editors letter by Laura Matthews

THE

JOURNAL Issue one

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EDITOR’S LETTER Hello and welcome The Journal, I’d like to begin by explaining what The Journal magazine is to me and why I have created it. Sketchbooks are my religion, or at least my religious texts. I have filled dozens of them over the years and I get nervous when I reach the end of one and don’t have another waiting, I see my Sketchbook or journals, whatever name you would like to call them basically as a visual diary, however anyone can make an art journal. The only difference is how you use it to inform your practice. The most obvious reason for keeping a sketchbook is practice. The greatest athletes, musicians, actors, artists and any type of creative person practices. It’s part of the DNA and the mantra of every good coach. Drawing is a skill, one that’s consciously and constantly developed. Sure, some people probably have more raw talent, maybe their brains are wired differently, but the skills are developed with practice. The idea is the key, everything else is just a tool. Jackson Pollack didn’t just paint huge, pretty pictures (if you like that kind of thing... which I emphatically do) he used the canvas and the paint to communicate an idea, without which, there would be a lot more free space in museums and galleries. Da Vinci only made a handful of paintings, but he’s a household name because of his ideas in his sketchbooks. To paraphrase Quentin Tarantino when asked about Peter Jackson’s King Kong; “if it isn’t about race, then it’s just a movie about a giant monkey.” Ideas are like butterflies in a high wind, and for me a sketchbook is the closest thing there is to a net. Refrence for quoatation This magazine is in essence my polished sketchbook, but with an extra added intention of using it as a piece in my portfolio. It is my intention when I leave the safety of an institution to work in publishing or graphic design, and not having my main source of income coming from photography. This aspiration for my future career in art has only been recently realized; during the end of my previous project ‘data’ I became very self-aware of my love for publications. Whether this is magazines, books, posters, I just wanted to be a part of that design world, I consider my photography degree as the loyal, drab wife while I spurned for graphic design – my exciting mistress. By creating my Journal as a magazine, it allowed me to still to use it as a tool to inform, develop and contemplate my photographic practice. Yet it also allowed me to develop the skills of working in Adobe InDesign, developing an understanding the importance of good aestheticism in graphic design. However, before you begin reading through the magazine, I would like to inform you due to the publication being polished sketchbook, it only contains highlights taken from my written artistic journal, therefore there are missing shoots and images that didn’t make the cut. Also with the way I have constructed the magazine, the imagery is place into chapters rather than filling the pages with shoot after shoot after shoot, I compiled the shoots into chapters.

Laura Matthews

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07 08 16 20 About Us

Shoot One

Essay

Shoot Two

Looking at what The

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Journal has to offer in

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a storm

Reflections on final

Back to the home

coming.

major protfolio.

comforts.

the virtual realm.

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28 39 44 68 Shoot Three

Shoot Four

Glitch Tests

Non Places

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Red and blue filter

Falmouth landscapes

Reflections on final

Examingin the enig-

major protfolio.

matic subject of the

play with portratiure.

noctunal city.

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Visit Us Online At http://study-bookmark.tumblr.com

Portfolio Development May 2014

ABOUT US: JOURNAL & BOOKMARK

About Us Portfolio

Format

The Journal

The Bookmark Blog

Format is my photographic portfolio and blog, this site can be used to view several projects that I have created over the past 2 years. The site also contains an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;aboutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; page, which can be used as a directory to both the sketchbook and bookmark sites, as well as all other professional social sites such as Linkedin.

Journal is my personal sketchbook, it is a place where I upload work as it develops. The site works well as it allows for feedback, which can sometimes be completely irrelevant, but can also be very useful especially when considering how the meaning and the intentions of the imagery can differ between viewers.

Bookmark is an online research blog, it comprises a compilation of artists who work without and with the photographic medium, as well as including quotations and passages of texts. The criteria of the blog is anything of interest to me, whether this is be contextually, aesthetically or psychologically. The blog is extremely visual and works as a giant mind map, the reason for this is as an aid to help my study; being dyslexic I find it very hard to evaluate imagery which is extensively text based

