Images for Alone project looking at styles of James Ravilious and Don McCullin
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1FXQ5T9o05pPx6SfX9e-TRKewxsvwyIeX
For a series of 12 images I have brought together images that create a typology of where I live, the motif of the natural world repeated in each. Link to images:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=12bEgJdlciGeyaZvemA7bBmAAfxFATSpa
https://wordpress.com/post/patriciahowedigitalimaging.wordpress.com/732
This set of collaged images is intended to highlight the disconnect between people and nature. On a more superficial level, the spoiling and carelessness of people in the natural environment is obvious. Although the images are spoiled, they originate from a passion to change what is happening and to concentrate the viewer’s attention on their own actions, as with Heartfield’s evident motivation in placing a cannon on Constable’s Haywain and recent TV coverage of plastic in the ocean provoking widespread reaction and change.
patriciahowedigitalimaging.wordpress.com/category/ex-2-3/
Beginning to explore family dynamics, I joined a mother and son image, where continuity issues with colour, scale and composition, became apparent, resolved by changing to black and white and choosing same scale images in the following collage. I have selected it to show my workings.
My Father. The time it takes to distinguish the features of my father accurately reflects the effect that time has on memory.
I researched Tacita Dean’s work to take the direction of identity as affected by history, memory and loss. Dean and Derrida have the idea that handling material brings its own pleasure, and although this is true, digitization opens more doors for creativity. Memory and loss take on mysterious ethereal qualities. Sophie Calle’s series of empty frames after the theft of some paintings question what we actually see in loss. Dean and Friedrich both look at memory as though fogged and distant. Departed family members are present by their absence, in fading memories. Corrine Vionnet uses fading and blurring to achieve a dream-like quality that I wanted to replicate to show the effect of time on family memories. Corrine Vionnette uses fading and blurring to achieve a dream-like quality that I wanted to replicate to show the effect of time on family memories. Like these images, my memories continue to fade.
Using as source material a substantial archive of my own family photographs dating back to 1910, I made a collage of the stages in one person’s life, blanked out or blurred faces, scribbled out detail as Vibeke Tandberg has done and presented others as only a part of themselves.Within a sense of loss, there is a grieving that is renewed, especially when I see how I remember my father. The loss is not nostalgic but more of a revival of identity in life and in memory and understanding the difference that time makes. Like this images, my memories continue to fade.
Having decided on the cliché of weddings, my aim was to present the selfie poses of the wedding and juxtapose the image of the rubbish in a church doorway I passed, in order to suggest the transience of so many marriages, and represent the rubbish of so many failed marriages and thus the futility of the wedding,
https://patriciahowedigitalimaging.wordpress.com/category/assignment-2/
Ex 4.3 Inspiration for meme.
Having researched memes in some depth, I found myself thoroughly confused. I have no interest in being anything other than I am and the more I tried to think myself into a alter ego, the more I failed.
6
https://patriciahowedigitalimaging.wordpress.com/category/assignment-4/
Researching the topic of Selfies (Assignment 4. Submitted to tutor for comment as per brief.) revealed to me that the genre has a positive therapeutic side I had not considered, and also a deadly, life threatening side, proving the value of research. I have had to step out of my comfort zone to look at, realize and present the ridiculous aspect of Selfies, where compositional skills have been organised by an App. The reality section showed me that even wanting to be totally spontaneous, I was still making sure the pose said what I wanted. There has been little opportunity to include my ecopsychological theme, except that the reality images are as natural as possible. I found the Assignment extremely challenging but learned a lot about myself.
After seeing the Cindy Sherman exhibition in London, I am concerning part of my response with facial Selfies, using myself as a model. This, to me, says all that is needed about the horror of selfies.
Assignment 5 formed a summation to the Digital Imaging and Culture unit for me. There have been many lessons in the process, much elimination of areas that I found to be at odds with my main theme of reconnection to Nature, and the final decision to go along my own path. Using my rejection of the generally accepted meaning of the Selfie Cult, abandoning the direction I had planned in favour of one with integrity for me, being more about absence than presence and reflecting my own involvement with the concept of separation and aloneness.
This image encapsulates the essence of my final work in Digital Image and Culture. Walking in a wood I turned a corner and saw this picture. All the skills that I have been using were combined in an instant: observation, having a camera with me, the selection of a black and white programme and rapid composition before the mist lifted. The element of chance in photography, as always, played a large part. Mist is difficult to replicate digitally and too much obliterates the subject. The light was catching on the foreground and completed the chance element. Enigma and the sense of the beauty of aloneness completed this project.
