Rankin- Seven photographs that changed fashion.

On Wednesday we watched a documentary about photographer Rankin who recreated seven images by the most powerful fashion images of the Twentieth Century. These included an iconic Cecil Beaton image taken in 1934 'Hat Box', a 1950's Vogue cover by Erwin Blumenfeld, a 1955 image shot by Richard Avedon of 'Dovima with Elephants', a 1963 image of Jean Shrimpton captured by David Bailey, the iconic image of Helmut Newton's, Rue Aubriot, Vogue 1975, Herb Ritts' 'Fred with tyres' taken in 1984 and finally the Guy Bourdin, 1970 'Untitled' fashion photograph.

Cecil Beaton "Hat Box", 1934

For recreating the hat box image, Rankin chose to use Sophie Ellis Bexter as his model as he believed she had a similar look to that of Elsa Schiaparelli, the original model. Rankin spoke of the fact that when the original was shot, technology of the time wasn't as it is today, so he made sure the final image was deeply influenced by this fact. For this particular image, the use of a 10 by 8 camera was used, which shows the photographer an upside down image, so it proved that little more difficult than using a digital camera. Also, with using the 10 by 8, Rankin wasn't able to see the final image,  so he took the photograph with digital also to give him an idea how the image was looking. He states in the documentary the 10 by 8 image works better when looking at Sophie's expression and the camera alone evokes this sentimental sense compared to the digital image, this was down to the length of the exposure between the two cameras.

Erwin Blumenfeld "Vogue Cover", 1950

For this image, Heidi Klum was used as the face for the cover, for her uncanny resemblance to the original face in the image. Watching the shoot looked like it was fun, playful and quite simple. Heidi took on her role as the character really well but added her personality into the image aswell which I loved. The original image is heavily influenced by the surrealists: it portrayed initial links that fashion and art have, but with Rankin's recreational element for this image and Heidi's cheeky character Rankin gave the image a modern twist.

Guy Bourdin "Untitled", 1970

Rankin chose the fashion designer and model Daphne Guinness to reinvent the iconic look of this image, but compared to other remakes, the chosen model didn’t really share some similarities as the original model. The set choice really resembles the one from the original, the only difference being, the use of the red tight, I think it would have worked that little more effectively if the legs were bare like the original. The remake is also got a lot more dominant feel to it, a more sexual compared to the original. 

David Stickman Higgins

On Wednesday We had a lecture from a guy called David stickman Higgins on about Black history Month and his personal experiences and projects he as been involved in and how on being creative with all your senses, sight, touch, smell etc. He spoke about what black culture means to him and gave life stories, poems and techniques on being creative with language too. Dave ‘Stickman’ Higgins is  a world class drummer and percussionist. Dave is also a poet, actor and educator of Black History. 
Dave gave a very personal account of growing up in multicultural Britain, sharing his mother’s tale of moving from Barbados to Bury in the 1960s, his experience of growing up to by a lot of sensory and poetry throughout his talk.

Higgins started his talk in an unusual way, rather then introduce himself and soon as we sat down the first thing he did was set the audience a task. He wanted from us was to write  five certain things. A colour, an natural element for example water, our name and an animal. When he returned from his 'water break' the whole point of this came clear, he tasked us what we had then took a couple and created various poems and 'played with the words' showing how he creates his poems, which was very interesting and totally different. 

 Throughout the talk he told us about stories that took pace in his life, about his childhood and family but also some were about the projects he has done in the past. each story he told he gave visual references for  such as photos, actual pieces of work or things he as collected that he brought  with him, which was really good and made it more interesting and interactive.

As well as stories and poems he also did a lot of interacting with the audience, Firstly by  waving a piece of cloth with some really strong scent on. Then he asked the audience what we can smell and people replying with likes of ginger and some other spices and they were correct. It was his way of getting a message out to us in different way, by saying basically behind that was that everything we smell or touch brings back memories, either from the childhood or our life in general. He also passed a box that was tied up with an object in and him asking people to think and and see if they can tell 'whats in the box'. It worked out to be piece of rock, where again it a contained a hidden message.  This time the message was everything we touch is a 'DNA story', holds a memory, which led him on to a particular sofa he brought with him and the story behind it. The sofa was a part of a little setup in the corner of the room, which also contained a box with black history related items in it, such as masks from africa, words written on the side of the box etc.