SHOOT 1 / STORMY SEAS

T H E R E S

S T O R M

C O M I N G

CHAPTER ON E - S TOR MY S E AS NO RTH COAS T - P ORT H L E V E N JA N UA RY 2 0 1 4

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This was a quick shoot, as I was struggling to start the project, so thought the best way to begin was to just to pick up the camera and start shooting. The chosen subject was the storm. These images are the documentation of the periods of time, both leading up to and after a storm. I decided that a good place to start would be with the images that I inverted, as they have a more surreal quality. I think that this prompted ideas of looking more towards the theme of still life, or even banal imagery. This is due

to the images just being of a rough sea and nothing more, the possibly have a more appropriate place on a site such as Getty or Alamy stock photography sites, rather than in my portfolio. In terms of the purpose of the shoot it was successful in that it began the thought process for my photographic practice. What I have concluded from this shoot is that although I don’t want to shoot themes of the picturesque or sublime landscapes I am interesting the notions of travel, the notion that “to escape is the

greatest of pleasures”(Virginia Woolf). I’m interested in documenting escapism, places outside of the home that we have relationships with, where we are contented in, places where we go when we are trying to get away from the world. Therefore I think the next logically step is to explore this photographically, beginning with a non direct self portrait, with places where I am contented, then work outwards.

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1 Rocks, 2014 Still Image 2&3 The Pool, 2014 Still Image and The Pool 2, 2014 Still Image

PortfolioA Storm Coming Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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4 Inverted Sea, 2014 Still Image

PortfolioA Storm Coming Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

I N V E R T SHOOT ONE | EDITTED IMAGE

Overall, I shot about 60 frames for this first shoot. While looking through them I couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity, I’ve seen these images so often as since moving to Falmouth three years ago, I have consistently taken photographs of the picturesque Cornish sea scape. There is no particular reason for this, the images have never served any purpose other than a snap to be shared on a social network, I find myself questioning more the mentality of this process, the compulsion to take a photograph of something ‘pretty’ and show the world rather than just relying on my memory of it. The image displayed over this double page is a quick postproduction edit. I was interested with de-familiarizing images of the idyllic picturesque sea side, I experimented with filters and colours trying to shift the perception of the image, it wasn’t until glancing at my negatives that I have collected over the years that the though as inverting the image came about. I consider that this still of edit has the potential to be explored further as I love the texture created by the process.

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First Reflections on FInal Major Portfolio Laura Matthews “In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.... SUSAN SONTAG”

Initially Data is in essence was intended as an ongoing research and response project, of which explores how photography is in a continuous cycle of being researched and reiterated. The series contains nine images; each image displays a research image & my own imagery, created as a reaction to the research image. My imagery is displayed as the larger image, while the research image is shown as the smaller image, as it reflects the same sized ratio as how it was initially first viewed digitally. With each image is a cover sheet, which refers to the ‘research’ image that inspired my visual reaction. The tracing cover over the image tells the number the times that particular image has been shared from one ‘Tumblr’ blog to another, also known as ‘reblogging’, as well it states the author (if known) and the source site of where the imagery was first found. Susan Sontag proposes in ‘Melancholy Objects’, “In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments” (Sontag: 76). If find this interesting as the paper was written in the seventies, which was

also the same time digital technology’s availability on a personal level began, with the release of first portable laptop in 1975, to the apple computer ‘Apple I ‘ being released in 1976. I became fascinated with how this opinion is embedded in an era when digital art and electronic archives were near non-existent, however what intrigues me most is how the argument still has validly in this present digital age. This was the trigger that began the process for my previous series of work, I still consider the argument to still have validity within the new project, however at this current moment in time I’m still vague on what It is am exactly wanting to produce, and how the imagery will form my portfolio and start career within the world of photography. I consider that Sontags point ties closely with an ongoing personal achieve I had been producing, since beginning university education. The ‘Bookmark Blog’ is my online research blog, its a compilation of artists who work without and with the photographic medium, as well as quotations and passages of texts. The criteria of the blog is anything of interest to me, whether this is be contextually, aesthetically or psychologically, when posted it gives the facility of everything being easily accessible as well as allowing me to add and update the blog at anytime and from anywhere. The blog is extremely visual and works

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10,508 Portfolio

Refrence image / Biba Kosmerl Source / Bibakosmerl.tumblr.com 17

‘That experience is the key thing for me, that moment when an image is showing itself not in terms of its relationship with the everyday world, its context, but showing in its mysterious other aspect. That’s what I try and follow, that quality. I don’t quite know what it’s about. It’s not choosing the image, it’s what the image is finding in me. Or rather, it’s impersonal – I enter into an impersonal realm. . . JOHN STEZAKER’

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