Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones’s life sized portrayals of young girls posed in interiors, are explored in the ‘Once Upon a Time’ chapter of The Photograph As Contemporary Art, by Charlotte Cotton.

This section is based on storytelling or tableau, in art photography, in which the narrative is contained in one image. Its characteristics relate most directly to the pre-photographic era of 18th and 19th century Western figurative painting, creating narrative content through the composition of props, gestures and the style of the of the work. The images are staged, with all the elements pre-planned and precisely worked out.

Jones says that this body of work explores the disconnection between the authentic (the documentary photograph) and constructed (fictional and non-fictional) versions of the natural world.

“I use the device of the constructed environment, such as 'the garden' or the domestic interior, public and personal, as a space to reflect on social and cultural identities” and later on: “My practice involves a way of working that blurs boundaries: my portrait subjects simultaneously function both as their own representative and 'model' in my work”.

She is interested in the way that photographs can be both poetic and formal, in constructing versions of the ‘natural world’ and addressing the problems of narrative in contemporary image making, particularly in portraits. She is interested in what we know to be in an image, and what our own associations might bring. How perhaps an essentially photographic visual language may be further developed and emphasised across a body of work through a complex set of references.

www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=503349&GroupID=503338&Contentwithinthissection&More=1
www.antonkerngallery.com/artist.php?aid=15
http://archive.balticmill.com/index.php?termid=24512
The Photograph As Contemporary Art, Charlotte Cotton.

AOP Gallery – Polaroid Retrospective
20 October-14 November 2008

Photographer – Bernd Opitz
Title - Woman With Birdcage

I like this image; it seems both personal and mysterious, and the title suggests more questions rather than giving you an explanation. The subject is a portrait, mostly in silhouette, of what seems to be a young woman standing barefoot, holding an empty birdcage above her head. Her hair is in a bun and she is wearing a black sleeveless polo neck top with a light coloured pleated skirt.

The photograph is an inkjet print of a Pola 55 scanned from the negative. The actual Polaroid/film edge surrounding the image suggests a ‘frame within a frame’ effect. The focussing is very soft and the warm sepia-like tone of the print suggests, though it is not, an image taken long ago, a feeling which is enhanced further by the obvious grain and blotches, as if the negative has been damaged.

The image has been shot at an angle which makes it even more intriguing. The landscape in the background tilts up on the left side. When you look closely at the original image you can see that the subject is looking away from the camera, to something just out of line? We are not sure what has actually happened, or is about to happen.

http://www.berndopitz.com/

Semiotics

Looking online, I found the Open University unit on semiotics helpful.

For reading, it uses extracts from Jonathan Bignell’s ‘Signs and myths’, which states that semiotics originates mainly from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, and Charles Peirce. Saussure explained that language is made up of signs (like words) which communicate meanings, and that by using the same kind of analysis, other things which communicate meanings could be studied in the same way as linguistic signs.

Saussure showed that there are two components to every sign. The ‘signifier’, which is the vehicle which expresses the sign, like the marks on paper which we read as words, or the pattern of shapes and colours which photographs use to represent an object or person. The other component is ‘signified’, which the signifier brings to mind when we perceive it. So when you perceive the sign ‘cat’ written on this page, you perceive a group of marks, the letters c, a, and t, which are the signifier. The signifier calls up the signified or concept of cat in your mind.

Charles Peirce explained that gestures, dress codes, traffic signs, advertising images, newspapers, television programmes, etc, are all kinds of media which use visual signs. As with linguistic signs, there is a material signifier, which expresses the sign, and a mental concept, a signified, which immediately accompanies it. He developed the idea of a ‘symbolic’ sign, explaining that linguistic signs can be arbitrary since there is no necessary connection between the written word, of signifier ‘cat’ and the signified concept of cat in our minds. The relationship of signifier to signified, and of sign to referent, is a convention established by the English language.

In describing an ‘iconic’ sign Pierce used the example of a photograph of a cat, in which the signifier resembles the referent. A photograph of a cat will faithfully record its different shapes and colours, which is the signifier. The signified is the concept of a cat which this signifier immediately calls up. The referent is the cat which was photographed. Iconic signs merge the signifier, signified and referent together.

