Thank You'

To: Angela Edgar, Patrick Clancy, Rachel Gillies, Max Oettli, Emily Hlavac, Mishca Rhys Hill, Lydia Katharine Boehr, Nick McKenna, Nik Smith, Dusty Colyer, Pat @ Gallup Map and Framing, Cory Hinesley, Colin J. Burke, Steven Lewis, Katy Osterwald and of everyone else that helped in some way...

Important Areas...

Good idea Em. You win.

Monday May 4th, 2009 - "The Perseus Project"
Wednesday May 6th, 2009 - "Trying to Think"
Tuesday May 19th, 2009 - "...photorealism..."
Monday May 25th, 2009 - "Yves Medam"
Thursday May 28th, 2009 - "Aaron Hobson - Cinemascapes"
Monday July 20th, 2009 - "Waaaay overdue"
Wednesday August 5th, 2009 - "Wow Lack of Posting"
Sunday August 30th, 2009 - "Current Work"

These are some of the older posts fomr first semester that are relevant, the majority of second semester work is accessible through my tag cloud and the heading current work. Thanks!

Some people came to my show!

I cannot resist a good pun...

Food and Drink! and some tunes.

Exhibition! Woo

"I'm just so happy to be here...i'd like to thank the academy for making this possible...god..small children...the pope...."


Silly photos. but some more to come. stay tuned.

Title and Poster

I printed 100. we put maybe 50 under car window wipers in Westport last night. And Anna gave them to people in the bar....
I'm putting the rest up around school today.

Some other Stuff...

All of the bits of paper form my wallet and my weird collections of paper from my house. on a wall. i dont have much more of an explanation than that right now. Bellow are all the munted recipts form my wallet overlayed into one image.

Chicago Murder Sites

Harlan Wallach - 1996
Take that name how you will, these are an epic combination of text and image and also ambiguity. The point of view that many of the photos are shot from adds to this sense of ambiguity and the dark and shadowy nature of the images adds a dark sense of brooding when combined with the snippits from newspaper cuttings...

SITE '09 and KCAI Present

[SLICE]

A Photography Exhibition
by Alex Lovell_Smith

Hit this up. Im actually posting some things here now. Just touch the picture, i know you want to. Touch.
Do it.


Or just hit the image on the right of this post...click click

Its Done.

Hung. I gotta go back in the morning and check that it is all straight and level though.

Hanging...

2 Images up....6 to go...

Title ideas:

Any suggestions/ideas/comments would be freaking sweeeeeet!

The [ ] Project

A Project of Deception

The Paradox Project

Deception Point

Force 5 (i dunno where that one came from)

Full Fathom Five

Sense

Shit i really dislike naming projects. There is so much pressure to have a name that its relevant and at the same time kind of intelligent sounding. I would rather call it something completely nonsensical but yea...

So i need a title....

Trying to think is dam hard right now. The exhibition is still without a title and i neeeed one...

Printing = DONE

Sign i put on my several hundred dollar pile of prints...
BooYah!

Just Because...

From our mission to the countryside. We had a panorama battle. I think i lost haha

First of two big big prints... i told you, never leave me alone with large format printers and a massive gallery space to use...

Some notes and stuff

Reading stuff/notes/stuffstuff:

-"My work is over when i have managed to get beyond the mirror" - Jorge Molder in Face: The new Photographic portrait. Ed:William A. Ewing

-"To say that 'the camera cannot lie' is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name." Marshall McLuhan 1964. page 86 of the above.

-"Photography pretends to show reality. With your technique you have to go as near as to reality as possible in order to imitate reality. And when you come so close then you recognise that, at the same time, it is not." Thomas Ruff 1993. Page 104

-"If you stand in front of a customs officer, you try and make a face like the one in your passport. So why should my portraits be communicative at a time when you could be prosecuted for your sympathies?" Thomas Ruff 1993. page 119. I found this one really interesting especially as it came from 1993! I feel that it is even more true now...

-Jason Salavon -"The class of 1967" 1998. All the male and females fomr this year overlayed on top of one another kind of in the style of Bernd and Hilla Becher..

-Axel Antas -"White Portrait" 2002
White out, a void where the face should be...