To sum up this talk, it was strange well more then strange. He was lively and very interesting. The way he played with the words he was given and made poems of was fascinating and made me think about things alot about the things we touch and smell and how they can bring back memories and past events. 

Rear window- Alfred Hitchcock

We watched a film done by Alfred Hitchcock called the  "Rear Window". It  is where a famous photographer named Jeff who as got him self injured trying to get a perfect shot for the newspaper company he works for and then finds himself trapped in a wheelchair. Inside his lack of freedom and his limited options. He passes his long days and nights by shamelessly maintaining a secret watch on his neighbours. Jeff stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartment windows around his courtyard. As he watches his neighbours he assigns them such roles and character names as "Miss Torso", a professional dancer with a healthy social life or "Miss Lonelyhearts", a middle-aged woman who entertains gentlemen callers and of particular interest is seemingly mild-mannered travelling salesman Lars Thorwald, who is a older man with a nagging, worthless wife. One afternoon, Lars pulls down his window shade, and his wife's never-ending rasp comes to a sudden halt. Out of boredom, Jeff casually thinks up a scenario in which Lars has murdered his wife and disposed of the body in gruesome way. Jeff's opinions turned  out to be the truth. This type of plot according to sources say As in most Hitchcock films, the hero is a seemingly ordinary man who gets himself in trouble for his secret desires.

The film is also well known for its first scene, where the shot is one long pan. It pans from window to window showing all of his neighbours living their everyday lives. I quite like how this scene is framed and filmed. It's almost as if you are looking from L.B Jeffries point of view and you can see what he actually is seeing.

David Severn

This Wednesday we had a guest talker come in and talk about himself and projects he has worked on. Also he was talking to us about how the internet can be used to inspire us by looking at particular photographic websites and the great quality of images they contain which can help us as photographers with any future projects of our own.

David Severn is a social documentary photographer from Nottingham whose work is based on the relationship between people and place. Most particularly photographs the working class, how they interact and are affected by the environment they’re living in.

He first talked about a project he had been working on a called 'thanks Maggie'. This series of photographs explores the reinvented uses of ex colliery sites in and around the former coal mining stronghold of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

As he grew up in the town and like so many from Mansfield, come from a mining family, so this project was particular special to him and  he mentioned how he thoroughly enjoyed it, despite having the odd difficulties here and there throughout the project. His Father worked at the pits all his life and his Grandfather a Deputy at nearby Sutton Colliery during his time. Taking a dip into his memories, cultural background and skilled perception of Mansfield, he had talked about how a very personal the project was and how that it speaks of his own roots and sense of belonging. He also spoke about the wide range of people and their unique backgrounds, he encountered throughout and how moved he was by the stories of ex miners and inspired by the work of young people in Newstead, as well as telling the great stories of his adventures getting the photographs he wanted.

His work is part of a wider project involving 8 artists of varying different practices inquiring into Mansfield’s current socioeconomic climate given the prolonged period of volatility sparked by the withdrawal of its primary industry in the early 1990’s.

David also then talked about some of his older work, such as the project looking at the British travelling showmen community. He said his aim was to involve the public with the fairground on another level, to help them understand the people behind the fair and suppress common preconceived misconceptions about travelling show people. All this was done at the goose fair in Nottingham.

David throughout presenting his work, mentioned how he likes to present it too, which I thought was quite intriguing. For every portrait, he would complement with a landscape type image. This was particular done when showing the project ‘Thanks Maggie’.

Overall I thought is presentation and talk was very interesting, if a little long winded. I really enjoyed some of images they were very suited to what they were photographed for. 
below are a couple of images from the series of images 'Thanks maggie'.

image from the series was taken in Boothy's Working Mens Club in Mansfield where the people in the photo are playing Bingo. The Main focus of this image is the man playing bingo by himself at the front. David said that once he got talking to this man, which he then told David that his wife had recently passed away and he continued to play bingo every week to carry on the tradition that he and his wife had.

 image below is of of David Severn's father, Jack Daniels, preparing to go on stage where he is an Elvis Presley impersonator. He told us that this image was special to him as he never saw his father getting ready to do what he does best. 

below is my personal favourite from the collection. A man David met while on the project told him a story about a man and his life and mining experiences that turned out to be himself. this image really captures all that emotion of the moving story about himself and is nicely shot and lit, which is why this is my favourite image.

