Ideas and Experimentation

     06/02/13                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

This is my first idea. It revolves around early memories and reenacting photographic documentations; with the intention to analyse the truth of memories. I have considered perhaps using a tilt-shift technique in my photographs as I have experimented with this previously, however I fear this would only work as a high angle landscape photo which is likely to be hard to attain, especially of specific places.

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I have been considering my project idea and am particularly drawn to subject of early memories and the photographic discourse as a means to represent these memories. This topic sprung to mind during a discussion with a housemate on the different ways in which people remember their earliest memories. I often remember a lot of things from a 3rd person perspective; as if I were watching myself act out the memory and felt that this may be an interesting point to interpret into my project idea. I also wished to focus on the verisimilitude of memories and how the photograph can spawn erroneous recall, in which the subject/viewer of the photograph remembers certain factors of the memory based only on what they see in the photograph, i.e. someone else's representations of them. The memory itself is the photograph, and not the first hand experience. Thus, we are continuously placated as the viewer and the fact that I, for example, experience early memories in 3rd person suggests that I am so accustomed to viewing that, even my undocumented memories are relived as such. There are many ways that this could idea could be executed. 

• Re-enactment - The idea of using 4 subjects to reenact their early photographic memories, by replicating a single photo and including that photo in the new replica (I.e. a photo within a photo) The point being that they are essentially "actors" in their own lives, as they are simply representing what the photographer chose (consciously/subconsciously) to depict. Highlights the fact that both photographs are constructed. This idea stemmed from a photographic project that I came across, entitled Back To The Future, by Irina Werning, who reproduced peoples old photographs; paying close attention to detail and a highly accurate portrayal of those people's past's; from costumes, settings and expressions, to lighting, background and photographic style etc.
• http://irinawerning.com/index.php?/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/

• Another reenactment idea that I had involved revisiting landscapes that made up my early memories such as Hampstead Heath, documenting these, and creating graphic matches/layering of both images to merge the past with the present in a dream-like and dystopian manner; thus generating a rhetoric of reality in photographic memories. The project Dear Photograph inspired me to come up with this idea. It is a blog in which members of the public send in photographs of themselves holding up their old photo's, but in the same locations; often certain elements in both images match up, thus fusing past with the present. I tried to veer away from this cohesiveness in my idea as I wished to encode my photo in a way that portrayed the representations of past and present as disjunctive.
• http://dearphotograph.com/

• I was also inspired by a photographer called Corinne Vionnet, who using transparent layering techniques to fuse together hundreds of tourist photographs of national landmarks, from images she found on search engines, thus evoking the general feelings towards this landscape via the photograph. "Each image makes distinctive, subtle but insistent interplay with us, with our memories, desires, hopes and feelings." I was particularly interested in the photographic truths of these images; and the idea of a "collective memory". The utilising of the photograph as proof, or as Susan Sontag referred to it; "Photographic Trophies"Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. New York: Picador, p. 9, to assert that one had visited these iconic monuments, thus fitting into an elite group. Therefore, the photos are somewhat homogenous in style (i.e. colour, framing, distance, scale etc), as each new tourist seeks to recreate what they have seen before. "What is remarkable about Vionnet’s findings is the consistency in online iterations of the travelers’ gaze." "Perhaps we instinctively choose how to photograph known monuments as we are socially conditioned to take pictures we have seen before – images popularized through film, television, postcards, and the Internet." Madeleine Yale, http://www.corinnevionnet.com/site/1-photo-opportunities.html. The technique used in Vionnet's work is an aesthetic that I may like to adopt in my idea as it is portrays different versions of memories, but in a way that promotes their uniformity; a theme that I would like to convey in my project, thus furthering my argument of photographic truths.

This is an example of an image posted on the blog Dear Photograph, along with a short recount of the memory. The image below is a very rough version of my idea; one is a photo of my dad, my brothers, my dog and myself in Hampstead Heath, and one which I took almost a decade later of the landscape of Hampstead Heath. I combined the two by layering the former on top of the latter and altering the opacity and saturation. I utilised a black and white aesthetic to portray the photo from the past and the transparency to symbolised the faded, distorted and somewhat dream-like fuzzyness of memories. To juxtapose this I intensified the brightness, contrast and saturation in the background image; thus depicting the modern photographic discourse. I am not fully happy with how this image has turned out, and I fear that I will not be able to use this style of photograph for my project as it depicts a photo which I did not personally take myself, and the discourse is somewhat ambiguous as it portrays two genre's merged; that being documentary (the past image) and landscape (the present image). 

