Notes on Artist Research

From Creative Review magazine, Photography Annual 2012:

• "The Baths" - by Frank Herholdt - inspired by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, Herholdt's 'The Bath' is actually shot of his family on holiday. 

- "Renowned for his advertising and editorial photography work." 

- "The image has an ethereal painterly atmosphere so it comes as little surprise to discover that Herholdt was inspired by classical art." 

- "I have a love of figurative painting, my work is heavily influenced by classic art," he says. "The Pre-Raphaelites spring to mind." 

- Shot this particular image with a Canon 5D camera. 

• "The Silence of Dogs in Cars" - Martin Usborne - series inspired by a childhood incident in which he was left alone in a car outside a shop. 

- "portraits of dogs that are both beautiful and strangely poignant." 

• "Titans of the Stage" - Nadav Kander - portraiture of actors and actresses in Black and White. *Keep in mind for Portraiture Project. 

• "Bad Guy's" - Nadav Kander - "A series of portraits of actors known for playing bad guys, shot for GQ USA in London and LA. *Again keep in mind for Portraiture Project. 

• "Up my street" - Dylan Collard - Part of an ongoing series of portraits of the shop keepers in Collard's local high street. 

- "The inspiration came on a late bus ride home when the shop fronts glowed out in the dark, warm and inviting as I peered in from the rain," he says. *Keep in mind for Landscape Project. 

• "Appleby Horse Fair" - Spencer Murphy - "Appleby Horse Fair is an annual event attended by gypsy and traveller families. For one week the Cumbrian town is transformed, its population swelling from 2,500 to up to 40,000."

• "Paradise Parking" - Peter Lippmann - "Lippmann travelled the French countryside in search of abandoned vintage cars reclaimed by nature. The series offers a poetic look at the relationship between the creations of man and mother nature." 

• "Memorial" - Thomas Brown - "In this collaboration with set designer Sarah May, Brown sought to explore the public presentation of memory and commemoration." *Keep in mind for Still Life Project. 

• "My Wife's Fight with Breast Cancer" - Angelo Merendino for Corbis - "Two years after her initial diagnosis, Mevendino began to document his wife Jennifer's battle with cancer and their daily life. In December 2011, Jennifer passed away." 

• "Disguise" - Alys Tomlinson - "From a series of images exploring children's identity, expression and imagination. Each child was asked to create their own character and express their personality through building their 'own' disguise". 

From Tim Walker - Pictures Book: 

• "Skull-and-Crossbones Chandelier, London, 2006" - 'We made a chandelier for each season, like a calender, I suppose. This was clearly for Halloween.' <<< Very interesting concept. 

• "Series-Pantomime" - British Vogue 

• "Eglingham Graffiti, Eglingham Hall, Northumberland, 2007" 

• "Eglingham Stream, Eglingham Hall..." 

• "Jasmin Guiness nairn, Scotland, 1998" 

• "Midsomer Nights Dream Series"

Lecture: Graffiti and Street Art (Wall and Street)

Notes made in lecture:

• Historically graffiti can be connected originally to cave paintings. 
• Caves at Lascaux, France. 

• Paintings from the Paleolithic period.
• Ancient Roman Graffiti. 
• Graffiti usually has a political message. 
• Kilroy/Chad - WWII

• Paris May '68 - Paris Riots - massive development of graffiti as an art form. 
• 1970s American graffiti - Urban. 
• Chris Osbourne - graffiti photographer. 
• 1970s New York. 
• Spray can graffiti. 
• Evolves alongside hip hop culture. 
• Making the language of the streets visible. 
• Announcing presence and saying 'we will not be ignored'. 
• Jon Naar, Photographer, 1973 - Documents this time. 

• "From becoming a Graffiti Photographer" By Jon Naar, book. 
• Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) 
• 'SAMO-SAME-OH' 

• "Death of SAMO" - 1979
• Neo expressionist paintings 1980s
• Worked with Andy Warhol - 'General Electric with waiter, 1984' 

• Keith Haring, "Radient Baby" 1990

• Popshop - closed 2005. 
• John Fekner, "Broken Promises" 1980

• Jenny Holzer, Times Square Show, 1980
• "Comment on the lack of availability of brands and technology in the Eastern world" 
• TATS CRU, 1997 for Coca Cola. 
• Invader - French artist. 

• "Attack of Montpellier" 
• Banksy - Kate Moss. 
• Shepard Fairey 2008
• Parisian photographer 'JR', 'Favela Morro Da Provienda, Rio' 2008. 

• Blu (Italy) and Os Gemeos (Brazil) Lisbon, 2010. 
• Blu animated graffiti 2008. 

• 123 KLAN (France) 
• Paul Curtis (Moose) - reverse graffiti. 

• 'The Global Picture' 
• 'My Dog Sighs' 
• 'Sam 3 (Spain)' Murcia 2010 
• VHILS aka Alexander Farto (Portugal) London, 2008
• Faith 71 - Amsterdam, bridges the gap between hyper-realist art and hyper abstract art effortlessly. 

• Diva (Booklyn)

• Fafi (France) 

• Miss Van 

• Herakut

• Swoon

• "Graffiti Woman Book" 
•  "Art of Resistance"
• Banksy and Palesteine Wall.  

