VISION issue 1 by Helen Jessica

V I S I O N

research journal & notes

PHOS330: photography final major project portfolio, mnhp level3

issue

From the Author

No project

portfolio can succeed without research.

start any

I first look through all my favourite photography magazines,

British Journal

of photography,

Aesthetica

and

Hotshoe. I

also go through all my favourite photography websites and blogs, from this

can start to pick out what is trending in the world of

photography at the moment, and start to build ideas of what imagery inspires me most and what sort of images

VISION all

another the

visual

issue and

inspired

imagery

and

my a

artist

one

research

practice, brief

magazine

that

with

outline

I might like to start making.

has

critical

how

cataloguing one

way

reflection

has

inspired

me.

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Ryan James Caruthers

The pictures of 19-year-old Ryan James Caruthers are a dreamy collection, offering an interpretive narrative within each frame. processes to create his artful pieces.

Ryan James

Most of his pictures are post-

creates portraits that are made

of a polish blend of photography and layered ghost like images. and fine art photographer lives and works in

The

young artist

NYC. At a young age he picked up on

disposable film photography, immediately fell in love with it and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how the story began.â&#x20AC;?

this project

photography.

am focusing my time to linking people and nature in my

I was drawn to these works because of the simple yet intriguing nature

of them, and the hint of a narrative that runs through the works. palette as a theme that runs through the work, is an area

The dark colour

I am interested in as well,

I like the idea of linking a photo series with a colour theme running through.

Conscious (2013) - R yan James Caruthers

Untitled (2012) - R yan James Caruthers

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P H O T O G R A P H E R

Oscar Parasiego

“Oscar Parasiego

created the series

‘Diaspora’,

about our identity, inspired from his own move to the

a project

UK. Every

day

thousands of emigrants leave their countries to find a better future elsewhere.

At that point, there is a clear transition between the person

we’ve been so far and the person we’re going to be.”

The

images

show

individuals

transparent

silhouettes

which reflect the individuals’ new environment, an environment they didn’t belong to until now.

The

silhouettes occupy a new space and

they gradually merge into this new context, just like a chameleon.

The

artist transmits a powerful feeling by portraying the individuals

without showing them, showing just their camouflage, their inner fight for seeing themselves reflected in their new lives.

‘The

Parasiego

explains:

protagonists of my pictures merge into their new houses, new

neighbourhoods, new countries, in the same way as

find my place

portraying them without showing them, showing just their camouflage.”

Following

on from my previous project

am planning on

using image multiply image compilations to create my final pieces. are many ways of combining images now using

Photoshop

and

There I

currently within this research trying to see all the different ways, both simple and elaborate.

Parasiego’s

work would to me come under the

more elaborate of ways to compose images; however having the concept influence the technique like in this series gives the image a new depth.

Victor (2012) - Oscar Parasiego

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P H O T O G R A P H E R

Randy P. Martin Rock On (2013) - R andy P. Martin

“Martin’s

latest series is called

‘We Are Tiny’,

proving how

small and petty we humans are compared to mother earth.

Nature

reveals more breath-taking beauty than we probably ever could, which gets quite obvious in the following pictures. with a

All

pictures are taken

Fujifilm X-Pro 1 or a Yashica T5.” I am drawn to the sublime beauty of this series and the epicenes

of the environments captured.

Taking

landscapes with an aspect of

the sublime is no easy feat and is an area of photography been personally good at.

I have never

I want to within this project combine the two

areas of photography that

Cold Reality (2013) - R andy P. Martin

I felt need the most work, portraiture and

landscape; this series shows a very novel way of combining the two.

The message is also portrayed very powerfully with in the series.

Mesmerizing (2013) - R andy P. Martin

Taking The Plunge (2013) - R andy P. Martin

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Caroline Mackintosh

“Caroline Mackintosh’s latest personal work centers itself around the reconstruction of natural environments through composition and light-manipulation.

Her series ‘Metallurgy’, features landscapes around Cape Town, South Africa (her place of birth and current base) and uses mirrors to create juxtaposing portals of warped light

– resulting in the beautiful and surreal images of the collection.