08/02/13

I have asked some friends to help me with my photography project by reenacting an early photo of themselves, in an accurate way. I intend to fuse the old photograph with the new in a graphic match, thus drawing on both Werning and Vionnet's work. 

Upon viewing some of the images I realised that this would be more complicated than I originally thought as the locating of costumes and props is a costly and complicated procedure. Also, ensuring that the lighting is similar/effective is difficult as, for example, some of the photo's were taken during different seasons such as the one below (summer/on beaches, with parasols and sun loungers in the background)  and in specific locations, which will be timely to recreate. The following two photo's are examples of images that I considered recreating.

The sunlight in this photo would be somewhat hard to recreate given that the weather in Brighton is cold and dull. As well as this, it would be complicated to source sun loungers and umbrellas at this time of year on Brighton beach, and thus this photo would not be feasible to recreate given the time-frame of my project.

The fact that the subject is now clearly a lot taller than when this photo was taken, means that this photo may prove problematic to recreate as he would have to be equally proportionate to the other objects in the photograph.

10/02/13

I have been thinking of some other concepts with which to base my project around, given that the memory-based idea may be hard to execute. I was particularly inspired during my Week 3 Photography lesson which revolved around the portraiture discourse. The themes within this lesson; such as the idea of utilising the portrait as a means of identification, the projecting of emotions onto blank facial expressions and the subjects use of the smile when being documented, all served to inspire me to create the following idea's.

• Identification and The Smile: Photographing people in an institutional context but editing in a false-mouth in the post-production stages - providing them with a uniform smile and highlighting the uniformity of this type of photography, as well as peoples innate behaviour attitudes towards the camera. Problems: Photographs of this style may not look aesthetically appealing and may come across as quite infantile.
• The Blank Expression: Providing photographs of faceless people in different situations (i.e. mother holding a baby) or portray only the eyes of the subject, thus allowing audiences to draw their own conclusions on the subjects emotional state. Perhaps second photo could reveal the whole facial expression, which is that of the oppositional reading (i.e. mother holding baby with a sad/depressed facial expression) therefore highlighting societies inbuilt responses to certain stereotypes (i.e. mothers = proud, caring) Problem: May also come across as aesthetically unappealing. The face devoid of a mouth may generate humour rather than underline serious issues.
• Surveillance: The idea of documenting people unaware to highlight how people behave naturally in conjunction to their performative behaviour in front of the lens (i.e. smile, over the top gestures etc) I would document a subject without them knowing and approach the same person and ask to photograph them. Problem: Idea of moral/ethical responsibility and not asking for permission in the first case.

I came up with the following idea's recently, upon looking back on my lesson notes and remembering certain class discussions from week 1 (on Documentary Photography) 

Social Networking: During my photography lesson on documentary in week 1, I also thought of the contradictory notion of society documenting photographs so persistently due to social media availability, yet missing out on important events or memories. I thought that perhaps in some photo's a couple could be taking self portrait of themselves smiling and posing into their mobile-phone camera, and in the background there be something serious occurring, such as a crime of some sort. I still like this idea but know that it would be difficult to execute, as the important/serious event that occurs in the background would have to be carefully considered, and if not presented effectively, the photo could appear quite silly. 

Power Structures: Upon discussing the tilt-shift style of photography in week 1, I have come up with the idea of taking high angle photographs of city buildings that connote wealth and power, and applying the tilt-shift affect to ameliorate this power and provide the rhetoric of capitalism in todays society. I also thought of perhaps applying this to religious buildings such as St. Pauls Cathedral and churches, perhaps editing a hand in to portray it is man-made and toy-like, thus questioning the idea of religion and existentialism (hand of God? man made?) The obvious problem with this is the feasibility of attaining these high-angle shots. I.E. from what point/place would I be able to attain them.

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I tried experimenting in the style of Corinne Vionnet, using the following 3 photographs of the famous Camden Lock Bridge.

I mixed these with some other conventional images of the same bridge, acquired from Google, to give more depth and layers to the image. This is the end result: