The Constructed Image

An exploration into the constructed image and how to effects the way in which we consume photography

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Duane Michals

Duane Michals is a self-taught American photographer who deals with his relationships with power and politics as well as looking at themes such as life, death and sexuality within his work. His work has a clear psychological feel to it as he begins to construct his own realities in his imagery – this is something that was seen as radical at the time of shooting as documentary photography and the decisive moment was on ‘trend.’ However Michal’s was more intrested in photographing what conventionally could not be photographed. When Michals first began shooting he did not use any additional lighting when creating his images and writing/drawing on his photographers the photography world was confused. Instead of looking outward to create images, Michal’s began looking inwards. This resulted in his images been clear not ‘reality’, for example in the Christ in New York series the halo has been edited on and is crudely done. As the viewer we can clearly see the halo has been added through manipulating the exposure – as these images are so clearly manipulated it leads us to begin to look at them more metaphorically, we become more aware that the artist has manipulated the image and thus we look for the reason why.

Michal’s work is so extensive I could look into many different aspects, however for this post I am focusing on looking at the filmic aspect to his work. Often sequence is used in Michal’s work, often with each image we see the narrative unfold and the sequences are designed to evoke a reaction in the viewer, rather than simply depict reality. This sense of the work been clearly fictional means that the viewer focus on the concept of the work. He was also interested in the theatrical element of photography, in his series Empty New York http://www.dcmooregallery.com/exhibitions/2014-04-24_duane-michals-empty-new-york he saw the scenes as film sets – thus this led him to begin to see life as an elaborate film set, with people ‘acting’ out their daily lives.

Handwritten text is also regularly used in Michal’s work, however rather than using text as a descriptive tool to caption the work he uses it to provide information that the image its self could not convey. In ‘there are things here that are unseen’ he comments upon the feelings and smells associated with the scene. This brings the work into a more filmic domain as through film we are presented with such information. The text gives a personal insight into his work and he often uses prose and poetry, adding his own musings to the work

 http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/duane-michals#17

http://www.americanphotomag.com/interview-duane-michals-50-years-sequences-and-staging-photos

http://projects.newyorker.com/portfolio/michals-empty-ny/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography--the-talking-picture-show-andrew-palmer-reviews-the-retrospective-of-the-work-of-duane-michals-at-the-royal-photographic-society-in-bath-1551621.html

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Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin doesn’t work within the constructed image genre, and instead works with social documentary, however her work deals with the cinematic. The work I have chosen to look at is ‘The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency’ which is a series of intimate and compelling images of her social circle. There is a rawness and honesty to these images as the camera became an extension of herself, her friends where completely comfortable with her photographing them. Goldins work is often said to have a ‘snapshot’ aesthetic to them which at the time was a radical development of photographic style. She wasn’t formally trained in photography and began to use photography as a coping mechanism when introduced to photography in college; creating these images as a visual dairy of her experiences, giving these images a sense of rawness and truth to them.

This work was originally exhibited as a slideshow with an accompanying soundtrack purely to entertain her friends, which was later exhibited in the clubs/areas in which the images where made. Through the use of sequencing and the music alongside this slideshow it almost begins to reference film. There is a sense of the filmic within this slideshow due to the autobiographical narrative expressed within the work. Later on this work was re-produced as a photobook however in interviews Goldin has stated that she prefers the work to be viewed in a slideshow format as her dream had always been to be a filmmaker and she is not particular concerned with the technical perfections of the prints, and instead more with the notion of memory and the sequence of the piece. The work is monumental in scale, often lasting up to and over an hour. The sheer scale of this work and the manner in which Goldin revists the work regularly, adding and revising the images included that creates this intimate and cinematic experience.

Goldin has had experience in creating videos, she worked with the film maker Edmund Coulthard creating a film about her life and work titled ‘I’ll be your mirror;’ however I have not been able to find a version of this online. Prior to this she began to create an autobiographical film dealing with her sister’s death, however she felt this was too difficult to continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlZJMS1wwsU

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10746151/Nan-Goldin-from-post-punk-parties-to-parental-love.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/nan-goldin-2649

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Began the first draft of my essay today, it’s very unorganized and unfinished right now as i’m just working on the content. I also need to add some more blog posts as i’ve got some new books out which i’ve been referencing. Four hours later and it’s time to take a break. 