When asked about how she creates this unique and eerie viewing experience, she replies: ‘The idea was to highlight the loneliness of the landscapes by establishing the mirror-portals as separate, almost sentient, entities and placing them to hover in isolation, as though forever experiencing an alternate perspective.”

This

technique of using a mirror is one that is currently trending in the

world of photography, with many photographers using it in novel and interesting ways.

am currently planning on basing the main part of my practice on using a

mirror as a major component, so looking at this series has shown me the different ways that the mirror can be used in my compositions, both in obvious way and in more subtle ways.

Metalurgy, Untitled (2013) - Caroline Mackintosh

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Transfer, Untitled (2013) - Kevin Corrado

P H O T O G R A P H E R Kevin Corrado

“For

the project

‘Transfer’, Kevin Corrado

dips his hand in paint and

places it in front of a landscape, creating an interesting visual effect.

The

series

began as a playful idea of the ocean being a giant sea of blue paint rather than water. In its entirety, the project speaks about our intense connection between common landscapes and their assigned colors.

Corrado’s

role as an artist.

The

pictures also address to

Kevin

has to pick a color, just like a painter would for

his painting (but a photographer usually wouldn’t).

Mixing these two disciplines, he

succeeds in creating appealing artworks with an ironic touch.

See more of his works

below.”

This

artistic series is less relatable to my image ideas than the previous;

although the concept behind the works does fit because way.

was mainly drawn to the work

am very interested in combining art and photography in a more tangible

I have always planned in this project to paint on my images. This artist had used

the paint before the image was captured whereas

I plan on adding the painting aspect

in post.

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Untitled (2011) - Amy Harrity

P H O T O G R A P H E R Amy Harrity

“Amy Harrity

is a young photographer based in

California, USA. Her

pictures focus on creating a surreal world where her subjects live. want my images to be emotive

Subjects here.

–

Amy explains: ‘I

the created world is open, whimsical, and freeing.

can really tap into themselves and explore different facets of themselves

I like to explore staging these moments in a more styled/cinematic fashion, but

also continuing to find them in everyday life.”

looked through

ideas, this was until

Harrity’s

works and they didn’t relate to my project

came across this one.

because it seemed to really grab my attention. the ambiguity makes it very versatile.

decided to add it to my research

The simplicity to the image as well as

These aspects I would like to bring to my work,

as an ambiguous image can fit any message.

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Moose (2010) - Traer Scott

P H O T O G R A P H E R Traer Scott

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Natural History

is a series of completely candid, in- camera, single

exposure images which merge the living and the dead, creating allegorical narratives of our troubled co -existence with nature.

Ghost-like reflections of modern visitors

viewing wildlife dioramas are juxtaposed against the taxidermied subjects themselves, housed behind the thick glass with their faces molded into permanent expressions of fear, aggression or fleeting passivity.â&#x20AC;?

Panda (2010) - Traer Scott

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This I

series is by far the most powerful and beautiful photographic series

have come across to date.

This

simple yet effective technique of waiting for the

moment to capture reflections creates a very personal and unique image that truly captures the moment. If

I could create images to this standard and effective I would

Ostrich (2010) - Traer Scott

Tiger (2010) - Traer Scott

have properly achieved my goal of this project.

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Inside the View, Untitled (2004) - Helen Sear

P H O T O G R A P H E R Helen Sear

“‘Inside produced by

the

View’

brings together for the first time key bodies of work

Helen Sear over the last thirty years, reflecting the artist’s exploration

of the relationship between colour and form, figure and ground, the visible and the unseen.

Sear’s work challenges the dominant view of photography as a documentary

medium, questioning its indexical relationship with the world.

Photography, whether

in its analogue or digital form, may enable us to view in close up the surface detail of objects, but in doing so our perceptual experience of them becomes more ambiguous and fragmented, belying their unity and coherence.”

These

works relate more to my first portfolio where i was specifically

looking at double exposures, however in this portfolio i am explore almost the opposite of

Sears

work.

