CONTEMPORARY PHOTOMAPPING

For this assignment I will explore the use of mapping in contemporary practices by looking at various photographers and artists. I will also make references to other contemporary themes that exist within photography that are relevant to the photomapping projects that i will examine.

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Sound-waves

For my final exhibition I want to incorporate sound waves as a projection above my images. The sound waves will be a projection of live conversation around my exhibition which will represent the action of real human interaction. To activate the installation, you must participate, the same characteristic as Mark Boulos' 'Echo'. 

I will have 2 or 3 prints of my strongest imagery and they will be mounted on the wall quite small. approximately 10x8inches. This will mean that to engage with the images, people will have to be close to the installation, therefore activating it. 

This type of installation will be a statement on how we have to communicate socially in the real world rather than just in a virtual/online world.

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MARNI SHINDELMAN & NATE LARSON – GEOTAGGING/SOCIAL MEDIA/THE INTERNET

Geotagging sets the tone for most of Larson and Shindelaman’s projects. The duo act from the US uses the simple mobile phone technology to put thoughts to a photograph. In ‘Geolocation’ -2009-2012, using ‘tweets’ from Twitter with the attached geolocation, the pair then photographs the exact place that the tweet was uploaded from and then uses the tweet as the caption. Similar work includes ‘Hashtags’ -2012, where the same technique is used but the tweets are taken from popular hash tags. Another work by the couple is ‘GPS Drawings’ – 2009-2010, where celebrity faces are created from hiking trails lead by coordinates given via social networks and followed using the GPS systems in smartphones. 

Apps such as Flickr, Instagram and Facebook allow you to attach a geolocation as you upload an image. This then uploads to your own personal map showing you and others where you have travelled to, mapping your events and memories to the corresponding location. Photo Maps is a commonly used tool on various applications for phone and computers not just the specified ones. With more and more people using this tool, it’s advertised as a great way to see how close you are to a friend or if you have visited the same place as a friend. Or even to check out the amazing places that they have been that you haven’t. Travel is being advertised more and more. This itself is becoming a trend.

In the rise of the digital age that we now live in, social media is taking over our society with brands, company’s, celebrities and TV shows using it as a platform for publicity, popularity and advertising. Some see social networking as negative effect on our social lives, making us feel more connected but simultaneously disconnecting us physically from reality. With the technology that most of us possess, such as a mobile camera phones, digital compact cameras and webcams, photography is being exploited. However artists such as Mishka Henner, Taryn Simon, Corinne Vionnet and Larson and Shindelman are amongst the few contemporary practitioners that are using this to their advantage. What makes them contemporary is how they keep up with times and acknowledge trends and in most cases, use them to make new trends within the photography and art world. 

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"Luckily, Image Atlas evolves and changes daily based on popular consciousness, global events, economic fluctuations, belief, and the influx of new images and expressions. The tracking of its changes interests me most." - Taryn Simon

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"Are we trying to reproduce the image of an image?” - Corinne Vionnet

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CORINNE VIONNET - APPROPRIATION/THE INTERNET/SOCIAL MEDIA

Along with Mishka Henner, Corinne Vionnet is another artist who has recognized this image-saturated world. With so much photography available, she too has used the extensive archive of the online world to appropriate others images into her own work.

Using social media sites such as Flickr, Vionnet was able to produce Idris Khan inspired images that represented famous monuments or places. In the way that Khan appropriated the Becher’s work by layering the images over one another to produce this blurred version of one image, Vionnet was able to do the same with the publics online images. Carefully selecting which images she used and how to layer them took months of preparation for the artist and the final pieces where exhibited as collective called ‘Photo Opportunities’- 2005-2013.

The artist was attracted to the idea of how many tourists visited these famous places and monuments and all photographed them from the same angles, therefore creating virtually the same image.  Inspired by this she then set out to produce her own work using hundreds of other people’s images of the same constructions that they had uploaded to the Flickr website.

For me I think the work distinguished three points. Firstly acting as map of popularity, locating the most visited and most documented places and spaces across the globe. Secondly, expressing how the need to create new images is nil as the human race has created a phenomenal archive and is obsessed with continuing to document everything through the medium of photography. And thirdly, acting as a commentary on how involved we are with our online presence, feeling the need to document and share our lives, and experiences to the masses for anyone to see. 

