bettie coetzee

SOME  ARTISTS I ADMIRE ... PLUS:  THE WORK OF BETTIE COETZEE 

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Dorsland #1 in my series of Double Exposures

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Double Exposure and other techniques revisited 2016

I have selected the following Categories and images in jpeg format to represent each Category for the reasons stated below:

ARCHITECTURE: Artscape facade file 8170, to illustrate my ability in capturing the abstracted shapes, defined by lines and the contrast between shadow and light, rhythms and shapes against a blue sky with white clouds. In Postproduction slanting vertical and horizontal lines due to distortion by a DSLR camera, 5 DM II were corrected.

LANDSCAPE with Building: Langebaan Fisherman’s Cottage file 7491 to capture the classical landscape with foreground middle- and background and create a sense of 3D depth through the use of linear and atmospheric perspective. Linear perspective created by the clouds meeting behind a central rectangular building, and atmospheric perspective throug the softer detail in the background as compared with sharper textures in foreground.

INTERIOR: Cape Town City Library file 8030 to illustrate the ability in capturing sense of interior space through the linear perspective provided by the converging lines of the ceiling structures. In Post Production the distorted vertical and horizontal lines were corrected. See under Architeture for similar distortion problems.

WILDLIFE: Elephant file 3007 to illustrate a moment when animals interact with one another through touch. The original colour image was changed to black and white to heighten the metaphorical content and intent of the image. Warm and loving touch by elephants part of a family structure (see baby elephant behind the mother) suggests a human link between animal, nature and human kind.  

FINE ART: Chosen as my field of specialization a series of 5 images, titled, Dorsland 1 - 5 (Thirst Land) were created around the theme of climate change. Drought and the yearning for the survival of the species is alluded to in the five double exposures of combinations of dry grass, cracked mud, droplets on spider webs and a portrait of a woman.

Research is recorded in my Pinterest account. I discovered the images, by Pieter Hugo, to which my photo’s relate in an uncanny way only after I had already made my own. The psychiatrist, Carl Jung, in his ground breaking research on the archetype has demonstrated through dream analysis that human beings from different times and geographical areas can dream up and create similar images without the one evern having seen the others, all due to our communal human archetypal unconscious or “collective unconsicous”. See for example, Carl J Jung, Man and his Symbols, Aldus Books, 1964.

https://za.pinterest.com/bcbrecht/double-exposure/

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The  photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) credited as the “father of street photography” also bears another label namely the title of his book, published in 1952,  “The Decisive Moment’ (the English title given by Margot Shore, Magnum’s Paris bureau chief, to the original French title, Images à la Sauvette. Loosely translated,the title means, “images on the run” or “stolen images”. Which of course, is the manner in which he revolutionized photography with the help of the new technology that produced the first 35 mm film camera in 1931.

”To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”

The phrase, 'Decisive Moment’, also referred to as 'Significant Moment’ is often bandied about as simply referring to photographs which were shot spontaneously, without people posing, in the outdoors, for instance people in the street, people in relation to buildings and each other. That is incorrect. 

The term, as Cartier-Bresson describes it in his book, and in interviews accessible on the internet, stresses the following that has to happen in a photograph for the term to be applied. He emphasizes that the so called formal building blocks of composition, i.e. shapes like triangles, circles, relationships between elements in the photograph should be  SIMULTANEOUSLY SEEN AND CAPTURED IN A SPLIT SECOND . Without “PRECISE ORGANIZATION OF FORMS ....WHICH GIVE THAT EVENT IS PROPER EXPRESSION” one cannot refer to a spontaneously, unposed person in an environment as answering to the definition of ‘Decisive Moment’.  

Cartier-Bresson also referred to the “two elements in conflict, like in poetry, that is an essential ingredient in a photograph that lives up to the phrase, “decisive moment”. He repeats over and over in an interview the need for “quick split second shooting “without thinking”. He refers to the “sensual, physical AND intellectual experience” that the act of photographing is for him.The “intellectual” aspect for him means the skill of the photographer to simultaneously compose the image according the modernist, guide lines, to “create order from the chaos that surrounds us.”

“You must put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.” 

#decisive moment #street photography #HenriCartierBresson #Leica camera #candid photography # 

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The genre, Street photography includes a multitude of WAYS OF SEEING. Which is a slogan that defines all artwork, not only the Street photography genre. In the above examples which Ive copied from Lensculture’s First Street Photography Award competition the wide definition of what Street photography entails is illustrated.