She

is exploring people becoming part of the environment

whereas i am looking to show the disconect that is appearing in the next generation.

where sears images place the model into the landscape i am to create a visual

seperation.

Aesthetically

i think that the texture

is very eye catching and powerful.

Sear

has produced in these works

tend to have a cleaner clinical finish to my

images, however this does seem visually appealing and i may see if i can potentially incorporate this into my work.

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Inside the View, Untitled (2004) - Helen Sear

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Spot, Untitled (2003) - Helen Sear

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Tim Macpherson

“This is the work of Tim MacPherson, the British advertising photographer. His clientele list includes Honda, McDonalds, Nikon, Phillips, GQ and The Sunday Times. As

you can see,

Tim’s

portfolio is bursting with conceptual photography,

bringing forward a vibrant imagination to any project he pursues.”

This

series entitled

‘Heads

and

Tails’

may not seem like it belongs within

this research project as it is more commercial than anything before.

have looked at

However I am really interested in perfecting studio photography and adding

portraiture to my portfolio and as of multi image compilations

started this portfolio with the board concept

was inexplicable drawn to these images and the simple

but effect narrative within them.

These

image to me are simple but effective and

want to try and create

images with the same technical brilliance and powerful narrative, but with mine

want this narrative to be my message of conservation and the damaging separation that’s now apparent between man and nature.

Heads & Tails, Untitled (2012) - Tim Macpherson

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Heads & Tails, Untitled (2012) - Tim Macpherson

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Elina Brotherus

“These new photographs continue the same visual thinking as my previous series The New Painting (2000-2004) and Model Studies (2002-). My work consists of walking with the camera in a back-pack and the tripod under the arm, observing the changing light, looking for the simple landscape. The essential questions are the passage of time, the color of light, the human figure.

I’m looking for what we too often lack in the everyday life:

calm, wide spaces, surprise, veritable solitude and in compensation a shared experience.”

These work interest me in two ways. The first is this idea of the ‘gaze’ that keeps appearing in the artists work i have been looking at, this idea that a photograph can capture different gazes, these images are focusing on the subjects gaze and the relation between the subjects gaze and there environment.

The second is the format, the idea of

using the diptext layout as a way to show two images.

I have decided that i want to move

away from the multi-exposure way of showing two images and think this is nice clean way of displaying images that even flatter each other or maybe even stand apart in a way that makes the viewer think about the meaning of them being together.

Points of View on The L andscape III (2006) - Elina Brotherus

Points of View on The L andscape II (2006) - Elina Brotherus

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P.a.C.A, Untitled (2012) - Melinda Gibson

P H O T O G R A P H E R Melinda Gibson

‘Man cannot truly create; but he can stick things together in such a way as to illude into the belief that he has created; and it is this esthetic quality of composition which all the fine arts must possess.’

Melinda Gibson’s

series

‘The Photograph

Contemporary Art’

adheres to this

theory, quite literally. She ‘sticks things together’ – in this case, sliced - up images culled directly from the pages of

Charlotte Cotton’s seminal book, The Photograph as Contemporary Art,

which has graced the reading lists of nearly every academic institution offering a degree in photography since its publication in

2004. The

resulting collages are both playful and

haunting, metamorphosizing the photographs that originally accompanied

Cotton’s text into

‘compositions’ – into creative illusions – that are entirely her own. For any photography student (or for that matter, photography teacher) of the last decade, Gibson’s works conflate hours spent in darkened lecture theatres, brimming photo bookshops and gleaming-white galleries into singular experience; they transform years of diligent and directed image absorption into a psychedelic trip down memory lane, as if a

Gibson

herself, posing as a photographer, had

managed to capture stills from a dream the night before a big exam.

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P.a.C.A, Untitled (2009) - Melinda Gibson

I was at first only going to explore the work of Gibson as a whole and not specifically look at the images but focus on the layout and the concept, however when looking at these images you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help being captivated by them.

Although

done in a quite simplistic way they are incredible powerful.

am particually

drawn to the seemless way the images are cut together and the colour combinations that make the image very aesthetically pleasing.

