Final Post

Everything's been handed in now so, until the viva, I suppose that this project is over. I do intend to carry some ideas through to my next project but in the meantime I think its time to evaluate this project, exploring what it is I have learned and what it is I would improve upon, were I given the time.

Firstly, learning outcomes. I think I have actually learnt quite a lot from this project, chiefly is the experience that I gained from using the Bronica, the first time I've used a 'proper' medium format camera (as opposed to the Holga). Early on I decided to use high-iso film and that has been a choice that has paid off. Not only did the fast iso allow me to capture images in particularly low-lighting situations, it gave me the grain, (which was the real reason for my choice), and gave a particularly good texture to skin-tones which would otherwise have appeared a little plain. As well as this I feel much more confident in using Photoshop as a tool to lightly manipulate images, such as using the levels etc. to make images a little clearer, as well as more major work with things like the selection tool, which allowed me to shift about the various quadrants of my Polaroid images.

If I had more time for this project I would have liked to further refine my final images, either choosing to shoot solely in black and white or colour, most likely black and white as I felt that these images captured a more distilled sense of 'looking' at a specific subject. I would also have liked to pick a single final strand to follow, whether to leave clues of identity through small idiosyncratic details in minor clothing or to completely erase any clues as to the identity of the person and have the study of their body being the sole focus I am still unsure.

Until the next project when I hope to further pursue these avenues of investigation, Goodbye.

Darkroom Prints

After having bought some 10x8 pearl photographic paper (resin-coated, not fibre-based), I headed down to the darkroom with negatives in hand. The image I printed was one that's already been scanned in and uploaded here before, so I didn't see the need to scan in and upload the image again, I did however, include some darkroom test-strips (below).

The paper I used was Ilford MGRC Cooltone Pearl, I chose this particular paper because I didn't want to use glossy paper for the low-contrast, high-grain skintones that I'd captured. I felt that the pearl paper really did improve the feel and quality of the images. Though I had scanned the negatives in digitally before I feel that there's always something lacking in the digital prints and copies that the analogue prints have, there's a solidness and the satisfying tangible quality that digital never seems to capture.

Ideally I would have blown these images up to life-size too, had I the time and photographic paper to do so. I don't feel that the 10x8 size quite does them justice but for the time being it is a reasonable substitute.

Full Scale Colour Print

I have just the one full-scale print, which is A1 in size, done on the slightly older (and much cheaper!) printer in the print room. Whilst I was advised that a file size of around 100mb is the ideal for an A1 print it was less of an issue with my Polaroid scans as no matter what the quality of the file, the image can only reproduce the original quality of the Polaroid. As a result of this I soldiered on with my 16mb file and produced a single print. Due to visual acuity, the larger an image is blown up, the further we stand from it to be able to see it all, and therefore the lower the image quality you can get away with, which definitley worked in my favour.

I haven't bothered to reproduce the print here as it would be a photograph of a much larger print and, other than for the sake of scale, there would be so many changes in its appearance by the time it arrived on my blog that it would not be worth it. I have included the original image below, though its been posted on my blog before I thought it would be worth showing it again anyway.

The printer, as I have said before, is particularly old so the results were not completely perfect, darker areas tended to have white lines running vertically down them and the skintones, as the printer was not attached to a calibration unit, have come out rather more pink than the original. If I were to print again using the same machine the skintones could quite easily be corrected manually, reducing the red values of the image with Photoshop before printing, however, the white lines would still be very apparent and so I did not pursue any further prints with this printer.

Belated Video Stills Post 3

This is the third and final video which I took, following the previous post on the multi-angle video.

The video differs from the previous example as it is not all the same object, shot from various view-points, instead it is more a montage over four different panes or streams of video, the main focus was the ultra-macro closeness of each shot, particularly the opening four shots of skin, this is further intensified by the HD quality of the video. The HD aspect of the video is also the reason I cannot upload it to Youtube again, and so there are only the stills below.

Again I decided to use the empty panes as part of my idea, the videos often overlap, 'cascade'- where the same shot follows at a slightly delayed rate, and occasionally occupy only one quarter of the screen, leaving three quarters empty.

