#mph0402

[saminaminyraouf-blog]

Experience with Film

This is a record of my experience with using film, including my mistakes and as well as my perspective on the technical processes throughout this project.

12-16.11.15 While shooting on location, obliviously taking an entire films worth of frames. Unknowingly at the time the film was not rolling inside the camera and therefore I had only exposed all potential photographs onto one frame. WHAT.I.LEARN: 1. How to properly place film into the camera, 2. Check the film is always rolling by looking at the rotation of the rewind knob.

24.11.15 Rolling the film in the dark room onto the wheel, the second film was beginning to fold and bend towards itself. Fortunately, the film did not crack and developed normally without any scratches. WHAT.I.LEARN: Patiently wind the film onto the wheel, careful not to force any movement.

30.11.15 I begin to experiment photographing reflections in the street.The early morning light day is grey and there is not much light in order to be able to shoot sharp images of the street and the reflections. WHAT.I.LEARN: Images which I had previously taken during the later morning and the early after noon tended to have sharper outlook, so by experiencing this I began to only go out to take photographs during this period of time.

10-14.12.15 I have shot 3 additional films in my endeavour to grasp a sharper image than I had already done so. Processing these films together so late into the project and hoping to be able to print the day after, thankfully I did not make any mistakes while processing the films, however by shooting late, processing late and printing late, the project was not able to be discussed into depth about which photographs can be printed for a greater presentation for the entire project. WHAT.I.LEARN: do not delay any project work needing to be done quickly.

[natasha--mitchell]

RESEARCH SUMMARY

‘Fenced’

Visual Research

For my visual research, I looked at photographers such as Stephen Shore, Thomas Ruff and Gabriele Basilico. These three artists really influenced the subject matter that I chose to explore in the project. I found the bleak, dull tones utilised in Ruff’s work as well as his subject matter of housing to be very aesthetically pleasing. It was the compositions of Shore’s and Basilico’s images that draw me to their work initially. They influenced me to explore symmetry and shapes in the urban landscape, which led me to the final ‘Fenced’ project. In addition, I was inspired to use dull, bleak colours in the project from the research of Ruff and Shore. All three artists looked at housing in their work which is what led to me to my theme of condensed housing and buildings in the city. They also took defining photographs of the areas in which they lived, focusing on particular places that depicted the certain era they were in. I am in the modern era, in which a lot is getting rebuilt and refurbished in order to look newer and contemporary, so the renewal of a city was naturally a part of my project. However, I slightly subverted this by photographing buildings in construction or demolition, as that is the integral part of renewal, as well as established housing, which is, too, a crucial element of the urban landscape.

Production

Initially, the term ‘urban landscape’ made me think of the man-made, cityscapes and the opposite of the natural world. I did many shoots in different areas as to explore the naturally occurring themes in the urban landscape. I tried shooting at night, where I live, central london and outer london to try and grasp the different elements of an ‘urban landscape’ and all it encompassed. Additionally, on these shoots, I would often have a different feature of urban landscape in mind such as apartment buildings, industrialisation or construction. Early in the project, I became interested in exploring ‘construction and destruction’; how a city is built up, how it becomes modernised and contemporary as well as industrial and almost natureless areas, which were inspired by the urban landscape itself. Unconsciously, I began to photograph layered images, which would incorporate a few aspects of the ever-changing urban landscape. I found these interesting because they accommodated most of the elements of urban landscape I was exploring and the compositions were interesting too, as I was initially looking at shapes that the landscape of building structures made. All the images I took were mainly isolating a specific subject and I never included people in my shots as I wanted to focus on the man-made and the lived in but without actual human presence, which gave the project a sense of eeriness and created a desolate atmosphere, much like the images from the house series by Thomas Ruff. I was also photographing building structures in a way that almost overwhelms the viewer, as they look so massive and overpowering. This warped perspective is was makes the images a little more powerful and would be compromised if people were in the shot.

Evaluation

For the final set of images, I chose five photographs that were coincidently all of the same area, Woolwich, that represented the compressed inner city, by depicting layers within fencing, as well as the compulsion to rebuild and renew. The images were all coherent as they all incorporated a ‘fence’ in the foreground, in addition to ‘layers’ of some sort. All of the images were edited with dull, gloomy tones to reflect the subject matter. I began with five series of images to choose from, however, the layered images are what resonated with me the most. I felt they said more about society in a city, gentrification and the environment more so than any of my other images, which were the main messages I wanted to get across in the project. All of the images barely have any nature or wildlife in them, which is a huge problem for cities in general. Also, all of the building and rebuilding is creating very expensive housing which has huge effects on areas and their inhabitants. I feel a strength I had in this project was that I had a lot of choice of images and sets, which all had thought go into them. However, a weakness of mine is that I had too many ideas of what I wanted to do so I didn’t have enough time to refine my chosen theme and, therefore, my images were not of the highest quality they could have been.

[saminaminyraouf-blog]

Experience with Film

This is a record of my experience with using film, including my mistakes and as well as my perspective on the technical processes throughout this project.

12-16.11.15 While shooting on location, obliviously taking an entire films worth of frames. Unknowingly at the time the film was not rolling inside the camera and therefore I had only exposed all potential photographs onto one frame. WHAT.I.LEARN: 1. How to properly place film into the camera, 2. Check the film is always rolling by looking at the rotation of the rewind knob.