However I was mainly interested in the whole book idea and concept that I plan to explore in more depth in the upcoming research magazine.

P.a.C.A, Untitled (2009) - Melinda Gibson

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;This backdrops of

Vee Speers

series entitled Immortal, is at once alluring and disquieting with beautiful youths set against

Eden-like

natural beauty, or scenes of post-apocalyptic destruction.

These Immortals

are real

people, young and beautiful, but they seem isolated, exposed and vulnerable, trapped, distant, on guard, defiant, and confronted by echoes of subliminal fears and insecurities.

With the smooth gloss sheen of fashion-model perfection Speers has created a new world that merges Mona Lisa charm and mystery, with the melancholy of Dorian Gray. The surface is loaded with reference both to classical art, and to the airbrushed

Photoshop perfection of youthful beauty that has become the everyday

obsession of western culture.

These Immortals

are all like tragic fallen angels, eyes opened with animal intelligence, looking out

onto an uncertain future, not even aware of how perfectly beautiful they appear to be right now.â&#x20AC;&#x153;

find these images capitivating, the complete perfect nataure of the image aswell as the detail in

the background makes it extremely visually interesting.

Although I

was immediately drawn to this series for

a simply aesthical reason, after reading into the concept behind the images is very powerful and relivant. In this body of work

Speers is trying to question the perfection that the youth is constantly trying to achieve

and puts this in juxposition with the over the top environments she has placed them in. Im am thinking of using the technique of superimposing photographs of models taken in the studio and placing them in different environments, either natural or overly edited.

Immortals #2 (2011) - Vee Spears

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Immortals #1 (2011) - Vee Spears

Immortals #7 (2011) - Vee Spears

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Tim Flack

“What underlines my work in this project, are the questions about how we shape nature and how it shapes us.” ‘By removing them (natural subject) from their natural environment and placing them in minimal studio -like settings, the images map over the style of human portraiture.

Tim’s animals

aim was to ‘illuminate the relationship between human and non human

- to make an inquiry into how these relationships occupy anthropocentric space.’ I was first drawn to these works simply because of the aesthetic appeal of them

and my love for clean, empty images. work

However

after researching further into

found that the concept behind this image series entitled

the same as the concept

Flack’s

‘More Than Human’

I am trying to portray in this project. I am trying to highlight

the similarities between humans and the natural world by the use of studio photography very much like this of

Tim Flack.

Personally I feel photography is only truely powerful when they have a message behind them and a point to make, which is the whole point and what

am trying to

achieve with this project.

More Than Human (2011) - Tim Flack

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More Than Human (2011) - Tim Flack

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More Than Humam (2011) - Tim Flack

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P H O T O G R A P H E R Roni Horn

“The Thames has this incredible moodiness, and that’s what the camera picks up.

[I]t has these vertical changes and it moves very quickly.

It’s actually a very dangerous river and you sense that just by looking at it

... [E]very

photograph is wildly different

–

even though you could be

photographing the same thing from one minute to the next. It’s almost got the complexity of a portrait.”

‘Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) is a series of fifteen large photo -lithographs of water, printed on white paper.

Each

images focuses on a small area of the surface of the river

Thames. The

of the

colour and texture of these watery surfaces varies dramatically between images: colours range from black to blue and from dark green to khakiyellow, and in each case the water’s texture is differently augmented by tidal movement and the play of light.

Close inspection of the images

reveals that tiny numbers in typeface are dotted like specks of flotsam over the water’s surface. These numbers refer to footnotes printed along the lower edge of each image’s white border.

The

footnotes present a

series of musings and quotations on the significance of the river and the moods and narratives it evokes.

Tate’s Still Water (The River Thames, for

Example) is from an edition of seven.’

[No Title] (1999) - Roni Horn

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[No Title] (1999) - Roni Horn

was directed towards these works during a

portfolio review with

Uta Kogelsberger,

who after

hearing about my ideas behind this project she mentioned that the combination of imagery in words can be very powerful when used right.

