The Lost, Found and Missing Top Up Project
ARTIST ANALYSIS
JOHNNY MOBASHER
Captioned under this photograph on the artists website, quotes the bible verse 'The desire of the righteous ends only in good; the expectation of the wicked in wrath’ (Proverbs 11:23). It is the blind, street instrumentalist that at first makes us as the audience have sympathy for the blind man. However, with the caption underneath this photograph which Mobasher had taken, then makes us question the message the photographer maybe trying to communicate to the audience. Perhaps Mobasher believes that the blind man is deserving of his situation? That perhaps he had done something which occurred him to lose his sight in the first place. Or perhaps the photographer maybe trying to say that he’s the righteous man who will soon get what he deserves, a good life? His sight? I think what influenced the photographer to take the photograph was his belief in the way the world works. The woman who assumingly is ‘putting money in the basket’, barely even looks at the blind man in the eyes. With a straight face, she also doesn’t seem to show the sympathy many people ‘should’ do. It can be assumed that she is giving money for the sake of it. So I think the photographer is trying to highlight what the ‘righteous’ will soon gain, and what the ‘wicked’ will soon lose. Personally, this photograph has inspired me to take my own photograph under the theme the lost, found and missing, and to express my own ‘lost’. I think this photograph strongly represents the distinction between what is lost and what someone currently has, which may soon go missing. So I hope to illustrate to the audience something that is also personally lost or missing which maybe someone else's gain.
ARTIST ANALYSIS
RICHARD AVEDON This photograph is titled ‘Marilyn at rest’ where at first was a typical photo shoot where she would laugh, play about and pose flirtatiously. Avedon mentioned in an interview, ‘then there was an inevitable drop... she sat in the corner like a child with everything gone’. Though Avedon continued to take pictures, Marilyn Monroe didn’t refuse and just remained in the still like pose.
I think the main issue which the artist was trying to highlight was that, there was something more to than just her playful and flirtatious life. “The evidence that, within the image, there is always something else” says Roland Barthes. So behind Monroe’s famous persona, was a lost character. Or perhaps a character that was always there but was missing in her life. Presumably, an identity which she suppresses due to her current lifestyle. Marilyn Monroe’s facial expression as well as Avedon's back story of what happened during the shoot raises the issue of missing pieces of identity. And simply by her ‘taking a small break’ from her persona at that point realises this issue from a perspective which can be related by all. Furthermore, the blue tone of the photograph sets a very ‘different’ atmosphere to other photographs which Monroe typically features in, which are usually bright and bubbly. I think what influenced the artist to take this photograph was to draw attention to this matter and to try and uncover more of Monroe’s identity than the persona known to the world. I like the way the artist was able to capture this moment of something different and quite profound. I think it embeds to the audience, that there is always something more. This photograph has inspired me to develop my initial photographs by uncovering the ‘missing’ pieces of my own identity, thoughts or memories which I wish to dwell on through this next set.
PHOTOGRAPHS
EVALUATION
In taking these photographs, my original intentions were to show a contrast of something that is missing in my personal life, and then to develop the photographs by showing something that was found or thought to be found, but truly isn’t. In the initial set of photographs I physically pieced out parts of my own body to express something ‘missing’ in my life which I cannot, at that moment, decipher. By using a hoola-hoop to symbolise the ‘hole’ within me; I hoped to highlight this issue to the audience both visually and metaphorically. Before developing the photographs I knew that the issue in the initial set of photographs were real, I was truly missing something which dwelt in my thoughts but I wasn’t sure that exploring the importance of these thoughts were enough to remove ‘hole’ which I was experiencing. Thus in developing my set of photographs, I decided to experiment with this idea to see if it was the ‘missing’ part of me. My memories. Not in the literal sense of losing my memories, but in the sense of missing my memories. In the initial set, I chose to shoot with a very simple background. I thought the way the built-in lighting in the room which created a warm tone, brought up an aesthetic quality to the photographs. Moreover, I thought the composition of the photograph of showing the triangular shape of the room and its compact and tight space surrounding me as the model, stressed the issue I was trying to raise. In this case it would be how having missing pieces of a person can make a person feel trapped within their own thoughts, not being free. In the developmental set, by filtering the memory in the hoola-hoop in black and white, I hoped to express that memory of being in the past. It is the ‘leather’ type texture in the developmental set which illustrates this situation being permanent. Just like when pen is written or drawn on a leather sofa, it is relatively hard to get out. A memory which is so longed for is also hard to get out of ones mind. I think the visual impact that my photographs would have on the viewer is to raise up any thoughts on whether or not there is anything lost or missing in their own identity. Perhaps it may also be memories, or also a lost or missing character such as the way the artist, Richard Avedon tried to show through Marilyn Monroe. The level of symbolism is transparent within the visual context of the photographs, therefore I think the audience will be able to understand the symbolic message I am trying to illustrate.