Our first masterpiece 

defeated......  by SHM

This is a 1.2 m² piece of artwork consisting of 100's of images of the 80's to create a mosaic portrait of Margaret Thatcher. We decided to call this piece of art defeated.... stemming from an infamous quote by Thatcher whilst in power Defeat—I do not recognise the meaning of the word!.As we all know the Baroness was kicked out of power by her own party and in turn her party then thrown out of power by new labour. The IRONY!! (excuse the pun, irony, iron, iron lady! cough cough)

On either side of the image of Thatcher are the portaits of my classmates and I from college(clockwise from top right Ayla, Jonathan, Lana, Julie, myself and Karl. The ones to the left where born pre 1980s and to the right post 1980s.

Our work was to represent the 1980s, the good and the bad...Thatcher being the latter of the two. We decided to have Thatcher in blue, the colder primary colour and us in yellow and red, the warmer of the primary colours. We wanted our portraits to appear as if we were laughing at Thatcher as she was defeated and look at the good that came out of the 80s, hence why we thought it was an excellent idea to form a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from a mosaic of all iconic images from the 1980s.

Mosaic Maggie....look closely!

placing our piece of art of the wall in college!

My team and I are extremely proud of our finished product and it is now displayed in the corridor of the arts and media department in college. Chuffed!!!

Inspired by artist Gilbert & George

Our class has now been divided into two groups, I'm in a group of six. Myself, Julie Ayla, Lana, Karl and Jonathon.

This morning in class we discussed what approach we should go for regarding our art work in relation to us as a team and Gilbert & George.
The subject we all seemed to agree on was the 80s. We decided that somehow, our finished masterpiece was to display all things 80s!
So first, we decided to gather images of stuff that represented the 1980s to us as a group and to us as individuals. Things like toys, sweets, tv programmes and clothing etc.

With Gilbert & George being renowned for their grid like structure I suggested using a rubix cube and the main backround image. The colours were perfect, in relation to Gilbert & George and it was a iconic symbol of the 80s. I also suggested that maybe we could use hundreds of images of iconic 80s memorabilia to make a mosaic. When put to the test, it did not work. In the assignment each member had to produce at least two images to be included in the finished product. The face of a rubix consisted of only 9 small grid like squares, we need at least 12.
So, I had another brainwave, Margaret Thatcher! Use her as the main image to generate a mosaic of 80s iconic images. I thought this was quite apt seen as though Gilbert and George were an oddity in the artistic world because of their openly conservative political views and their praise for Margaret Thatcher. George claims never to have been anti-establishment: "you're not allowed to be Conservative in the art world, of course", he says. "Left equals good. Art equals Left. Pop stars and artists are meant to be so original. So how come everyone has the same opinion? ... We admire Margaret Thatcher greatly. She did a lot for art. Socialism wants everyone to be equal. We want to be different."

Another member of our group suggested Maggie being in the colour blue, while our images could be in the warmer primary colours yellow and red!! We were firing on all cylinders now!

We did a trial run with my chosen image on http://click7.org/image-mosaic-generator/?create
It looked good. Now we had to decide how we were to get our faces on there too, just like the famous Gilbert and George did!
Our tutor Bill suggested using our portrait images we had taken for one of our previous assignments.....we were back on track again.
Over the next couple of days we ordered a high res image of the Maggie Thatcher image and set to work on editing our portrait images on photoshop. We also decided to take some new portrait shots of each other.

Lanas turn!

Karl doin the big fish little fish!

moi

I had been reading a book called Experimental photography by John Warren and when Karl suggested an Andy Warhol type of portrait effect a technique sprang to mind....LINE CONVERSION! Perfect!  Line conversion is a common technique used today, due to media production, half tone images in newspapers are used widely. Now we acheived this technique in photoshop by first of all converting the orignail portrait into black and white with an adjustment layer. We then used the artistic CUTOUT filter. Each portrait had the same level 2 through out. To then ensure the image had a true black and white conversion and no midtones we adjusted the LEVELS.
So our images went from this.....