In explaining an ‘indexical’ sign, he said that that they have a concrete and often causal relationship to their signified. “For instance when a cat is hungry and miaows to gain our attention, the sound made by the cat is indicating its presence nearby, asking us to notice it, and this kind of sign Peirce calls ‘indexical’”. Another example he gave was of smoke being an index of fire, a sign caused by the thing which it signifies.

He noted that certain signs have mixed symbolic, indexical and iconic features. A traffic light showing red has both indexical and symbolic components. It is an indexical sign pointing to a traffic situation (that cars here must wait), and using an arbitrary symbolic system to do this (red arbitrarily signifies danger and prohibition in this context).’

Roland Barthes noted that in media the linguistic, visual, and other kinds of sign are used not only to denote something, but can also to trigger a further range of connotations attached to the sign. He named this a ‘myth’, structured to send specific messages to the observer. So myth takes an existing sign and makes it function as a signifier on another level.

For instance, an advert for shoes which contains a photograph of someone stepping out of a Rolls Royce not only denotes the shoes and a car, but with it comes the connotation of luxury, through the sign ‘Rolls-Royce’. This connection now has an intended mythic meaning in which the shoes are part of a privileged way of life.

Open University:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=170753

Introducing Semiotics, Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz

Modernism / Postmodernism

I am struggling with the book “Introducing Postmodernism – a Graphic Guide to Cutting-edge Thinking”, think I need to back to basics and briefly recap on what was covered in our lecture on the subject.

Modernism is based on social change and technology, it focuses on tomorrow.

Is Modernism mad?

It was considered arty and elitist. It seemed to leave ordinary people behind, for instance, the architects behind the modernist post war East London buildings gave no consideration to the people who would be living in them.

Frantisek Drtikol was a modernist photographer who’s experimental work photographing the female nude was based on form, body and shape.

What is modernism? Is it a revolutionary project?

A modernist, Rodchenko’s work was art in the service of revolution, whereas William Eggleston is considered postmodern in that he was one of the first art photographers to present a ‘snapshot’ concept in colour about ordinary life.













In modernism, pretty images were replaced by ugly ones, for instance Picasso’s work and Germaine Krull’s film on industrialisation made at the time of the Bauhaus movement, with the images/aesthetic very much based on form.
Is modernism just about aesthetics and form?

Edward Western’s black and white image of pepper is all about form, proportion, light and dark, texture, and how it it printed.

Postmodernism can be considered a criticism or comment on modernism. It engages with popular culture and reinterprets, often with humour.

Richard Prince took conceptual photography to another level in the 1980s, directly appropriating materials from mass culture for use in his work, most famously his Marlborough Man / cowboy series, by rephotographing a print advertisement then cropping into and enlarging the image.

Pop artist Andy Warhol is considered postmodern in that he turned mechanical reproduction into an art form itself by transferring a photographic image into a silk screen print.

Can we be certain about anything anymore?

Documentary photography was a ‘certainty’, now we probably question more, for instance Dorothea Lang’s documentary work on the FSA project.

Post modernist Nan Golding creates intimate portraits - she as also aware of culteral references and paintings.

Geoff Wall is fascinated by and has often referenced Manet.

So what is Post modernism?

Not a revolutionary project
A re-evaluation and criticism of the modernist project
It is not mad (??!!)
First political with a small p (feminism, racism)
Questions aesthetics
It is about uncertainty

Reading:

Postmodernism: a graphic guide to cutting edge thinking
Modernity - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, from All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
On Richard Prince: http://artcritical.com/appel/BAPrinceRecord.htm
http://www.richardprinceart.com/cowboys.html
Frantisek Drtikol:http://www.radio.cz/en/article/60598
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=frantisek%20drtikol&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Feminism - Claude Cahun, 1894-1954

I really enjoyed reading The Guerrilla Girls’ “Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art”. Instead of asking “Why haven’t there been more great women artists throughout Western history?”, the authors have asked “Why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western History?”

This is not the first book to ask the question but for me, the most refreshing. It presents previously forgotten or ignored female artists from the past and redresses their importance to art in a humorous and digestible way.

Some artists were new to me, others I had heard of but didn’t really know too much about, for instance Claude Cahun, in the book sub phrased ‘Boy and Girl Together’.

Decades before Cindy Sherman, she was one of the first 20th century females to use costumes and props and then photograph herself in the name of art.

In her writing, sculptures, collages and photographs, Cahun explored gender identity. As "Claude" is gender-ambiguous in French, her choice of this pseudonym is itself a form of cross-dressing.