To achieve the extreme close-ups with the macro I taped a 6mm focal distance macro lens (designed for the holga) over the lens of the camera. This means that many of the shots tended to hover in and out of focus and gave a very shallow depth of field.

Belated Video Stills Post 2

This second video was taken after the 'Bellmer Legs' shoot. It plays with an idea which I borroed from the music video 'The Bucket' by Kings of Leon. I particularly wanted to experiment with the multi-angle, multi-view type idea, incorporating four different shots of the same object into a single frame.

The subject of the video is my face, at less than flattering angles but it puts the idea across. Each shot was taken at a different distance and angle and they all almost meet up in the centre. The changing-scale of the facial features was a particularly interesting facet as the distortion and mild sense of disorientation it creates was a key idea.

The black panes in the video were also quite interesting, the images below are only stills as the video could not be uploaded to Youtube due to it being shot in HD- the uploading times are appaulingly slow. In the video the panels appear and disappear, leaving blank space which was interesting in and of itself, and could also be crossed-over to my Polaroid work, using the passport 4-shooter.

Belated Video and Stills Post 1

This post is long-overdue, the videos concerned having been made and edited atleast a month ago, there are more to follow but I felt it would have been a bit lengthy to include all of them in this single post (not to mention they were all made at different times- they will be uploaded chronologically).

The first one is a result of my earlier posts on Hans Bellmer, based on his sculpture wherein two pairs of mannequin's legs are joined together by a ball-and-socket joint at the waist (below). My video work for this mostly revolves around the 'has and has not' a crotch element, wherein the legs finish before they reach the crotch, but the joining of them using the mirroring technique creates a v-shaped pseudo-crotch. Other than this the video itself was quite simple to make, it was shot in HD on the Kodak Zi8 in ambient, natural light and the slightly low-budget 'mirror' effect was added in using Final Cut. The shoes and socks were designed to mimic Bellmer's dolls and also give an inkling of information about the identity of the model.

Polaroids in Colour and Black and White

I took a few more images using a different model with my Polaroid passport camera, following the style of my previous images, cutting up the body, and doing minimal photoshop work to re-arrange the images so that the lines meet-up better. Again, keeping the skin-tones particularly smooth and softened was important whilst maintaining the rough contrasting frame.

The first few were in colour, finishing off the pack of film I had in previously, the second series, which can be seen further down the page, were taken with a high-iso black and white film. I had hoped that, with using the 3000 iso black and white film that they would yeild somewhat grainier results, more like my previous Bronica images, unfortunately this was not the case, not that I was particulary disappointed with the images I did manage to capture. The lack of large-grain despite the fast film speed may be due to the limited size of the images, 31/4" x 41/4", and the process of making the Polaroid is more or less a contact-print, rather than an enlargement as you would get from a conventional film.

All these images will be included in my selection of 10 final Polaroid images which I intend to enlarge in prints upto A1 size for display (whilst I may blow-up a couple of images as examples, the cost of enlarging and printing all the images without an actual venue to display them is a little excessive).

Bronica Film Roll 3

Continuing with the Bronica and High-ISO film vein of my project I took another roll of film. The results from this were much better than my previous roll, in which I only managed to take away 3 successful photographs, and I managed to successfully take a whole roll of film with near-correctly exposed images. Though some of the images were under-exposed this was in fact intentional, attempting to get some more softly-lit 'dim' images.

I felt that these images worked quite well because the tension in the body of the model helps to add a further texture to the already clearly apparent large grain. Again these images were taken with Ilford Delta 3200 film and processed in the darkroom.

Whilst I am more or less certain that my final images will now be Polaroids, albeit scanned in and blown up for final prints, I felt that using the Bronica was something which I particularly wanted to explore and experiment with. Though they have not yielded any final images they have taught me how to use this camera as well as how to use more basic Photoshop tools to improve the images, such as the Levels tool. I was also particularly pleased that the images had the kind of gritty, grainy texture which I had hoped they would, and which cannot easily be created in Photoshop, atleast, not as convincingly as a photograph taken on film.