Essay

Discuss the ways of which constructed realities have been explored by two recent art photographers.

 Photography and film have had a direct relationship since the birth of both art forms, over time each medium has ‘borrowed from and lent to the other. Each has envied the qualities of the other. And at key moments each has relied upon the other for it’s self-definition’ (Company, 2007) Film and the cinema relies upon constructed realities within its work, entire film sets are fabricated along with the characters and narratives within them. In contemporary photography practises this act of constructing and fabricating a reality has grown into its own sub-genre ‘Cinematic Photography.’ This term refers to works that has this sense of the cinema within it, where there is a sense of a constructed narrative, where the viewer is able to sense a before and after to the scene. It also refers to work that has a ‘filmic’ quality to the light and colour within the work and where photographers reference stylistic choices we would associate with film.

There are many photographers who draw upon cinematic devices within their work; Nan Goldin’s ballad of sexual dependency references the sense of narrative found in films in its presentation. She takes the private and places it into the public domain, inviting the viewer to see her life unfold through her picture dairy.  Duane Michals adds handwritten notes on his images and sequences his images in order to create a sense of narrative and to expand the language of photography outside the limitations of the photograph. Gregory Crewdson creates highly constructed scenes of American suburb’s and through the use of cinematic devices transforms these ordinary scenes into something that has a sense of tension and surreality to them. It is this act of using cinematic devices to blur the lines between fact and fiction that I will be exploring in this essay.  

 Hannah Starkey’s series, Twenty Nine Pictures combines the banal, everyday moments of existence to create these highly stylised, cinematic images. Starkey’s images depict the quiet dramas of everyday life of women and are set in ordinary, urban environments. The scenarios depicted in her imagery are the fleeting moments, the pauses we experience in life. They are titled with a rough estimate of the date/time of the shit – providing a sense of a hazy, ambiguous fact that references how we memory is viewed. This link to memory within the images paired with the familiarity of the scenarios means they could almost be Social Documentary Images and thus the work begins to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

In diCorcia’s series ‘Heads’ also hints at the Social Documentary genre however through process rather than aesthetic. His work was created by singling individuals out of a crowd in NY and photographing them without their knowledge, lighting them with a strobe light which was connected to his camera. This lighting technique meant that despite been shot in daylight the subject is illuminated and appears to emerge from the darkness, spotlighting them and creating a halo around his subjects, giving them a sense of heighten importance and a ‘kind of heroic grandeur.’ (Campbell, 2009)

Both works blur the lines between fact and fiction. In Starkey’s work there is a sense of the familiarity within the work and as described the Saatchi Gallery ‘the photographs [are] reconstructed scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film.’ Each of the scenes are something that the viewer can relate to, yet something about them is slight askew. The images appear almost candid yet when scrutinized further the subjects within the images almost begin to reference dolls, they are un-naturally static; almost as though the sense of narrative that goes with these subjects has been artificially suspended in time. This creates a tension between the real and the imaginary within this work. In diCorcias work he explores the ‘enchantment of fantasy without relinquishing the power of fact’ (Gallery, 2001) due to the use of artificial lighting there is a strong contrast between the subjects face and the inky darkness of the background. There is also a sense of contrast created within the image itself, the subject appears naturalistic, immersed in his/her or own thoughts, oblivious to the presence of the camera. Whereas the aesthetics suggest something much different – they feel highly stylized, constructed and cinematic, as though it would be impossible for an image like this to be created without the knowledge of the subject, but of course it was.

  Starkey also ‘Abstracts and distorts reality through the use of both windows and mirrors’ which are a running theme through her work.

