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.
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.
Individuals in the crowd are singled out – up close
Rather than remain part of the crowed the individuals aqquire a kind of heroic grandeur
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
Theatericalness of the finished image
Enchantment of fantasy without relinquishing the power of fact
Untitled – twenty nine pictures
Photographic mediations on contempary life
‘the photographs reconstructed scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film’ Saatchi-gallery.co.uk
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
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