Exam Unit:
Materials
02 Materials
The physical properties of glass, wood, fabric or concrete, have inspired photographers and filmmakers to produce inventive images. Stephen Gill has incorporated street debris in his work. Helene Binet's photographs of concrete buildings record the qualities of the materials used in construction. The 'Glassworks' series by Fay Godwin records the various qualities of glass. Make reference to appropriate work by others and produce your own response.
The physical properties of glass, wood, fabric or concrete, have inspired photographers and filmmakers to produce inventive images. Stephen Gill has incorporated street debris in his work. Helene Binet's photographs of concrete buildings record the qualities of the materials used in construction. The 'Glassworks' series by Fay Godwin records the various qualities of glass. Make reference to appropriate work by others and produce your own response.
My Initial Response to Materials
This is my first set of images taken investigating 'Materials'. These were in and around my house as I knew that my house would have the most materials that would be interesting. As I didn't know what I was going to focus my photos on they are very unrelated so I wouldn't be able to create a set out of them. Only a few images work well on their own but none go well together.
Beads
Fan
Twig
Shed
Here I have edited some of my images form my first set. I decided to edit them in a few different ways, one I changed the thresholds, another I have changed the image to black and white then I changed the levels to curves to make it darker, I inverted other images and I also made some images look a bit vintage or as if they were taken with a film camera. I think that these work quite well as triptychs of the same thing because the thing is being viewed in a different way each time.
William Henry Fox Talbot
In 1833, while visiting Lake Como in Italy his lack of success at sketching the scenery prompted him to dream up a new machine with light-sensitive paper that would make sketches automatically.
Thomas Wedgewood already made photograms - making silhouettes of of leaves and other objects - but these faded very quickly. 1827 saw Joseph Nicephore de Nipce produce pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839 Louie Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' to French Academy of Sciences. A while after this, Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to Royal Society. His process put the prints on light-sensitive paper rather than bitumen or copper-paper.
He then went on to develop the three primary elements of analogue photography : developing, fixing and printing. Although exposing photographic paper produced an image, it often required long exposure times, sometime up to 2 hours. Talbot accidentally discovered that when an image was exposed for a short amount of time he could make a useful negative by developing it.
Thomas Wedgewood already made photograms - making silhouettes of of leaves and other objects - but these faded very quickly. 1827 saw Joseph Nicephore de Nipce produce pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839 Louie Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' to French Academy of Sciences. A while after this, Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to Royal Society. His process put the prints on light-sensitive paper rather than bitumen or copper-paper.
He then went on to develop the three primary elements of analogue photography : developing, fixing and printing. Although exposing photographic paper produced an image, it often required long exposure times, sometime up to 2 hours. Talbot accidentally discovered that when an image was exposed for a short amount of time he could make a useful negative by developing it.
Helene Binet
Born 1959 and studied photography at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Rome, which developed her interest in photography further. Over 25 years, Binet photographed both historical and contemporary architecture. Her clients include architects: Raoul Brunschoten, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Zumthor and many more. As well as photographing and following the works of contemporary artists (usually from construction to completion), she has also photographed the works of past architects such as Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto. Recently she has begun to direct her attention to landscape photography. Binet is an advocate of analogue photography and therefore she works exclusively with film. As she only uses film she often spends days upon days looking at all angles of the buildings and checking to see where the lighting is so she can decide which part of the building to shoot. Binet has a focused way of working which has nothing to do with the neutral documentation of buildings.
"Photography is still handcraft to me. With digital photography, I would always be thinking about how to change the images later. Thus I wouldn't be really present. But my work is about reduction, about concentration and focus. I absolutely cannot change this way of working." -Helene Binet
Stephen Gill
Gill became interested in photography in his early childhood, because of his father and interest in insects and initial obsession with collecting bits of ponds then examining the things he picked up underneath the microscope. He mainly draws inspiration from his immediate surroundings of city like in East London, but more recently in Sweden attempting to make work that reflects, responds and describes the times we live in. Gill's work is often made up of long-term photo studies exploring and responding to subjects in great depth. In January 2003 he bought a Bakelite 1960's box cameras made by Coronet for 50p at Hackney Wick Sunday Market. This became his most used camera over the next 4 years to photograph within the varied environment and to make portraits of people at that market and who lived and worked in that area. The plastic camera had very low quality, and as the images denied information but somehow retained a heightened sense of place and the images don't have a forced point. His approach to making work was more about reacting, responding and being carried by the subject rather than looking for already made ideas. Gill described this way of working as almost "walking away from photography or almost starting again, putting content first and technique second whilst aiming to work with photography's weaknesses rather than its descriptive strengths".
Hackney Flowers:
He collected flowers, seeds, berries and other various objects from Hackney locations. He then pressed them in his studio and began photographing them alongside his own photographs. Some of his initial photographs were also buried in Hackney Wick, and the staining and decay has left its imprint upon the images.
Hackney Flowers:
He collected flowers, seeds, berries and other various objects from Hackney locations. He then pressed them in his studio and began photographing them alongside his own photographs. Some of his initial photographs were also buried in Hackney Wick, and the staining and decay has left its imprint upon the images.
Faye Godwin
Godwin's multi-cultural, upper class and artistic environment / upbringing created a passion for contemporary arts and literature. After 6 years of continuous wondering and traveling, she took a job at a publishers where she was in charge of commissioning book covers and she also made many contacts here that would later help her publish her photo books.She photographed her children as they were growing up but in 1966 she began taking photography more seriously, investing in a small darkroom and enlarger. After her marriage broke down she took out a loan so that she could get the best camera she could buy (a Leica) and began practicing her portrait skills. Over the next five years she built a reputation for herself and she wanted to move to other areas of photography. As she was unable to make her self available at any time she realised that producing and publishing books would allow her to progress her photography career. She egan proposing book ideas to her old publishing contacts which led to her book "The Oldest Roads - An Exploration Of The Ridgeway", published in 1975. The death of her husband and the diagnosis of her cancer led to her developing her interest in landscape photography. This interest produced the book "Land" and this along with the following exhibition brought her fame. Her photography eventually became more dedicated to documenting the abuses of the landscape.
Aaron Siskind
Siskind creates abstract images of the real world by mixing the modernist concern with the flatness of a picture with close up framing as well as specific emphasis on texture, line and other visual elements. Some have considered him to be a part of the expressionist art movement. His interest in photography began when he received a camera as a wedding gift and he started photographing when he was on his honeymoon. His work now focuses on the details of nature and architecture around him, but it now being described as 'crossing the line between photography and nature'. Turned photography ' on its head' by taking photographs of found objects that were simultaneously true-to-life and abstract. He looked to seek a meaning in inanimate forms observed from around him instead of folloeing other photographers at the time in focusing on social/political post ww2 photography.
Edward Weston
Edward Weston is best known for his 'carefully composed, sharply focused' images of landscapes, natural forms and nudes. His work inspired a generation of American photographers. Pepper No.30 is one of his best known works. When he was 16, his father gave him his first camera, a Kodak box camera. His earliest photographs captured life on his aunts farm in Michigan where he spent summers. In his mature years his work shifted along with modern painting and became increasingly abstract, mainly focusing on form. Inspired by his late 1920s travels, Weston created a new body of work that became some of his most recognisable modern photographs. He photographed landscapes that devolved into flat patterns, his nudes became shapes and vegetables began to take on human qualities. His daybook explain that he 'created high resolution, sometimes magnified images of carefully cropped common places to spark a reconsideration of the subject'.
“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh,” - Edward Weston
Analysis of Weston's Photograph
Moyra Davey
"Copperheads"
This series of photographs were conceived following the stock market crash of 1987 and includes one hundred photographs of pennies, displayed in grids. Each coin is seen extremely close up, so that Abraham Lincoln's face is reduced to 'strange and foreign' terrain. The way that the photographs have been taken resemble traditional portraits, so when it is printed they all look like individual portraits. As she photographed coins, each photograph is very different and unique, due to the coins being worn down by touch, varying their appearance widely. This emphasises the individuality of the coins as objects.
Another Response to 'Material'
This is another response I have produced to the theme 'Materials' but I was trying to be more focused while taking these because my other set was really random. I think I was most inspired by Aaron Siskind because he takes photos of textures and I wanted to focus on textures and things. Siskind's photographs are extremely flat because he wanted them to resemble paintings where as I think that the depth of the material I am photographing to be shown. I changed some of these images to black and white but I think that the colour is very important in some of the images because of the way that some parts have rusted and been worn by constant human interaction. These images have inspired me to investigate traces of human interaction with everyday mundane things.
Editing
Here I have been experimenting with changing the colour of the image using the curves adjustment. I really liked changing the colour that way because I was able to make the image more contrasting than they originally were. The first image is my favourite because it has really grungy colours such as greens, browns and greys. I don't really like the third image because I think that it is too orange / pink looking and neon. It would probably look better if I had made the original yellow look a bit greener and dirtier.
Christian Michael Filardo
Responding in School
This is a set of images I have taken in school that were focusing on how worn parts of the school are because of them constantly being touched by people. These images show that someone was once there but now they're gone. I think that these image are successful because all the scratches and dents can be seen throughout all of the images. I would like to take some photos in London because I feel like there will be a lot of things that humans have damaged, by constantly bumping and touching things.