The names of the photographers are: Martin Dupuis, Dagmar Schwelle, Ashley Neuhof, Claude Dussex, Isabelle Scotta,Craig Buchan, Andreas Neophytou, Ross Harvey, Emanuele Macaluso, Guy Moberty, Mario Mecacci.

These photographers have one thing in common, which I would say lies at the heart of Street photography namely, spontaneous shooting. 

Merely spontaneous shooting, to me, is different to what Henri Cartier-Bresson defined as the “Decisive Moment”, even though there is a strong similarity in the defenitions. In a next Blog I will discuss the Decisive or Significant Moment as I think Cartier-Bresson meant it. 

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Alicia Brodowicz from Poland’s selected images in the online PhotoGallery, Lensculture’s first Street Photography Awards competition.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn from this site how many different types of spontaneous shooting are classified under the heading of Streetphotograpy. These include: Street portraits, urban culture, street fashion, roadtrip, streetart travel, architecture, black and white, abstract, graphic.

The quote by one of the iconic photographers of our time, Elliott Erwitt summarizes this genre, as well as all other genres of photography:

Erwitt: “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place ... it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

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Sandra Hoyn, a Magnum Prize winning photography from Germany captured this touching image of a young brothel worker and her much older client. One cannot help but feel saddened by the empty eyes of the young girl as she stares into nothing, while her much older client almost grips her in his possessive and lecherous embrace.

This is part of the series, “The Longing of Others” which were photographed in the Kandapara brothel. The brothel in the district of Tangail, Bangladesh.  It is one of the oldest and second-largest in the country. 

Bangladesh is one of the few Muslim countries where prostitution is legalised. It is some 200 years old, was demolished in 2014 and has been re-established recently with the help of local NGOs and the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association. They convinced the High Court that the eviction of the sex workers was an illegal act. 

Hoyn, who is a Series Winner in the Photojournalsm category has exhibited these portraits under the title. “The Longing Of Others” as part of the prestigious Magnum Photographers in the Magnum Gallery, Paris from 13 January to 12 March, 2011.

Although one would, on first hearing about the legalisation of prostitution, through up arms in protest, on reflection I for one, have sympathy towards the argument for acceptance of the practice as means of survival. The very fact that it was women who stepped in to weigh up the pros and cons of this moral issue, puts weight behind their argument. For the simple reason that they took into account, not our so called Western Christian morality, but the needs that arise in a country where abject poverty is a factor to consider. Prostitution in such a society happens to feed not only the sex worker but also her family. 

As one studies more images from Hoyn’s series, one’s opinion on the Women Lawyers arguing in favour of legalisation, waver. The violence, the expression of utter despair on some young girl/woman faces leaves one devastated.

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A sample of the work that was done as Assignments for the Vega Higher Certificate Photocourse 2016 under supervision of Gerhardt Coetzee and Frank Kummacher. From top down, left to right the following friends modelled:  Harnes van der Waldt, Rose Hampton, pedestrians in park, Heinrich Kammeyer, Juan Maree, Rose.

The skills practiced: #controllingmovement #complementary colours #windowlight #movement #slowshutterspeed #blurredmotion #frozenmotion #environmentalportrait #fashion #windowlightsetup #reflector

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An exercise in Quick Speedlight Portraits against a neutral building in a building in central Cape Town. Above is one of the security guards, Pasqual and below right the building maintenance manager, Walton Rodney. The agreed to stand still for a second or two while I set my camera to shutter speed 1/160 and witih off camera flash shot them in the eye. Thank you willing model! 

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ROGER BALLEN from Asylum of the Birds a Quote from Interview

What draws you to birds as a subject?

Most people are drawn to birds because they have archetypal meanings to them. These meanings are deeply embedded in the human mind. You can see that in the Bible and in Greek mythology. People are drawn to birds because they can lift off into the air; they can fly and get above things. In mythology, they’re the animal that links the heavens to the earth. So they’re very much an animal of beauty and mystery. Birds carry that symbolism. And then when these birds come into contact with this so called “Roger Ballen world,” the metaphors for the book are created, and the metaphors for the film are created.