Book Mock-Ups

Though I have been leaning more towards life-size prints I haven't as yet completely ruled out the possibility of a book as a means to display my images. I began to mock up some book-covers as possible solutions to this project, below are shown several possible layouts and colour schemes. The book would be comprised of a series of between ten and twenty images, and an introduction, detailing the intentions and briefly mentioning the methods by which I created these images.

I particularly like this one above, I feel the colours and simple layout tie in well with the images whilst not upstaging them. The scanned-in textured piece of paper which is taken from the piece of the polaroid which is usually discarded (and contains instructions and temperature development times) however, slightly detracts from the overall sleek look of the design. I may remove this in later layouts, though I found its absence made the design feel a little barren and flat. I wanted the pink lettering to tie in with the fleshy pink tones of the image and the dried caustic paste at the top of the frame without looking too feminine, the off-white background helps with this and offers a slightly less stark and 'rosy' feel.

This second design is not too dissimilar to the first, however the pink has been replaced by two shades of grey and the scanned-in piece, image and blurb have been re-arranged, whilst the portion devoted to the image and text works better the scanned piece had to be rotated, meaning that the text no longer faces the right way.

The blue in this layout is a little stronger than my previous colour schemes, as well as this the entire front cover is now an image, though, with enough empty space on the image the title and author labels fit in easily. The back panel is similar to the first design however the scanned-in panel is now on the left rather than the right. I liked the idea of incorporating the title into the image however I'm not sure that the images is 'clean enough' to be a cover image, what with the rough edging of the frame that I left on the original. This could easily be removed however the image itself then lacks the contrast of texture between the rough frame and the smooth skintones.

While the layout on this design is the same as the first the colour is radically different, the deep red is far too strong and tends to detract from the image, which should be the main focus of the cover, equally, the white lettering looks too officious and does not have the conotations of some of the more reserved colour schemes.

I've also taken some more photographs in a similar style, using the Polaroid 403r, experimenting with some black and white film. Unfortunately I am away from my scanner at the moment, but will scan in and upload them in a later blog post. I have also taken more photographs with the Bronica and intend to develop atleast two more films once I get back to uni and can access the darkroom, again these will be updated in a later post.

Large Scale Prints

I had originally envisioned the outcome of my project as being a book of some sort, however, recently I have been leaning more towards a series of prints as the final display for the project.

I intend for the prints to be life-sized, rather than the original polaroid images and so with this in mind I began to experiment with large-format prints. The image below shows an A1, near life-size print in relation to myself. The image was printed using a poster-printer which is fast apporaching 20 years old, as you can see it only prints in black and white and its tonal range is limited, hence why these prints are solely for scale.

Though these images will be printed much larger than the original polaroids I still intend to use the Polaroid 403r passport camera as it is the most consistent and efficient, if not the most cost-effective, means of creating these images.

The idea behind a life-size scale is to create a more visceral engagement with the viewer, for the apparent deformity of the model to be more tangible than the original 31/4" x 41/4" images could be.

Cleand-Up Photos and Bronica Attempt 2

Firstly, I've cleaned up some of the photos I uploaded in a somewhat unfinished state last time and am uploading the finished versions on here now. I wanted to keep the grain but removed all the smaller pieces of dust and scratches, as well as some light leaks and slightly adjusted the levels to turn some of the darker grey tones into true blacks. The images below are the results of this.

Secondly, my second attempt with the Bronica was for the most part unsuccessful. With these photos I attempted to shoot in natural light rather than using the unpredictable flash, still using a high iso film and using close-ups of the body. Unfortunately I achieved only 3 images, none of which were particularly astounding, these can be seen below. The rest of the images were very heavily under-exposed, leading to almost black images which could not be salvaged, despite numerous attempts to fix them in Photoshop. However, I still wish to continue to use the Bronica and high ISO film as the first images were such a success in their texture and grain. My next step is to re-shoot after re-educating and re-acquainting myself with the lightmeter so as to get more correctly exposed images. I think the difficulty I have been having is that I still want the images to be very dim and 'Henson-esque', which is a difficult way to light photos.