Sexualisation has been a growing part of our culture for many years. What would have been frowned on fifty years ago is now taken as the norm for young girls, who have little time to use their childhood years to prepare them for the emotional rollercoaster of puberty and adulthood. Peer pressure and the availability of the trappings of adulthood contribute to robbing the young of their childhood. There seems to be an expectation that the ‘sexier’ a teenage girl makes herself look, the better her self-worth and position amongst her peers. The problem for young girls begins with women being treated as sex objects. The sexualization effect is also there, though to a lesser degree as of now, for young boys, though this market is also changing. Pornographic videos are readily available and will fuel the natural curiosity of the teen into unhelpful channels. This trend is happening globally as can be clearly seen in Japan’s Tokyo sexshop dolls.
Making a living being into an object has the effect of divorcing it from reality. If a person becomes a thing, then the dynamics of relationships change. ‘Things’ can be grouped together and treated as non-feeling entities. This is a dangerous prerequisite for scapegoating and subsequent mass ill- treatment of individuals, animals, ethnic minorities etc. So the objectivisation by sexualisation of women in general and children in particular is a very slippery slope, and invites paedophilia. It is difficult to tell when this phenomenon began, but stereotypes of black women slaves were used to dehumanize them and allow inhumane treatment many years ago. More recently, films made from novels such as Lolita written in 1955 and featuring a 12-year old girl, paved the way for young girls to be taken out of their natural childhood for entertainment and projected into the sexual world of adults. 1959 saw the introduction of the Barbie doll so that girls at a very young age were exposed to adult expectations. Since then, magazines have been produced especially targeting young teenage girls with fashion and makeup. Social media makes it very fast and easy for an exchange of explicit material ,especially with programs such as Snapchat where messages are temporary and parents are unable to monitor messages. ‘Sexting’ is the craze now for young people to circulate intimate images of themselves, sometimes with dangerous and unexpected results. The up to date way that older teenage girls like to portray themselves is with maximum breast exposure and protruding bottoms. The narcissistic element of selfies encourages young people to project stereotypical images of themselves and to indulge in self-adoration, ‘because you are worth it’!
Mental illness is sometimes attributed to sexualisation, as self-worth is necessarily down-graded when girls compare themselves to ‘super models’, probably photoshopped to perfection and setting an unreachable target. Depression, self-harm, suicide and eating disorders have all been linked to self-assessment as values and ideals are adversely affected. It is hard to see a positive side to sexualization, as the negative aspect seems overwhelmingly damaging.
St Elizabeth Hall, Hambrook, Bristol
Led by Stephen Monger, 13 students from several disciplines gathered to study Typography. Interestingly, we had our first music student join us to expand our perspective. Steve gave out posters with graphics and several words in different sized fonts. We had been asked to bring pencils, scissors and glue and our set task was to design a poster around the theme of the word ‘Conform’.
With a blank piece of paper to begin, we had to select and place the elements that would include all the details we had been given of artists, venues, dates, times and sponsors. There were as many interpretations as there were students.
It was evident at the conclusion that forethought and planning had their reward. All the elements needed to be included and presented in an artistic way.
After lunch, we had a group crit with several people bringing work to show and others wanting to discuss their ideas and find out more about how it all works at OCA.
Steve Monger with Dorothy Flint’ s work
In her Illustration work, Dorothy needed to prepare something based on the willow pattern. It was beautiful work and suggestions were made that the two tiny figures at the centre would benefit from being enlarged. A paper plate was also suggested for use in further drafts.
Looking further into her work with disused coal mines in the Forest of Dean, Anne Bryson astonished us with her ‘tunnel book’. This one is in the process of complicated construction and will eventually look like a concertina type of book that will give a deep 3D impression. This impressed me as a way to approach my in depth study of the natural world, but I am not sure I would have the skill or the patience.
Helen’s textile work was varied and intricate with the makings of some useful techniques for her in her future work.
Liz Nunn is still cleverly folding up the landscape with great effect. We also watched a video she had made and wanted feedback for on the format and effectiveness of the work presented in this way. It was interesting to see how the work moved within its natural surroundings and a moving image illustrated this really well.
