Relationship Between Natural and Urban
Unit 2 Exam
Candidate Number 1072
Contents page Statement of Intent - 1 Mind Map - 2-4 Photographers Analysis - 5-8 Photographers Interpretation - 9-10 Photo shoots - 11-17 So Far - 18-19 Possible Ideas - 20-25 Evaluation - 26
Statement Of Intent The theme I have chosen is relationship between Natural and Urban. I chose this theme as I wanted to show people how they link within and between each other, how it works together (ground to road, path to a river bank). I have used the artist Doug Aitken as my starting point to help inspire what I want to do. Doug Aitkens has done two types of relationships within his photography, firstly he has used words and placed pictures to do with the words inside of them, making the viewer think about the link between the image and the text. The other idea he did was take a square out of four photographs and place them together to make another square. I’ll look further into Doug Aitken’s work and I’ll also look at the work of Ed Ruscha who took photographs and added words on top of them. I will try to retake/remake photos done by Doug Aitken’s and use different landscapes at different times of day to try and get the widest variety and selection of photography that I can. I intend to use Photoshop quite a bit to help edit the photographs I take towards my liking. I will cut, crop and layer photographs making shapes to try and engage the viewer’s mind, showing them the world they live in from a point of view that they don’t get to see every day. I might later on decide to use shutter speed and aperture to distort the photographs manually as well to add more natural effects to each photograph. Through doing this project I hope to learn more about the photography and art work of natural relationships and how to make it look as good as I possibly can. I want to find out other people’s interpretation of nature, and how different parts of nature link to different parts of a persons everyday life (for example how a tree might make one person think of a pencil, another of a axe and maybe another of a digger or other machines alike. I see my final piece as being influenced heavily by Doug Aitken’s, I want to take from his nature photography and how he has different pictures from different angles and how shapes are cut from them and put back together again to create a new image.
ED RUSCHA TINA BARNEY
Doug Aitken
Piet Mondrian
David Spero
Steven Pippin
Hans-Christian Schink’s
Doug Aitkens
Doug Aitkens
Doug Aitkens work was very focused on the use of words to create his art. As you can see bellow, he put words onto a plain background and the letters for each word would be hollow and have pictures within them. It would normally be a single image that the shapes of the letters were cut out of.
Doug Aitkens work was very focused on the use of words to create his art. As you can see bellow, he put words onto a plain background and the letters for each word would be hollow and have pictures within them. It would normally be a single image that the shapes of the letters were cut out of.
I like Aitkens work because he decided to not just show a picture and say that it’s photography but he went an extra step via giving us a key word to think about as we look at the picture. Furthermore, because the way the photograph is taken, it’s almost as if you are looking at two completely different pieces of art at the same time, the photograph within the letters and the word upon the background.
I like Aitkens work because he decided to not just show a picture and say that it’s photography but he went an extra step via giving us a key word to think about as we look at the picture. Furthermore, because the way the photograph is taken, it’s almost as if you are looking at two completely different pieces of art at the same time, the photograph within the letters and the word upon the background.
My thought is that he’s a very intelligent artist that intends to get the viewer to use there brains to think up why he has done what he has done in each image/photograph The photograph to the right of this text is Utopia, it is obviously given this name since the word used in this photograph is the word utopia. The full piece is presented upon a white background where the letters are casting a shadow adding even more effect to the photograph. The photograph used within the word is distinctly a crowd of people but still leaves a lot to the viewers imagination, who are the crowd? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Why does the word ‘UTOPIA’ link into the picture? From my point of view, the reason that Aitkens has used this photograph along with this word is to put across his point of view that his utopia is among people or maybe that all these people are crowded up to get to a certain place, a utopia.
The photograph to the right here is called ‘Star’ as you might have guessed from the actual look of the photograph it’s given this name because of the text within the photograph spells out STAR. Within the word seems to be lots of bright lights. A photograph taken from the sky looking down upon a city. The background is a plain white so that all attention is drawn towards the photograph within the word. The only thing that could draw your attention away from the lights is that the floor is a different colour to the wall allowing you to notice the change draws you away from the word.
The photograph that can be seen to the right of this text is know as “new opposition” it’s a single photograph in a group of different photos. For this photograph he has take four separate photographs and cut squares out of each one at an angle allowing the effect that the corners meet and create a square within the image itself. I like what Aitkens has done in “new opposition” because he has allowed us to look at the ground and sky or atleast what looks like the ground and sky of four completely different places as a singular place, allowing us to easily see the differences and similarities in each photograph and showing us that even though they are four different places, they both have ground and sky allowing us to see that they aren’t so different after all. I say that it atleast looks like the ground and sky because another person brought up the fact that you can’t see the sun or clouds, what I see as the ground looks also like Pastry or some kind of food. this made me think because the two top pictures do look like pastry and the bottom left looks like some kind of cheese whilst the bottom right part of the image looks a lot like sugar.