She was born France in 1894 as Lucy Schwab, but by 1917 had taken on the pseudonym of Claude Cahun. Her step-sister and lifelong partner Marcel Moore, (born Suzanne Malherbe), collaborated with Claude on much of her work. She was associated with the Surrealists in the 1930’s, but was mostly forgotten or ignored up until the mid-1980s.

In 1912 she began a lifelong obsession with self-portraiture, presenting herself alternately as a male dandy, or demure maiden. Sometimes enigmatic, androgynous portraits with close-cropped or shaved hair, or as a historical or fictional character, from Buddha, to masked avenger, vampire, rag doll, or even her own father.

She once said: “Beneath this mask, another mask. I will never be finished lifting off all these faces”.

Claude and Marcel moved to Jersey in 1937, and when it was invaded by the Nazis started covert resistance work. They were captured in 1944, tried and sentenced to death, but were liberated 10 months later. Much of their work was confiscated or destroyed.

Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sherman exhibition and book, New York University, 1999:
http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/odysseys/index.html

Further information and images:
http://www.vinland.org/scamp/Cahun/
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5204353
http://www.squidoo.com/cahun
http://www.meta-magazine.com/index.php?id=13
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/photography--behind-the-mask-who-was-claude-cahun-man-woman-or-member-of-the-third-sex-adrian-searle-reviews-the-genderbending-surrealist-photographer-1444902.html
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Tirza/TirzaEssay1.html

Steve McCurry – Afghan Girl, 1984

In December 1984, Afghanistan was five years into a civil war between the Soviet Union, which sought to maintain a Marxist government, and anti-government Islamic rebels. Millions of refugees were pouring over the borders into Pakistan to escape the fighting.

While touring a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry photographed a young girl of about 12 years old. The magazine chose a close-up of the girl as cover photo for the article in the June 1985 issue. This image of the girl with amazing eyes came to symbolize the plight, pain and strength of her people.

For me, the strength of this image is the haunted look in her eyes which despite her situation, also seem to be glaring defiantly back at the photographer. Her burka frames her face beautifully and the colours of the wall behind her and her clothing bring out her glowing eyes with enormous clarity. Perhaps down to the skill of McCurry, he seems to bring to light the soul of his subject.

Website: http://www.stevemccurry.com/main.php
Image taken from:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/steve%20mccurry%20afghan%20girl/ZillionaireL/SharbatHi.jpg

The Photographer’s Gallery - Freshfacedandwildeyed08

Photographer – Steve Schofield
Image – Jason in Brighton, Science Fiction Fan

At The Photographers’ Gallery annual new graduates show I particularly enjoyed Steve Schofieds’ portrait series of science fiction fans. Dressed in a Star Trek uniform holding a ray gun, the subject stands in front of a large living room window. The lurid orange curtains wonderfully match his orange Star Trek top.

It has been shot in a studied, respectful, formal manner. The original image shows great detail and depth of field, I assume shot in medium format or possibly 5x4. Natural lighting is suggested as you can see light from the window falling onto the subjects’ right shoulder and across the living room floor. I would imagine he would have used some kind of reflector to subtly bounce light back onto the front of the subject.

There seems to be a paradox between the ordinariness of the subjects’ surroundings (the furniture, window hangings, TV etc), and a desire for escapism in the subject himself. I like this image because despite the formal manner in which it was taken, it has a slightly humorous touch while still remaining respectful to the sitter.

Online gallery: http://www.photonet.org.uk/freshfacedandwildeyed08/

Gordon Parks - "American Gothic", 1942

Portrait of Ella Watson, charwoman employed by the government in Washington, also know as "American Gothic"

This image was taken as part of the Farm Security Administration programme (an effort to combat rural poverty during the Depression, also known as the FSA) by newly recruited Gordon Parks. That the photographer was also African-American is crucial as the image is as much a political statement as well as a formal study of a portrait.

“My first photograph of [Watson] was unsubtle. I overdid it and posed her, Grant Wood style, before the American flag, a broom in one hand, a mop in the other, staring straight into the camera”

“American Gothic”, a portrait by Grant Wood of a male and female set in the rural American Midwest, had by the Depression come to represent endurance in hard times through the values of work, thrift and religious faith.