In the meantime I still need to shoot some more 'cut-up' images of the body with my polaroid camera and then intend to move onto using black and white 3200 iso and eventually chocolate 80 iso film. Here's the latest in the set below.

Bill Henson and The Bronica

After having written my essay on the work of Bill Henson I decided to attempt to use some of the techniques which he employed in my own work, more specifically, the way in which he controls light and uses a high ISO film to acheive particular skin-tones and textures. The large grain of the ISO is particularly effective when the subject is light with very low-key lighting and so I used a 3200 ISO Ilford Delta film and a single Metz flash and set the Bronica to an apperture between f/13 and f/22, depending on the image. Below is an example of Henson's work.

I chose to work in black and white for convenience rather than for a particular atmosphere, however the images did, for the most part, work as I had hoped they would. The large grain adds a distinct and almost palpable texture to the skin and the low-key lighting, in the first image below atleast, has worked well. The images do require some cleaning-up, as there is a lot of dust and some small scratches which will either have to be fixed with the clone-tool in Photoshop or the negatives will have to be scanned in again, using the digital-ice filter.I have also left the right-hand edge on these images, whilst it will most likely not be left on for the final images I thought it added a grittier feel, as well as the scratches and large grain, there is something almost dirty about the photographs which I had wanted to capture, following the work of Bellmer. The close framing of the work was something I decided on so as to photograph around the body, using the edges of the image to cut up the body.

Something I particularly struggled with in these images was the control of the flash, in some images the lighting worked as I had hoped however in some the image appears much brighter than I had expected, this may be to do with the controls I had the flash set to, not having used this equipment before. In the future I intend to preview the images and use off-camera flashes or natural light rather than using a sync-cord for the Metz flash.

The image below is another example of my inexperience with this camera and film-type, either when loading the film, taking it out or processing it the film was partially exposed to the light, leading to the fogging of the negatives and the white patches which are visible on the edges of the photograph below. This is one reason why I intend to re-shoot some of the images from this roll, as well as to become more familiar with using the Bronica.

Bellmer and the Polaroid 403R

I recently revisited the work of an artist by the name of Hans Bellmer. Bellmer's work deals with adolescence and deformity, as with the previous post I suppose the more general heading is 'Deformation of Beauty' (which can also be linked to Bill Henson, see later post for more of this). Bellmer took shop mannequins and began to reconfigure them using the simple ball and socket joints so as to create figures which had a kind of 'ruined innocence' about them, as can be seen in the images below, the moving around of the body parts into new arrangements deforms the typical concept of the beautiful and healthy body into something more resembling the work of Francis Bacon or H R Giger. The expressions and the way in which the pieces were photographed originally suggests a particularly sinister theme, perhaps more like rape victims, which give as unsettling an heir as the maquettes of the Brothers Quay (still from the film, The Street of Crocodiles, furthest below).

Taking into consideration Bellmer's work and combining it with my initial concept of dividing the body using the framing of the image I took out my Polaroid passport camera and began to do just that. The first image is my first attempt as it appeared on the original polaroid image. Though it illustrates my point I felt that by lining up the edges of the limbs etc. in the image I could more clearly express my intentions and influences, which is why the lower image has been doctored in Photoshop. Lighting when using this camera for this kind of work becomes more important and, as the flash provided with the camera only lights for the passport-portrait style image I intend to experiment with off-camera slaveflashes so as to use the light more expressively. If this is successful I also plan to shoot some shots with Polaroid chocolate film, which has a large grain and gives brown-sepia toned images which would further resemble early Bellmer photographs. I also left the edges of the polaroid image on rather than peeling them off so as to further the idea of the rotting or decayed texture, particularly when compared to the smooth and even skin tones within the image.