Book Review on Image Makers Image Takers By Livi van Tienen

“…unlike Kodak’s 1888 catch phrase, great photography is anything but straightforward. Perhaps a better slogan would be: ‘It’s not what you click, but how you tick.’”
The introduction to ‘Image Makers, Image Takers’ starts and ends with the contradiction against Kodak’s 1888 phrase ‘you push the button and we do the rest.’ Instead it explores the idea that Photography has developed far beyond this and actually is an art where much care should be taken. Since the accessibility of taking a photograph, made possible by the founder of Kodak, George Eastman, Photography has been seen to be an effortless act. Josef Albers argues in the introduction, “Such a way of looking at Photography…is the lowest level possible and should not be our way of approaching and understanding Photography.” With thirty-three interviews to back this argument one of the messages of this book is to learn the true act of seeing. It portrays how complex a photograph can be, the ideas that are created behind the image, the technicality an image can be constructed with and the beauty of the final frame.
There is a broad variety of interviews which explore what motivates and inspires contemporary Photographers. It also takes a look at the people behind the scenes who edit, curate, publish and basically hold this creative industry together. In particular ‘Image Makers, Image Takers’ tackles the idea of ‘seeing’ and the relationship it has with the Photographer and viewer. It is a constant pursuit to look beyond the representational view of a subject. As quoted from the introduction, “The eye – of both Photographer and viewer – should be trained like any other muscle in the body.”
There is an abundance of sincerity and depth to the interviews which is the core to what makes this book so successful. The beauty of ‘Image Makers, Image Takers’ is that you can jump from one interview to another without having to read it categorically. Although separated into the sections of Art, Fashion and Advertising, Documentary and Portraiture the interviews all have one running message; the importance of having your own way of expressing how you see the world.
In each interview every Photographer articulates how important personal projects are to an artist. It is a way of voicing how you see the world, how you feel about certain subjects. It also gets your priorities straight; you should want your art to be successful in your eyes before it is successful in anyone else’s. This also means if you don’t become a ‘great’ Photographer it doesn’t mean you have failed because your work is fulfilling to you.
This book is tremendously inspiring, with a very insightful approach into gaining an understanding of how some of the best Photographers in the world produce their pieces. Therefore it is very difficult to think of an aspect of the book I would change as it is already a brilliant resource into professional Photography. However I felt there could have been a section on current art students at college. It would have been interesting to read about what other students had to say; and whether if they have the same doubts or confidences. That way instead of just having established artists you would also have another aspect which is the art students perspective.
‘Image Makers, Image Takers’ is aimed for creatively driven people to get an understanding of this industry and in some way to gain a small access into how the mind of a professional artist ticks. ‘Image Makers, Image Takers’ is a book I would fully recommend to any artist who wants to be inspired and motivated, and who also wants a greater understanding into the world of professional Photography.



Publication Notes

Title: ‘Image Makers, Image Takers’
(The essential guide to photography by those in the know)
Author: Anne-Celine Jaeger
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Word Count:
545

Context of Practice: Postmodernism in Photography

Notes written up in lesson:

KEY FEATURES:
• Kitsch: Low Art/High art.
• Chaos.
• Loss of an original: reproduced/recycled.
• Breaking of rules and tradition.
• History is reinterpretated.


• ANDY WARHOL: “Electric chair” 1964, “Marilyn”
• Recycling images and producing a new interpretation, Consumerism.
• Pop Art – Ed Ruscha.
• “26 Gas Stations, 1962”
• “Standard Station, 1966”
• “Collecting or mapping objects.”


• New Topographics : Exhibition “New Topographics; Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” in 1975 in New York. Inspired by the work of Ed Ruscha in 1960s. 8x10 large format view cameras, Photographers from an Higher education Background.
• Bernd and Hilla Becher, 1970s – collection of industrial objects. Male and female partnership- A Lost Era, <theme in their work.
• Other Exhibitors; -Robert Adams, -Lewis Baltz, -Joe Deal, -Nicholas Nixon, -Stephen Shore, -Frank Gohlke.
• Conjunction between the landscape and the man-made.
• New way of looking, making a comment on the unremarkable.
• Keith Arnatt, “Self Burial” 1969.

• Raymond Moore – photographing moments that appear to mean nothing.
• “Turning traditions and genres on their head.”
• “New Topographic Approach”
• Subject Matter is historical.
• Almost like a scientific/industrial catalogue.
• Anti-aesthetic.
• Moving away from making things beautiful. Very factual almost cold, a record of actual life.
• Land Art – Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty, 1970”, - Richard Long’s “A circle in the Andes, 1972”
• Photographing art as a way of documenting the only way to see it is through a photograph.
• The Photograph is part of the journey.
• Feminist photographers: Mary Kelly, “Interim, 1984-89” << *

