Genius of Moving Image: Pt 1

1. List two specific key relationships between Sam Taylor Wood's photography and film work.
Sam –Taylor Wood’s work expresses a juxtaposition of photography and moving image, her work purely consists of people and the emotions that people and the state of being. The photographs she produces examine through the highly emotional scenarios, and the social or psychological conditions in terms of a split between being and appearance.
2. How does the use of multi-screen installation in her work reflect narrative?
The use of multi screen installation in her work reflects narrative in a way that shows it is constructed rather than one that is being dictated to you. By piecing it together it can result in dysfunctional narratives that sometimes don’t work, but film is highly influential in her work as her influence is based on idea that film makes you feel as if you are entering a magical mystery tour of someone’s mind, which is what she interprets in her work.

What other photograaphers use film as an integral part of their work? List two with examples.

Gregory Crewdson an American photographer who makes images in small town America, he is best known for elaborately staged scenes which are quite dramatic and cinematic, although his work doesn’t consist of moving image, his photographs filmic settings that feature often disturbing but surreal events.

Another photographer who recently integrates film as part of his work is my favorite Fashion photographer Tim Walker; he brings all the fancy and intricate scene-making so fundamental to his renowned fashion photography. His first short film ‘The Lost Explorer’ is an exception to his creative work.

Research three video artists and explain their working philosophy.

1. Tim Burton an American filmmaker and artist, is famous for his dark, quirky themed movies such as Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate factory and Alice in Wonderland. Burton’s work is expressed through artistic visualization which he had discovered in his childhood, through his sketches and photographs Burton brought together all forms of art and cinematic ephemera to his films. His strength lies in his unique style of thematic fantasy life and emotional core that is captured in his work, it creates a sense of feeling of being in a dreamscape or in someone’ s mind is his visual theory that is integrated in his work.

2. Another filmmaker is James Cameron, who from early childhood had a huge interest in science fiction stories and fantasized about the making of motion pictures. This is what his main focus to the day is. He integrated his interests of science and art into his work which makes his work unique and effective, his films create a sense of a dreamscape of a world that revolves around science fiction, and his films like Terminator, Titanic and Avatar explore his unique interest.

‘I love the idea of being in another world and anything that transports me to another world is what I’m interested in’- (James Cameron).

3. Guillermo Del Toro is a director, producer, novelist, screenwriter and designer. He is best known for his creative fims such as Hellboy and Blade, his films draw heavily on sources as diverse as weird fiction, fantasy and war. He has always had persistant interest in fantasy and drawing monsters from his imagination. He has made action hero comic book adaptation to historical fantasy and horror films. His interpretations of mythological creatures and monsters is higly influenced within his films he believes monsters have multiple values and how you use them determines how they are portrayed as symbols of great power. He believes that all creatures, like angels and demons, vampires etc are characters that are living breathing metaphors which he has created from his own personal beliefs and values on life and religion.
As a screenwriter Toro beleives that 50 percent of narrative is the audio/visual storytelling, screenplay is the basis of it all but doesn't tell the movie it tells the story but doesn't tell the movie it tells the story but doesn't tell the whole movie. A lot of the narrative is in the details. Also he thinks:

Fairy tales tell the truth, not organised politics, religion or economics, those things destroy the soul, that is the idea from Pan's Labyrinth and surfaces to some degree in all my films'.

Show an example of a specific gallery space or a site specific location where a video artist or filmmaker has created work specifically for that space and been influenced by it.

An example of a specific location is Alnwick Castle, it has been used in number of film and tv programs including the book adaptation films of Harry Potter by author J.K. Rowling and producer David Heyman. It is probably best known as being the location of Hogwarts, the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The exterior of the castle is used for the exterior of Hogwarts shots, the famous Quidditch match and the broomstick lessons is set within the ramparts portrayed in scenes from the harry potter movies. It has also been used for other featured productions such as Elizabeth Taylor and Robin Hood the Prince of Thieves. It's an imposing place and can help you imagine the area around to be considered the famous town of Hogsmeade.

Genius of Photography: Pt 2

1. What are Typologies?
Typologies refer to a methodical image- making approach that summarizes a group of images in retrospect by anticipating the style that a given artist will utilize to record a particular subject. It can be compared to earlier photographs or a type of subject matter that an artist would be likely to portray; it’s used so that a viewer can get to know something better if it is compared to something else. Typologies discipline photography’s tendencies in order to create pure documents, just the facts and nothing else.

2. What was the 'Face of the Times'?
August Sander a commercial portrait photographer sis a typology of people, when he became a modernist in 1929, he published a selection of his portraits onto the all encompassing title ‘The Face of the Times’. By collecting people and fitted them into a frame but photographed them using a method of placing them in various social types such as Farmers, young farmers etc.