Interviewed by the PhotoEditor of VICE, Matthew Leifheit, Ballen finally revealed the Place where he has been photographing people on the fringe of society on the outskirts of Johannesburg. He talks about his subject matter - birds - and his view on “documentary photography” vs “conceptual fine art photography”.

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT BALLEN’S ART 

Ballen has received negative response from both the art world and the general media because of his socalled insensitivity regarding the down and out, in some cases insane or mentally challenged. He was accused of unethical behaviour, because his images were read as merely superficial representations of social outcasts. Luckily this view has changed over the past decade. It is now finally understood that his camera pierces what happens underneath the skull, despite the early literal resemblances to people he photographed on the far away mining towns where he worked as a qualified doctor of Geology. His interest in psychology - with tertiary qualifications in that field - matches his interest in what happens below the surface, whether it be the crust of the earth, or the human skull.

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ROGER BALLEN’s latest photographic book, Asylum of the Birds published by Thames and Hudson in 2014 was the trigger for an extensive exhibition at the MOMO Gallery in Cape Town. The work above, Caged, was one of them. The exhibition was arranged in collaboration between the artist and the Parma based, Italian curator, critic and writer, Didi Bozzini and called “The House Project”. 

The house serves as metaphor for the mind, the parallels drawn between, on the one hand public spaces ( the exterior we show to the world and see in a daylight mirror) and on the other hand the inner world where dreams, nightmares, repressed guilt or our shadow side hides. In the exhibition that is the attic and the cellar. 

Ballen’s work, irrespective of date executed, was thematically divided over three floors of the MOMO Gallery. Every room marked from Ground floor to Cellar and Attic.

The image, Caged was fitted into the space called Attic, the highest room in the house. This is where we store things that once meant something to us, but has lost its relevance but we can’t somehow get ourselves to throw it out. 

The motifs of the compositions shown in the Attic, are of a suffering Jesus, snakes and doves as references to biblical stories. These might be read as alluding to our mind’s occupation with ideals, symbols and values to live by. 

The image, Caged features a teenage boy with a snake in a bird’s cage flanked by ghostlike heads hovering next to doves cramped into a too small space -also enclosed in a suffocating bird’s cage.

We as viewers are invited by the association of the Attic space with the lofty psychological space of the head, the mind. We can read this combination within the image as a veiled visual criticism of our belief-systems. The image provides an ironic view of our fundamentalist view of traditional religious values. 

Divided in two horizontal rectangular spaces, one above the other, the composition alludes to two realms of being. Using his compositional building blocks in a meaningful way, Ballen satisfyingly connects the two rectangular halves of the composition into a coherent aesthetic whole with a vertical line - the snake reaching from the bottom rectangle held in the boy’s hand, up to the doves in the top rectangle. 

A connecting line is experienced a logical method to achieve order and coherence. However, the fact that this line is formed by a snake, causes an element of tension. Our minds have been trained through biblical associations with the Garden of Eden story, to read the snake as symbol of first sin (sexuality). Visually, therefore the vertical line is pleasing, but conceptually it refers to taboos - sin, guilt, something we don’t talk about or acknowledge as natural. The connecting line therefore becomes ambivalent.

The boy, a child, which within in our normal symbolic language is understood as an image of innocence, seems to enjoy the snake’s interest in the captured doves - their potential for food to be devoured. Our sense of innocence and cruelty is stirred.

Playing with formal geometrical shapes, and the sensuous quality of the curving line of the snake’s body, and fitting them into motif’s referencing our higher mind’s religious ideals, and our ideas of innocence and sin, the artist cunningly turns the viewer’s concept of what is considered good and bad, upside down.

The fact that both halves of the image feature the motifs within the frame, or behind the bars of a bird’s cage, suggests captivity. Could this be interpreted as representative of our lack of freedom of choice, or our refusal to review our accepted norms of what is good and what is bad? Here is a boy, generally accepted as a symbol of innocence, in the company of a snake, in our symbolic language accepted as symbol of sexuality and sly aggression. Doves,  known as symbols of the good message (as in the story of Noah and the Ark) and also as the animal species that connects the earth and heaven, all captured in a cage. 

Does Ballen want to say, perhaps, that this cage is a Cage of the Mind that exist when when we unquestioningly accept values handed down to us. When we refuse to re examine them in the light of new times and circumstances that demand new ways of thinking?

