Coursework 2 The brief Experimental… The photograph as an object
The photographers’ gallery is currently under going a refurbishment and is due to open to the public in February 2013. as part of the launch, the gallery will host an exhibition titled ‘The photograph as an object’. As a medium, photography has traditionally ben used to document and capture ‘decisive’ moments in time. The aim of the ‘The photograph as an object’ is to showcase photographs that explore the physical qualities of the printed photographs, thus blurring the distinction between photography and art.
Slowly disappearing into nothing
Delicate objects
My intentions for this project For this project I would like to photograph some delicate objects which are sacred and have a special meaning to some people such as a religious object. However I want to create final outcomes which blur this fact and make my images into something which cannot be so clearly seen, just as religion and God are viewed.
Initial photographs
Artist analysis
Artist: Priya Launahewage
Although this is not a famous artist, I still found this piece of her work to be quite intriguing and visually striking because of the way she has decided to layer the matt image and acetate over one another and create an image which gave a supernatural illusion to it, making the image look as if were disappearing. I was really inspired by this image because I feel that it really linked with the theme of ‘slowly disappearing into nothing’ and also ‘delicate objects’ because of how she layered the image of the woman’s face to create a blurred effect and also because the face can be something very delicate albeit it’s not a ‘delicate object’ but it is still delicate in the sense of features on a face such as the eyes or mouth. I really liked how Launahewage uses one image to create an outcome which is blurred and hard to focus on. There is no real central focal point because of the blur. This work has inspired me to photograph a ‘delicate’ object and develop it further to blur the object so the viewer is unable to figure out what the object is.
Developments
Evaluation of project I am quite pleased with my initial photographs because of the composition and lighting and focus. I think I captured the object very well using the detailing and lighting to my advantage and creating a focal point in the image to highlight the detailing on the Buddha. I think this created a strong visual impact on the viewer. I think for this project I struggled a bit because I didn’t know where I was heading with the work. Also I don’t think I pushed my creative boundaries as far as I could have. I think if I had more time to work on my developments I would have tried editing them on Photoshop using layer mask and the opacity tools. I wanted to create close up images of the object which were blurred slightly so it wasn’t as easy to see what the object actually was. This is because I wanted to follow the theme of the image slowly disappearing.
I think Launahewage helped me figure out how I could follow the theme of the object disappearing and blurring the object in an effective way. I really liked how Launahewage used an acetate of the same image and layered them together and faded part of the face but still kept some parts in focus, such as the eyes which are seen as something which should be seen in portraitures. On the whole I don’t think my final outcomes really reflected my experimentation as I didn’t get to show my experimentation using Photoshop. I think if I had extra time I would have been able to experiment further on Photoshop, layering some parts of the image and leaving other parts empty to show the image slowly blurring. I think by doing that my final outcomes would be much more visually pleasing and stronger.
One artist I would look at for inspiration to develop my work further would be Idris Khan Every, who takes blurred images of still objects in black and white. What I like about this artist is that although the object is blurred it is still the central focal point and the black and grey shades highlight the object and make it look illustrative or ghostly.