-"I am visable, I am Image." Jean Baudrillard, 1993.

-Eva Lauterlein series called "chimeres" - Spooky and haunting images of people who look totally disengaged, robotic almost...

-Douglas Gordon "Monster" 1997

-"The visable world is no longer a reality and the unseen world is no longer a dream." W. B. Yeats

-Helen Sear from the series "twice...once" 1998-2000
Epic series in whice two portrait images were superimposed creating bizzare and starngly penetrating portraits that look like victims of some sort of strange surveillance experiment. "What is secret and hidden is also ghastly". Look up Freud's notion of the "Unheimlich"

Because I didn't like looking at a big bunch of text when the page loads...

Artists Statement - SITE 2009

“They Say the Camera never lies. It lies everyday.”
-Caesar Romano

The photographic image has long been treated as a direct and literal representation of reality. [SLICE] explores the nature of truth within the photographic image. It questions and distorts our reliance and assumption on the truthful and unbending nature of the mechanically produced photograph.
In our everyday life we interact with the photographic image, we use it to tell us about the world, to report on events, times, space and locations inaccessible to us. We hungrily consume the photograph in order to learn, to discover, to seek out, the “truth” of a situation.
But how do we feel when this truth is distorted, warped, bent or even horrifically misused. How does this change the nature of other photographs that we view? Do we question what it is we are seeing in a photograph anymore? Are we happy with the notion that what we see may not be what actually took place? With so much visual stimulus persistently bombarding us in contemporary society it seemed critical for [SLICE] to explore the constantly shifting nature of truth within the image.
As Andre Bazin notes in The Ontology of the Photographic Image(i) , the photograph provides us with a “…hallucination at the same time as it delivers fact.”(ii) The photographic image offers the viewer a slice, a frozen moment of the real, delivered to us as a tangible object, something that can be held in our hand, pinned to a wall or stuck in a book. However, the event depicted by the image is something that does not exist in that same time or space as the photographic print itself.
In [SLICE] the figure within the images is caught in the middle of a sudden movement, frozen forever in that split second of time that it takes for the camera’s shutter to fire. This figure acts as a metaphor for the isolation and removal from time and space that is inherent in every photograph, this hallucination that Bazin speaks of and what Barthes calls “madness”(iii). Through the use of this figure and the ambiguity of its presence in the images [SLICE] makes the viewer question exactly what it is that they are seeing and their assumptions of the photographic image. It creates a paradox, questioning and commenting on the power of truth at the same time.
[SLICE] does not attempt to make a judgment or final decision on the outcome of the nature of truth within the photograph, for that would be impossible and recklessly self-limiting. Instead, it is intended to make the viewer explore, discover and question their ideas about reality within the frame and the long held perceptions of the photograph as an indexical signifier of truth.

(i) Bazin, Andre. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” (1967) in Trachtenberg, Classic Essays on Photography, 242.
(ii) Kriebel, Sabine T. “Theories of photography – A Short History” in Photography Theory Edited by James Elkins 17-19. New York: Routledge, 2007.
(iii) IBID

All planned out yo...

Self explanatory i think...
ok maybe not. this is gallery space here at KCAI and iv just sorted out the prints that are going where in the space.

Money money money

Ok so i have just realised how woefully under-thought-about i have been in terms of dimensions and frames and all that jazz. I just picked this proportional size for the images and thought "oh yea that'll be sweet"...fail...epic fail.
So i have a frame that is 22x28 inches, its cheap (only cost $22USD) but there are several problems. One, using this frame means i am going to have to crop my images down to fit this size, it is smaller proportions than as it is in camera. I like the format of the standard in camera frame, the images were shot and frame to this so it makes sense to keep the standard (i want to say 35mm) dimensions.

The other option would be to crop the images down to the panoramic, 16:9 kind of style of image (reminiscent or Aaron Hobson etc) I think this is the only way i would like to crop them...but then this means making custom frames OR getting them professionally framed...hence the money money money.


Pano style

Vs.


Totally uncropped - as shot.
Vs.