For myself, I took along the a draft of the book I have prepared for Assignment 5. This was received and with many comments. Most were on the details of the format. Some people liked page numbering and others disliked it. The same went for the white borders around the images, the inclusion of references on the page, the quotes not matching the image in every case and the lack of an artist’s statement. Opinions were so varied that it was evident that there was a significant amount of viewer subjectivity and that there was not a solution that would please everyone. There were some comments I agreed with but I have my reasons for how the book is organised, so I need to give this serious thought. Steve suggested that I decided what format the book was going to be in. What was the most positive thing for me was that everyone sensed my main objective of drawing people into peace and tranquility in ‘aloneness’. From that point of view, my aim has been achieved whatever the design or format.
This was some helpful feedback from one of the peer group;
However, as I read through your LL, I see you’ve described your reasons for turning your back on your assignment 4 ideas in online in some depth
Not turned my back but used the experience to get a better understanding and to be able to
use this to bring a resolution.
I do think however you have to further develop this submission to make your stated intentions clearer in your final submission. If you want to use images of the natural world to express a rejection of networked world (for example) then I think you have to find ways to better express this. A series of black and white images of the natural world alone need to be put in a much clearer context for an assignment and module that is intended after all to provoke ideas and thinking about our place in the digital world.
One way to think about further developing this assignment before final submission, might be to think about how you could intercut your existing black and white images with either writing and text that explores your themes (alienation, loneliness, etc) or perhaps for example photographs of mirrors or objects around your home – personal objects which relate to selfhood, reflection, loneliness, etc.
You’ve provided extensive writings on loneliness (and your reasoning from rejecting your original idea) on your Learning Log. Is there a way perhaps that you could use your own writings to illustrate your images of the natural world to better make clear your intentions?
. You also might be interested in looking at Julian Germian’s project ‘For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’ which also explores the theme of loneliness through an intimate picture of one man’s home and its objects: http://www.juliangermain.com/projects/foreveryminute.php
I do think you can use them in some way in this last assignment but perhaps as mentioned as part of a more developed piece which better expresses your stated intentions.
Mathieu Asselin’s Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation which explores the impact of the chemical industries on the American Farming Communities: https://www.mathieuasselin.com/monsanto
Thomas Joshua Cooper’s epic travels are documented in series of poetic representations on the voyage: https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/thomas-joshua-cooper-worlds-edge
Think further about how you might bring your interesting ideas on loneliness, your rejection of selfie culture and your relationship to the landscape into this final submission.
Could you help us here please? When submitting Assignment 5 of DIC, we have the option of presenting work in a book, which I have done. Do we also need to submit prints of the included images? If so, would a selection be sufficient as I have a lot of images in the book.
Thank you for your help
P Howe
509589
Dear Patricia,
Thank you for your email. Apologies for our delayed response, your message caught us at the back end of the November assessment event which has kept us rather busy.
We’ve read the course materials for assignment five and are happy that the material is specific as to outcome being either one or the other and not both. We also imagine that for submission for formal assessment, if you have chosen to address the assignment through the use of a book that the usual requirement for prints for each of the revised assignments would be mitigated for this assignment by submission of the book.
If you have any other queries or concerns about the outcome for the assignment, please just let us know.
Kind regards
Course Support
Open College of the Arts
+44 (0)1226 730 495
Reflection on visit to Hauser and Wirth in January 2018.
Carsten Holler’s work with mushrooms resonated with me because of my interest, during a printmaking module, where mushrooms featured as a dominant theme. I used several bark rubbings with mushrooms where the print or photograph is taken directly from the spores themselves, as in the last of the following images.
I was therefore particularly interested to see how Carsten Holler presented his work. My first impression was that I did not understand the relevance of oversized plants. I have learned by now though that my first impressions tend to be superficial and that further reflection is necessary. The first impression here is of the size, with a fly agaric sculpture that was man-sized. The colour is the next aspect that involves the senses with the bright red and contrasting white, the bottom of the stalk giving the appearance of the earth it has been taken from. Looking at more of Holler’s work, he has sometimes exhibited these mushrooms upside down, and the overall feeling is one of immersion. Pictures of children lying down underneath and staring up at these larger than life sculptures necessarily directs the viewers’ thoughts to Alice in Wonderland and the dreamlike and surreal qualities of the changing sizes.
Carsten Holler is a German living in Sweden and has a background in agricultural science, not beginning to make art until the 1980s. (https://mymodernmet.com/carsten-holler-surreal-mushroom-sculptures/). His work questions the average understanding of how we see things around us and seems to ask if we ever really see them at all. I have discovered a tiny woodland fungus called Scarlet Elfcup that appears at the same time as snowdrops. I was therefore surprised to find that not one of the people I know had ever seen it, despite its prominent colouring and contrast to the snowdrops. On a forest walk with a dozen people who knew the area well, not one person had ever noticed them, especially surprising as they frequently appear in groups of flaming red.