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A new approach to photography is seeing the light - photographers without cameras. The need to press the shutter is replaced by a direct interest in images - not necessarily in making images. - Hans Aarsman, Hans Eijkelboom, Hans van de Meer, Hans Wolf and Hans Samson - In the jury report for The Kleine Hans award in July 2011

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MISHKA HENNER - APPROPRIATION/THE INTERNET

Nominated for this years Deutsche Börse Award, Mishka Henner has certainly had a quick rise to fame with only being nationally recognized in the past few years.  In 2011, Mishka Henner also opted to use Google Street View as a tool to create his next project ‘No Mans Land’. At first glance the images appear to depict hitchhikers at the side of the road however, the images actually reveal working, female prostitutes.

This body of work took months and months of Henner gathering precise locations, searching through online forums where people discuss and exchange postcodes and street names to find the images that Google has captured.  Although this piece of work caused great controversy it was also shocking for many people to discover that these types of forums existed and that in order to create this project, Henner had to consume himself within these sites like a covert investigation. But it wasn’t the content of these images that caused anarchy amongst critics. The source of the images and the way in which Henner had used them raised big questions about authenticity and authorship. Where Doug Rickard has photographed the scenes off his computer screen, Mishka Henner had used an even simpler technique by screen grabbing them. Henner argues that in doing this he is creating a new image and that is what makes the images his. Also he has curated the series and chosen out the scenes making the collective also his work. 

This new style of image making (or image taking depending on your perspective) is clearly at the forefront of contemporary practice as artists and photographers all over the world are beginning to see how the world of photography is changing. In previous years, photography was seen as a prestigious job, which required skill and patience. In todays society, technology and software has taken away so much of this perspective as people now believe every amazing photograph to be ‘photoshopped’ and also allowed for amateurs to be just as fluid in image making. In a 2012 article in the British Journal of Photography, Henner says “We don’t need to carry a camera around with us all the time any more because everything is being photographed in any case.” It appears that Mishka Henner is one of the many photographers that have recognized this.

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The very definition of photography is expanding. Personally, I am ecstatic about it, and I see a massive frontier that is unfolding to feed and fuel my obsessions.” - Doug Rickard

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DOUG RICKARD - NON-PLACES/APPROPRIATION/THE INTERNET

When Google Street View began in 2007 it aimed to capture every street in the USA using nine multi facing cameras on top of a van. In this technologically fuelled global environment, Doug Rickard is one of a few that have begun to use this public archive as a means for a new project through the use of another contemporary practice called appropriation.

 In 2012, Rickard set out a task to find and represent the towns and streets most affected by financial difficulty. Using Google Street View, he was able to locate what The Daily Mail Online calls ‘forgotten streets’ in creating ‘The New American Picture’. Similar to the derelict and empty spaces within Preston outlined in ‘Open to the Public’, these are the non-places of America. The destitute areas represent how the economic recession has affected these small areas by taking away any life and purpose, now only inhabiting few residents. The shells that are left become these non-places where the physical buildings exist but the atmospheric presence and the aura of the place doesn’t.

 To create this set of images, Rickard trolled through thousands of hours of street view and selected the scenes that he wanted. He simply re photographed the images by photographing his computer screen as they came up.  By doing this he is not only making a statement about how he is creating his own work, he also captures the pixelated aesthetic (sometimes described as appearing quite painterly) which contextualizes the project as he leaves in evidence of the images origin. Whilst critics argue and discuss the authenticity of the work, appropriation is becoming an ever more common choice of technique in photography and art most likely as a result this digital age we live in and the obsession we have with the internet and virtual spaces.

 Although this project highlights these deprived areas, he is highlighting them non-the less. Using the map to put them back on the map. Although the financial status of the places will most likely remain the same as a result of this project, these forgotten places can be remembered. 

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'Clearly the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces…'  - Marc Augé

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OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - NON-PLACES

This very recent project was exhibited in Unit 12 of the Guild Hall Arcade in Preston from 24th of January until the 1st of February 2013. The project explored and mapped out all of the vacant spaces within Preston City Centre. Expressed by the title, the project was aimed at inviting the public to view and then to express their opinion on what they thought should be done with the empty spaces.  It was also a visual map of today’s economic climate and how this is affecting even the smaller cities such as Preston.