Diffferences  

 Phillip Lorcia diCorcia

Individuals in the crowd are singled out – up close

Rather than remain part of the crowed the individuals aqquire a kind of heroic grandeur

Large prints

Oil paintings – lighting

Triggered flash – subjects unaware

Subjects crisp – back ground blurs around them into a inky  darkness

Artificial lighting – contrast

Momentarily placed under the spot light

People remain imeresed in their own thoughts

No indication of physical setting – hints at social context

Sense of the urban conveyed

The private made public

Theatericalness of the finished image

Enchantment of fantasy without relinquishing the power of fact

 Hannah Starkey

Untitled – twenty nine pictures

Photographic mediations on contempary life

Freeze frame

‘the photographs reconstructed scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film’ Saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Not candid, constructed

Static – forces us to look

Mirrors, windows and smoke – interior physiological space

Isolation – no sense of interaction/conversation between the characters

‘Abstracts and distorts reality through the use of both windows and mirrors’

Stages senarious based on the experiences of young women living in the city

Suggest a narrative that has been artificially been suspended in time

Subtle – compared with Crewdson and Sherman

Encagment with the narrative

Suggestive possibilities of the still photograph

Intrested in the power of a single photograph, how it lodges itself in our personal collective memory. How one image has to contain everything an evolving narrative to keep the viewer intrested. Mayeb hour consciousness, cognitive process of reading a photograph is deeper because of its restrictions – Hannah Starkey

About the motionless subject in the still image

Medative

Enables the space around the subject to act as a metaphor for psychological interiority

Quiet dramas, ordinary spaces – understated

Large format, prints big – allowed the viewer to scrutinise the image

Banal everday moments, highly stylized constructed images

Filmic, suggest narrative

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ESSAY PLAN

intro - what cinematic photography is, brief introduction to the sub genre and those who practice it 100 - 150 words

Who I will be looking at, What projects and Why 100 - 150

Hannah Starkey - Detailed analysis of work 200-300

Phillip De Lorcia - Detailed analysis of work 200-300

Simmilarites 400, 3/4 points 

Differences 400, 3/4 points 

Conclusion - 100-150 

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Finally decided on my essay title, which means my blogs going to start to become a bit more focused as I start to research and write my essay.

My chosen question is; Discuss the ways of which constructed realities have been explored by two recent art photographers. The two photographers of which i’ve chosen are Hannah Starkey and Phillip De Lorcia 

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Phillip de Lorcia’s series Heads was shot in 2002, New York. The project consists of 19 portraits of the people of New York. To create these images De Lorcia pre-focused the camera for a pre-determined zone and wired a strobe light and camera up to be underneath some scaffolding which were activated by a radio signal when he pressed the shutter. While these images are portraits of individuals they are also portraits of New York when viewed collectively, through his work De Lorcia has shown the diversity of the residents of NYC.

For me this series of images falls into the constructed image genre due to the way in which they were created and the aesthetics this results in. The use of the strobe light in broad daylight causes the subject to be illuminated and emerge from the darkness of the rest of street, giving the images a cinematic feel and create a stark contrast between the realness of the subjects expressions and the highly dramatized lighting. There is also a sense of the subjects been spotlighted/haloed that works with the cinematic feel to this work and gives these everyday people a heightened importance. There is a sense of narrative/story attached to the subjects, as though they were the protagonist in their own movie. This gives the images an almost surreal sense to them, it forces the viewer to double look at the work as although they are familiar characters the use of lighting is so surreal. This been said it could equally be argued that these are documentary images due to the element of chance involved with this work and that the people photographed are real people, just living their daily lives. The facial expressions of the subjects in these images capture an almost intimate naturalism that could not be staged, yet the context is entirely set up– these images did not just come about by chance; this has resulted in many debates about under what genre these images would fit. For me this mix of planned strategies and the element of chance associated with the work almost creates a link between reality and fantasy and causes the viewer to question what is the ‘real’ and when dose something start to become fabricated and constructed?