Franken-fashion, Masks, Van Veluw and Hundertwasser

A few months ago an article in the magazine Dazed and Confused caught my interest. They had set up a project, working with various fashion designers, in which they challenged them each to make a mask out of scraps from around their studios. The project raised several particularly interesting themes, such as concerns with the recycling of materials and the use of everyday detritus to create art. Particularly interesting was the image below, a mask made of discarded rubber gloves in which various hand-signals are carefully intertwined and written with the fingers. In the image further down the mask is made of glass by Walter Van Beirendonck, in the article he says 'the glass creates a deformation of beauty'. I think the anonymity and trasnformative nature of the masks is a concept I would particularly like to explore in this project. Indeed, anonymity is directly linked to the mask, from renaissance masquerade balls to those worn by costumed comic-book heroes. The mask is also linked to the history of medicine, plague masks can be likened to the modern day surgeon's mask.

I began to experiment with the idea of the make-up as mask, I have several ways I wish to explore this which I haven't gotten around to as yet, however, I did start to think about the works of two particular artists recently, Levi Van Veluw and Friedrich Hundertwasser. The photographs below are my first attempt at exploring the use of make-up as mask, drawing lines in eye-liner across my face and photographing them using the previously mentioned Polaroid 403R. The first image is the stages of this and the second is used more as documentation. The photographs become documents of an event, like the images left after 60s performance art. That the camera is used to create photographs for documentation is also an applicable and interesting facet.

Levi Van Veluw's work involves covering his own face and head in various materials, including leather, felt and human hair. His work contains a dual attraction, curiosity and repulsion create feelings of ambivalence in the viewer. These works also follow the vein of performance art in that the photographs are all that is left as documentation of the works. I intend to further expand on his work in a later post.

Friedrich Hundertwasser was part inspiration for my face-contours photographs mostly because of their aesthetic similarities. When first starting these photographs he was not a direct influence, the lines were more a way of exploring the contours of the face through a simple pattern, however, after having studied the photographs more closely, the works of Hundertwasser and the likeness to the painting below became very apparent.

Passport Photos and the Polaroid Miniportrait 403R

I've finally managed to buy a Polaroid 403R from eBay. These cameras were used up until fairly recently to take passport-photos manually, but have now been phased out by machines or digital cameras. I think when trying to study identity and anonymity the passport image is key. The passport image is the identity on paper, it is recognised in bureaucracy as the proof that the person who owns the document exists and that their image and the information printed in the passport match. That there is no directly interposing negative, that the image is exposed directly onto the polaroid film is also linked in with validity, there can be no tampering with the image after it is made, the light reacts chemically with the film and the image is created.The camera comes with a built in angled flash and two fixed focussing distances, 1.2m and 1.92m, this means that every image taken with the camera will look fairly consistent with the preceding and following images, particularly when photographing the face. Though there are more complex lighting set-ups for the passport photograph, as in the diagram below, I have found that taking the images with the flash pointing directly at the subject on a white background is similar enough to the passport style for my purposes.

The image below is a grid of six 3.25" x 4.25" polaroid images. The camera has three settings for taking photographs, you can set it to take four separate images, two and two the same or all four the same. Though these photographs are only my playing and experimenting with the camera I have some more specific intentions for the next set which should be more relevant to my project.

Found Passport Photos

In my first year of Photography at college the tutor mentioned the idea of found photos and since then I've kept my eyes peeled for photographs on the ground. After three years I've found only two. Strangely the images are both passport style photographs. I'd held on to them for a while not knowing what exactly I wanted to do with them, as well as being worried that if I were to use them in a project or stick them into a book they would become fixed there and could not be used at a later date. I bought a small 'passport style' notebook from Muji and decided that this was a suitable vehicle for the photographs. So as to avoid a finality in their fixing to the pages I used photocorners so that I can remove them at a later date if need be. With each image I included the year and the address of where it was found. Though there is not the volume of material to contribute much to this project I felt that it would be worth including it if I am to look at themes of identity and anonymity.

The first image I found on a supermarket floor as I was sweeping up towards the end of my shift. There was some information written on the back, though beyond the name, Julian Fox, the text is quite cryptic. The text reads: 11540/Julian Fox/Full.

The second image I found on the steps of the Kimberlin Library and so assume that the person in the photograph is a student currently studying at De Montfort. I think this is an interesting facet of this photograph, that I may see or have already seen or encountered the subject of the photo and that they would be none the wiser. There was nothing written on the back.