The Engima Of Time.

In January, 31st, 2019, my group took part in a workshop dedicated to the Engima of Time, these were the images that we had created together as a group.

 

For the first time during this workshop, we had the chance to use a film camera, which was extremely informative and helpful as I have always been interested in film and how it works. Throughout the images, we tried multiple exposure which created some very evoking and particulary “ghostly” type images, layered with the contrast of one part of the person being in focus whereas the other part is transparent or has movement in it. The final image we had created, we all sat down in front of the film camera and layered all of the top parts of our bodys, in which we tried to make it so we were in the same position.

It was a very good workshop and due ot it being my first one on film cameras, I learnt a lot about film and what can be created.

It was good to work together with my group, who also were getting introduced to film for the first time, we helped each other to understand.

 

The Constructed Image.

14th of Febuary, 2019 was when my group took part in this workshop.

This workshop focused relatively on Surrealism, by playing some surrealist games to get our heads thinking that there is more out there than just the simple “norm”

The Tate defines “Surrealism” as: “Surrealism aimed to revolutionise human experience, rejecting a rational vision of life in favour of one that asserted the value of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s poets and artists found magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.”

It was here that we learned a lot about surrealism, rather than just its simple “strange” stereotype.

After playing these games and learning about the movement, each one of us had the chance to pick out two “words” or “sentences” from a bucket and were asked to create a book cover, as if we were commissoned by Penguin, using just those words we picked out of a bucket.

We were aloud to use Photoshop after picking out our words and use google or our own images to create this book cover. My four words were “The daytrip” and “The Crucible”. I found this a rather challenging experience, to create something far from the “obvious”, however, eventually I had an idea after looking at the defintion and the movie “The Crucible”

I found that the defintion for “The Crucible” was a situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new.

This sentence is really what got my brain wondering, in which, I began to look into daytrips, and moving away from the modern way of using “day trips” and looking more to the past, as i believe these two sentences put together are somewhat mysterious and interesting, which could create an atmospheric book cover.

I first found the “Daytrip” image of the carriage travelling from a gate into a rather creepy castle, and decided to make the background black, to match with the aesthetic. I then looked into the controlling and “severe trial” which reminded me of a hand, “controlling the puppets” and so, I put them it on top of the horse and carriage image to match the idea of “The Crucible”

I then looked into the typography, making some letters different fonts to add a twist to it. Finally I added the penguin logo and had finished my book cover.

At first, this was quite the task, and despite being a person who is very in to the surrealism movement, I found the photoshopping element tough, with coming up with a idea, but in the end, I found that thinking outside of the box can work and it doesnt always have to be straight forward, and so, I am quite proud of myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got to use photoshop to create the book cover which I particularly enjoyed and I was very proud of my book cover. The two words I picked out were ‘The Key’ and ‘The City’ and this was the cover that I created.

Throughout these past few months, I have taken photographs ranging from all different kind of genres (landscapes, portraiture, advertisment etc)and it has been a very good experience.

I am very pleased with the way my 12 final photographs turned out, ranging from fruit, to portraits of light and shadow on the body and people I dont know.

I have gained much more confidence throughout these past few months within these projects both with the camera and subjects. I have learnt so much this semester and I am proud of myself as a whole. I look forward for what’s to come next.

These are my final four images for Everday Geometry.

These are my four final images for Who’s who?

These are my four final images for light and shadow.

Fernand Fonssagrives was a French photographer born in 1910 – 2003 and he is revered as one of the e”arliest and greatest practitioners of ‘beauty photography’ in the 1940’s”

His work could be seen on the pages of Vogue, Harpers, Town & Country.

 

 

The most memorable work he created was through the unique partnership he had with his first wife, model Lisa Fonssagrives.

 

Lisa was in fact responsible for Fonssagrives picking up a camera – she gave him a Rollieflex.

 

“My objective was to try to understand what life was all about and to be free. And there’s no place you can do that but in America. This is why I am here – this passion to be an individual. It is possible in America, despite all these miserable trends. But you have to buck the system at times.”

Once the highest paid photographers in the world, he preferred to remain anonymous. Little was written about him, even at the peak of his success.

Fernand Fonssagrives has been a massive inspiration to me throughout this project, I knew that I wanted to create images with light and shadow on the human body, such as, the face, from the beginning. I wasn’t too sure on whether these images would be part of my finals, but I knew that I definitely wanted to experiment with the idea as it has been something I have always wanted to do. The way he works with light, creating shapes and figures on the human body evokes particular feelings, making the audience realize there is more to photography than pointing and shooting. There is an idea behind the camera, the lighting, the use of shadows, and I see that this photographer has truly captured that in their work.

 

I used artificial lighting (a torch) and created my own backdrops, and my own textured lights with kitchen appliances, wrappers from food, bubble wrap etc. I put these materials in front of the torch, with the help of the models used for this shoot, and took the photographs and these are the finished results.

 

I am extremely happy with how these images have turned out, due to the strength in the shadow, the facial expressions and the backgrounds. They are extremely soft yet strong, dramatic images due to the light, which I decided to turn black and white to bring the colours together, with simply black and white being shown, helping the contrast come into view.

I experimented with the models looking away in the distance, and looking into the camera, breaking the forth wall.

My photographs:

 

 

When looking for people to photograph, I didnt look for anything specific, I simply looked for people that caught my eye, some of these are moments that happened and some that are posed, I experimented with both and tried to think about the background as well as the actual subject.

This person really interested me, I dont know much about her, I dont know her name and all I knew is that she was really shy, despite her posing and confidence that can be portrayed in these images, which I found shocking, but almost not “too” shocking, because it is clear in modern times that we can cover up our true selves in media, but it doesn’t stop us from seeing how we are in real life. However, she was very helpful and kind, both in real life and on screen, she was a very interesting character to me.

 

I really liked the way that the light caught her face. Im extremely happy with how these photographs turned out.

Here, I simply wanted to experiment with light and shadows in purely, a landscape, with water, which shows the shadows strongly, making the image rather striking.

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I really love landscapes, the looking into the world around us, the colour that can be found, with it being ever changing I find it so interesting and evoking so I really wanted to take photographs within landscape for this Light and Shadow project.