Although

asetetically

image alone is that appealing,

dont feel the visual

I very interested in the idea

behind combining the image with specific text to create different meanings.

Personally I think these image alone

are not strong and they need the text to give them purpose.

want to take this into my new direction my

portfolio is heading and experiment with how text can potentially alter an image and and image can alter text and more importantly how

I can use this in my own work

to make my message more powerful.

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P H O T O B O O K The Photography of Nature “The

book is a survey of

Fontcuberta’s

oeuvre displaying his

genius as photographer, essayist, humorist and fantasist alike. In teasing fashion, the book can be flipped to reveal an essay section, with texts by

Geoffrey Batchen myths that

and

Jorge Wagensberg

that examine and unpick the

Fontcuberta has so meticulously constructed.”

was bought this photobook after seeing it at

Paris Photo

2013 and was immediately in love with both the imagery and the concept behind

Fontcuberta’s work. The idea that people believe what they see in

images is one that

I started to explore in my dissertation, and an area of

photographic theory find extremely interesting, and one that has such a vast area of relevance across all photographic practices.

a completely aesthetic note

also am drawn to this book

by the beautiful and interesting way it is laid out and put together, from its fabric cover to the artwork used as chapter headings, for me this is more than just a photobook it’s a work or art.

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Aerofants (1941) - Joan Frontcuberta

“Joan Fontcuberta somewhere in

is one of the most highly acclaimed international wildlife photographer” it says

The Photography of Nature & The Nature of Photography, so it’s got to be true. Just like the story

about the fossils of mermaids at the end of which this sentence leads off the author’s bio. to inject that mermaids don’t exist and never did. written, makes a strong case in point.

But Fontcuberta

You might now be tempted

has pictures, and the article, convincingly

There are quite a few other things you didn’t know about in the book. There’s

a early-evolution centaur, where you have a monkey instead of a human torso attached to a horse (any biologists reading this will please forgive my somewhat sloppy description). in space (along with his companion, a dog named

Kloka).

course, pictures lie (or can be made to tell a tall tale).

done was to produce cleverly interesting. to look at

Or there’s Soviet cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov, lost

That

Photoshopped

all know that. If all

Fontcuberta

had ever

images of the aforementioned centaur, say, that would not be very

said, those people trying to sell us something with pictures (remember this or that?) might want

Fontcuberta’s work. What has struck me about all those cases that have recently made the news is how

amateurish the fakery has been. In much the same way,

I’m

actually amazed that a photojournalist producing work

like this isn’t laughed out of the room by his peers and/or news organizations. when a news photograph looks like a still from a

This

picture isn’t really a fake.

But

Hollywood movie, I’m tempted to think there’s a problem.

The reason why all those people should look at Fontcuberta’s work is because he’s testing the boundaries of photographic believability. It starts with the pictures, but it doesn’t end there. well done, they ’re very convincing. with very closely.

While

They

For a start, the images are all very

follow the conventions of whatever context

we all now believe that pictures lie

Fontcuberta

wrote it earlier) they actually don’t.

photography lies is based on a complete misunderstanding of what photography actually is or does. by themselves, don’t do anything.

They’re

just photographs.

But

wants to play

The

idea that

Photographs,

they can be made to tell a story or tall tale or

outright lie when they are being placed in context, when they ’re used to tell a story that might or might not be true.

And

even if you believe that photographs do something, the idea that they lie is completely detached from

how we look at them.

The issue of the veracity of photographs depends very strongly on the context they’re used in

– different contexts come with very different expectations. To pretend that the same rules apply for each and every context just doesn’t make any sense.

In his work, Fontcuberta has been exploring the mechanisms operating in different contexts in many different ways.

The

story about the mermaids is more than a set of pictures, for example.

The

pictures are made to look like

the kinds of pictures you would see in an article in a very specific kind of magazine. In other words,

Fontcuberta is

very aware of context, of its rules, and, in particular, of the viewer’s expectations that come with that particular context.

come back to the heavily

problem with this picture is not that it’s interested in) context

Photoshopped

example of photojournalism

Photoshopped. The

mentioned earlier:

The

main

main problem is that its makers are unaware of (or not

– they don’t see a problem with a news photograph looking like a movie still.