This work created a lot of controversy due to the nature in which it was shot. De Lorcia didn’t at any point in creating this art work speak to the subjects of his images to ask permission to use their photograph; this ultimately lead to him been taken to court by one man. De Lorcia in fact won the case and argued that there can be no expectation of privacy in a public place, such as NYC where they are tourists and cameras everywhere. The work sparked ethics debates between free speech advocates and those concerned with an individual’s right to privacy and about whether this could be constituted as Art or not.

 https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/philip-lorca-dicorcia-head-10-2002

http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/connecticut/articles/philip-lorca-dicorcia-empire-of-illusion/

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Faking It, before Photoshop was an exhibition at The Metropolitan in New York and explores how the manipulating and constructing images isn’t a new phenomenon. It explores our relationship with photography as a truth and challenges the idea that photography (pre photoshop) depicted the truth. The exhibition consists of work from the 1840’s right through to the 1980’s and focuses on images manipulated in post process, ie after the negative has been made. There is a series of techniques explored within this exhibition including: multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage and retouching the negative. There are seven themes explored in this exhibition.

Picture Perfect

Looks at a group of photographers who primarily wanted to please customer, they would hand pain on to achieve a life like richness to their images.

As this was at a time when photography was still in the developing stages, film used to be almost ‘colour blind’ to blue yet, meaning that the sky would be a different exposure time to the ground, thus causing problems for landscape photographers. This meant that landscape photographers would combine two negatives, one exposed for the ground and one for the sky in order to achieve an image with a good exposure.

Another problem faced by photographers was the long exposure time on group portraits, photographers would often find somebody had moved during the exposure, for this reason group portraits where often shot individually then pasted together.

Artifice in the Name of Art

Focuses on work from the early 1860’s when photography as an art form was under debate. For many art critics at this time the aesthetic value of photography came from the photographers’ ability to shape what was recorded by the camera as more value was put upon the art of crafting art works. Artists featured in this section focused upon combinations of negatives to create dreamlike, mythical worlds of artistic aspirations. As technologies advances artists began to using staging and multiple exposures to create such scenes.

Politics and persuasion

Looks at work manipulated with a political interest in mind. Weather this to be sway public opinion or to support or protest against government regimes.

Novelties and amusements

This section looks at the 1850’s where commercial portrait studios where moving in to the mainstream and man offered novelty images to support business. These were much like the photobooths we have today where people could have humorous images created. These where later commercialised and mass produced as post cards.

Pictures in print

When photojournalism was in its very early stages many magazine/newspapers found that the limitations of the camera often meant photographers couldn’t capture events as they happened as we do today. This lead too many news images been completely fabricated/manipulated, thus dropping the reliability of news imagery at this time. Advertisements and fashion imagery are also

Minds Eye

This images in this section stemmed from the surrealist movement in Paris in the 1960’s where photographers where experimenting with new ways to express the power of dreams and the unconsciousness through photography. These artist where working with manipulating reality in order to depict an inner world and their own sub-conscious. They sought to challenge and expand the medium beyond the restrictions of ‘straight’ photography. Surrealist photographers such as Man Ray and Maurice Tabard still influence photographers today

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/arts/design/faking-it-at-the-met-a-photography-exhibition.html?_r=0

 http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/faking-it/picture-perfect

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This work was exhibited in the MOMA, New York.

Maurice Tabard was on the leading early surrealist photographers work with photo-montages, double exposures and combination printing to create distorted images that had been taken out of their original context and given an entirely new role. The surrealist movement stemmed from the DADA movement and was founded in Paris in 1924. While surrealism undoubtedly had a large influence on art both at the time and today it was in fact a cultural movement. Whilst influencing art, literature and music the movement also influenced the political stance of those who were involved in it – meaning many of the leading figures in surrealism where socialist who believed in themes such as communism and anarchism.  The movement had its roots in physiological theories, especially those of Sigmund Freud who believed that our dreams held the key to unlock or unconscious mind. He published a book entitled ‘the interpretation of dreams’ and was the leading psychologist in terms of dream analysis and free association. Those involved in the surrealist movement then took this idea and expressed their own dreams and unconsciousness through visual arts and writing. Breton described the movement to be an ‘expression of the ‘real’ functioning though without the control and restriction of reasoning.’ The movement advocated the idea that the ordinary expressions and dreams people had are vital in understanding or consciousness and resolved the previously contradictory conditions of the dream and reality.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phsr/hd_phsr.htm