3. Which magazine did Rodchenko design?

Rodchenko designed the photography magazine called the USS en construction; it was a showcase of political propaganda glorifying the achievements of the soviet system that portrays radical photographic styled work combined with cutting- edge graphics.

4. What is photomontage?
Photo- montage is a graphic technique that took its cue from cinema montage, mastered by Rodchenko who had treated photographs as royal footage, suppressing their individuality collectivizing their energies. By cutting, pasting, retouching, and re- photographing them to conjure up dizzying visions of the future. Photomontage shows photographs for what they really are, mute documents whose meaning remains fluid.

5. Why did Eugene Atget use albumen prints in the 1920's?

Eugene Atget another commercial portrait photographer had created albumen prints during the 1800’s and all the way throughout to the 1920’s because he was skillful in it but found difficulty in using modern materials for photographs as he didn’t know how to use them.

6. What is Solarization? and how was it discovered?
Solarization was discovered by Man Ray in the late 1920’s, the use of it was through placing objects in a darkroom onto photographic paper and exposing it briefly to create interesting and unique patterns on the paper. H e had made the people look as though they’re faces are made of aluminum  which gave it a sleek and metallic look that portrayed them as super people slightly inhuman and robotic. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear darks suggesting that the photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone.

7. What was the relationship between Bernice Abbott and Eugene Atget?
Bernice Abbott was a young American photographer and one of Man-rays many assistants, who pictured Atget as a kind, living, breathing found object in 1927. Abbott became the largest collector of Atget’s work when she purchased his estate, bringing 5000 of Atget’s negatives to America popularizing the work Eugene Atget.

8. Why was Walker Evans fired from the FSA?
Walker Evans had been commissioned to produce propaganda images for the Farms Security Agency set up to the ease of the effects of depression in rural America. Evans’s understanding of documented photography was much more complex, but when Evans readily molded reality to fit his personal vision he couldn’t make that vision conform to the propaganda requirements of the FSA in 1937 and was sacked.

ITAP 2 : Genius of Photography- Pt 1

1. What is photography's 'true genius'?

Photography has intrigued us by showing the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances; it has showed images in different forms using various processes that made photography possible today. It has pleased, outraged, and often disappointed its viewers which is the reason why it makes it photography’s true genius.

2. Name a proto- photographer.

A proto- photographer that experimented with photographic processes was Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of calotype process associated in the 19^th century, who made major contributions to photography as an artistic medium before the well-known Louis Degaurre the inventor of the degaurretype process which is also associated with the term ‘Mirror with a Memory’, or referred as ‘Mirror of Nature’ that signifies how one sees oneself in a mirror.

3. In the 19th century what term was associated with the daguerreotype?

French photographer Andre Disderi inventor of small photographs usually eight on one large photographic plate, given the term of ‘Carte De Visite’. An albumen print or photograph mounted in a stiff piece of card that frequently revealed portraits of celebrities of that time.

4. What is the vernacular?

The Vernacular contains some of photography’s greatest naturally occurring riches, merely as a gift of the medium itself rather than a product of the genius of the individual photographer. It was associated with any type such as keepsakes, advertising, forensics, documentation for records, passport photo’s, postcards etc every kind of photography that wasn’t intended as art or a piece of art form.

5.How do you 'Fix the Shadows'?
Fixing the shadows was a high purpose, in the 1830's it was found that certain chemcials were light sensitive, chemicals for e.g. silver salts, silver chloride and silver nitrate. To fix the shadows you had to be able to stop carrying the exposure which was troublsome. Henry Fox Talbot's use of fixing the shadows was through camera obscurer, with a mouse-trap camera that held the negative and carrying the paper but to be only exposed for a certain amount of time. Louis Deguerre attempted this also, but started in the early 1800's whose method was the creation of the deguerreotype to fix the shadows using a mirrored metal plate to fix his images.
6. What is the 'Carte de visite'?
The 'Carte de Visite' was a photograph mounted on a stiff piece of card measuring 11.4x 6.3cm, It was introduced in the mid- 1850's by Andre Disderi. These cards frequently  portrayed portraits of celebrities of the day for collection into home albums also known as albumen prints.

7. Who was Nadar and why was he so successful?
Another photographer of the 18^th-19^th century was Gaspard Felix Tournachon also referred to as Nadar who photographed up and coming stars in a style that rewrote the rules of photography which made his style unique and original. Photographing celebrities as equals, his portraits of artists unrivaled by the character of the person with them just standing in his studio as themselves. His photography presented a likeness and authenticity about them.

8. What is pictorialism?
Pictorialism an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the 19^th century, it was photography at its most po-faced, as it merely created an image rather than simply recording it. Imitating printmaking and drawings the mean, moody and occasionally magnificent Pictorialism.