Inked Girls

Whilst in New York I raided Borders in the desire to find inspiration in the magazines not available in the UK. One magazine which really caught my eye was Inked magazine, a men’s magazine (the majority of photos were of scantily clad women) based around tattoos. However I found the whole “look” of the magazine really inspiring, the lighting, the poses. It shows that a men’s magazine can be tastefully done, it doesn’t have to be the typical “tits pushed together, licking her lips, looking into the camera and pulling the porn star face” style of photos that you see in publications such as Nuts and Zoo. I love that each of the girls is shot in a very distinct style, to express the style and personality of each model. The whole aesthetics is very artistic and tasteful, I will definitely use this imagery for my future work, in particular a pin-up girls shoot which I am planning for my next project at uni.

Inked

Inked

image from Nuts: Tacky!

image from Inked: Classy!

Faded faces

I’m really fascinated by old photographs, those that are real snapshots from family albums that have been disregarded by people through death, house clearance amongst other reasons. I remember going to a flea market in Brighton last September where they had boxes upon boxes of old black and white photos for sale. The ones that really caught my eye were the ones from the 1930’s and 1940’s of soliders, posing proudly in their uniforms and with their families, presumably before going off to war. They look so happy, there are big smiles from everyone in the photo, but how were they really feeling? Knowing that they were going away to fight in the trenches, not seeing their families for months, years, if ever again. Despite their big smiles, I couldn’t help but see through to a sadness beneath it all. Perhaps this was the last memory that they had as a family together and it has ended up in a dirty box, having strangers rummage through them and throw them about carelessly.

 Whilst in New York we went into a thift shop in Brooklyn, where there were boxes full of old photos and negatives. This time it was the black and white 5x4 negatives that caught my eye as opposed to the actual photos. Unlike with digital where you can snap to your heart’s content, with a 5x4 camera you only get one or two shots from an image and your shot must be composed and exposed correctly first time.  Anything that the ammeter photographer wanted to photograph must have been very important and significant to them in order for them to go to the trouble to set up and compose the image. Looking at the negatives I wondered what made each moment so special, why they chose this subject and this moment to capture on film. 

Here are the prints, I didn’t worry too much about perfecting the print, only a tiny bit of dodging and burning, it was more the subject that I was excited to see.

The first one is obviously of a wedding, not that exciting but still fun to see all the little details and the smiling couple and proud relatives looking on.

 When I first viewed the negative of this image I thought that it was a Xmas morning scene, but looking closer it is actually a couple opening Wedding gifts, you can see this if you look closely at the design on the wrapping paper. I like the old fashioned clothing, particularly her hat and his thick, black rimmed glasses. I really love the look that the man is giving the female. She is obviously concentrating on opening the presents, maybe shy to look up because she knows that she is having her photo taken? But he is looking straight into face and smiling, looking genuinely happy and in love, it's really sweet. When printing the images, I realised that they were square and my paper was a rectangle and so either the top/bottom or sides had to be cut off. So i experimented with cropping and actually found this image works better portrait than horizontal. You can see the big pile of presents and it cuts out all the negative space either side of them making it feel more intimate, like we are seeing a private moment.

This image of a baby was very striking as a negative, the huge space of the blanket gave the illusion that the baby was wrapped up and peeking out at us, it looked a little disturbing. Although there is still something that I find a little bit creepy about this image, the infant looks a lot more sweet and peaceful than I had first imagined. However this is part of the fun that I find in printing old negatives, you never know how the image is going to turn out, your first impression of it could be completely wrong.

These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you, let’s hear it for New York

I have just been on a six day trip to New York City with my University class, staying in a  hotel just around the corner from the Empire State Building. Throughout our stay we vivsited the International Centre of Photography and saw the prints of the lost negatives of Robert Capa. We had a talk by the Hans Neelaman, the founder and owner of the stock images company WIN (Worldwide Image Navigation), a stock company that uses very artistic imagery and tries to push away from formulaic stock photography.  

We looked around several galleries including the Aperture gallery and the Museum of Modern art (MoMa), I made a note of artists and photographers who I found inspirational and whom I want to look into more. At MoMA we went to an exhibition titled “Pictures by Women: A History Of Modern Photography”, gender studies is something which greatly interests me and so I was keen to really take in everything that I could from it. The collection included works by the likes of Imogen Cunnigham, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Barbra Kruger and Maya Deren. 

An exhibition that I particularly liked was in MoMa PS1 (over in Brooklyn), it was titled The Talent Show and was based on the theme of everyone having their 15 minutes of fame. It examined the relationships between audience, artist and the participants that model, it had some really intriguing pieces that the audience could not only view but participate with and engage in, really pushing home the whole idea of everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame.

“In recent years, television's reality shows and talent competitions have offered people a conflicted chance at fame, while various kinds of Web-based social media have pioneered new forms of communication that people increasingly use to perform their private lives as public theater. During the same period, governments worldwide have asserted vast new powers of surveillance, placing unwitting "participants" on an entirely different kind of stage.” - MoMA PS1

An artist whose work caught my eye in this exhibition was Shizuka Yokomizo. For her series Stranger she would send an anonymous letter to different houses asking them to stand in front of their window with the lights on at a specific date and time. The photographer wuld then set up her tripod outside this window, expose the film and leave. The pictures would be taken at night time and so the subjects would not have been able to see the photographer, only her silhouette. I like how she frames her images to include the subject's surroundings, the curtains, window frame, personal belongings and household items, it helps to emphasise that feeling of voyeurism and puts further distance between the observer and the observed.

There was lots of inspiration in New York, for me this was mainly in the less “touristy” areas, Williamsburg in Brooklyn was full of old fashioned red brick buildings, 1950’s style diners, thrift stores full of beaten up treasures, graffiti art sprayed on the side of buildings, just real New Yorker’s living away from the bright lights of Manhattan and Times Square. However, New York didn’t do as much for me as I thought it would. It is a city that you see so often in movies and TV shows, you almost feel like you know it before you have even arrived. But like with most things, the reality never quite lives up to the hype. New York was fun, I’m glad for the experience and the knowledge and inspiration gained from the galleries and talks we were given, but I'm afraid it just wasn't for me, I guess I'm really just a London girl at heart.

Beneath the trees, where nobody sees, we'll hide and seek, as long as we please

As part of a brief at Uni we have been given the task of creating a double page spread for a magazine of our choice. I have chosen Lula magazine because I love it, it’s so different from any other magazine I have seen. I love the fashion and the child-like motifs that run through out it, titles such as “Welcome to the Doll’s House” and “Once Upon a Time” are used through it to give it a fairytale style feel. The photographs are simple yet effective, they have different styles of photography within the magazines, but my favourite style and the one which i feel gives the magazine it's distinct identity are the ones that are dream-like and playful. A lot of these images use faded or pastel colours and the soft focus gives it a hazy dream like appearance. We are lucky enough to have copies of all the issues of Lula in the library at Uni and so I have spent a lot of time going through back issues and scanning or photocopying images from the magazine for inspiration.

We have been given a very short time in which to complete this brief, only three weeks, one of these we were to be away in New York for and so this left us with only two working weeks at Uni to complete it. The idea of this being that we get used to creating good quality images with a very quick turnover time. I got onto it straight away, getting inspirational pictures from the magazines and sketching ideas, my main idea was the theme of a teddy bears tear party. However as I developed this I moved on from the teddy bear idea and just made it a picnic/tea party in the woods. I scouted for locations in the New Forest, taking pictures of different areas that could be potential for the shoot and seeing how the light fell at different times of the day so I could figure out when would be the best time to shoot. I made some initial sketches in my sketchbook, I then found a model and an assistant and went out to shoot.

I used a Metz flash (borrowed from the stores at Uni) to shoot but unfortunately it stopped working half way through the shoot, batteries were fully charged and I was told later that it's just because the flashes "are just old." However as I had chosen quite a sunny day to shoot, it meant that the loss of the flash was not a big problem, the shadows weren't too harsh and the sun light being bounced back with a silver reflector was sufficient and actually looked really nice, gentle and natural.

I wanted to achieve that faded, hazy, soft focus look in my images but as a student I cannot afford a proper soft focus lens. I looked on the Internet for cheaper alternatives to this and read that one way you can do this is stretching nude coloured tights across the lens. I was sceptical about whether this would work but I decided to give it a try, I took some test shots at home using this technique and found that it worked wonderfully. So I decided to implement this into my shoot and got the results that I was after.

Here are some of the images from my shoot. If I had more time I would like to develop this into a much bigger picnic with two or three more people and lots more props.

"Christ, they'll be bringing those bank machine things round next year!"

Last week were lucky enough to have the photographer Gary Salter come into Uni to give us a talk and tell us about his work. Gary has created images for companies such as Absolute Radio, Shreddies, Uncle Ben’s, Pimms, Bulmers and LG. It was really interesting to learn about the photography industry from someone first hand. I really like that Salter seems to take his inspiration from life and events that happen to him or his friends. He said that he carries a camera everywhere to keep a diary with it and carries a notebook to note down any funny or interesting things that happen that he could use for inspiration. 

For example he went to a show where he saw that they were giving "knitting lessons to grannies" and amongst all these elderly ladies was a young 24 year old man doing some knitting. Salter obviously found this amusing and so noted this down and used it as a starting off point for this next picture of a biker knitting club. I love the attention to detail in his image, like the knitting needles of the wall in the shape of the cross bones, and the cake on the table in front of the figure on the far left was actually a knitted cake that belonged to his set designer. 