Cropped to fit 22x28 inch frame

[S]pace dimensions

So i am going to make the images on the larger wall i have in the P/DF gallery slightly bigger than the rest in order to make better use of the space and the whole exhibition more visually appealing.
So these two images (and iv decided that this wall will be the image on the left and one cloud one) would measure 50x33.271 inches and the rest of the prints going on the smaller walls would all measure 40x26.617 inches. So now i need to print the dam things! and then obtain a quote for framing (note: be seated when reading quote)

Super Sunday Rain Mission///

Over twelve hours of driving through some epic thunderstorms and crazy-ass Missouri country-side. We battled keeping the insane amount of gear we had with us dry, it was a crazy crazy intense day and we plan to do it again very soon...project as yet unfinished...

Julia Fullerton_Batten

Staircase - 2008


Mirror - 2008


Cupboards - 2009


Broken Glass -2009

I have seen her work before but had not seen all of this series. Thanks to Katy for picking it up for me!
This blog has become quite the point of collection for these sorts of bizzare images that deal with he floating figure in contemporary photography. Its fair to say i think that i have become obsessed with this technique/style/idea. But after my discussion with Patrick late last week i need to think more critically about why i have become obsessed with these images, and more importantly how my images relate to this obviously well used technique.
Why is this floating/suspended figure important to me> what is it/he trying to say/do/communicate to the viewer?
Important questions...

Sexy paper mock ups

So these are two bits o paper that i am thinking will be the size of my final prints. I am open to suggestions tho haha.
I think they fit well as a diptych on this wall (which there are two of this size in the gallery) and one image this size will fit nicely with plenty of room on the center-floating walls. My only concern is images this size on the larger wall. Should i print the images for the larger wall bigger? or is that an exhibition no no. Hmmm if i do print them bigger then i have to make a very concrete and irreversible decision on which two will be going on that wall.

trust the yellow and black....

Nikon baby all the way. this shot: D700 + D2x - shot with D3



"shit, is this even on....?"




This is Missouri.

Eight by Ten ///

Dusty Colyer

Because i never posted this before

American Professional photographer Joey L(awrence). Beautifully shot and incredibly graphic...you know i like that haha

Mock up changes

Another mock up. It takes away the shot were i am falling/suspended/whatever in front of the building. I like this image because it is one of the best and most painful to create (my ribs still hurt) but it does not fit so well with the rest of the series. This is mainly due to the lack of sky in the image (apart from the reflection in the buildings windows..) It just does not have the same feeling of overwhelming sky and openness that most of the other images do...

/////

Haha going back and looking at that image again i really do like the clouds in the window....it adds another depth to the image and still ties thematically to the other images. Wow indecisive again.

Images series being considered for SITE...

Here they are in proper form, not all silly and distorted. Let me know what you think. I also have a massive library of shots like the cloud shots in the mock ups. I am still thinking hard about the inclusion of these and have not really decided ether way yet.
The taking of the photos such as these i so process driven and so physical, i like the clouds for two reasons. One, there the opposite of physical, they are light and spacey and not blunt and physical which the images allude to in their technical seduction. Two, the taking of them is bound up in the process of making these images, and the way in which they react to the images of me is interesting...maybe...

mockymock ups ya'll...

So here is a complete mock up of my space. I'm totally behind the 8-ball compared to you guys back home but yea. The dimensions on the images are the total wall dimensions, not print size!
Ok... problems:

-I don't like any of it... kind of...but thats probably 'cos its all distorted and gross and o
-I fell like i have fuck all prints because I'm refusing to use the same location more than once (is that justified do you think?)
-I like the idea of sitting the prints on the side walls with the clouds, the cloudscapes have become a part of this in the process part of the images, i am always tempted to shoot the clouds when i am out shooting the events so they tie into the images but the way i've been editing them also brings together more of this open light spatial feeling...i think. I can hear people saying "nooooooo its to late to introduce stuff!" and thats also how i feel. Wow indecisive Alex, well done. Ok I'm now writing in the 3rd person so i will stop.