24.11.15 Rolling the film in the dark room onto the wheel, the second film was beginning to fold and bend towards itself. Fortunately, the film did not crack and developed normally without any scratches. WHAT.I.LEARN: Patiently wind the film onto the wheel, careful not to force any movement.

[adeebahidrusi-blog]

As I was walking around central London exploring different aspects and elements of my current location, I realised that there is so much more to explore in terms of being a photographer in London. One factor that caught my gaze was the shopping displays, I was intrigued by how each product had its place and how immaculate the presentation of the high street displays were. As a result of this, I decided to pursue my interests through taking images of both people and buildings. The mannequins in my work will represent people and the reflection will show the representation of buildings hence achieving the criteria of creating a series for street photography images.

One photographer in particular that has inspired me to capture a unique element between displays and reflections is Lee Friedlander who takes a selection of images of shopping displays in America. One could ask why I am so intrigued by this combination?  The way in which he captures the two genres; landscape and portraiture in the highest degree of originality combined with the way in which the reflection eliminates aspects of the mannequin’s physical features is a skill which creates a new form of photographical manipulation. Moreover, the use of black and white in his photography allows one to observe in depth what is being displayed. It allows the two genres to merge as the coverage of the face allows one to focus on the clothing itself, hence making the overlay the focal point of the image.

A quote extracted from the song – Paper Doll by J. Black (Quote found in Lee Friedlander Mannequin –Fraenkel Gallery).

“I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal.
And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes.
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real. When I come home at night she will be waiting. She’ll be the truest doll in all this world.
I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own.
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl” (Friedlander,2012).

This quote proves to be ironic and controversial at the same time. The way in which the artist juxtapositions the two elements of female human beings and female mannequins intrigued me in terms of characteristics. This develops further into a realistic social issue as the author is aware that females of both older and younger generations look up to mannequins as idols, in terms of fashion and appearance. Overall this suggests that the artist supports the idealisation of mannequins as “perfect women” as they are more visually appealing and are more faithful compared to actual women who can leave them.

Alongside Friedlander, Bovo also took a similar approach which allowed me to see a different perspective to mannequin’s photography and reflections through the use of colour. Bovo explains “The images are not accidents—the camera does not reveal things that do not exist, but can reveal a world we filter out in normal vision. As a tool, it reveals—street reflections in a window, or an urban landscape reflected in the glass of a building” (Artplugsdesign,2012); this connotes that he uses his camera as a tool of expressing the naturally photogenic nature of the combination of mannequins and buildings in big cities. The link between our work is that we both use mannequins in shopping displays combined with the reflection of our location in order to observe things from another person’s point of view in order to make the relationship between photographer and viewer more intimate

The French photographer Atget photographed the storefronts and boutiques of Paris in the 1920s to document images in which he took with a large-format wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens (yellowkorner,1925). Atget’s images give a real perspective of how fashion was like in the 1920s, this is clearly shown by the elegant clothing worn by the mannequin in comparison to fashion in the 21st Century.  Even though my work focuses on black and white imaging, Atget’s work inspired me to take more landscape shots and be more aware of documenting my surroundings. However, after looking at the results I received, I realised that my preference was portrait imaging. This is due to the fact that the mannequins appeared more heightened and therefore responded to Friedlander’s work more whereas the landscape images appeared to be monotonous. Overall, he inspired me to experiment with a different format yet I was swayed more by Friedlander’s approach as his images were more captivating of modern buildings in contrast to old fashioned buildings, which I happened to prefer.

When taking photos, the imagery of Friedlander’s work was constantly in my interest, hence making his work my up most goal to mirror. My intentions at first were to use his concept in taking images of my own reflection while taking the image of the mannequins, however I felt this distracted the viewers gaze from the focal point, the mannequins. Consequently, I decided to make my final series focused on just the merging of the mannequins and the reflection of the buildings. The initial idea of taking these images arose from a mistake that I had made in my first film, I had used the light meter on the SLR camera incorrectly which resulted in my images being over exposed. The bright side to this however was that there were a few images which were slightly visible and these had been the images which drove me further to the concept of reflections alongside the other three photographers who focused on the same area.

 In conclusion, my intentions were to capture both people and location/landscape in one image in the most unique form. In my opinion I have successfully achieved this as my images take a surreal approach to street photography. On the other hand, my weakness during the project was that I was impatient, I tended to go straight for the enlarging process without making a test strip; through this mistake I had realised that there are no short cuts with photography thus I decided to do some test strips more frequently in order to get maximum results from my work. To improve my project further had I been given more time, I would have used a medium format camera to experiment with a different photographic medium and also captured London’s notion in the reflection of Londoners travelling to capture a more realistic scene and aesthetic of the city. Also, I would have taken images and re-winded the film to experiment with the process of making two images merge into one technically rather than visually.

 Bibliography

 Artplugsdesign, Claudia. 'ART BATTERY GROUP : Energizing Art Since 2005'. Artbatterygroup.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 2012.

 Friedlander, LE. (1 Jul.2012)-Lee Friedlander-Mannequin.US-Fraenkel Gallery

 Mannequin, 1925. 'Photo Mannequin, 1925 - Eugène Atget - Yellowkorner'. En.yellowkorner.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.