  This idea of mapping vacant spaces in amongst the new wave of contemporary practice involving non spaces and places. As the buildings and physicality of the places suggest their existence is real, their importance and usage is nil, this evaluates them as non-places. The large white installation map with the black markers covering the unoccupied spaces allows us to put into perspective the ratio of used and unused spaces within the city.

  The project was funded by the ‘In Certain Places’ scheme, which was initiated in 2003 and works along side the Harris Museum and Art Gallery and the University of Central Lancashire. The website explains ‘In Certain Places is a programme of temporary public artworks and events, which examines how artists can contribute to the development of a city.’ This statement given by the website explains that the project aims to help the city move on and find new ways of using these spaces as a positive reinvention of the city.

  Artists Katja van Driel and Wouter Osterholt were the commissioned artists that created and curated ‘Open to the Public’ and gave talks and one on one interaction about the vacant spaces with the community to explain what proved to be a somewhat controversial topic with some members of the public.  Debates on specific spaces such as Preston Bus Station and the Tithebarn Project were raised and discussed within the exhibition space with anyone welcome. The debates raised ideas and was able to depict a picture of what the community wanted and felt was needed and what the council have plans to do.

  The exhibition was supported by a 154-page book displaying photographs of the vacant buildings accompanied with black silhouettes of the shapes of the spaces. Although some would see this as a negative outline of the lack of Preston’s financial investment, the project hopes to see the community being more involved with their city and give a positive outlook on the alternative future that could be created for Preston. 

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“Notebook. No photographer should be without one!” -Ansel Adams

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“I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do – that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.” – Diane Arbus

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SOPHIE CALLE - PHOTOJOURNALISM

  French photographer and installation artist Sophie Calle, known for her unethical and unusual works, undertook a project, which was later deemed very controversial. In the project ‘Suite Vénitienne’, published in 1979, Calle becomes obsessed with a man that she met at an opening coincidently after she had spent the day following him.

  When Calle returned to Paris she felt lost and felt the need to reconnect herself with the city. Much like the character of the ‘flaneur’ coined in the 1890’s by Charles Baudelaire, Calle wandered the city and without meaning to, began to produce the prolific works that she is well known for. In this particular project, after meeting the man at the opening she finds that he is planning a trip to Venice and so Suite Vénitienne is about her travelling to Venice and her attempts and desire as well as struggles, to discover his location and to follow his every move.

  Sophie Calle’s approach to each of her works falls into many categories. Some say its documentary others say its conceptual art. I like to look at her work as photojournalism as her images and projects are all concerned with unearthing, exploring and recording about a particular subject or event.

  In this piece of work Calle’s journalistic approach means that she notes down in diary form, the time and place of each occurrence, even when nothing particularly exciting comes of it, she notes it down, as this is still one of the stages of her journey. Like in all of her works, it is clear that Calle’s focus is always in the process and the journey, although she considers the formats of how she presents the final outcome, the focus is always on the journey and paths that she has taken in order to produce and carry out the project.

   In the publication given the same title as the project, we are able to read all of Calle’s text accompanied with the images taken at those times. On more than one occasion she notes down each exact street that she takes as she follows ‘Henri B’. It is evident that this is crucial to her process as she clearly has a need to record as much information as she can. It could also be argued that by publishing these notes and the information within, she is inviting others to follow her, to rein-act and retrace the journey that she went on and to rediscover her work via this format. Mapping in reference to Calle doesn’t just mean these events of following and wandering around the city streets but also how she maps her life in multiple projects. The Birthday Ceremony and The Appointment were other works by Sophie Calle, which involved using installations along side text to map out key aspects of her life. In each project she contextualises her own life and is able to let us understand what drives each or her projects.

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Mapping Within Contemporary Photographic Practices.

In the past few months I have began to discover new types of photography. As I begin to engage with these new findings, it seems that all the paths link back to the same road. This is how I chose to explore the contemporary themes within mapping.

I started my research with Sophie Calle as her work has always been an interest and inspiration to me, and recently she has influenced a lot of my work. It seems that her practice is consuming my own at the present, however, in this assignment I reference her only as a starting point, which leads me on to more contemporary practitioners and eventually narrowed down to a particular contemporary topic.