#dsdn 244

[ellenayoung]

http://www.flickr.com/groups/double_exposure/pool/

The use of double exposure in film is really interesting as what is erased and what remains is hard to calculate. 

[ellenayoung]

Taranaki st had a variety of building types

houses: 23

shops: 15

offices blocks: 10

garages: 8

Apartment blocks: 6

Other: 5 

The progression along the street is easy to see within the series with office blocks / apartments - shops/garages - houses 

[ellenayoung]

Taranaki St 

My first street to be completed I found documenting, each building easy if not repetitive. The photos came out well framing both the building and a portion of the road to give me something to work with when it came to editing. light conditions changed throughout the shoot so some of the photos maybe harder to edit. 

[ellenayoung]

I used the map to plan out my locations and how far along the streets I would photograph. I also wrote down what I would expect the progression along the streets to be both in function and style. I already can see some of the locations progression and the style changes in different areas just from my memory of the locations.

The further out it gets generally it becomes more of a housing area and also the style tends toward more colonial and victorian. 

[ellenayoung]

Leigh Merrill 

Merrill is a San Francisco photographer that focuses on the urban and domestic environment. The photos above are from the two series The Streets and Into the Sunset.

Bushes, archival pigment print,  30" x 38",  San Francisco (top photo) 

Documentary, Editing, Surrealist

Merrill uses photo editing to the extreme creating these streets out of hundreds of photographs. Usually using individual photographs of the houses and then creating the surroundings out of the rest. 

Bushes shows 3 houses and the street below. The houses are in various shades of pastel with intricate topiaries. The houses are all different styles with a interesting facades. The roadway takes up considerable space in the composition and has an interesting pattern to the colors. 

Merrill uses the photographs to investigate the urban environment. "I am fascinated by how seemingly insignificant elements, like small plots of lawn or idiosyncratic topiaries, can hint at who we are. In this project my intention is to mix fact and fiction to open up questions and conversations about our individual desires and collective ideals." She looks at how the place we live in represents us. 

Both Merrill and I are photographing the urban environment. I think her technique is interesting and could be a good way to show the whole street in one image. I plan on experimenting with how it could show the progression along the street. 

Differences in our work would be why we are creating the images, Merrill is using it to look at how we show who we are and I am using it to show the progression of the streets from an architectural point of view

[ellenayoung]

Artist Precedent

James Voller is a NZ artist that photographed buildings in Wellington printing the facades and placing them on objects and other buildings. 

Ohiro, 2010, Wellington, Digital (top photo)

Black/White, Documentary, Paste up 

Voller photographs the facades of buildings, in Ohiro the facade of a prominent state housing tower in Wellington. He then printed out the facade and pasted it up on the front of a bus shelter. 

The photograph has a natural background featuring both trees and sky, In contrast to the green, white fences and a concrete base slab frame the B/W pasted image of the state housing facade. The facade is divided through the rule of thirds a black background in the left third highlights the white round windows that characterize the state building making it recognizable to the general public. The other two thirds are white with standard windows. The paste up is of a smaller scale. The pavement then cuts away on an angle to the concrete slab. 

Ohiro is part of the series 7 mm of Growth by Voller focusing on the Wellington architecture. "It is concerned with how New Zealanders construct the spaces in which they live and how they both the people and place change. The work also looks at who constructs these spaces and how images define our ideas of space" 

Voller uses images and then repurposes them to comment on the spaces NZ's construct. I plan to use the images I collect to document the main streets of Wellington in regards to style and function. Both Voller and I focus on the Wellington architecture and its function. Voller uses B/W to highlight the architecture pasted up whereas I plan to use colour to show more information.

[ellenayoung]

after narrowing down the variables in the project I have decided to look at the progression along streets looking at the change in style and function within the city plan. I plan to catalogue the arteries out of the city towards Kelburn, Mt Vic, Newtown, Aro Valley and Lambton stopping at the town belt. I will evaluate the change along each street and look at a way to show this progression creatively. 

[mpipsondsdn244]

Proposal

Aims and objectives

In this project I want to use the soles of shoes to show something about the person wearing them i.e where they have been or maybe what they do. I want to expose  the viewer to different/obscured visual cues that hold clues to personality, lifestyle possible gender and age. Scuffing and wear, matte and gloss, leather or canvas all offer clues to the wearer and how the shoes are worn. By asking the viewer to extrapolate the information themselves i hope to make the data gained more relevant to their own lives.

Method

I want to shoot them in a "mug shot" format with the shoes size, brand and what activity they are used for. The rest is interpreted by the viewer. Who, how often, why, under what conditions. Are the shoes still in use or now obsolete. All the information will be coded like a number plate or dog tag so again the viewer must interpret the information by comparison to other examples.

Rationale

I feel shoes can show a good understanding of someone, who they are, where they've been and what they do. It is possible to invent narratives by imagining what stories the shoes could tell. each viewer will be able to add their own narrative to each pair of shoes.

Problems

Too many pairs of shoes?