http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/surrealism

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Judith Lyons’s works with digital imaging and her series ‘Photographic Reproduction’ consist of nine complex geometric patterns that represent female body parts, an embryo and a foetus. These images are created in a ‘camera less’ manor, she creates photograms in darkrooms and then uses digital technology to manipulate and construct the images. This results in images that the viewer is able to link with the reproductive process through the sematic language used in the images.

This method of constructing images without the use of a camera and creating these images that illustrate something that it is impossible to see with the human eye, let alone photograph is interesting. It challenges the notion and belief that photography represents truth – as these images are not real, nor do they pretend to be. To me these images come closer to digital painting or graphic design than photography due to the manipulation involved.

 The project ‘Flowiculture’ by Lisa Creagh experiments with the ideas of creation in both the digital and natural world. Her work is based around Persian rugs which are sometimes referred to as instant gardens due to the colours and composition of the rugs and have a similar aesthetic to Judith Lyons ‘Photographic Reproduction.’  Creagh’s work looks at themes of life and death – she has photographed the flowers at a range of different stages in there development meaning that the viewer sees these flowers constantly changing and evolving in the images, moving away from the notion that the photographic image runs along a linear time frame. This makes reference to the flower of life, a geometric symbol that has been adopted as scared in many different cultures around the world.

The flowers she has used are industrially grown and genetically modified meaning that each flower is exactly the same. In a sense even the subjects of her images are ‘constructed.’ Her work begins to reference scientific photography as she has photographed the flowers from a range of different angles/times – looking at the photograph as a way of documenting development.  She has photographed the flowers from a range of different angles and times in there development. She then uses digital software to construct these complex mandalas. Again this work blurs the lines lf what photography is and how far it is possible to construct and manipulate an image.

http://www.judithlyons.co.uk/

http://www.lisacreagh.com/home

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Penelope Umbrico

Penelope Umbrico is a conceptual artist works with digital found imagery. She searches the virtual world, appropriating images from a selection of different sources on the internet namely flickr. Within Umbrico’s work photography is both the subject and the medium as she rephotograph images with an iphone, often applying filters to them in order to recreate the ‘iphoneographer’ aesthetic. This method of re-photographing links her work in with pop art and the repurposing of images that we are flooded with by the media. Within her work there is this interesting sense of the consumer of her work and the producer been the same as she has used the general public images to create the work. Her works are less about the direct representation and more about the abstraction and concept of how we consume photographic images online. She explores how we as a culture consume and make images and our relationships with them. Her work also looks at questions of ownership – of who owns and image when we put it online and how can we control how that image is read?

Within her ‘sunsets’ work she has searched for the ‘tagline’ with the most hits on flickr and then reappropriated  these images by displaying them in an exhibition context. Due to the use of this process her work comments upon collective practises within photography, both amateur and professional alike; creating an auto portrait of society that questions the reasoning as to why so many people have photographed this everyday thing. By displaying the images as an exhibition she explorer how images function differently in different times, situation and spaces – the work questions why these images where taken and what they meant to the photographer as well as exploring this new culture of photo sharing. Through this she looks at the possibility of photography been used not just as a documentation but as a medium of social communication. When installing her work the sheer number of ‘hits’ that the search returned is apparent by the sheer scale of the instillations, filling whatever space is available to her and naming the instillation however number of ‘hits’ the search returns at that exact time – in turn this becomes a comment upon the mass databases of the same images we are flooded with by the internet and social media on a daily basis. The work is printed on 4x6iinch Kodak prints that are accessible to all and have a cheap, glossy appearance. The work is then exhibited in a grid format and the images almost blur into one giving them an abstract feel. The images appear to dissolve into one and other creating this mass, almost surreal sea of suns.