Editing
Second Response in School
This is another response I have made focusing on human interaction with materials in school. This time I was focusing on things that have continuously been touched resulting in them being broken, scratched and peeled off. I think that these images are successful because they show most of the 'ruined' parts of school. I think that using the macro lens is a lot more better than using a regular lens because it allowed me to really focus on a certain part and get up really close.
Editing
Re-photographing my Triptychs
Here I have taken my triptychs that I made before and I have re-photographed them in various locations, including where one of the images was originally taken. I think that this was interesting because it really changed the way that I thought about the images because only one of the three fit in with the surrounding area, and the other two were the odd ones out.
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer heavily involved in the New Objectivity movement. The New Objectivity movement was a reaction against expressionism around the 1920's. Renger-Patzsch used the camera to produce a faithful recording of the world. He began his photography career in 1925 as a freelance documentary and press photographer. He rejected Pictorialism (the imitation of painting) and experimental photographers who relied on startling techniques. His photographs recorded the exact, detailed appearance of objects, reflecting his early interest of science, he called for documentation rather than art.
Photography as a tool
Photography as a tool
‘There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should be fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique’
- Albert Renger-Patzsch
Experimenting with photo books
Here I have been experimenting with mixing up coloured backgrounds with black and while photographs layered on top. I made this as an experiment to see what it would look like to have full bleed backgrounds in colour then paste smaller black and white versions of the same images on top. I also did this the other way around with black and white backgrounds with coloured images pasted on top. I really like how this worked because I wasn't in control of how the backgrounds were going to look because I was folding A4 photos in half.
This is another photo book I have made but this time I was photocopying my images onto thicker and textured cartridge paper. I think that this paper made the images look better than they did on the regular printer paper because the texture of the paper was making the image look more grainy than it already was. The paper also made the images look less shiny than they did before. I printed these images on A3 pages double sided so the order of the order of the images would be out of my control. I also had a few single sided pages so that there would be a blank page every once in a while. The single sided pages have a blue background image with full colour and yellow single coloured images layered on top.
Where next?
I would like to do another photoshoot focusing on the parts of my local area where things have been damaged by people constantly using them, rubbing against them and where they are naturally being worn from age. I think that the images look better when they are taken when it is a little bit dark outside because I am able to use the flash and I think that the flash makes the colours look better than when its light out. I would then like to use these images to make another book that is printed onto a range of paper including tracing paper, graph paper, squared paper, patterned etc.. I would like to use these types of paper as I think that it will make the viewer look at the images in a different way.
I could also take some photographs in London that are also focusing on the damaged parts of the city and compare the damage of both places in the form of diptychs. This could be interesting if I tried to get the same kind of shots and perspectives.
I could also take some photographs in London that are also focusing on the damaged parts of the city and compare the damage of both places in the form of diptychs. This could be interesting if I tried to get the same kind of shots and perspectives.
Responding Outside of School
These are some photographs I have taken in Greenwich focusing on physical materials that look a bit tatty and/or dirty looking while also focusing on the kind of worn parts of the areas. These photos are quite successful because I have managed to capture the parts of Greenwich that have been worn down and "ruined". I also took photographs of some industrial materials such as locks and a lot of metal. I took photos of these because they seemed interesting to me and I thought that it is something that I haven't done muuch of before in this project.
Editing
Here I have edited some of the photographs that I had taken in Greenwich. To do this I adjusted the levels and curves to make the photograph darker and more contrasting. I then added a filter called noise onto it to make my image look grainy. I chose to edit my photos like this because I think that adding a grainy filter on top makes them look a little bit older and brings out the dirtiness in some of the photographs.
Second Response Outside of School
I then decided to visit a park and take some photographs there as I was inspired by the industrial styled photos that I had taken in Greenwich. I decided to take photos at the park because I knew that there would be a lot of metal around the park and I thought that I would get some interesting photographs that weren't just grey or black but ones that included a lot of colour.
Editing
Shoreditch
i then decided to mix it up and take photographs of non industrial materials, such as bricks / concrete. I wanted to do this because I thought it would make my final outcomes look interesting rather than having lots of photographs that look the same. As I was travelling around shoreditch, I found a fence that was covered in locks, although I went out looking for non industrial materials, I found this wall really interesting because it was really personal and links back to one if my first ideas about documenting human interaction with materials.
Editing
Locks
While in Shoreditch I found a fence that had locks all over it, so I took lots of images of the range of locks and thought that I could create a series with them. I could make my own 'wall' of locks with these images by displaying them close together either on an actual wall or on some mount board. I could also create a photobook of these locks.