Exam – Fantastic and Strange
By Joel Hook
Context – Family History I find it really interesting finding out about my family history because I feel that it is important to know my family from the past that relate to who I am today. I found on the internet some other reasons why it is important to know your family history; I have picked out the most important ones: “We are all an accumulation of not only our life experience, but those who were our ancestors.” -Connie H. “My family is all gone, though I do remember a few members from when I was a child. I want to pass this information on to my grandchildren. Our world is changing so fast and our young people may never know the lengths our elder family went to.” - Carole H. “Learning about family history is important. It is essential to understanding ourselves and basic humanity and diversity. Family history also helps to keep memories alive and allow each generation to have an idea of who they are and where they come from.” - Taleta M. “To know and connect my family blood line, since no one in my family knows my father’s side. It would be great to get in touch and meet all of them.” – Virginia W. “To know who you really are.” - Janice B.
Literary context Old Photographs - Poem by Freya Grace ancient photographs of people I don’t know unfamiliar faces staring back at me a moment long ago frozen in time nothing is different nothing is the same who are these strangers what were they like immortal smiles and eyes watching me for eternity
Picture Analysis – Idris Khan This picture reminds me of an old industrial town during the industrial revolution between the 1800s and the 1900s such as the town of Halifax in West Yorkshire that had a skyline filled with smoking chimneys and wool factories that Halifax depended on for its livelihood. Some of these chimneys and wool factories are still around today, abandoned and lost in time. And this made me wonder about what life was like for the workers and the people who lived within Halifax’s borders. Whether live was unbearable in the smoke and filth of streets, in the same boring routine every day and having to endure long hours of gruelling work. Or whether life was filled with excitement as more and more money was being invested in the town and the element of danger made life fun for these people. Maybe I could use some old photographs of Halifax and other old industrial towns to try and recreate what people saw in these towns on a daily basis. I selected this artist because the blurry movement of old photographs resembles other work I have done with old family photos, tweaking them on Photoshop to create a sense of movement in the photograph. By looking at this artist it has made me investigate how to implement techniques used in my other works onto a landscape shot and create an effect similar to this picture.
Picture Analysis-Ken Kitano This picture reminds me of a distorted mirror that creates a superficial image of us and society, and to some extent I think that is what the artist is trying to portray in these pictures. That in our society the world looks into our lives and judges us upon what we appear to be. So we now recognize ourselves as flawed people and that anytime we look in the mirror we conceive a fake realism of our own lives and see ourselves as inadequate beings. We never perceive a complete image of our lives and how we look, always judging the person we see in that mirror and not the person we are. I think this because the artist has ordered his picture in such a way that the face of the child in the mirror in clear and has emphasis placed on it showing that our world only takes into account what they perceive on the outside and not what the person is like underneath the flesh and bone. This inspired me to portray other images in this fashion and see what the outcome would be. This meant that I used some old family photos from around the 1900s and also some photos I took from part of a shoot. I used Photoshop to edit these photos by creating many layers and tilting them at different angles to generate the busy, blurred areas around the subjects face. I then turned the opacity down to 25% so that all the layers could be visible. This allowed me to form the same type of spectral, mysterious images that Ken Kitano makes. I chose this artist because they have a certain sense of surreal and eerie traits that run throughout their work and that really appealed to me. By looking at this artist it has given me new ideas of how to use different editing techniques and how to create photos in the photography darkroom with photograms and layering film to get the same effect.
Picture Analysis-Mari Mahr This picture reminds me of old and antique photos that have been edited to make them have an atmosphere of distortion and darkness, especially with old photos of children’s portraits. I think this because on the left we see a masked child and the mask reminds me very much of porcelain dolls that have aged and cracked, making them look macabre. This makes me think about nightmares I have had in the past involving disturbing images of anamorphic dolls and dark thoughts and images. This inspired me to portray those images I saw in my nightmares onto an existing photo. This included using superannuated photos from the 1800s up to the 1940s for my work. Using Photoshop I edited the photos to give them an ominous effect such as masking the people in the photo and blacking out their eyes. I chose this artist because they have a certain sense of surreal and eerie traits that run throughout their work and that really appealed to me as I wanted to explore the world of the dark and strange and this artist allowed me to catch the first glimpse of it. By looking at this artist has given me ideas to investigate methods such as double exposure and photo editing to give a creepy aura to a photo. The artist has also allowed me to experiment with editing techniques that I did not know how to use or implement to help achieve my desired effects.
Man Ray.
