PHOTOGRAPHY - SPACE & TIME

My theme for my photography project was based around space and time. The whole idea was to take a different approach of space and time. Not in an everyday sense, but more out of a time into a place with ‘surreal’ identity where it was possible to create a place that didn’t relate to a specific time. You could also say into a space and time which doesn’t seem real.

I used a mixture of techniques with the model but mainly tried to keep the photos quite natural and flowing throughout the time spent there. Some were slightly composed as to me wanting certain shots but most of the photos keep an element of naturalness to them. The photos where the model (Catherine) is looking away our mainly the most natural, where as the others when she’s staring into the camera are more to show  a connection not just with me - the photographer - but to the viewer that she is aware of you looking into this surreal place. So this shows a mixture of curiosity, Natural and composed compositions.

After the shoot I experimented on editing all of my favorite pictures on Photoshop CS4. I have used Photoshop ever since starting photography and I find it a great program to work with my photos. Generally on most photos I have changed the levels increasing the blues on quite a few and even yellow on others. Even to the black and whites this was done first and added black and white on top. I also played around with exposure and gamma effects to add softer tones to certain pictures. I’m not one of the strongest people on Photoshop but I feel I’m at a confident level and very open to help. If I find myself stuck on how to do something I watch tutorials and learn that way. All in all with this shoot I did prefer the edited ones to the originals so I’m happy with the different effects and outcomes which I have produced using the program Photoshop.

The set for the photos is key to what I wanted to create. The place in which they were photographed is somewhere neither me nor the model knew. So the photos often show elements of curiosity and interest in the surroundings, and both of us work to explore them. The only difference is I had a camera. This personally gave me a great chance to do photos concentrating on one person as I have never done anything like this previously and has helped me have the confidence to do something like this again. Possibly in the future I’d like to explore a different place like I have done in this shoot, but maybe with another photographer and work side by side photographing each other exploring the place and use both our images as a combined set of photos. This would relate to some of the same ideas as this set with Catherine but with a very different outcome as this shoot mainly concentrated through only one person’s eye not both. 

For full size and better quality photo's visit my Flickr - set's - Catherine -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxwellreynish

Contextual studies

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The first image I am going to discuss is the black and white image on the left. This photograph was taken by sculpture/ photographer Hans Bellmer the image is from a series of his work called the ‘La poupee’ series which were used in the journal Minotaure (a surrealist puplication). His work is often quoted as being ‘surrealist photography’. Which I find myself coming to agreeing with as his work for me looks and feels very surreal and unnerving. The bodies he creates from doll parts and makes himself remind me   very much of work by dali .

For example in this Dali painting the way the human form is very twisted and miss shaped. To create instead of a romanticized image of a beautiful body it gives a more weirder and vulgar image, What Dali lacks where Bellmer succeeds is where as Dali uses lots of bright colour’s which although give a very real surreal affect, Bellmers are very real and taken by camera and give more of an unnerving, chilling feel to them which isn’t exactly an emotion I have felt when looking at a Dali piece. Although there is a different feel with Dali’s And Ballmer’s work the surreal elements are all to similar. For example Female beauty and the sexualization of the youthful form are two key elements key to both artists but more so with Ballmer as Dali is of course a lot broader.

The second image is by yet another photographer called Cindy Sherman. Her image uses a doll like the first one with a made up femine beauty, very similar to that which you see in the fashion industry with bright lips and neat eye make up. The model also has a large cut taken out of her chest where another female face lay, Almost looking as if were waiting. The model woman also has a back drop of a beautiful silk sheet which is a good balance of colour with the rest of the colours in the image but also shows some form of wealth, whether it being hers or the photographer or industry taking it’s wealth I do not know but would probably show the industries wealth not hers. The "model's" excessive makeup, hair in wild disarray, and bruised "flesh” are all related to controversy in the 70’s over the sex-and-violence– saturated fashion photography. The figure is also as I mentioned early complicated by a hollowed chest in which another vacant representation of the painted female face resides, Ready to destroy this body and create another person who will go on and destroy her body and so on. Almost as if the face inside the body is influenced by the person she is in, like a roll model and when she breaks out and becomes her own model she is yet to be battered and destroyed and another girl with high hopes and dreams will idolize her and go on to do the same as she did. Almost like a violent circle.

Qualities yet again with this image depict very surreal imagery yet again I feel, also the use of dolls is a very surreal object in itself as it creates this element of surrealism about it straight away, if both the pictures by bellmer and Sherman were people it would have a totally different feel. Both share very up in your face straight away unnerving feelings of death and mysteriousness. This in both wouldn’t be as strong without the fake yet almost life like forms created by dolls. Both images share views on the female body but what’s interesting with the two images I picked is we have both sexes representing the female body.