Lea by SHM 2012

TO THIS.....
I then made a template in Photoshop to the size of three images by one, I dragged all the yellow images across onto this template and using the rulers guidelines set the images up so they were ready to print out and be put in their A3 frames. I suggested this method as it was easier to give them all the same colour yellow rather than doing it individually. We added a fill layer to the images with the yellow and in the drop down menu for layers we selected multiply. Tadah!!!
We did the same with the red portraits too!
Saving these templates along with the blue Maggie mosaic we were ready to print baby!!!!

We purchased the frames from a hardware store for a mere 2.50 each. Just thin black framed A3

We were now ready to print..........my next blog will include the final masterpiece

Our next assignment given by our tutor Bill was named After Gilbert & George.

In a nutshell, as a group and as an individual we had to research the artists Gilbert and George. Who they are, where did it all begin, their work throughout their career etc
With that information on-board we then, as a selected group, had to design and produce a work of art using a similar method and style as Gilbert & George did.

This is what I found during my research.....

I've finally sifted through the hundreds of images I had taken for my family project and reduced it to just a small collection, as I stated earlier in my other post, my photography technique would be natural action shots. The composition for the majority of these images was to capture what my eye sees in a natural way...this was angle, lighting, colour to enhance the moods etc. I shot in complete manual mode because when I shot in Aperture Priority the images became blurry due to slow shutter speed to keep the light coming in. ISO was cranked up to 3000, the room was just too dull at times thanks to the winter months!!

Nannypop

HOHO GLOW In this image my daughter Evie was dressing up. She had just found the jazzy Santa hat in the decorations box. This close up was how close I was to Evie at the time, as I stated earlier, I want my viewers to see exaclty what my naked eye could see at the time. I added a few fill layers on photoshop to soften and warm the image up. My little teddy bear!

death by ipod

This image is of my eldest daughter Sarah. By this point she was oblivious to me taking photographs of her, partly because Id taken so many beforehand and partly because she was engrossed with the contents of her Ipod. This image is so natural, taken sat on the floor next to her on bed I just clicked away while she was chatting to friends.

Evie dont mind them

I put these together as they come in sequence. Grandad was letting my snake Ang stretch his legs and cheeky Evie wanted to get in the shot.
Mum in the background was in a world of her own until I started laughing at Evie pulling faces....which brought her attention to the snake....HAHA look at mums face x
I love the way I made the snake the main focal point of the second image with mums horrified face in the background

Mum hates snakes!

i

Sausage in the middle

Evie & Gangang

Buddah and Me

Lawn darts

My second egg x

I knew from a very early age, that what I saw on tv had nothing to do with real life. So I wanted to make a record of real life. That included having a camera with me at all times. - Nan Goldin

An american photographer, Nan Goldin is famous for her documentary style photography of her close friends and family in the gay and transsexual community

Her photographs are honest, truthful and raw. She photographs her friends, lovers and family, embracing life as they know it.
When viewing some of her images you can instantly feel the emotion the subjects were feeling as these were not taken in a forced artistic manner, but in a more natural documentary style.

Her images take you through her journey of life, through the happy times and the not so happy times. She carries you through the decades of her teenage years in boston in the lte 60's, through to the fun free spirited late 70's in New York, onto the drug and sex fuelled 80's and 90's which led to some devastating results of dear friends who fell victim to the AIDS crisis or drug overdoses.

Through her images she shares her life with you, taking you on her journey without words. She needs no words, these images are raw and full of emotion. The composition of most of her images are just shot naturally as in the eye of the beholder, no clever angles or fancy lighting, just available light.

Her work is often presented in a slideshow format and her first in 1986 being The Ballad of sexual dependency which was 45 minutes long with a series of 800 images shown.