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The Holy Bible

Violence, calamity and the absurdity of war are recorded extensively within The Archive

in the world.

Modern Conflict,

the largest photographic collection of its kind

For their most recent work, Holy Bible, Adam Broomberg and Oliver

Chanarin mined this archive with philosopher Adi Ophir’s central tenet in mind: that God reveals himself predominantly through catastrophe and that power structures within the

Bible correlate with those within modern systems of governance.

The format of Broomberg and Chanarin’s illustrated Holy Bible mimics both the precise structure and the physical form of the

King James Version. By allowing

elements of the original text to guide their image selection, the artists explore themes of authorship, and the unspoken criteria used to determine acceptable evidence of conflict.

Inspired

in part by the annotations and images

own personal bible,

Bertolt Brecht

added to his

Broomberg and Chanarin’s publication questions the clichés at

play within the visual representation of conflict.

Discovering this book by Oliver Chanarin & Adam Broomberg was a major jolt of inspiration with this portfolio.

think the way they have interlinked the

text and the images was very clever and to do it with such a book as the bible and interlink it with images of conflicted has such a powerful statement that is so subtle.

This idea of taking a well known text or book and changing its context with

images is an idea that think

plan to take and incorporate into my own work, though,

I would take it a step away from simply putting my images into a book, but take

the pages out of the book format and incorporate into framing my images, so id be deconstructing the book used and reforming it into frames for the images the text has inspired.

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Gasoline “The gas station is one of the most iconic of twentieth century buildings. Recognised across the world, American

it is arguably most established on

soil where the notion of the road trip on a full tank of gas is

culturally ingrained.

Gasoline presents 35 archive press images of gas stations taken between 1944 and 1995. They have been David Campany,

collected by writer

purchased from the photography archives of several

American

newspapers

which have been discarding their analogue print collections and moving to the now ubiquitous .jpeg or .tif formats.

Gasoline can be read as a cautionary tale about the modern dependence on oil, about news photography, about the shift from film to digital imaging, or as a minor history of car design and vernacular architecture.

Marked

with the grease pen notations of the newspapers’ art directors, the photos tell of oil shortages, road

congestion, crimes, accidents and choking cities.

Individually

the images are single moments in time; collectively they show a growing consciousness

about cars, the oil trade and global concern about pollution.”

This

is a brilliant yet simple idea, but its so effective.

love this book not only because the imagery is

beautiful but also because of the face he had used all off the image, by keeping the editing details and including the writing on the back

Campany is showing that with all forms of photography there is art to be made. He has

taken editorial and documentary imagery and buy the simple act of displaying all the outside information that in the newspaper context (of which the images where taken for) would have been removed and putting them into a

Photo Book format he has changed the meaning of the images. This

work although very different from that of

Fontcuberta’s

‘The Nature

Photography/The

Photography of Nature’ it has still achieved the same end result, in that it has shown us that an image is just an image, its where the image is seen and it what context it is viewed in that determines its truth.

One

of the main things

have found interesting in the world of photography in my five years of

studying it is the ability of photography, or photographs to be more specific, to be interchangeable. it isn’t what an image shows that’s important, but where it is shown.

The idea that

This would make the idea that a photograph

needs to be technically brilliant or have an amazing concept at the start unnecessary; any image can be made into any concept…

Does then make the photographer irrelevant? A question that intrigues me, but I would need

a lot more research to answer.

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L A Y O U T Gasoline This Photo Book because of its imagery but

isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just amazing

am very inspired

also by its layout and format.

The

book is

split into two seconds, the first showing the original scans of photographs, with all the editing marks.

Then

the paper changes and

there is the written element, done in the form of a conversation between the author, and

David Campany,

George K aplan. The

second

section is then the backs of all the images from the first section in the same order.

This format although very simplistic, in my opinion is highly effective.

