research summary 2016
Research Summary
Daisy Cumming
The Copy and The Series
The idea of creating still life came from the workshop we had on still life photography, however I was mot excited by the traditional and old-fashioned style of still life that features fruit or other home objects. I then decided I wanted to explore modern still life, and combine the projects with my portfolio, that mainly features art and fashion based projects.
I took my main inspiration from book: On Display, by Maurice Scheltens, where he arranged designer clothing items into a form that expressed the items the most weird and creative way. My copy image came from this booked, for Dazed and Confused Magazine 2006. It is of a snail like creature, formed by a two long sleeved shirts, another t-shirt, and two apples.
The shoot for this image was much difficult than it turned out to be, as trying to copy the exact lighting, although looked like a simple arrangement, was challenging to achieve the slightest shadows and highlights in the image.
My ideas for the series project followed on with the thoughts of using clothing in my images, and similar lighting arrangements, however I wanted to combine collaging into the series, and was not sure on how to do this at the start. I began to study other collage artists, and produced the idea of using clothing items on a flat surface, to give the impression in the final photographs that the subject was actually handmade with a collage.
Visual Research
The three main photographers and artists I looked at were Maurice Scheltens, a modern still life photographer, Laura Letinsky, a still life photographer of food, and Rafafans, who always combined paper and digital collage with his photography for fashion magazines.
Rafafans was shown to me in a lecture, and I loved his work the minute I saw it, as he’s approach to photography is the exact style of fashion and art I want to achieve. I love the way he works with fabrics and collage to form a vibrant fashion image and this is where I took my main inspiration and ideas. Also, I thought it would be a good set of final images for a colour darkroom project, to test with the colour filtrations to create a correct exposure with the different range of colours in my own images.
I had to look at fashion magazine to see if my artwork would fit in a hard copy like that, as this type of photography could be mistaken as just still life, or a piece of artwork. However most days, you see anything in a fashion magazine.
Production
For the production process, I have to think hard on how I could achieve the outcome I wanted and came up with numerous ideas. These included: photographing in the studio, on a coloured or plain flat background. Where I would arrange clothing items in a way I would collage paper on to paper, and photograph from high up, giving the impression or illusion I have collages the pieces onto paper. Another being to create a series of pairs of images that play off each other, by including the clothing from one still life image into the second image which features a model, or a location, and another being to photograph separate clothing items with a digital camera, or film then print them out digitally, and place onto floor background with a collage approach and photograph that as still life, much like Schetlens cardboard still life.
My final shoot was set indoors, using the ambient light coming in from the window, and also using a white reflector to bounce light into the shadows. I believe this lighting arrangement was suitable for my photographs and it showed the clothing items with their natural colours. This set out was really good for me as I has a large soft light source, which was much bigger than a soft box in the studio. Also this homely setting related to my photographs as well, keeping the theme of identity and the way people judged someone through their clothes and the way they are dressed, however this is all kept unknown to the audience, leaving not much to think about.
Evaluation
In conclusion, I am happy with how I used the large format hassleblad monorail camera, as this is the first time I have used one to take a serious photograph. My strengths throughout this project include flowing my idea from the copy into the series quite nicely, and using my exploration with collage and modern still life into the series project; I believe I visually researched well, resulting in having an idea that had many lines of enquiry to, where I had options to work with the clothing.
My weaknesses throughout this project would be struggling in the colour darkroom, and printing in the dark and figuring out the differences between the colour filters on the enlarger; I believe my final images could have been a lot stronger if I researched how the other photographers had shot there own still life in a fashion based approach, as this was hard for me to combine to two together, and I could have researched on what fashion and still life should contain in the photography.