An interesting documentary about Nans work I found was  I'll be your mirror documentary

Gotscho kissing Gilles in Paris 1993

Joanna laughing in Paris 1992

Cookie at Vittoros casket

Nan one month after being battered 1983

Picnic on the esplanade 1973

Christmas at the otherside

Me and Brian

 I'm not a lover on all of Nans images but I love her method, her technique.

I have not gone into her more recent work and career, it was during these decades mentioned above that caught my attention.

 One of her most recent interviews for the Guardian she quotes



“I don’t photograph adults so much any more. I don’t have a child and, psychologically, my focus on them is a lot about me wishing that I did. But I am a godmother to friends’ children around the world – in Berlin, New York, Sweden and Italy. I don’t remember much ever feeling like a child, so maybe photographing them triggers memories. They are wild and magical, as if from another planet. And they haven’t been socially conditioned yet, so they can scream and express how they feel publicly. Sometimes I envy them. When I am in a group of people, the children and I find each other’s eyes, and end up laughing at the same, unspoken thing.

I’ve been taking pictures of children since the early 1980s, and it’s become increasingly important to me. I see a continuum in the children of my friends, some of whom have died. It’s about hoping that my friends will bring up a new species of people.”….I certainly think that my work comes from a humanistic vision of the world, rather than some kind of manipulative, theoretical version of art. It’s about the people and places I love, and that haunt me.”


The Guardian has an interview with Nan Goldin by Sarah Phillips

Researching the many photographers who have photographed their families over the years ( Sally Mann, Alfred Stiglitz etc) I have decided to opt for the documentary style.

I think capturing images in a photo-journalism way will create more raw emotion and a more candid outcome.
This type of photography is normally used when documenting historical events but I feel it will work well for my assignment.

Artistic photography is simulated, producing ( using props, manipulating the composition of the image) an image that you want the viewers to see.

Its now day 2 into my family snapping and have so far gathered about 500 shots haha, although about 50% of these are complete garbage.
I'm really struggling to keep my shutter speed nice and fast, to enable me to capture my little toddler on her hairy missions. Once a get the right exposure (lounge on an evening) its great for still shots but as soon as she starts to move I get a big blob of human mass floating around the image :(
I've adjusted my flash compensation and exposure and changed my AF mode. Ive also changed my lens from the 50mm prime to my kit lens 18mm-55mm vr lens. I've done this as I found the DOF was too shallow and I also struggled to focus on a moving object (Evie) as its manual focus. Argh!!!

I WILL get there eventually as I'm persistent and very stubborn.

Wish me luck guys and if anyone has any feedback please don't hesitate to comment x

Update: after much appreciated feedback from my tutor I've decided to revert to my original plan of aperture priority, going no lower than 2.8, this should be easy as the lens I've chosen to use only stops down to 3.5 anyway.

I thought is was quite apt to post this as it merges my last two tasks together into one. Family photography and self portraits.So, lets say you have no photographs of your family or ancestors? Well why not impersonate said family members and take self portraits to create a family album of your own?Thats exactly what Rafael Goldchain did in his album named I AM MY FAMILY.In this series he impersonates and captures the image of each family member.

The self-portraits in I Am My Family are detailed reenactments of ancestral figures that can be thought of as acts of “naming” linked to mourning and remembrance. I Am My Family proposes a language of mourning through self-portraiture and through the conventions of family portrait photography. In reenacting ancestors through a relationship of genetic resemblance, and through the conventions of the portrait photograph, the self-portraits in I Am My Family suggest that we look at family photographs in order to 

recognize ourselves in the photographic trace left by the ancestral other.