The photograph to the right of this text is called “FREE” as you can probably guess via the actual photograph itself. Within the photograph you could see many meanings and purposes for it, for instance from looking at the photograph I believe that the photo is meant to symbolise Childhood and the beach. I say this because if you look at the photo within the word “FREE” you can see water and land and what seems to be a childs play park from what I can see.
Ed Ruscha throughout Ruscha’s long life he has dabled into many different forms of art, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He was born December 16, 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States making him 77 years old. His father was an auditor for Hartford Insurance Company and his mother stayed at home. His mothersupported his early signs of artistic talent whilst he wanted to become a cartoonist. He moved to Los Angeles in 1956 and studied at the Chouinard Art Institute. Once he had graduated, Ruscha became a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency in Los Angeles. By the 1960s he was known for his paintings and photographs. from 1965 to 1969 He worked as layout designer for Artforum magazine. He also taught at UCLA as a visiting professor for printing and drawing in 1969.
Ruscha created a very simple form of art. He would take a simple picture, edited or not and then proceed by writing a word or sentence over the top of the image. As you can see to the right here we have the piece called “Rebel” as you have likely already guessed. In the background of the piece you have the snowy top of a mountain with the light of the sun starting to shine from behind it and hitting the side of the peak. Over the top he’s simply put the word ‘Rebel,’ people could interpret this piece in many different ways, some might take it as the mountain trying to hide the sun from people and trying to be different and out of the box. Others might interpret it as Ruscha trying to say that the peak could be home to rebels or a place that Rebels frequent.
Ed Ruscha throughout Ruscha’s long life he has dabled into many different forms of art, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He was born December 16, 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States making him 77 years old. His father was an auditor for Hartford Insurance Company and his mother stayed at home. His mothersupported his early signs of artistic talent whilst he wanted to become a cartoonist. He moved to Los Angeles in 1956 and studied at the Chouinard Art Institute. Once he had graduated, Ruscha became a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency in Los Angeles. By the 1960s he was known for his paintings and photographs. from 1965 to 1969 He worked as layout designer for Artforum magazine. He also taught at UCLA as a visiting professor for printing and drawing in 1969.
In the piece currently to the right called “Think Maybe I’ll...” Ruscha used a background that looks as if it were hand painted paper with orange paint and a simple paint brush. On top of this background you can just about see the words Think, Maybe and I’ll in another shade of Orange close to the orange shade at the top. On top of these words you have “WAIT A MINUTE...!...!” In blue, “ON SECOND THOUGHT” in a bright yellow and “MAYBE... NO...” In plain white. In my opinion this piece shows the thought process of a very unenthusiastic man/women, someone who wants to do something but can’t be bothered to put the effort in. I have gone straight to this conclusion and can’t think of another possible answer to why these words are used.
Ruscha’s work though simple engages the viewers brain and might even confuse them making them try to think why has Ruscha put this word along with this picture and if it isn’t just a random picture along with a random word.
To the right now you can see a photograph of Ed Ruscha standing next to his piece ‘Noise,’ a very simple piece, showing the word ‘NOISE’ in yellow placed onto a simple blue background. This piece is very simple and in my opinion takes no skill but still makes people think ‘why has he used the word ‘NOISE’?” apart from the idea of why has he used that word, the piece is empty and could be made via someone on Microsoft paint. Still as I said, even though this is a very simple piece, it still makes the viewer think and question why this word has been written on to this background and why have those colours been chosen.
In this photograph by Ed Ruscha, He takes the view point/ quote of some one that’s less educated then your average Joe, as far as to even write the words like the person spoke them. In all fairness he could have written the word like that so that you’d make the connection between the words and who it is. The back ground appears to be a city at night with the lights shining bright and with a blur on it. The writing is in straight lines as if block capitals and opposing colours to the background. This piece is actually a very smart photograph, it creates a story in your mind, The background shows a blurred out city at night, telling us that this all takes place within a city and that it was late at night when it happened. Next you have the writing/speech, it looks as if it were written by a simple worker, not educated to become a doctor but a simple construction worker or a shop owner, someone who doesn’t need t have the best possible education. All in all this photograph paints the picture of a man running out on his wife and kids one night after something bad has happened, maybe he didn’t want the kid or had a fight with his wife?