William Eggleston

On Wednesday we watched a documentary on a photographer called William Eggleston. It was glimpse of how he works and takes his photographs, as well as other well-known photographers talking about his work and how it influenced them, such as the like of Martin Parr.

William Eggleston has spent the last 50 years documenting his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. A place often described as quite a boring and dull place throughout the documentary by various people. This is what photographer Juergen Teller had to say about his first time visiting and how disappointed he was.

The famed Magnum photographer Martin Parr explains how radical it was for Eggleston to be shooting in colour in the late 1960′s when every other street photographer was still shooting in black and white.

He has done the majority of his work in Memphis, and photographs every day. Even after such a long time documenting his hometown, he still feels the drive and desire to find parts of Memphis that he hasn't discovered yet.

What William is photographing is very much against the tradition and the normal stuff of photography. William Eggleston wasn't so interested in photographing “art photography” but what simply interested him and breaks all the rules of traditional rules of taking a picture.

I soon started to appreciate his vision after looking at some of his work more closely. What I initially thought were stupid photographs of ordinary, boring everyday stuff. He wasn’t interested in photographing ‘decisive moments’ nor was he interested in capturing obscure characters or extraordinary moments. He was all about finding the beauty in the boring.

His images, they are so vivid, full of life, and you can see that he has a very good understanding of use of colour in his photographs. His images aren’t just of random colours, but there is a very subtle form of coordination in his photographs. For example, many of his photographs have primarily warm tones in the background like red, orange, or yellow, yet his subject of interest may be of a very cold colour like blue, green, or violet which pops out at you. William Eggleston is one of the greatest innovators of colour photography. What he was doing at the time was quite far-reaching, not shooting in black and white as other serious photographers were doing.

But Eggleston didn't shoot in colour because he wanted fame or anything of the sort. Rather, he found colour to be more of a challenge and fascinating than black and white. He didn’t complain that he lived in a pretty boring place. He would rather focus on documenting his own hometown in a very personal way, taking photographs every day and looking for the brilliant light and colour which made his community unique.

Eggleston’s photographs are not taken from a normal eye level. Adjusting the usual perspective of the viewer, Eggleston makes new angles and causes different atmospheres making the viewer look at objects from another viewpoint. An example of this is, Eggleston’s famous picture of a child’s bicycle with three wheels which was taken from a very low angle from below, making the rather small childlike object seem huge.

William also makes use of natural light a lot. That means he’s not gathering artificial lighting to lighten the scenes of his photos. The photo shown below is a good example. In that image of a parking lot, the evening light and the shadows from the sun going down highlight the warm tones of the scene.

Introduction

On Wednesdays we have a lesson of contextual studies. For this assignment, it aims to help boost our research within photography in order to discover the potential of various techniques. By developing work though researching various sources and analysing and reviewing experimentations with different photographic materials and techniques, effective outcomes can be produced.  It also aims to broaden our ability to select and visually record from a range of sources in order to interconnect information to different audiences.

We will be looking at different Artists, craftspeople and designers working today and in the past have all been influenced in different ways by contemporary and historical related understanding. Wednesdays are to be organised in a rolling program of short tasks, which are either written and/or practical and guest lectures for us to respond to along with exhibitions visits. This unit will continue over the course of one year.

Will be required to gather evidence and show responsiveness of other photographers and artist’s work from a range of sources including visits to galleries, museums, market research and workshops and studios. We are expected to keep records of our research findings and evaluate it in an understanding throughout the development in our blog.

We must study all parts of art, craft and design production and how a professional body of work relates to our own specialist area. We will gain a wide-ranging understanding of other’s work from which they may focus upon a particular period of historical or contemporary practice to explore in depth and present our findings.

Working on Blogger, identify and evaluate relevant information, our  Blog should contain initial ideas, a statement of intent, development of ideas, annotated work in progress, contact sheets of all photographs taken, a variety of relevant analysed experimentation and research, a detailed evaluation.