The image, Cage, encapsulates, for me the main thrust of the exhibition, namely: repressing our real feelings, refusing to look deep into ourselves and converse with our so called shadow side, shackle us, puts us in cages. 

In short, freedom lies in facing taboos, examining what we store deep in our unconscious, acknowledging our fears and gain new insights.

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An example of the Fashion photographer, VICTORIA JANASHVILI’ photographs woman with fuller bodies, and in so doing helps change the norms of advertising in the media where the unnatural over thin bodies of emaciated models have been popularized as the ideal figure to imitate.

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CHALLENGING THE NORMS REGARDING WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE

VICTORIA VANASHVILI, the fashion and portrait photographer is well known for her photographic editorial, “Plus Size Bodies, What’s Wrong With Them Anyway”, January 2012. The model for this series of what would in our time be considered “over weight women” is Katya Zharkova. This acknowledgement of woman’s body representing all sizes, flies against the artificial norm that has been set during the 20th century. The over thin, emaciated look which has been popularized since about the 1960′s, has led to social psychological issues for woman to became over critical of their bodies. This led to illnesses like anorexia, and other psychological disturbances. Weight-loss ads became a multi-billion dollar industry at the expense of a distortion in how women perceive themselves. “Fear of fat” paradoxically has had a great lot to do with  another socio-psychological problem, namely obesity.

Janashvili’s contribution to a better understanding of the evils of a distorted self image, influences students of photography. Her example of going against the grain of accepted norms, serves as an example to students designing ads, to also challenge conventions. At the Vega school photography students have been given an assignment to do exactly that.

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My Fine Art Photography series, titled, Fragmented. See text below

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FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY. My meeting with the extraordinary combination of old wisdom and childlike innocence in the person of Cliffie, was the inspiration for a series of images which I can summarize with the key words, Fragmented, Fenced in. Yet, the loving playfulness, exuded by this Child/Woman with a chronological age of 64, but a mental age of three or sometimes younger or a bit older, is such to leave you with a renewed question mark about what it is to be human. What is wholeness? What is normality? What is skew, disintegrated and distorted? What is aesthetics, music and rhythm or noise? Who or what decides these categories?

My aim was to examine integration of people with disabilities in socalled ‘normal’ society. How do those looking after the disabled benefit from this act of humaneness. And vice versa.

The title, Fragmented, came to me while pondering a suitable theme to explore the art style, Abstraction and the Collage technique. Both in essence being methods dealing with disintegrated wholes. 

Do we not take a kettle apart to get to the broken piece that needs fixing?  Is abstraction, and putting things back in non-perfect new wholes, not what lies at the bottom of the disjointed, art historical style,  that emerged with Pablo Picasso’s famous painting, ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon from 1907, which grew into the style, called Cubism consisting of newly assembled fragmented pieces of ordinary household items, and figures? 

When I overheard the conversation about Cliffie, between two women on my once a week morning walk in the Greenbelt of Constantia, one of the suburbs of Cape Town, I knew I needed to know more about Cliffie’s story. It felt right to explore her story through the lens of Collage and Abstraction. 

The conversation I was hearing fragments of, due to my failing hearing, was about a woman of 64 years old, with the mental capacity of a pre-school child. This child/adult’s love of Cliff Richard’s music has lead to her taking on his identity insisting on being called Cliffie. Marie Botha/Cliffie knows all her hero’s songs, even though, when singing her heart out, strumming a tiny toy guitarre, it is sometimes difficult to decipher the words of the song. Cliffie’s diction is similar to that of a very young pre-schooler. 

This led to my meeting with Cliffie when her carer, Frances Hills, her six years older sister, who has officially adopted Cliffie as her child, invited me along when she fetched Cliffie from Adams Farm for her regular weekend stay in Constantia. Here Cliffie has her own room filled with toys, Noddy books, and her beloved Cliff Richard CD’s.

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PANNING tips in ACTION PHOTOGRAPHYwww.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-pan-for-action-photography/Put the camera in shutter-priority mode and set the shutter speed according to the speed of the subject. Set your camera's autofocus mode to continuous mode so that it will try to keep the moving subject in focus all of the time. Try to keep the focus placed over the subject as you pan.