http://www.penelopeumbrico.net/Info/Words.html

http://www.markmooregallery.com/artists/penelope-umbrico/

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Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American originally trained as a graphic designer and was producing her main works in the late 1970’s in New York, alongside artists like Cindy Sherman. ( http://pvd223constructedimage.tumblr.com/post/110159364185/cindy-sherman ) She appropriates both image and text from popular culture and collages them together in an almost crude manor. She takes found black and white images from magazines etc. and overlays bold, white text on a red background on top of the images. This cut and paste style has clear references to the DADA movement in the early 1900’s and in both aesthetic and concept due to the appropriation of the mainstream media to comment on the political happenings at that time. Kruger had also worked as a picture editor and this sense of collating and collecting images and texts then collaging them together as one work references the process she would have gone through whist working at a magazine. http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm

As Kruger was emerging as an artist Pop Art had already become a major thing in the states, the use of bold colours, a simplistic aesthetic and appropriation of the media as all clear references to the Pop Art movement. The juxtaposition between the monotone found images and the red text give her work a bold aesthetic that draws the viewer into the work. Similar to works in the pop art movement she relies on the audience already having some kind of prior knowledge of the images and text she is appropriating in the work. She takes the pre-existing connotations people have with slogans/images and completely inverts them to create new meanings – for example ‘I shop therefore I am’. The text taken for her work references popular culture, film and television meaning it is accessible and relatable to a wide audience. Her work explores mass communication and what this means for us as a society – interestingly a lot of her work is reproduced as billboards and physical items such as bags, tshirts ect. This is interesting as there is a comment on advertisement and consumerism raised and it almost begins to blur the lines of reality.

The captions used are declarative and assertive. She uses pronouns such as ‘I’ ‘we’ ‘you’ in order to direct the work at her viewers and force them to question the concepts she is presenting within her work. The use of pronouns could also be interpreted to be addressing the cultural constrictions of power and the sense of identity and ideals that we hold as a society and how effective these actually are. Her works address a series of issues – looking at identity, sexuality, consumerism, race and gender and thus challenges society in a holistic manor. Her work is interesting in the way it plays with our assumptions of truth and the language of photography and of text – how as a whole the public often takes things at face value. In her Kruger is playing on this fact v fiction dynamic and challenging people to question the society we live in.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html

https://www.artsy.net/artist/barbara-kruger

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kruger-barbara.htm

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Idris Khan

Beethoven

The Qu'ran

Every Becher

Idris Khans work deals with appropriation in a conceptual manner; he takes well known aspects of culture by using pre-existing artefacts to create his images, i.e. The Qu’ran, Beethoven’s sheet music and The Bechers gas holder typology. This technique of digitally layering these images on top of each comments upon our collective culture. There is a sense of memory, history and a layering of experience in each of these images that almost collapse time into a single image. There is a clear sense of abstraction within these images yet somehow they still have a clear sense of narrative.  

These images reference charcoal drawings and feel kind of historic and almost as though they are from an earlier time yet the images where created digitally. Khans overlaid each image on a computer then digitally manipulated elements such as contrast and opacity – the process was a continuous one of adapting the image each time another layer was created. This method of layering creates images that appear to be saturated with information that require the viewer to take some time to study the images for some time in order to make sense of them – this could be a reference to how we are flooded with information and images in the digital age.

Throughout the work he draws on his experience with Islam and the Muslim faith, while Khans himself isn’t a practicing Muslim both of his parents are and thus it became a big part of his childhood and later on of his major influences. Even the repetition in the process of the work was inspired by the repetitive nature of Islamic traditions.

http://www.apollo-magazine.com/profile-idris-khan/

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/mar/25/artist-idris-khan

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/idris_khan.htm

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Appropriation

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans

Barbara Kruger

Idris Khans

Penelope Umbrico

Joachim Schmid

Appropriation within regards to the ‘fineart’ world refers to when well-known imagery or ideas that have been reworked to fit a different purpose and/or audience. It has strong links with the Pop Art movement and this idea of an artist taking images that we are already flooded with on a daily basis and appropriating them to comment upon the consumerist nature of society. Within photography this act of appropriation has become a trait of the ‘post-modernist’ artists of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The word originally comes from a military background and thus has connotations relating to conflict and ownership – ie when one country invades another and appropriates their land.  Often appropriation relates to instances when something has been over taken and changed without the permission of the previous artist. These connotations lend themselves to appropriation with relation to photography as well – an example of this is Sherrie Levine (1981) and her exhibition ‘After Walker Evans’ were she re-photographed his work. This approach is very controversial and although it raises many important questions in relation to ownership in photography to me it feels almost wrong. This been said they are many other examples of appropriation within photography; Cindy Sherman’s work where she appropriated the style and feel of movies at the time in her project ‘untitled film stills’, Barbra Kruger who used cuttings from magazines, Idris Khans who digitally overlaid the Bechers work and Penelope Umbrico who appropriates images from photo-sharing websites such as Flickr – all of whom I will explore in this blog. Appropriation also lends its self to found imagery and how artists use this within their own work – ie Joachim Schmid. This idea of using ‘found imagery’ or ‘ready-mades’ then leads to the debates around if there is such thing as an original piece of art anymore? Or if everything is simply an appropriation of something else in one way or another. Appropriation also forces us to question the value of art pieces as Richard Princes version of the Marlboro advertisements was the highest valued artwork in 2005, yet it was simply a cropped Marlboro advertisement so is it the concept behind the art work we value, its originality, or its aesthetic?

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Gregory Crewdson

Twilight

Beneath The Roses

Gregory Crewdson creates highly constructed scenes of typical American homes and suburbs. The locations themselves almost fit into the genre of deadpan photography – photographing the normal, everyday. Yet despite this through the use of cinematic devices and extensive lighting these ‘normal’ scenes are elevated to have this dramatic, surreal quality to them – not unlike the work of Hannah Starkey. This results in a haunting tension within the work, the images feel familiar and ordinary yet strange and unsettling. This blurs the lines between fact and fiction, we are aware that these are fantasy world yet the feel so real, so familiar they are relatable. Crewdson works with an extensive production crew when creating these images, not unlike that of a movie – the process can be seen here. http://www.gregorycrewdsonmovie.com/. Sometimes Crewdson adds artificial rain, dry ice and smoke into his work to further enhance the filmic feel his photographs have. This building and construction of this new world almost references child’s play. Crewdson is bringing these scenes and fantasies in his mind to life.

 Through the use of cinematic devices these ordinary American locations and representations of small town life are transformed into these dreamlike scenes. There is a sense of an ambiguous narrative surrounding these works yet we are given no context within the images, meaning that often the viewer’s own dreams and anxieties are projected onto the images. The figures in these images appear disconnected to the camera rather than encaging with it they appear to be isolated, lost in their own minds. There is an alienation with the subjects that hints at some kind of narrative yet the images and the narratives that go with them are not resolved. In an interview (http://theamericanreader.com/interview-with-photographer-gregory-crewdson/) Crewdson speaks about the limitations of the still image and how these are moments frozen in time with no past and no future.

The attention to detail within these images is on an epic scale and Crewdson constructs and selects every minute detail within the frame. Here (http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/) you can explore the images in greater detail and on a larger scale. Despite this attention to detail there is a surprising lack of information within the image – this is done consciously in order to conserve the sense of ambiguity that surrounds the images. We are given no reference to a before or after and thus the images are more open to interpretation and encourage the viewer to project their own thoughts onto the scenes.

I have included images from two series of works in this post, the earlier series ‘twilight’ deals with this sense of the in-between time, just after day but just before night and thus the images have more literal interpretations. This transformative quality to his work could be seen as a metaphor for suburban America and the American Dream. His later works ‘Beneath the Roses’ are somewhat more ambiguous and deal with more psychological themes and the workings of the inner mind.