This validates for me what Holler is saying about our perception of the obvious and our perceptual blindness. Perhaps this is some of the rationale to my interest in the minutiae of the natural world. It may be that if people slowed down enough to notice, there would be less of a disconnect between the natural world and humankind.
Opposed to this was a sickening video of farming methods by Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s ‘Our Daily Bread’ (2005), where brutality and carelessness were the accepted norm and epitomised the Anthropocene obsessiion with profit making. On a similar theme, John Gerrard’s images of metal racks in pig farms are brutally suggestive of punishment. Cows are made ready for consumption in 18 months instead of five years with the use of antibiotics and growth hormones. Belgian born Mishka Henner, working now in Manchester makes use of readily available images found on Google Earth and other publicly available sites to home in on the effect of man’s intervention in the world, finding images betraying secret sites and using them to create a pixelated effect of the world, perhaps illustrating brokenness and using surveillance methods to show us the “Big Brother’ possibilities that bring about a global panopticism. Some images are constructed by stitching together several photographs. He sees the damaging result as viewers being conditioned to seeing the world through a surveillance lens. This is a forerunner to distancing ourselves from anything we might once have recognised as harmful, as well as numbing the senses to the reality of the cruelty and damage being done around us, or worse, by us. Mishka Henner’s images present abstract pictures, again parodying how mankind has abstracted the knowledge of damage and allowed him to stand away without taking any responsibility. These images illustrate a lamentable contemporary attitude to life and death. (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/arts/design/mishka-henner-uses-google-earth-as-muse-for-his-aerial-art.html)
‘In your assignment submission, you have produced a series of black and white reproductions of landscapes (forest scenes) and into those, you have inserted what look like cut out figures. These two elements sit a little uncomfortably together…’
I am happy that the two elements sit uncomfortably together as my intention was to suggest the discord of the ecopsychological disconnect. However, my tutor further suggests:
Experimenting further with this idea of the silhouette, perhaps cutting the figure out of the landscape itself….see Douglas Gordon’s Blind Stars portraits…’
The following are images I constructed a little while ago when I was thinking about what people see, and how they look at the world.
Bibliography
Image source
Martin, j. (2018). [image] Available at: http://ohn Martin. ‘Sadak in Search of the Waters Oblivion’. Oil on canvas. 1812 [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
Mccullen, d. (2018). [image] Available at: http://Don McCullin. ‘Broken Tree near Bruton.’ Platinum print. 2016 [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
Holler, c. (2018). [image] Available at: http://Carsten Höller. Giant Triple Mushroom [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
2014. My Modern Met. [Online]. [19 March 2018]. Available from: https://mymodernmet.com/carsten-holler-surreal-mushroom-sculptures/ [Accessed 20.3.18]
Mccarthy, p. (2018). [image] Available at: http://Paul McCarthy. ‘Use a Shovel to throw Dirt in the Air’, Photographs. 1972. [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
Leach, b. (2018). [image] Available at: http://Bernard Leach. ‘Mountain Gorge in Mist. Etching. 1918 [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
Gordon, d. (2018). [image] Available at: http://Blind John Hurt (White Eyes) from Hollywood Blind Star … [Accessed 19 Mar. 2018].
DRAFT REPORT
Patricia Howe 509589 – Assignment 1 – DiC
https://patriciahowedigitalimaging.wordpress.com/
You state in your LL that you are interested in looking in your assignment submission at the ‘disconnect between people and nature’. This is a theme that you return to again and again throughout your LL and is one that most likely will provide much inspiration as you move through DiC. Indeed, there are many artists who work with digital culture that are specifically interested in the anthroposcene and I will give direct links to a couple of the many projects in this report that focus on the impact of intensive framing (John Gerrard’s Sow Farm (2009) http://www.johngerrard.net/sow-farm.html and Mishka Henner’s Feedlots: https://mishkahenner.com/Feedlots)
In your assignment submission, you have produced a series of black and white reproductions of landscapes (forest scenes) and into those you have inserted what look like cut out figures. These two elements sit a little uncomfortably together and `I’d suggest experimenting further with this idea of the silhouette, perhaps cutting the figure out of the landscape itself and then placing this down onto a neutral sheet of paper to get your idea across? (In this respect look at the reverse techniques, artist Douglas Gordon’s Blind Stars portraits, where the actually burns holes in to the found images and then represents these against neutral backgrounds. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gordon-blind-james-white-t11830
In your work depicting silhouetted figures walking past flower shops, I’d argue that these do not convey the idea of our alienation from nature – in fact they could be read in quite a different way, as carefree figures breezing past a window full of attractive flowers, so you have to think further about this.