Cole Rise_

Relocationist


One Would


From the Pass


Endless

Amazing. I really like the combination of the images of figures and the landscape style photographs as well. They create an interesting interplay off of one another that i think is very powerful. If all the images contained figures then i feel that you would be overwhelmed and this sense of power and awe that these images provide would be lessened if not lost.
This is extremely relevant for me as i am right at the point where i am trying to decide which images are going to make the cut for the exhibition/SITE09. To many of the figure is going to simply become overwhelming and/or lessen the impact of the images that do contain the figure.
So ill see how we go with he coming mock ups...

Experimentalismnists

Radio Slave + Night Time = Fun. More to come.

Linking the Links (but who watches the links?)

Here is a direct link to R Gillies post which is directly related to my other project work. It discusses it in realtion to the very interesting video art of Kimjoosa. The hit the photo for Rachel's post...



Hit here for the article Rachel references on the Guardian website:

Bill Viola

Bill Viola was mentioned by Cyan in my Crit. I've looked at his work before and im sure we saw one of his video pieces (on youtube) in Su Ballard's class last year BUT i realised that there are no image of his up here. So here we go:



- Ocean without a Shore - 2007
This is a video installation of his created in 2007. This qoute is sited as partial inspiration on his website:
‘Ocean Without a Shore’ is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then breakthrough an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realize that their presence is finite and so they must eventually turn away from material existence to return from where they came. The cycle repeats without end.


- Dissolution - 2005
Color video diptych on plasma displays mounted vertically on wall


This image i couldnt find details for and the site i pulled it down from was in Japanese. hmm.


The Crossing-1996 Video/Sound installation.

There is something so beautiful and yet so graphic and disturbing about Viola's large scale video installations and associated pieces. His use of light and motion are incredibly powerful and are on an epic scale. I am drawn to these images of his but i am sure that the actual video works would be much more impressive than these images./ I wish i could get anywhere near his beautiful and powerful use of lighitng and amazing (yet simple) use of effects - water, fire etc.

Post - Crit +

So, despite my misgivings about fridays Crit it actually went really well! the whole week was a really interesting process, not only being able to see and review the Digi Film groups work but to have Crit sessions with 40+ students and four or five members of the faculty made things much more interesting and wide ranging in discussion.
I think in terms of my Crit that talking to R Gillies the night before was crucial. She made me realise exactly how my work has kind of split into two much more distinct catergorys since coming here. There is the work that is the continutaion from the rest of my Fourth year at art school; which almost culminate with the images osted earlier on this blog. And then there is the body of work that has changed and moved on from there and drawn on the influences i have been exposed to while studying here at KCAI. The important realistion for me was that the three prints presented on Friday were images that belong to this expanded project that is drawing on the influences here at KCAI and is still an ongoing and shifting project.

Points that came out of my Crit:
-Austin's comment about my use of the word "suspended" and how that the images have such a gravity and weight (due to the figures position and movement and the black space) that there isnt a feeling of suspension in them. There is much mire a feeling of gravity and movement. My comeback that its a phrase i use influenced by the process of creating the images and that i agree does not reflect the nature of the images.
-The use of lighting and the change of the lighting and clothing to suit individuals and there relationship within the photograph.
-Use of the massive black space to create and highlight the feelings and emotion of each figure. The way on which this space also creates the feelings of movement and space.
-Joe Fuller's comment to me afterward about how the distance the camera is from the subject also lends this diagrammatic element to the whole thing.
-The images were read as part of a series but they are not identical and do not suffer due to this. In fact they work brilliantly together because of the subtle differences in lighting and position etc.

ok that is enough text/writing for now...

This is not a Mock Up...

Untitled I, II and III from the series [ ]
Inkjet Print
40x21 3/4 inches

This is on the same wall as the image in the mock up (see earlier post)


Really bad stitched image, i couldn't get far enough back form the wall with my wee point and shoot so this is two images cobbled together.
I will document it properly tomorrow when i can roll in with me 20mm.

Japanese Robot Company...its not Gundam but its epic

Please just watch this...it'll will make you laugh and go wow at the same time.

Thanks Jesse!

Getting in on this Mock Up game...

Mock up 1 - its enourmous i know but its an idea haha

Space shots - Gallery space attached to the Photo/New Media Dept at KCAI

F*ck

My images for review look like the images of artists that are of influence to this project. Dam. I arrived at similar images...but i got there a different way...does that count? Even if it does i feel like this half a semester has been a...well a lot of dicking around i guess...
Shit...not feeling good about friday now. Not at all.

Just for kicks...

A little tiny giant City heheh

Images...

The Space itself marked out by me. Photos not in chronological order.





I marked off an approximately 1 metre by 2 metres on the footpath next to an entrance way on the north side of W47th Street, Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, MO. It was a blank piece of concrete, on my right were steps leading to another road, to my left was an entrance way that eventually lead to the doors for a parking building. The wall i was in front of was blank and not marked with any signage. But very interestingly on the wall above me there was a small dome security / surveillance camera.
In the course of the 25 minutes that i took to act out this securing of public space i was approached by 3 groups of people, all genuinely believing that i was a security guard employed by the Plaza.


Panorama taken from inside the space that was guarded/ reclaimed from the authority of The Plaza:


Some of the video footage from this piece can be viewed here... [CLICK_ME]

Thanks to A.C.E who did an epic job of filming and photographing!

Mid-Semester Review Prints

So over here, there is a mid-semester review, much like the one that we went through just before I left Otago. Except over here it seems to be a much more intense process, although perhaps it seems that way to me as an outsider who isn't that familiar with procedure yet.
Anyhow, these three images are going to be my presentation for the review this friday. I have printed these images so that they are 40x21 1/2 inches in dimension. So there pretty big while not being so big that they cannot be hanged.
At this point in time i am not that happy with them. I do not really like where this work has taken me this semester so far. While this is only mid-semester for these guys it is under a month before i have to have show here and document it to submit for SITE09 and i am not that happy with the direction of the work.
I set out to capture these images that contained something that would look impossible, a figure suspended and floating above a surface, suspended in space and disloated fomr the space that they are in. I do not like how the space has become simply black, but it does make for an elegant space and one that emphasizes the figure within it. I wanted this over-all body of work to talk about a sense of isolation and a sense of dislocation...something which i dont know if these works do, the figure is certainly isolated but...i don't know its making me go kind of crazy right now. Feedback of ANY sort would be epic!

All yo!

mmm wireless flash...drool....

Beacuse I havn't written about him on here...yet

Bill Henson sparked a massive media outcry back in 2008 for an exhibition that was quickly and foolishly labeled "child_porn" by the Australian Media Machine. The Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, Australia was raided by police and several of Henson's images were seized. Some his images, those seized and creating such a media scrum, feature young girls right in cusp of adolescence. The rest of Henson's work is dark, harsh and incredibly moody and it seems that the combination of these aspects with the misunderstanding that Henson was trying to sexualise these young people has lead to such an intense media storm.

Below is one of the images seized by Police preceding the later dropped court case against Henson under the Australian Child Protection Act. 20 of 41 of his images were seized.

There is some interesting writing on blogs all over this issue, Here and also Here are links to a couple of them...


Personally, i find Henson's work incredibly powerful, dark and very moving. his images are imbued with a sense of gritty darkness and i am continuously drawn to them for this. In terms of weighing in on the "porn" debate i dont feel as if i need to...but if our society has come to a point where art (photography or otherwise) that pushes our social boundaries, makes us sit up and take notice, makes us question things or provokes a powerful emotional response is going to get the artist locked up.......well..... i might as well quit now.

I also find it very weird that i feel the need no wait, i feel "socially obliged" to put turn on the "adult content warning" for the blog because i have that image in here....hmm....

Sometimes i like to play dress ups...

Your banned, your all banned, Get out.

ImageFest

mmm subway...








Impromptu fashion shoot...










Brooklyn Bridge yo






Never let me on the subway with a camera. Im a creep.




this is how the human race views art now...

More NY images...

Times Square/.




Late Night Reflection/.


I love these reflective dome thingys haha.
This is obviously just a couple on here, if you hit of FaceBeardBook there a whole heap more there.

The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was another highlight of NYC. AT the end of last month they had opened a collection of works by Robert Frank entitled "Looking In: Robert Franks The Americans" To quote the Met's website:

This exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. Although Frank’s depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, it soon became recognized as a masterpiece of street photography. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank is considered one of the great living masters of photography. The exhibition will feature all 83 photographs published in The Americans and will be the first time that this body of work is presented to a New York audience.


