Freya (Experiments in photography)

It's a Cut-Up

We visited the Exhibition in Flannels 'It's a Cut-Up' 

These are the worksheets we filled in whilst there:

What is it? 

Creative, bright, colourful, unique.

Photomontage

Putting different things together.

Images/objects.

What are some examples?

Graham Rawle - Womans world

Mark Lazenby - Rediscovered

Ian Killen - Beatles + busy going crazy

Graham Rawle - Dog Baking

The piece I find most effective

Graham Rawle - Dog Baking

Description of piece

The piece is around the size of a laptop screen (medium). Eye-catching. It is a colourful montage with bold black and white text strips at the bottom and top. It's unique and quirky.

What this piece communicates to me

This piece communicates humour to me. It's fun and creative.

It's a play on the word 'baking'. The 'Lost Consonant' is an R, baking would be barking because that's what dogs tend to do when the doorbell rings. 

Why I have chosen this piece

I like this Photo montage because its very unique and has a humour factor. A dog holding a baking tray wearing oven gloves is obviously not something you'd ever see so it makes you wonder why and how Graham Rawle came up with the idea to make this. I also like how there is a number in the bottom left hand corner and a dotted cut out strip around the around the outside. It makes it look like it's a collectible and they're like a series of stamps.

What is experimentation? 

Experimentation is trying something new whether it be something nobody has tried before or something that has been tried lots before but you personally haven't tried it yourself yet.

Why do we need it?

I think we need experimentation because it will allow people to come across new things, it can show and help you develop your skills in different categories of photography and it could even help you think of a completely brand new idea when you've tried something that has been tried by many people before.

It can help you progress in different forms of art and it can give people different views on how to create the art because everyone will have a different picture in their mind when something is explained to them. Everyone would create it differently. 

Word and Image

In the lesson for this task, we were given words and we had to draw something we thought was the meaning for the word. We were given words like: danger, happy, home, lonely, celebration and help. We cut them out and then cut the words separately, swapped them with the person next to us and had to match the words with the images.

We also had to create a set of instructions just using image. I did the instructions on how to make a cup of tea by drawing out the steps.

The people I've chosen to look at are Jamie Reid and Jim Goldberg. 

This 'God save the Queen' montage by Jamie Reid is effective because it shows Anarchy. It stands out because it's defacing a picture of the Queen on a badly cut out flag. The montage has been messily put together but I think that makes it more visually striking and stand out more. The bright colours draw you in and the Ransom note form over the Queen's eyes and mouth kind of take away the identity, someone could have just posed for a picture and that would be used. I think the statement over her eyes is quite sarcastic because they wanted the Royalism to end. The fact that the Queen has been used for something Punk Rock is controversial because they Punks were against the Royal family and the Government. 

This photograph by Jim Goldberg stood out to me because I think just as a picture, as it says they do just look like ordinary people. But with them actually writing on the picture makes you think about it deeply. It makes me think you can't judge someone just by looking at a photograph of them. The fact that they have wrote 'we have a terrible life' makes me curious as to how people looking so 'ordinary' and happy could have such a terrible life. I ask myself a lot of questions just by reading the quotes on the image. What makes their life so terrible? I think without that text, the picture would just be a happy looking mother and daughter. 

Experimental Chemistry and Camera-less Photography

Floris Neussus created Photograms of humans, he had a sheet of photographic paper and the person would lay down on top if it. Then they would expose the light and a silhouette of the person would be left on the paper.

I like this and think it's very effective because it's the first time I've seen a person been used in a photogram. Normally, people just use objects to place on top of the paper and create patterns but seeing a silhouette of a human is very unique. 

Susan Derges creates Photograms but uses digital editing too. She dips her photographic paper into a lake at night and gets the reflections from whats in the lake, like tadpoles and nature. The moon acts as her light source and that's what exposes the paper to light.

I really like the idea of dipping the paper in the lake and getting the nice moonlight scenery. It's a very different idea and a different way of using this technique. It's good that there isn't just one way to use the Photogram technique. The only bad thing about working this way is that you would have to leave the paper for hours, so it's a very long process and some people may get very impatient. 

William Henry Fox Talbot does was he calls 'photogenic drawings'. He placed an object, like a leaf or a piece of lace onto photographic paper and cover it in chemicals such as lemon juice. Then they would be left out in the sun to dry and expose. 

I like these because they would leave really nice patterns on the paper. The objects he uses always give texture and this adds to the photograph. It makes them photogenic, which is probably why he chose to call them 'Photogenic drawings'! 

Pierre Cordier uses a technique called 'chemigram'. He uses different liquid materials like egg and wax to draw patterns onto photographic paper. 

I like this idea because I would have never thought you could draw into wax and other different materials and be able to get something that looks really effective out of doing this. I would say it's a brave thing to do because I would be scared about completely ruining and wasting photographic paper. 

Christian Schad creates photograms by using fragments of newspapers and found materials and places them onto his photographic paper. 

I like this but it's not my favourite out of the ones I have been looking at so far, I don't think there is much experimentation as in the others. It's just placing objects on paper and exposing it to light. I do like all the texture the objects add though, there is so many different fabrics in the photogram.

László Maholy Nagy created abstract photograms but he experimented more with the lighting of the photogram. He changed the angles and positions of the light source. He also poured liquids over the paper.

I like the idea of experimenting with the light source and pouring liquids over the paper to see how doing that changes your photogram.

Man Ray created 'Rayographs'. Larger objects were used to make a picture out of them and a meaning. He thought about them and how they would turn out a little more.

I like these photograms because he thought about the placement of the objects a little more and they turned out to look a little more organised/planned. 

Gary Fabian Miller creates dye destruction images. He places objects onto positive colour paper and after the exposure, excess dye is bleached out to leave behind only the desired image.

I like this idea because it's different than just using negative black and white paper and placing objects on top. I like how they are dyed and bleached to get a nice colouring on the image.

Broomberg and Chanarin created photograms by blacking out the back of a car and exposing the light in at a certain moment. They chose to do this because everyone was always seeing the same war photography and the shock factor was decreasing. 

I like this idea because they thought of something new other than the cliché war photographs. Also, I like the fact that they would capture a moment and you won't be able to capture that exact moment ever again. 

Thomas Ruff creates photograms using 3D imaging software. He controls the fall of light on objects that he has placed on paper, he can then manipulate this on screen as a 2D image.

I like this idea because you don't see 3D photograms anywhere, this is the first time I've seen then and I think they look really effective and unique. I like how using an old historic technique can look so modern just by making it 3D.

History of experimentation


1700 - 1800s

The camera obscura is something that was popular. People would black out a room and place a small hole facing outside and the image would be projected around the whole room. It was a moving image too, it didn't have a shutter so people would trace over the moving image from the wall.

You can also re-create the camera obscura in a normal bedroom, rather than building yourself a little dark room, a regular room can be converted into a camera obscura. This was created taken by Abelardo Morell.

He quotes "The camera obscura is an optical instrument that was the forerunner of the modern photographic camera. It can range in size from a small tabletop device to a room-size chamber. The term is Latin for 'dark room', which describes the simplest form of the camera obscura, a darkened room into which light is admitted through a tiny opening in one of the walls or windows. An inverted image from the outside world appears against the wall or screen opposite the opening".

1800 - 1830

Joseph Nicephore Niepce is a French inventor. He is the owner of the first surviving photograph, he used metal sheets. He had to heat the metal over a candle to dry the mixture. He then placed it into a camera and faced it outside his window from his house. He had to approximately have an exposure of 8 hours! So he he focused on photographs of nature rather than people.

This is a link to the video I watched explaining in more detail how it was created.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/firstphotograph/process/#top

1836 - 1840

William Henry Fox Talbot created what he called 'Photogenic drawings'. They were drawings made with light, he would put an object on paper and leave in in the sun and coat it with chemicals. A piece of good quality paper would be soaked in a weak solution of common salt allowing it to dry. The exposure wasn't known, it would be as long as it took the image to appear.