Grant Wood, "American Gothic" 1930

In Parks’ portrait, the subject seems to be both visually and symbolically dominated by the stars and stripes flag behind her. The mop and broom the woman holds are as much commenting on her social and economic status as well as displaying the tools of her trade. The positioning of the flag with white background to the left and right is a rough composite of the rule of thirds running vertically down the image. The subject, broom and mop compositionally create a golden triangle. The strong dark vertical stripes frame and draw the viewers’ eye back down to the subject.

The combined elements seem a metaphor to represent the oppression of the black community in America. Although for some the land of opportunity, segregation was still legal and minority groups kept down in terms of education, health care and social status.

On Parks photographing Ella Watson: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap07.html
FSA: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html
Gordon Parks International Photo Contest: http://gordonparkscenter.org/photocontest.asp

William Eggleston

Red Ceiling, 1973

William Eggleston’s colour print exhibition at MOMA in 1976 transformed the perception that art photography should be limited to black and white.

It was the first time that commercial advertising printing techniques displaying vivid colour saturation effects had been used to produce fine art photography. His undramatic, snapshot style, aligned with using the most technically advanced printing processes, took the art world by storm. He took photographs of seemingly mundane, ordinary or trivial subjects and took them out of their context by transforming them into huge colour prints for display in a gallery. The ‘real’ subject then often became the colour itself. You could say that Eggleston used modernist techniques in a post-modernist way.

He has been a huge influence, or inspiration, on both later art photographers and filmmakers. An article from Style.com, November 8, 2008 notes "Eggleston's spare and richly hued pictures…have cast a spell on everyone from Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, and Larry Clark to Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Juergen Teller."

From Los Alamos, published 2003

William Eggleston website includes; news, full list of artist books, articles and essays, biography etc: http://www.egglestontrust.com/
Getty Museum: http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1540
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eggleston
Collection of reviews: www.salon.com

Madame Yevonde - Goddesses series, 1935

Lady Millbank as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons

Referencing classicism and ancient mythology, Madame Yevondes’ images from her Goddesses series, 1935, seem theatrical and stylish, sometimes with a touch of high camp humour. They display to me, a love of props, dressing up and dramatic posing. Technically adept and innovative, she used studio lighting and championed the Vivex colour process from its invention in the early 1930’s, until the factory manufacturing and processing the system closed down in 1939. In 1932 she held the first exhibition of photographic colour portrait work in England.

Eileen Hunter (Mrs Ward Jackson) as Dido

Incredibly staged, I read that the series reinforces her past suffragette leanings, posing the subjects as heroines or powerful goddesses. It is interesting that she was well connected, her subjects were beautiful, glamorous, upper class society women or well known actresses. I wonder if her exhibition/reputation would have been so successful if her sitters had been normal women. I can't help thinking of, for example, Sam Taylor Wood...

“Be original or die”
- Madame Yevonde

The Yevonde portrait archive: http://www.users.waitrose.com/~felice/

Benham Gallery Seattle: http://www.benhamgallery.com/artists/yevonde.html
National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp06547&role=art

Pedro Meyer

“Where is the Money?” © Pedro Meyer, 1985-2000

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures” -

Ralph Waldo Emerson, referenced by Pedro Meyer

Primarily a documentary photographer, Pedro Meyer is one of the earliest to experiment with digital photography, starting in the early 1990s. He created and curates Zonezero.com, one of the first photography websites on the internet. It showcases photographers from around the word as well as his own images and essays. I find him fascinating as he challenges the notion that documentary photographs are expected to record the truth or what really happened, whereas controversially, some of his digital work is in fact a collage of images used to produce a final image, and yet he still refers to this work as documentary, or truth, rather than fiction.

“Face it, all photographs are and always have been the product of manipulating reality. They are simply interpretations of the photographer who made them”. To him, photography has always been a manipulated medium, through cropping, sandwiched negatives, retouching or other techniques. He sees himself as constructing realities that are more truthful to what he remembers than to what may or may not have been there.

"Viejo con billetes” © Pedro Meyer, 1985

“Deshoyando al Borrego” © Pedro Meyer, 1985

Zone Zero website: http://www.zonezero.com/
Redefining documentary photography: http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/photography/fieldskinds/document/redefining.htm
Museum of Contemporary Photography: http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/meyer_pedro.php
Online debate: http://67.43.164.180/FUDforum2/index.php?t=msg&goto=81&rid=0