Mari Mahr Experiments
Exam Experiments
Evaluation of Experiments After researching my artists I decided to investigate materials, such as cellulose thinner and traditional photographic dark room techniques to try and achieve different textures and different effects to complement my final piece and my work about how faces are forgotten in time. A practical example of this is where I used cellulose thinner on some of my exam pieces and achieved an old, grainy effect which links into my work as I used old family photos to create the same effect as Ken Kitano and Bill Kouirinis. The blurred effect created by the cellulose thinner is similar to the effect created by Idris Khan when he uses dark room effects. I discovered that the cellulose thinner gave the image a darker contrast with less white areas which are created due to the exposure of the image. I think this worked well because my work is slightly dark and sinister and so the darker image fitted in to the theme between the images. Unexpected outcomes included the fact that when I overlaid the images in Photoshop it had an effect close to negatives on a light board which I thought was very effective and so I decided to implement this into my final pieces.
Final Idea – Exam work My final piece is going to be manipulated images of old family photos and the people contained in them by looking at artists such as Ken Kitano and Bill Kouirinis to observe the effects that they use to portray the meaning of their work through the image and onto the viewer. Through this piece of work I intend the viewer to see how faces and people get lost in the vast expanse of time and how they are forgotten in people’s memories. And also how an image can hold these memories; suspend them in time and space and allow our brains to remember the forgotten people that we used to love and cherish. One image can bring so much emotion from the past to the present. A photographic time machine. Yet images are flimsy and delicate, these emotions can be lost through the image as soon as someone could forget them. Memories have a huge effect on how the image is perceive and analysed. If that image contains someone who pulls an emotional tug on our brains then we perceive it to hold more emotion than a picture of a landscape. This connects with my artist’s work because the artists Ken Kitano and Bill Kouirinis use techniques in the darkroom that intentionally loses the facial features of a person; stripping them of personality, identity and thought. Their whole life is suspended in time. Lost from the world. These people become the faceless, emotionless, thoughtless people of our world. While their flesh and skin will be seen and remembered throughout time due to this picture, their lives will not and they will be forgotten. This addresses my theme of ‘emotions lost in time’ because the blurred effect used in the artists photos signify the end of someone’s emotional life and the start of their eternal life as the faceless character that has lost all meaning other than how people can be erased from history by the simple act of time and forgetting the emotional tug of that person. My media experimentation has enabled me to appreciate the fragile state that life becomes after death and how a legacy, worked for over decades can be abandoned in time and left to rot until people remember through the emotions of an image. I need to experiment with old images to try and lose someone’s facial features and create that lifeless emotion that lingers on the image and is all but forgotten. I have realised how delicate our lives are and how death doesn’t always have to be the end of life. An image can hold life in it but the life can be lost or erased from someone’s mind as easily as it can be created. Our lives live in two states, the living world and in people’s memories. And when all traces of our life are forgotten, that is the end of our life.
Ideas In my final piece I will be using old family photos to create the effect that Ken Kitano uses in his work. I am using old family photos because I never really knew the people that are in the photo and it is the idea that people are forgotten in time and their names erased from people’s memories as future generations come and go. And it is this idea that I want to portray through my work by manipulating the photos in such a way that the faces become blurred so become indistinguishable and unrecognizable to portray the lost imagery of these people in the images. Family histories can be invaluable when all memories have been forgotten. After my Grandmothers death 5 years ago I started to look at the family tree and its history allowing me to see into the past and see what my family was like before people started to forget them. This links to my work because by using these nameless people in my family in my work I have created forgotten souls and shown them in a different light. Rather than being dormant in a box they have come to life through my work, albeit unrecognizable.
Best Photographs – Exam Work I think that this is the best photograph because it captures a moment in time that shows emotion through the subject’s facial expression. Her facial expression shows amusement and happiness which creates a sense of rejoice. Her face also bares the emotion of awkwardness as she has been put in the spotlight and has a slight awkward smile. The way that she looks off to the side intrigues the viewer to what she is looking at and makes the viewer wonder what is making her feel those emotions off to the side of the camera. The way her hair frames her face makes the face the main focal point of the image and so the viewer is drawn to her emotion that she is expressing through her face. The lighting creates a shadow across her face which creates an aura of unknown sides that she may be hiding from the world that are left in her shadow. It also creates a greater contrast in the image so the reader looks for the highlights of the image and leaves out her shadowed side.
I think that this is one of the best photographs because it captures a moment in time that shows emotion through her facial expression and body language. The way that she looks like she has been disturbed from her reading and so shows a slight sign of irritation in her eyes and eyebrows. The way that she looks off to the side intrigues the viewer to what she is looking at and makes the viewer wonder what is making her feel those emotions off to the side of the camera. The sepia tone brings out more contrast in the image and allows the viewer’s eyes to drift across the picture, picking up subtle details in the picture. Her black dress contrasts with her paler face which makes the face the focal point of the image and is what people first look at when they glance at the image. It also allows people to concentrate more on her face and so they can pick up subtle emotions that she holds in her facial expression. The image has an old texture that looks like it has been battered and beaten over years of its existence, showing the sign of age.
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