He gave a good insight into how you would actually go about organising a commercial shoot. You have to scout locations, find a selection of props and models for the client to choose from, sometimes you have to find several different locations for the same image. I hadn’t realised the extent to which the images are photoshopped together. He showed us his sketches and plans for this advert for Bulmers. The bottle itself was shot in a studio, the fountain was shot at one location, the feet were in a swimming pool at another location, these are all then brought together seamlessly.

I think his work is really funny and people can relate to his pictures. One of my favourite images of his is the one below. He told us that after Halloween he and his friend's had been talking about how greedy the trick or treaters were getting and he had said "Christ, they're going to turn up with one of those bank machine things next year!" and from that came the inspiration for this image. Some of his work remind me of Martin Parr's, in that he takes comical pictures of life in Britain, humorous yet relatable.

"I do believe in fairies, I do, I do...."

 During research for a project at Uni, I stumbled across the story of the Cottingley Faires. I remember being a kid and being fascinated when watching the film Fairy Tale based on the story. Two teenage cousins borrowed their uncle/dad’s camera and went down to the bottom of the garden where they took photos of what they claimed were fairies. You can imagine the surprise on the father’s face when he was in his darkroom developing the photos of the girls, only for a fairy to appear dancing in front of them. However he didn’t believe that they were real, although he couldn’t figure out what trickery they had performed. Eventually the photos found their way into the hands of Edward Gardner, the leader of a spiritualist group. Gardner sent the photos and negatives off to a photographic expert to be examined, the result, he was told, was the there had been no tampering with the negatives, the expert did not go as far as to say that the photos showed fairies but that "these are straight forward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera at the time". They also came to the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle who, like Gardner, insistently believed they were genuine photos of fairies. Looking at the photos now, they are so fake looking, crude and badly done that it’s hard to think that anybody, least of all an intelligent, well-educated writer such as Conan Doyle would ever believe these were real. Both spiritualists, they published the photos as proof that fairies existed. The girls later admitted that the photos were fakes, that they had copied drawings of fairies from storybooks onto card and propped them up in front of the camera. Yet two children, with little to no photographic expertise managed to fool the World. How and why did they manage it? Who knows, maybe people just really wanted to believe that there was more out there. Maybe they were fooled because they wanted to be fooled…?

I find it interesting that when someone has a photograph of something, we almost immediately take it for granted that it is real, photography is the medium we trust to show us the truth. With all the images that surround us today we tend to take them at face value. The images on the news are there to pose as proof that the story is real, that these events and these people are really in the World somewhere. I just find it interesting that photos are used as a representation of reality in an age where digital alternation is so easy and assessable to whoever wants it. And we are all guilty of it, myself included. I know that the women in fashion magazines have been Photoshopped to perfection, yet it still doesn’t stop me from having those few seconds where I think “wow she has the most perfect skin/boobs/legs, why can’t mine be like that”. And then I have to remind myself, it’s NOT REAL. Who knows, maybe in 50 years time people will look back on airbrushed images of our time and think “that’s so fake and badly done, how can anyone have ever thought that was reality”.

First Blog, Brace Yourselves for the Excitement...

Ok so here's my first blog. I'm new to this blogging business so am not entirely sure what i'm supposed to fill this space with. I will use it to note down ideas and inspiration and share any work, mine or of others, that might be of interest to others.

I will start off by giving you a taste of some of the photography that I like by surrealist photographer Herbert Bayer. They are shot on black and white film and would have been created in a darkroom. They remind me that you don't need a computer or technology in order to create great surreal images. Growing up in the digital age I have become accustomed to forgetting how easy we have it in terms of photographing and editing our images. With a digital camera you can see then and there on the LCD screen roughly how your image will look and change your technique accordingly, you don't have the mystery and suspense that comes with film photography. Once home you can pop your memory card in the computer and photoshop it to your heart's desire. Problems? There's a help section and endless "Photoshop for Dummies..." style books on hand to spoon feed your way through to the final edit. I'm not against Photoshop, I think that to learn it well is an art form in itself but I like to look back at old photos like these and remind myself to not take this for granted and appreciate the hard work that would have gone into images like these.

(left) Bayer's Self Portrait in Mirror. The use of photomontage to fragment the body makes it seem almost fake and plastic, like a doll. Bayer was one of the modernists who used the process of collage and photomontage to deconstruct the apparent "realism" of photography.








(right) Lonely Metropolitan is probably Bayer's most well known image. I love the juxtaposition of all the elements, the strange arrangement presents us with a dream like image that conveys a sense of loneliness and alienation in an urban landscape. I think the eyes looking straight into the camera are quite haunting.

Lonely Metropolitan was the inspiration for the monster in the Guillermo del Toro film Pan's Labyrinth (below left). This is an image that I am constantly being seen reproduced by amateur and student photographers. Below right is what I would consider to be a good homage to this, photographed/created by friend James Sheppard. This is also an example of how art/photography/film all feed off each other and continue to borrow and recycle old ideas.