Photographers Interpretations Doug Aitkens
Doug Aitken was born in Redondo Beach, California in 1968. In 1987, he initially studied magazine illustration with Philip Hays at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before graduating in Fine Arts in 1991. He moved to New York in 1994 where he had his first solo show at 303 Gallery. He currently lives and works in Venice, California, and New York. His work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live performance. He often explores spatial art from minimalism to landscapes and using words to make suggestions to the viewer.
Doug Aitkens has taken nature and split it into 4 squares, placing them together to make one square itself. His work as you can see on the left of this text is part of a album, just one photograph to show people the differences in landscapes even when they’re empty. All four different landscapes have different colours to the ground, the top left has brown sand, the top right has clean white rock, the bottom left has a dark brown nearly orange colour and the bottom right has yellow turning into white ground. Even though they have differences you can clearly see that all four images are landscapes (even though I’ve had the comment that the bottom pictures look like close ups of some sort of pie/pastry). I tried to focus and adapt upon the way he uses individual images to create one image. As you can see underneath this text, I have created my own interpretation of the image with my own spin. I’ve taken six individual images of the same tracks from different angles and take triangles instead of squares out of them to create a image within itself.
Photographers Interpretations Ed Ruscha
Aitkens is an American artist associated with art. He has worked in painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film making. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California. He was born into a family in Omaha, Nebraska, with an older sister, Shelby, and a younger brother, Paul. His mother was supportive of him, showing early signs of artistic skill and interests, The young man was attracted to cartooning and would sustain this interest throughout his early years. moving to Los Angeles in 1956 where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as the California Institute of the Arts) under Robert Irwin and Emerson Woelffer from 1956 through 1960. He then spent much of the summer of 1961 traveling through Europe. After graduation, Ruscha took a job as a layout artist. By the early 1960s he was well known for his paintings, collages, and photographs. He worked as layout designer for Artforum magazine under the pseudonym “Eddie Russia” from 1965 to 1969 and taught at UCLA as a visiting professor for printing and drawing in 1969. as you can see bellow his work is very orientated around using words in different fonts on different surfaces to create his own art, whether it blunt and straight forward or smooth and calm.
Ed Ruscha Bases his work upon using words on backgrounds in order to make the viewer think and question, “why this word on that background” He does this in the majority of his pieces as he tries to engage the viewers mind, making them create stories of their own in order to go along with his photography. In the piece ‘Rebel’ he uses the word and the background to engage the viewer, for me it makes me think as if their are rebels inside this mountain hiding out or using it as a base but as I said before, everyone’s opinion on what Ruscha is showing us is different. Some people might take it that people who clime it are ‘Rebels’ I took a picture from my first photo shoot in which you can see a road going up a hill with nature on either side of it as it tries to overtake the rood turning it back into nature hence I’ve used the word ‘Nature’ and placed it on top of the hill on the road. Other people might look at my photograph and think, “oh He’s trying to say that roads are the urban form of nature” or maybe, “He’s trying to say that to him, this is Natural, this road in the forest that he sees so much” So as I said, everyone has their own opinion and story that they see when looking at Ruscha’s kind of work.
Photo shoots Photo shoot PLAN questions: 1. Date of the photo shoot. 2. Main aim of the photo shoot. 3. Shutter speed range (secs). 4. Aperture range (F numbers). 5.ISO. 6. Light source 7. Photo shoot Ideas 8. Photo shoot evaluation.
First Interpretation Date of the photo shoot - 3rd Febuary, 2015 The main aim of the photoshoot was to complete assignment 1, to take a general photo shoot of my selected theme, as you should know my selected theme is Natural and Urban. The shutter speed ranges from 1/30 to 1/600 because some are taken in the same lighting and others are taken of the sky and the ground with the ground in darkness/shade. The Aperture ranges from 3.1 to 11, from quiet dark (in the shadows/shade) all the the way to a bright sunny day. The ISO ranged from 64 to 400, The ISO tended to stay at 64 and only went to 400 twice, reaching 100 and 200 a couple of times as well. The light source for this Photo shoot was completely natural, only using the sun since I was outside. the natural light actually helped in some pictures to create a focus point. My idea for this photo shoot was to just take a walk through my local forest looking and taking photos of simple relationships between Natural objects ( the grass, trees and dirt) and man made objects(walk paths made over time, walls, fences and tracks). overall I believe that this photo shoot was very eventfull, it even took part in helping me to decide on my final piece. I was also able to use a lot of the photos be it to make mocks or to just be used on pages.
