Because as things stand I feel stuck.
1. Spitting, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD & Randi Kreger, Raincoat Books, 2011, Kindle Edition 6%
2. Gregory Heisler video: http://vimeo.com/100946762
Barthes talks about the photograph being a recent 'disturbance' for civilisation to deal with, whereby the self is for the first time able to confront itself as the other. He dismisses paintings and etchings which came before. I'm intrigued by his understanding of portrait photography. I wonder what he would make of the current 'selfie' trend. Whether we take the photograph ourselves or ask, possibly pay someone else to take it for us, there is no denying the level of activity related to this modern 'disturbance' has reached fever pitch in the last decade. I recently heard on one of the many 'fascinating facts' films my eldest son watches so avidly on YouTube that we have taken more photographs in the last... now, was it two hours, weeks or years... I don't think it matters... more photos in the last tiny amount of time than have been taken in the whole history of photography. What is this desperate splitting of the self into two entities, whereby the self gets to gaze upon itself as an other so frequently and with such alacrity about?
(Splitting is an interesting phenomena in psychotherapy and one which I read a great deal about last year, which describes an individual's inability to see the self and others as rounded, mature cohesive entities or objects. So someone who is split sees only fabulous objects or disgusting objects in the self and in others for instance. A split person cannot see herself or others as good and bad at the same time. A split person is polarised as described in a book titled Splitting: (1)"..unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad, an extreme way of coping with confusion, anxiety, and mixed feelings. Splitting is especially prevalent under stress...")
I can't help but wonder what we're doing as a culture when we split our selves so regularly as we seem to do with the constant compulsion to see ourselves as an other - the beautiful, acceptable, desirable other we want the world to see as opposed to that which we'd rather the world didn't see. Are we and if so why are we polarising our Selves to such an extent - hidden, undesirable self and shiny, highly marketable other by means of images which we either take ourselves or get someone to take for us?
It has struck me as I read about and learn to market myself online (I still feel hopeless in this regard but I continue to battle one with it, even though sometimes it all feels excrutiatingly gormless and uncomfortably clumsy) that the world we live in has pretty much always demanded an an outer persona, a mask or several which we present to the world. Very few people get to know the inner world and person but in certain key relationships the outer persona dissolves to a greater or lesser extent. Yet today, people have an added dimension to penetrate if they are to get to know someone well - the controlled, self-concious online persona that so many of us now feel obliged to construct; a marketing tool which can be used to market the self just as much as it might market a business or service. Often people have websites or blogs, not to mention social networking pages that are primarily about themselves - indeed I do for work purposes as well as this blog. A portrait or several (or many, many portraits) are nearly always crucial in these presentations. Photographs of many different standards and styles, but nevertheless images of the self as other are plastered all over the internet and people, we, most of us to a greater or lesser extent, are scrambling to load more and more images that represent the online persona we wish to present to the world.
I will keep on with Camera Lucida - I have a feeling there will be much more in it to make me think about how, why, what in relation to the very modern habit of placing photographs of ourselves all over the internet. The book is extremely challenging to say the least but has already fed into some questions and thoughts that have been on my mind.
***********
I am feeling a bit lost about where I'm at with photography at the moment. I go out and take photographs of families as that is what is coming my way more often than not. I am focused on finding a voice or style but I feel at the moment I'm simply taking photographs that aren't really anything. In a way, I feel that since attempting to find a 'voice' I've got worse not better with that side of the photography I do. I imagine this is a normal part of learning and remember feeling something similar when I first started learning to use a camera in manual. I suspect it has also to do with some lack of patience I have with myself.
I recently watched a short clip online of photographer, (2) Gregory Heisler, whom I did not know. His work is very powerful and distinctive, so I'm glad I came across it. In the clip he discusses how finding a style is not an aesthetic thing - it's about how you see the world. He advises, as he was advised, to take photographs that you cannot help but take and that that more you take these photographs that you cannot help but take the closer you will get to knowing your style. In theory this sounds great - but I am just not sure what it is that I cannot help but take. I want only to take close ups of children's faces sometimes. I'm intrigued by the capacity and promise for what they might one day become that exists in their faces even when they are very young. And then I find them intensely difficult to work with and think I'd prefer never to take another photograph of a child again. Then there are times when I just want to be the master of my own mini productions with an image or series of images that explore some of the themes I touched on in my last assignment. (Pictures of self as other taken by self!) I also have found the last few months that I like landscapes sometimes - something that I had no idea about a few months ago. I think I just have to keep searching but I do wish I felt better about the family portrait stuff for now. Because as things stand I feel stuck.
1. Spitting, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD & Randi Kreger, Raincoat Books, 2011, Kindle Edition 6%
2. Gregory Heisler video: http://vimeo.com/100946762
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