My Final Component 1 Evaluation
Throughout component one, I have researched many photographers, for example Albert Renger-Patzsch, Jan Groover, Dafna Talmor, Martin Parr and Tom Woods. These photographers have helped me get an understanding of how to develop my work further and my ideas in terms of each theme and project, and how to get my ideas from point A to Z. I particularly enjoyed exploring Tom Wood's collection "Bus Odyssey ", because I found the way he used the reflections in the bus windows unusual. He was able to alter and distort his images of a common everyday occurrence (taking the bus). Photographers transform everyday reality into something remarkable simply by photographing it. This is because photographs are a way of paying close attention to things we might otherwise ignore. Photographs flatten the world, stop time and put an edge around reality. Exploring this theme has forced me to focus closer on things I would otherwise overlook.
I have experimented with a variety of techniques, processes and materials. For example, Dafna Talmor did a workshop about manipulating 35mm slides. She cuts up her own negatives to make new landscape constructions. In her workshop with us she showed us how to dismantle the slides, cut up the positive images and abstract them, by collaging the fragments and sticking things on and overlapping imagery. The end result is extremely distorted and twisted and altogether a surreal version of reality. She photographs nature and landscapes that are different to the norm such as deserts and rocky coastlines, which are already difficult to relate to reality if you're from an urban area. I chose to study her work as I thought that her photographs were the best examples I've seen of abstraction. I used these processes in my own work for my abstraction project.
I have also experimented with colour layering...
Tom Wood's photographs tied particularly well into my theme of rituals. Your bus journeys can be seen as a common ritual, one that everyone does. However, it can also have a personal dimension. Everyone does different things to make their journeys more tolerable and suited to them individually. In some ways the music you listen to, the clothes you wear, the phone games you play, all tie together and combine to make up a new ritual, one devised entirely subconsciously and through personalised experience.
I used this theme of bus photos in my final piece for Rituals, and tried to particularly focus on the use of reflections to distort my images. During the time I was photographing, it was winter and the days were short and dark and by the time I started on my way home, the sun had set. This made reflections particularly work because of the lights from inside and outside the bus.
In my work over the past two years, I have explored some of the key threshold concepts, namely #3 ,"photography has many genres, some old, some new, some borrowed". I explored this by reusing the outdated medium of 35mm slides. It was fascinating to re-use something that is less common today as it helped me realise that sometimes older concepts make for new ideas and can work better in a certain theme. Another threshold concept that has helped to shape my ideas about photography is threshold concept #5 . In class we talked and learnt about the ways that taking a photograph is abstract, the way the camera flattens reality, and that you can put a border around certain objects and cut out other obstructions in the photograph to give a different perspective, an altered view of reality. Photography in itself is an abstract concept, and by distorting and further playing with images, you are only emphasising the abstractions that are already there. There are many different ways to make an image unrecognisable.
I have experimented with a variety of techniques, processes and materials. For example, Dafna Talmor did a workshop about manipulating 35mm slides. She cuts up her own negatives to make new landscape constructions. In her workshop with us she showed us how to dismantle the slides, cut up the positive images and abstract them, by collaging the fragments and sticking things on and overlapping imagery. The end result is extremely distorted and twisted and altogether a surreal version of reality. She photographs nature and landscapes that are different to the norm such as deserts and rocky coastlines, which are already difficult to relate to reality if you're from an urban area. I chose to study her work as I thought that her photographs were the best examples I've seen of abstraction. I used these processes in my own work for my abstraction project.
I have also experimented with colour layering...
Tom Wood's photographs tied particularly well into my theme of rituals. Your bus journeys can be seen as a common ritual, one that everyone does. However, it can also have a personal dimension. Everyone does different things to make their journeys more tolerable and suited to them individually. In some ways the music you listen to, the clothes you wear, the phone games you play, all tie together and combine to make up a new ritual, one devised entirely subconsciously and through personalised experience.
I used this theme of bus photos in my final piece for Rituals, and tried to particularly focus on the use of reflections to distort my images. During the time I was photographing, it was winter and the days were short and dark and by the time I started on my way home, the sun had set. This made reflections particularly work because of the lights from inside and outside the bus.
In my work over the past two years, I have explored some of the key threshold concepts, namely #3 ,"photography has many genres, some old, some new, some borrowed". I explored this by reusing the outdated medium of 35mm slides. It was fascinating to re-use something that is less common today as it helped me realise that sometimes older concepts make for new ideas and can work better in a certain theme. Another threshold concept that has helped to shape my ideas about photography is threshold concept #5 . In class we talked and learnt about the ways that taking a photograph is abstract, the way the camera flattens reality, and that you can put a border around certain objects and cut out other obstructions in the photograph to give a different perspective, an altered view of reality. Photography in itself is an abstract concept, and by distorting and further playing with images, you are only emphasising the abstractions that are already there. There are many different ways to make an image unrecognisable.