Skylines
Date of the photo shoot - 25th Feburary, 2015 The main aim of the photoshoot was to complete assignment 3. The shutter speed ranges from 1/30 to 1/340 most of the iamges are quiet bright as they were take on a sunny day outside. The Aperture ranges from 3.1 to 11 again jsut like in the first photoshoot, I believe this is because of a mix of detail, lighting and distance. The ISO ranged from 64 to 200, not as much as the first assesment as the photos were all taken in the light with no contrast to dark meaning the ISO could be lower. The light source for this Photo shoot was completely natural, only using the sun since I was outside. My idea for this photo shoot was to try and take photos that would fit along with the work of Ed Ruscha and Doug Aitkens, simple but could easily have a story created from them to make the overall picture more complex and thought provocing. overall I think that this photo shoot went well, It allowed me to think about the spacing of each photograph and where the picture should be taken from.
Objects and environments Date of the photo shoot - 25th Feburary, 2015 The main aim of the photoshoot was to complete assignment 4. The shutter speed ranges from 1/30 to 1/340 most of the iamges are quiet bright as they were take on a sunny day outside. The Aperture ranges from 3.1 to 11 again jsut like in the first photoshoot, I believe this is because of a mix of detail, lighting and distance. The ISO ranged from 64 to 200, not as much as the first assesment as the photos were all taken in the light with no contrast to dark meaning the ISO could be lower. The light source for this Photo shoot was completely natural, only using the sun since I was outside. My idea for this photo shoot was to try and take photos that would fit along with the work of Ed Ruscha and Doug Aitkens, simple but could easily have a story created from them to make the overall picture more complex and thought provocing. overall I think that this photo shoot went well, It allowed me to think about the spacing of each photograph and where the picture should be taken from.
reshoot for the final piece Date of the photo shoot - 10th March, 2015 The main aim of the photo shoot was to complete assignment 6. The shutter speed ranges from 1/35 to 1/180 most of the images are around the same shutter speed as they are all taken relatively close to each other and of the same thing. The Aperture changed from 3.1 to 8, I believe this is because of the constant lighting and how the conditions were the same thought out the shoot only changing a little. The ISO was a constant 64, Unlike the other photo shoots this one isn’t of multiple things in a lot of different places. The light source for this Photo shoot was completely natural, only using the sun since I was outside. The idea of this photo shoot was to get the photos needed for my final piece, I took a range of photographs as I moved up the hill so that I could later on choose which ones I wanted exactly. Overall this photoshoot worked out very good as I got all the phots that I wanted.
Final piece Progress Date of the photo shoot - 28th - 29th April, 2015 The main aim of the photo shoot was to complete assignment 9. The shutter speed is a constant 1/35 becauser all the photos were taken in the same room from the same height and aimed at the same place. The Aperture is a constant 3.1 as well because of the lighting being the exact same thoughout the photo because of the artificial light created via the bulbs. The ISO was a constant 64, Unlike other photo shoots since just like the reshoots, it’s of the same thing but at different times. The light source for this Photo shoot was the light bulbs within the lights in the exam room. The point of this photo shoot was to document my exam nearly every hour so that I could see and show my progress. The photo shoot was a success since I’m able to show any viewer what my final piece looked like as I made it except I would have liked to take more photographs.
Final piece Progress Before
After
So Far...