The

plain layout,

or white wall space, used means there is little distraction from the imagery and no text on the image pages to explain or lead the viewer, leaving them to take what they want from the images.

I also like the idea of have the necessary

text accompaniment, not only separate from the images but also in the form of a conversation/ interview between two people, so its not a definition, rather a discussion of the work.

Another aspect of this work that I find fascination is that although this is billed as the work of

David Campany, he took not one of the

photographs.

This

begs the important question

of at what point do we breach copyright, and at what point do we enter the realms of the ridiculous.

For

example, could

submit a

portfolio of completely found photographs for my final, and cover it under the umbrella of appropriation?

Although

many people look at

this photo book and find it absurd,

I personally

think that by including the editorial parts of the images that would originally cropped off and placing them in the white space format, he has made these images his own, he has completely changed the meanings of them.

Therefore

images in this book are in fact that of

Campany,

the

David

even if he did not actually press the

shutter release.

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Fading Fields N.5 (2012) - Elena Deliani

Fading Fields N.2 (2012) - Elena Deliani

Fading Fields N.6 (2012) - Elena Deliani

Fading Fields N.1 (2012) - Elena Deliani

P H O T O G R A P H E R

Elena Damiani

The

unstable transparency of the prints on silk chiffon is relative to the

light and the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position, varying continually as we move around them.

apparitions or ghosts the images portrayed appear or vanish in the space as fade- out recollections of a distant landscape.

Hence, these impressions appear as oscillatory

surfaces that fluctuate between presence and absence and contingent objects that shift as a result of what surrounds them.

The

viewer struggles to grasp at once to totality of the image, which keeps

fusing with the space in the background.

As a result, the works function as constant

reminders that it is only through the eyes of the present that we can catch a glimpse of the past, and that both realms -virtual and physical- merge constantly in the act of remembrance.

am starting to look at photographers work more in the way they print

and display their work, instead of just the their subject matter.

This

work for

example, subject-wise is not all that relevant to the way more portfolio is heading, however them.

was captivated by the way in which she has chosen to print and display printing on silk material and placing the see-through silk in front of

the second image and at slightly offset angle means that the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s angle in relation to the image, changes the image.

This

makes for a very interactive

exhibition, where the view is almost in- charge of what they see. with different ways

plan to experiment

can combine my images and am considering looking into

different and imaginative ways of having one image being seen by looking through the other as

feel it add a whole new depth of meaning to the compilation.

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“Woods Bay, Montana: An largest freshwater lake west of the about

P H E R Lauren Grabelle

odd little town on the border of a great wilderness to the east and the

Mississippi River

to the town’s west.

Basically

nowhere, with a population of

660. Where David Lynch meets Cheers: creepy and strange and everyone knows your name.” Personally I really dislike the way this body of work is described, if I read this description first I don’t think

I would have continued to look though this works. However I am happy to say I looked at the imagery and drew my own conclusion, which to me made the work very interesting.

When I

looked at this work

felt an intense reaction to the words on the sign and thought that these

words could be the inspiration of all the images that followed.

Although

this is not the case

these works into my research because to me it demonstrated the power of text within imagery. the text in the image

have included

only reading

created a whole new mean to the body of work, which was then completely changed and

denied upon reading the photographers description.

This personal reaction to this work makes me think of David

Campany’s Gasoline and back to this on going idea I keep coming back to about the completely inter- changeability of imagery.

Unititled Series (2012) - L aura Grabelle

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H “Staff

P H E R Marco Casino

riding, the local slang for train surfing, is a widespread phenomenon in

South Africa. A

huge

majority of surfers are kids under 25. The spectacular and risky act of train surfing has become a binding framework for an entire township’s youth.

Although amputations and deaths are common, the activity remains as popular as

ever.

The townships in

act also has a protest dimension.

K atlehong,

where these images were made, is one of the largest

South Africa and has played a key role in the history of the struggle against apartheid. Two decades

ago, the place served as an epicenter for anti-apartheid’s guerrillas.