• Theory based work. – Victor Burgin “Office at Night” 1986- Edward Hopper painting.
-Barbara Kruger, 1987, - Critical practice, conceptual art.
• The idea of staging an image.
• Refusal to provide a narrative.
• Text works together with imagery.
• Sherrie Levine- “After Walker Evans” 1981, re-photographed from a catalogue, raises questions about viewing context and the value of art.
• Reference to Walker Evans who made a series of images of rural workers.
• Sherrie Levine re-photographed a historic image from a catalogue – photographing a reproduction of the image.
• Making comment on the art market and the idea of an “original”.
• “Why is one reproduction of an image more important than another?”
• Images losing their value.
• Raise questions on the way we view images and what price we label them with.
• “Is there no original with a digital print?” An original doesn’t exist in a digital sense.
• “Simulacra and Stimulation” 1981, Jean Baudrilard.
• Interaction between reality, symbols and society.
• The real no longer exists – we only ever have copies.
• Similacrum – a copy of a thing that looks real but isn’t the real thing.
• “A constructed type of reality”.
• Jeff Wall, “Dead Troops Talk” 1992.

• Staged image, soldiers in varying stages of decay and injury. Each costume of the soldiers is from a different stage in history.
• The construction of the image is a typical postmodern way of working.
• Walls work is very critically informed.
• Yinka Shonibare “Diary of a Victorian Dandy” 1998, staged images, questioning racial differences in eras.

• Dropping himself into an era and class that racially he wouldn’t naturally have been apart of. A comment on class, race and society. (Shonibare).
• Yinka Shonibare designed the ship in the bottle that was put on a plinth in Trafalger Square. Part of the YBAs.
• Gregory Crewdson, “Untitled” (Ophelia from Twilight) 2001.

• 21st century Ophelia, a disaffected housewife. Tragedy mood, Harking back from the original Pre-Raphaelite painting (Millet).
• “A moment of tension, photographing between moments”.
• Looks like a still from a movie.
• Doesn’t give the full narrative but asks the viewer to create their own narrative from the clues given in the image.
• Crewdson worked on films so his photography has that style, from the lighting effects he uses.
• Cindy Sherman “Untitled 1981”, Dresses up as different characters, gives a small narrative that again the viewer has to come up with.

• Yasumasa Morimura, “To my little sister: For Cindy Sherman” 1998

• A comment on gender, sexuality, race. Very similar themes to Shonibare.

Context of Practice: Aspects of Modernism

Notes written up in lesson:

• Modernism is about simplicity = “form follows function.” “ornament is crime.”
• IKEA is the contemporary version of “modernist” style. – (in a craft sense)
• “Truth to Materials.”
• The manta of modernism.
• For photography this means that photographs should look like photographs.
• No manipulation.
• A move away from ‘Pictorialism’ of the middle to end of the 19th century.
• An exploration of the qualities specific to the medium.
• Sharp – pinpoint focus in their photography.
• Alfred Steiglitz: The force behind the establishment of the photograph to the status of an art in it’s own right.
• Birth of ‘straight’ Photography.
• “Flat iron building, New York, 1903” by Steiglitz. – soft focus, cropped, celebrating the architecture of the building. – Example of his pictorial former style.

• “The Steerage, 1907” by Steiglitz-more modernist, moving away form Pictorialism. The main focus of the image is the bridge boarding onto the ship. This divides the image, not only visually but divides the figures in the image. The lower class being at the bottom of the image, and the upper class being higher up on the image.

• Steiglitz is known as a FORMACIST.
• F.64 Group – US Group based in San Francisco in early 1930s.
• Founded by Willard van Dyke and Ansel Adams.
• Characteristics; Sharp Focus, detail through print, natural forms.
• F.64 – smallest aperture on camera – depth of field is most in focus on this aperture.
• Edward Weston, “Nude, 1936” and “Pepper, No. 30”

• The idea of shape – comparison of nude figure and pepper. Light being an important factor giving an exquisite image, with full detail and tonal value.
• Pepper almost like a Henry Moore sculpture. Henry Moore based his sculptures on the human figure.
• Use of high contrast and shadows – This effectively changes the shape of the subject.
• Paul Strand – “Wall Street, New York, 1915”

• Also did “The White Fence” image.
• People being small compared to urban buildings.
• Use of abstract shapes – Wall Street Building.
• A very formalist way to Photograph something.
• Ansel Adams, “Yosemite, Monolith, 1927” Maximising the tonal value; his prints over done to give texture and real rendering of detail.

• “The print becomes a fine art piece”
• Willard van Dyke, “Still from The City, 1930” – film still from the movie.

• Reference to modernism, photographer almost becoming a part of the building, from its viewpoint; typically modernist.
• The relationship between the body and the city.
• The idea of migration and movement.
• Imogen Cunningham, “Magnolia Blossom, 1925” – ultra focused, with a shallow depth of field.

• Uses a macro lense – celebrated, demonstrating what a camera can technically achieve.
• Sculptural Status – through a macro lense.
• Technology enables the human eye to see things you couldn’t do without a lense.

VISUAL LANGUAGE OF PURE AND STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY:

• Depth of field – as much in focus as possible.
• Contrast – strong use of full tonal range (black to white)
• Exquisite hand printing, no manipulation.
• Subject matter: Art genres eg: still life and the nude, landscape etc.
• The City, people in relationship to Technology.