So Far... So far I have decided a theme, researched photographer, looked at techniques/processes and started looking at the outcome. Choosing a theme - I decided to go with Nature and the human interpretations and representation of it. E.g. a photograph of a field compared to a painting of a field, how the differ and there similarities as well. I chose this theme because I wanted to see how we have changed are views of nature throughout are lives, how humanity has seen it and how nature itself changes over time as well. I have been to my local woods and field, taking photographs of the environment from the ground to the treetops and then looking at how people have seen similar images within paintings, photos and other forms of art. I have realised that over time people have adopted the look of having landscapes being very bright if it’s open (e.g. a field/plain) and having a landscape very dark and gritty if it isn’t (e.g. forests and trees). Photographers Research - I have looked at multiple artists since I started looking at my theme, take two for an example, Doug Aitkens and Ed Ruscha. Doug Aitkens as well as making photography using words and putting pictures inside of them has also done work where he has taken photographs and cut them equally, making shapes (normally squares) out of the pieces of pictures combined. On the other hand, Ed Ruscha has take the approach of taking simple photographs say of a mountain and then writing a word or a sentence over the top of it. Via looking at both of these artists I have been able to think about different ways I can show my theme, be it through Ruscha’s way of writing over words or Aitkens way of cutting out parts of photos. I have used both ideas, editing photographs making mock ups of each. I have also thought about the four elements and how they work with and into my theme, how I could show each individual one and why. Techniques and Processes - I have completed 3 photo-shoots so far. My first photo-shoot was simply of relationships, keyboard to mouse, knife to fork, chair to pillow. The second photo-shoot that I took was of my artist interpretation, I decided to take focus on Doug Aitkens for this photo-shoot, taking photos of landscapes from ground to sky, allowing me to be able to edit the photos later. I have also done a photo-shoot based on relationships targeted at my sub theme of nature and the human interpretation of it. I tended to use auto settings whilst outside taking photo-shoots, allowing the aperture and shutter speed to automatically change. I used camera to steady out each image so they could link better allowing me to use Photoshop to cut and move each image to create the desired effect. If I wanted to refine my work via the techniques more, I would/could use precise measurements and have pictures cutting corner to corner. If I was to take a technique further I would explore into my work in Photoshop, changing the amount of pictures in each shape, adding more cuts and maybe even taking some out. Planning for the Outcome - I could take the shaping of my work further, maybe changing the shape of the cuts I take out of photographs, even the size, I could then change the layout of the shapes, making a completely different shape compared to the current shape I’m making. I might even look further into Ed Ruscha’s work and how he used text upon landscapes. I want to take more photo-shoots based upon my theme, different environments and different styles. Not just ground to sky but focusing on specific parts of nature, maybe a leaf or a singular branch but from many different angles.
Techniques
Cropping
Cropping - where you enlarge or cut an image to create a new image that’s focused upon a certain part of the original image. My favourite crop out of the five crops done bellow is definitely the top right one, the second crop. I say this because if you look at the image properly it looks almost as if the image is slanted into the shape of a Rhombus and then recur back to a square.
Techniques
Rotation
Rotation - the movement of a image or images to create new images as if the first had been mirrored. for instance pasting the image under the same image and flipping it vertically to make it look like a mirror is placed under the original image. My favourite Rotation piece is the second one I did, the rectangular one found on the right of ths page. it’s my favourite as the shape of the olriginal image helps the shape of the new image.
Techniques
Rotation
Techniques
Repetition
Repetition - The use of the same image, over and over again but made smaller or cropped slightly to show a difference. My favourite Repetition edit is the circular edit, specifically the one of the grass and the fence because thje effect of the grass looks almost normal but then seeing the fence everytime shows you that it’s edited.
Techniques
Scanogram
Scanogram - The use of a scanner to digitally produce an image of objects My favourite version of Scanograms is the last one (the one on the far right), It’s busy and looks as if there are lots of layers one ontop of the other but in the end it’s just a scan with a single layer, just lots of cards on top of each other.
Possible Ideas -Other Artists
Evaluation
When I first started working with my question to show relationships I started via taking a photo shoot, I went out and took photos of what I believed would show links between my given question. As I took the photo shoot I began to get the idea that the link between Nature and man made “urban” parts. I saw a road within a forest and it made me think about how nature over time takes back what we have urbanised and left. I started off my research by looking at a couple of artists given to us via the exam paper. I imediately saw a connection between Ed Ruscha and Doug Aitkens. I saw how they both used a single word along with a picture to tell a story granted that one of them did it via placing a word on top of a picture and the other via placing a picture inside the letters I still took interest into how they both showed their photography. I experimented before making u pmy mind of what to do for my final piece. I tryed to use one photo to hide another via making it into a sort of curtain, this worked apart from over time the photograph on top would get ruined. I looked into DOug Aitkens landscape work and liked the idea yet thought it could be changed. taking his work and changing it, adding more to it and taking it in a different way to get a different reaction from the viewers. I looked into how different photos would work, using the same photo six times to create an image, using six different photos, using three photos or just two photos allowing people to see what the photographs originally was. I thn changed my idea of the curtains and thought about using hinges to act as a way of hiding an image and presenting it. This idea lead to me thinking of making a kind of book, two peaces of art hiden and when opened both pieces are shown. This form of prescentation reminded me of Ed Ruscha and how he had work presented on a wall and as you go along it told a story, at the end it finished with a piece called “The End” which told people it had finished yet was still a piece of photography. I took my idea of putting cut outs from photos together from Doug Aitkens landscape work and took them idea of putting words onto pictures from Ed Ruscha.