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Hannah Starkey

Hannah Starkey combines banal, everyday moments of existence with highly stylized, constructed scenes in this series. Although the images appear at first glance to be social documentary images of woman going about their everyday lives they are instead carefully reconstructed scenes and the women in the images are actors. Because of this the images have a filmic quality about them and suggest a narrative – in a similar way to Cindy Sherman’s ‘Film Stills.’ Again similar to Sherman the work is not titled and is categorised by a rough estimate of date/time of the shot – giving the viewer these ambiguous details it begins to reference the vagueness of memory and how we do not recall the details of these fleeting moments. By recreating the banal, regular routines in everyday life Starkey elevates them and gives them a sense of importance by inviting the viewer to study the images. This merging of the everyday and the constructed image blurs the lines between fiction and reality – each one of these scenes appear to be something the viewer can relate to yet something about them is slightly off. To me the images appear almost candid, yet not quite and the positioning of the actors almost references dolls.

These scenes all take place in urban environments however the location in each one is every different. The situations are fleeting moments, pauses – the kind of activities undertaken when one has time to kill. These generic moments such as browsing a record store or in a café appear almost deadpan and melancholic as the subject is simply waiting for time to pass. Often the subject will be alone or isolated and there is no direct interactions with others, this creates a meditative feel to the images. The work looks at the physical and psychological connections between the individual and her surroundings mainly through the use of mirrors and reflections which is an ongoing theme in Starkey’s work. The reflection’s represent a sense of how we see ourselves and offer an abstraction within the composition. Smoke is also a running theme throughout this work, in an interview Starkey stated that the smoke represents a sense of the fluidity and the escapist quality of these ‘in-between’ moments she is photographing – again similar conations surround the wind and condensation used throughout the work Through the use of different models and locations Starkey has managed to address issues of class and race throughout the series.

http://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/hannah-starkey

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/hannah-starkey-2683

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artists/hannah-starkey/series-photography_4

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Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled film stills are a series of black and white images shot over a three year period (1977 – 1980) which represent a wide range of fictions female clichés. Each photograph is a self-portrait in the technical sense of the world yet there is a sense that these characters are not a reflection of herself but instead a reflection of women in general. The images reference movie stills, specifically scenes that would be found in Italian neorealism films which is what Sherman would have grown up with. There is a sense of a constructed narrative in each image that leaves the viewer questioning the photograph in front of them and wondering about the past and future of the protagonist – this is created by the use of filmic photographic techniques. The images are untitled which adds to this sense of an ambiguous narrative within the work. The work is constructed by her alone through the use of a variety of wigs, costumes, make up and locations which completely denies her of her own identity as she adapts herself to fit the many cliché female roles in society in the late 1970’s. The images speak about the female identity and the different roles of femininity in society. Although the characters are entirely fictional as a viewer you feel an almost connection with them, they appear to be characters that are recognisable and relatable, almost as though they are known to the viewer.

The work has clear references to popular culture and is just as relevant now as when it was shot. It speaks about how we are saturated with images from the media that tell us how we should behave. The work also links with the modern phenomenon of the selfie and how we take ‘self-portraits’ almost every day but how truthful actually are they? This work questions the notion of the selfie and whether this is a representation of who we are or who we want to be perceived as. In terms of exhibitions this work also links in with the pop art movement and the idea of repetition of imagery/typologies as each of the photograph was printed and framed identically.

  http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/sherman/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/sherman.sht fePfCp7�@

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Cinematic Photography

Often Images are referred to as having a filmic quality to them – photographers such as Cindy Sherman, Hannah Starkey, Greggory Crewdson, Sarah Jones and Duane Michaels work all have this cinematic feel surrounding their work. I will further explore these photographers and their work in posts to follow. These photographers’ reference stylistic choices that we associate with the cinema in their work and each image is highly constructed; Crewdson has an entire film crew and equipment on hand when creating his images. Each photographer uses colour, lighting and composition in different ways in order to create a sense of narrative and drama in their images. Colour is an important element in both films and photographs that have this filmic quality as colour is instrumental in how the viewer feels when reading an image – colour saturation, white balance and hue are all things that effect how we read an image. http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours provides a break down as to how colour can effect moods and thus how photographers can use colour to manipulate how the image is read.