Looking at your exercises, you have experimented extremely widely with different layering techniques to varying degrees of success. As mentioned you do talk extensively about your own feelings regarding ‘the horror’ of the disconnect between man and nature.
I’d recommend you think hard about how you might explore this themes throughout DiC.
I notice that you mentioned (later in the course) Sam Taylor Wood’s video using the still-life, and rotting fruit as a visual metaphor for death and decay. You also have made your own tentative experiments with photographs of dead or dying plants and have also experiment with microscopic photography. Let’s discuss these experiments as a way of further exploring your stated themes in future submissions.
One last note on your research. You should aim to avoid too much personal opinion in exhibition reviews, focussing instead on thoroughly describing, researching and referencing any works in an exhibit with a view to more fully understanding their meaning (i.e. Your sentence ‘ I admired a sculpture of a mushroom’ is insufficient I would suggest in a description of Carsten Holler’s contribution to this exhibit (although you do late include a reproduction of this piece of work). More academic rigour is needed here.
To further your research and reflection, write a 500-word illustrated review of one or other o
STUDENT FEEDBACK:
This feedback was very useful in directing me to further research and pointing out weak areas that need looking at. Particular points that I have will be addressing are:
1 Avoid too much personal opinion in exhibition reviews.
2 Focus on thoroughly describing, researching and referencing.
3 More academic rigour.
4 Concentrate on ecopsychology and also look at the anthroposcene with the horror of the disconnect between man and nature.
5 Look at reverse techniques eg Douglas Gordon’s Blind Stars.
6 To further my research, write a 500 word illustrated review of one of the artists/pieces quoted earlier.
There is much to work on here and I have begun to address the issues in my Learning Log under ‘Response to tutor’ and in red text. I am thankful to Wendy McMurdo for her encouraging remarks as I had initially been nervous of this feedback.
Using the list of artists given above as inspiration, create a series of 6-8 images using layering techniques. To accompany your final images, also produce a 500 word blog post on one contemporary artist-photographer who uses layering techniques. (This can be any one of the artists cited in any section of Digital Image and Culture)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
These have different degrees of aesthetic appeal and different reasons for making them. They are all taken from my own photographs. I noticed that a lot of the artists studied used a blurred background and so I utilised this in image no 1, which I think works well.
No1 is made of 2 layers with a gaussian blur applied to the background. This colour combination works well as the gold of the saxophone mirrors the bright ginger hair of the child. Moving the saxophone around gave me the best compositional arrangement.
No 2 is abstract and has a faint overlay of leaves. There is a third layer of spatter where I wanted to try and see how Helen Sears had arrived at the featured image. This was a disappointing result.
No 3 is a personal reaction and is symbolical, showing a man (our son) greeting the daughter he abandoned when she was 7 years old, hence the snake in the grass, the barbed wire and the hemlock to illustrate the prison he has kept her in and the poison that remains. It consists of 5 layers. The barbed wire had to be turned vertically to make the squares. This image does not fit with my theme but proved very cathartic and it needed doing!
No 4 is an inverted image of cliffs and trees with doves flying behind them. The doves do not show clearly. The original image of the trees was more dynamic.
No 5 is a combination of three layers . The background layer is a painting of mine with beech leaves and some beech trunks added. The colour is consistent and the composition reasonable, but it lacks the interest value that I had hoped for.
No 6 is an abstract photograph that I took of a CD with water drops and another layer with a reptile eye in the centre. Perhaps this should be matched with No 3.
No 7 is symbolic of time passing with an image of myself added to a clock. This one works well and is clear.
No 8 is of two doves flying in front of clouds. It is 3 layers with one of the dove images made smaller than the other. The colours are a good match, but this again lacks dynamism.
In summary, this exercise was time consuming but rewarding. I learned a lot from looking at other artists and enjoyed experimenting.
Link to Google Drive with Assignments 2, 3 and 4.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1A1jGKuCI81OdtnOpRsOD58GX71EN4DBP?usp=sharing
Patricia Howe. Digital Imaging & Culture 