Today, for many of these youths, the situation

of segregation remains more or less unchanged. In a context where violence, rampant poverty, drug abuse and AIDS are rampant, train surfing represents the search for a social redemption that will never come for the characters of this story.

Staff Riding is part of a long-term project about the township lifestyle 20 years after the official end of apartheid.”

stumbled onto the work of

Casino

by complete chance while researching way of displaying double

images, and found not only that the work was captivating and deep with meaning, but also that the way it is displayed is very similar to that of inspiring this whole portfolio.

Broomberg

and

Chanarin’s ‘The Holy Bible’

which is chiefly responsible of

Staff Riding (????) - Marco Casino

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Staff Riding (????) - Marco Casino

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P H E R Nikita Pirogov

“Simultaneously coexisting on two different sides – is this an attempt to break free of the duality of the world, or rather an attempt to mark the border of what is possible in its interpretation, to test its limits? In both cases this is a search for some symbolic, almost ungraspable borderline, in order to define and understand it, to transcend and perhaps join it.

This certain “syntax” of space and the construct of a “language” in relation to the visual environment, their constant evolution, flowing from one form into another on the crossing of borders within the

European

Union set me thinking about the idea of borders in general, through certain situations, meetings, details, subjects, conversations.

I noted the changes in the organisation of the place and thus people’s relation to one another,

changes in their mindset, way of life and stereotypes of each other. there were such gradations in my own familiar reality

these travels

strove to understand if

– in Russia – what it is like and how it presents itself. This

question troubled me for some time and I didnt know how to answer it.

Whenever I crossed that border to Russia,

Europe always seemed a world a way and I had to search for the starting point once more. Thinking about this a little deeper I realised that it is not a question of comparison, but rather of what arises this

–

“between”. It

is not what we look at or even what we see, but rather what we know and can learn from

getting to the very essence of the thing.

nail down. It can only be found

This

essence, though, the very purest substance, is impossible to

“between”.

They say that if you live in another country you develop another personality, speaking another language, navigating other symbolic codes, existing in other systems of thinking and attitude to the world. is different

Even the light

– not the landscape, because the physical border is also a psychological one, where the familiar meets

the new and unknown.

This is a certain attempt to record and nail down this change, visually and substantially,

through a poetic metaphor.

Only

a metaphor can overcome stereotypes and really come to the very core and

essence of the issue and thus discover changes and new experiences and overcoming yourself.

this sense the diptych is the combination of past and present, traditions and their new offshoots. It

returns to the source of writing as diptychs were first used in the printing press.

They

Ancient Greece,

long before the invention of

came in the form of two or more clay boards for recording text or images. In their

juxtaposition, they combined to form some third thing, whole, continuous and bearing forth additional meaning between the two juxtaposed sides.

This project is an attempt to find a new composition by almost imperceptibly and allegorically combining my very personal experience on these travels and retaining the themes of places and people that became familiar to me. in

Perhaps through my subjective poetic experience I may show something universal that exists as in Russia, so

Europe or even the process of combination and extension of borders of the Image.”

Diptychs (????) - Nikita Pirogov

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Diptychs (????) - Nikita Pirogov

with the work of

Elena Damianiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s I

was

not drawn to this work because of its subject matter, but because of the format display the image in.

The

Pirogov

has chosen to

use of diptych

(Two

images

mounted together / an image divided into two) and triptych

(Three

images mounted together / and image

divided into three) formats is a very simple yet effective way of displaying two images together. an area

This is definitely

plan to explore as sometimes

feel the best

and most visually effective way of doing something is usually the simplest.

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A R C H Too Be Continued

Research for me is the most important part of any portfolio, I personally love looking at the work of others and gaining inspiration and techniques. find it a usful way to incorperate the critical language

I also

I have learnt throughout

the last three years.

Research for me is an on going, never ending process and I will continue on with it until

I hand in the final piece. This issue has focused solely on the works

of artists and photographers, so in the next issue

will be looking more into

critical theory and book, jounrals and all written inspiration that has informed this portfolio, though

I am sure I will find more photographers work to be added

aswell.

Issue Two of VISION coming soon... 74