U.S. 285, New Mexico, 1955
Gelatin silver print; 13 1/4 x 8 5/8 in. (33.7 x 21.9 cm)

I have to admit i had only vaugly heard of The Americans as photographic book so it was an interesting surprise to see the entire book layed out in print form. Robert Frank was a very interesting photographer, the way he depicted American society was radically different for the time period he was creating these images.
The image below was one of the most powerful for me in the whole exhibition. The way in which the focus is on the people rather than the starlet in the foreground, the way in which the camera is watching them watch her and we are watching them makes for an incredibly dynamic and striking image. The many layers of watched and watchers i think sets this image apart and it had a profound impact on me for its simplicity but effective nature.

The Devils worship is lazyness...

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Golden)

In the uppermost floor/level of the Gugenheim Museum, once you make it past the powerful and inspiring retrospective of Kandinsky that fills the entire rotunda, you come a room like that in the above image. From floor to ceiling (over 3 metres above you) stretch's a luxurious gold bead curtain. Through the shimmering movement of the golden beads is something even more seductive on the floor beyond the curtain. As you gently push through the beads you come to a lrge atrium space, beautifully lit with natural light. The only object in the gallery is on the floor in front of you; 2 pounds (0.9KG) of gold compressed in to a delicately thin mat. It was incredible, it shimmers and moves as the light changes around it and threatens to dissolve into the floor and vainsh!
The interaction of these two works was incredible, the interplay on the simplest of colours and objects created a very powerful space. One that seemed even more overwhelming after the sensory experience of Kandinsky works. The exploration of the symbolism of gold and the attachments we make to this colour / material was simple and at the same time incredibly powerful. I think part of this was also the tactile nature of having to physically push through Gonzalez-Torres’s bead curtain after an entre gallery of only being able to look. To suddenly employ another sense was very powerful and set the viewer up to interact with the beautiful materiality of Horn's shimmering, almost translucent mat.

New York !

NY, NY.

An envelope of time. The images create this, a before and after of the event that is the image...the how.
I like that phrase "...they create and envelope of time..."
Patrick, in response to Fred Muram and Sam Taylor_Wood's images form my presentation

Distortion HDRI

Check out the figure...i really like the way in which they photoshop software has fucked with alignment of the person in the frame.

Lighting Experiments...and pain...

Montage from a series of flash tests shot on sunday night...i hurt myself in the process and Ange kindly captured it.




This needs to be printed. Reproducing it on the web is not that great as the scale is to small in any sort of condition to actually be able to upload it.

Hmm 44 inch printer anyone>?

Hmmmmm...now to find a train station...

Thanks Don!

Flash Sync Yo...

F7.1, 1/125th, ISO 200

Max_Dworkin

Dammit....

Woo now they can see everything...

This is pulled right of stuff, click to jump straight to the article.
They want to install cctv cameras around Queenstowns waterways in order to crack down on boaties braking the rules, and back up accusations with "...solid video proof..."
I just thought this was the best quote from Andy Brinsley the Director of Kawarau Jet boating operations:
"The [harbormaster] can't be everywhere simultaneously."


I just thought that was a great line. Is that what surveillance systems are trying to acheive? The idea that they can be everywhere simultaneously>? watching all from a point of power? Shit, does this sound Orwellian to anybody else? Not to mention the fact that lakes and rivers are right in that gray zone that may, with measures like this flick over into that realm of private and controlled space....

Who are we making images for>? For us now>? For the future, whoever may come after us>?

Sophie Calle - the woman who, through her mother, got a detective to follow he and take photographs of her. Wanted surveillance style images, "not good photographs".

Sophie Calle//Exquisite Pain

Also getting way more pumped on some narrative stuff...

Bell Soto:


The Father Figure The Hunger

Interesting to see that on her own website these images arnt presented as they are above...have other people put these together in order to dhow the narrative content more clearly? curious...