Self-Portrait as
Motl Yosef Goldszajn Liberman

b. Warszawa, Poland 1902
d. Santiago de Chile, 1959

Self Portrait as Malka Ryten

b. Lublin, Poland, 1884
d. Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1974

Self Portrait as Pola Baumfeld

b. Ostrowiec, Poland
d. Poland, early 1940's

Self Portrait as Naftuli Goldszajn

b. Krasnik, Poland, early 1800's
d. Krasnik, Poland, late 1800's

As a boy

all grown up

Born in 1894, the second son of wealthy parents, Jacques-Henri grew up in a family whose money paid for its fun and toys. Latrigue’s father raced cars, built gliders, and taught his son photography and processing when the boy was just six. Jacques-Henri’s enthusiasm for picture taking led his father to buy him his first camera when we was eight. It was the glass plate negative camera Jacques is holding in the photo. 

Jacques-Henri’s photographs of his family were mostly taken when he was between the ages of eight and twelve. 

His family were eccentric and very unique which has helped produce some amazing images.

Zissous bat

First wife Bibi, Autochrome

Cousin Simone on land bobsled

Cousin Simone and her bobsled skids

Boyhood photos

Brother Zissou and his tyre boat invention

Later, as a teenager, Lartigue sold a few pictures to sporting magazines but decided to become a painter rather than a photographer. Luckily, he continued photographing his life, including his three marriages, his many mistresses and his very famous friends.  

Over the years, Lartigue would show his photo albums to friends but it wasn’t until 1963, when he was 69, that they were seen by John Szarkowski, then curator of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Szarkowski recognized Lartigue’s genius and arranged an exhibition of his work at the museum. 

So today I began to do my research for my new assignment FAMILY.

Bill, our tutor introduced us to an artist by the name of Richard Billingham.

He is renowned for his fly on the wall documentary style photographing and videography of his family.

Richard Billingham (born 25 September 1970) was born in Birmingham UK, about an hour away from me. He studied at Bournville College of Art as a painter. He stumbled across what he is now famous for by taking numerous photographs of his family in action to then select just one single image to paint for his assignment. When showing his tutor the images, his tutor told him he was done, that ALL of these images were his final piece of work and needed to do no more AND THAT WAS THAT!
He went on to to take CANDID PHOTOGRAPHY of his family which finally became a book called RAYS A LAUGH (his fathers name being Ray)

I found after looking at his images, my first impressions of his parents were that they were alcoholic, selfish people with poor hygiene. Once viewing one of my favourite videos the FISH TANK I looked at tem from a totally different light. The dynamics and essence he captured through his photos and films is unique. The close up shots, almost following where you would be looking naturally if you were there are unique. 
You become for the duration of the move, a part of his family.

His family became totally oblivious to his filming and photographing after some time and I think this is what created the unique natural shots that he captured.

Dad Ray & cat!

Liz

RAY & LIZ

BILLINGHAM THEN WENT ON TO EXPLORE LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY.

Yesterday I was given an assignment as part of our  Visual Recording unit based on FAMILY

As part of this assignment I have to research and examine the meaning of family of family in the modern context. Asking myself:
What do families consist of, immediate family, extended family?
What types of families are out there...blended. typical 2:4, lone parent etc etc?

I will also research some well known photographers who have used their family as their subject, explore their techniques and researched how they capture the essence of their relationshi with each family member and the dynamics of the family on a hole. I feel that if I do this it will lead me to produce great photographs.....which leads me to the next art of the assignment.

I need to 'fill my boot' with images of my beautiful family in acton. preferably no posed shots, more photojournalism/documentry style instead.

Wish me luck and I will keep posted with my prgress

TTFN X

I came across a nice piece of work on the net based on Andy Warhol and his self portraits.

I think he is a very unique artist, which is obviously why he is known worldwide for his work.
Below are the 12 portraits featured in this post
I love the way each image has captured his personality in different ways, almost like representing the different sides of is personality. I will take this into account whilst experimenting with my own self portraits.

Self portrait

Self portrait

Self portrait

Self portrait

Bernard Gotfryd 1980s

Nancy Schiff 1981

Self portrait 1979

WeeGee 1965