No matter what kind of SLR camera you have, having the proper settings is key to being able to take panning shots. First, make sure that your camera is in manual mode. On most cameras, this is the M on the mode selection dial. Along with manual mode, you will also want to change your focus setting to continuous mode. This allows your camera to continuously focus on and track a moving object as long as you have the shutter release button halfway depressed.

1 Get set for panning Use the Tv or S mode to set a slower shutter speed than you would normally need to freeze the action. What speed depends on how fast your subject is moving and your position in relation to them: are you on a fast or slow corner?

Are they coming at you three-quarters on, or hammering past you down the straight?

For most motorsports on a mid-speed corner, try shooting at around 1/125sec and see how sharp your subject is and how much motion blur is in your background. Increase your shutter speed if your subject is too blurred, decrease your shutter speed if the background is too sharp.

Experiment with different shutter speeds for different events and different locations on the track – see the table, right, for suggested speeds.

2 Pan and focus There are two ways to focus when panning; autofocus (AF) or manual focus (MF). Autofocus can produce mixed results if you’re not at the right speed to follow the focus on your moving target.

On the other hand, manual focus can produce more consistent results, but it takes practice and patience. If you are using autofocus, focus on a part of the track that you know the car or bike is going to go over, then switch to manual focus mode to lock the focus.

Frame widely, so that you have plenty of space to fit in the fast-moving vehicle. Use motordrive, then track your subject, pressing the shutter just before they hit your spot on the track.

3 Move your body The trick to panning is get a good spot trackside, with room to swing your big lens from left to right without anybody being in your line of vision.

Take a wide stance and, moving in a 90-degree arc with your upper body, smoothly track the car/bike throughout and shoot continuously.

Always remember to follow through the arc – avoid starting or stopping abruptly, otherwise the motion blur will be messy.

How to fake perfect panning shots Free action photography cheat sheet 101 Photoshop tips you have to know Break the rules with white balance

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ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY  10 tips See below.

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ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY research

Action Photography Tip #1: Plan ahead! Carefully plan where you will set up.  This is probably the biggest mistake for action photographers.  I can’t tell you how many parents I see on the sidelines shooting their son’s soccer game from the middle of the field.  Since the action will mostly occur near the goal, that is a much better place to set up.  No matter what action you are going to shoot, you need to predict where you can be to capture the face of the subject.

Action Photography Tip #2: Pre-focus. If the subject suddenly springs into the frame, you might consider using a technique called pre-focusing.

Action Photography Tip #3: Shoot in short bursts rather than one long bursts.  This will prevent your buffer from filling up, which could cost you the shot.  I usually shoot action in three shot bursts, wait a second, then shoot another burst.  To do this, turn your camera to continuous high drive mode.

Action Photography Tip #4:  Give the subject space to move.  For fast-moving subjects, the best composition is usually to allow some space on the side of the photo where they are traveling.  For example, the photo featured on this page has more space on the left side of the frame, since that is where the person is jumping to.  This composition will feel much more comfortable to the viewer so they don’t wonder what’s in front of the person.

Action Photography Tip #5: Get a fast memory card! This can help prevent your camera from slowing down if the memory card write speed is the bottleneck in your system.  Not sure which memory card to buy?  Check out this post.

Action Photography Tip #6: Don’t miss the face.  Capturing the expression on the face of the subject will add much more drama to the photo.  Did you notice the face of the guy jumping into the icy water?

Action Photography Tip #7: Shoot JPEG.  Action photography is one of the only times that I switch over to JPEG.  Since JPEG files are much smaller than RAW files, most DSLRs can capture a few more frames per second on JPEG than RAW.

Action Photography Tip #8: Get down low.  One of the most important–and lesser-known–composition tips is that shooting from down low will make your subject look powerful.  Look at any picture of a CEO in Forbes or Business Week and you’ll see that they are often shot from a low angle to make the person seem like a towering giant.  The same is true in action shots, where photographers generally want to make the subject look dramatic and powerful.

Action Photography Tip #9:  Shoot with two eyes open.  I learned this trick from teaching classes in shotgun shooting.  Closing one eye lessens your ability to determine depth and hinder’s your eye’s ability to track movement.  It takes some practice, but I always shoot sports and action with two eyes open, and it seems to help me get the shot.

Action Photography Tip #10:  Don’t mash the shutter button! Just because you’re shooting action doesn’t mean you should forget last week’s tips on getting sharper photos.

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