Photo_rant//

So...I have been thinking a lot about this project and what I have been working on at the moment. Some of this thinking coalesced last night when I had to rapidly write an artist statement for group show that may be happening with the jnr and snr photo group here. This is what I wrote:

These images represent an ongoing body of work that is exploring the idea of the human body in public and private space. It is examining the way in which we move through and interact with everyday spaces, so-called public spaces, private spaces and the exchanges we may or may not have within them.

This series of images aims to convey a feeling of dislocation, of confusion and bewilderment to the viewer about the idea of public space. These images aim to create confusion and bewilderment in the mind of the viewer and to make them aware of the growing confusion about what exactly is public space and does it really exist.

///So this wasn't really what I expected to write...but it kind of made sense in relation to what i am trying to do with these images. There are a lot of things going on (in my head) and dont know how much is being conveyed or not. In writing this last night it felt like the two sometimes disparate bodies of work that i have undertaken in the past months have finally found this point where they have merged together. But in saying that im not sure how i feel about this merge yet.

The floating people images have been a way of dealing with several things. The sudden change in the landscape that i am in, the way in which i have been feeling suspended in a new environment. But i would like them also to deal with the ideas of the human body in general and its relationship to space, and being here in the US seems to make it even more relevant to the nature of public/private space.

In saying this I recently re-read a post that Rachel left me. It was talking about Denis Darzacq and his flaoting people series. She mentioned the way in which the figure sin his work cast no shadows and are shot in flat landscapes and how this could reference that perhaps they do not fit in or belong in the landscape they have been shot in. Another intersting part of Rachel's comment was the way in which the lack of shadow could also reference the theft of soul, like the old photographic myth....

On top of all this im just not feeling hot about the floating images that i have been shooting in the last week or so...the first thing i need to do is go back and re-look at these first images:

I like this image more than the more recent ones where I am centred in the frame. I feel that the recent images have become focused soely on the figure rather then about the space that the figure is floating/suspended in. I want the figure to be a smaller part of the image, for the image to create more interest about the location that the figure is in...

RantyMcRanterson

Dominique_Wilson

Untitled
Image found on tinyvices.com - a collection of work of many many photographers.

A bloody D&G add...

Inspiration comes from the weirdest places and this just proves it. I would never have thought to have been inspired by a ridiculous fashion label and there fragrance advertising campaign but something in this shot clicked in my brain last night...

There is something so bizarre in the way (i don't even know which celebrity's they are) they are making out, not only is it in the confines of an elevator ( which I'm totally down with) but the bodyguard is right there next to them, reflected in the glass jsut over her shoulder! Then your brains processes the visual clues and you realise that the dark mass near the screen is the same guards rumpled suit, and hes standing there as they go at it, cool as a cucumber.
I don't know, the perversity of this situation and the interesting camera angle clicked a wee switch somewhere in my brain. We'll see what happens...

and if for some reason you want to see the whole add hit the image for the link...shudder...

Under the Radar Music Showcase

Matt Dill:






Death Top:









Polymer Slug:






Friday night _ this was at the Pistol and Foundation down in the very industrial Westbottoms. Amazing showcase of local music.
nb// images are super washed out on here but are way more epic in real life haha

Some more things...haha i almost wrote thugs

I am really keen to create a performative piece that is based on some of the ideals in the previous post but i am also interested in combining it with the work myslef and Mishca Rhys Hill are doing and bring into it a surveillance aspect. Or even just an aspect of control and security. I like this concept and i would like to do something in a place where i know i would be under some sort surveillance. So more work to come on this...

In the mean time here ia another series that is germinating as an idea at the moment. The spaces where stumbled across, no planning as with the poses, positions. All shot with Canon G9 on self timer.

Lily McElroy

This photographer has a really interesting suspended series of images but ti was drawen to this work entitled "Locations".

Her artist statment says that the work began as a documentation of "...public reaction to unexpected behaviour in privately owned public spaces..." These spaces are where we all spend a great deal of our time and they all have a strict regimentation on the expected behavior in theses spaces. There are no public spaces, as myself and Mishca Hill have recently been discussing. There are only points of transit from one private space to the next, or as McElroy puts it, privately owned public space.



She continues to explain that this regimentation has created fear of unconformist actions in these spaces so she wanted to do some thing that was clearly non-conformist but at the same time not confrontational. She also talks about how the work quickly became a study of the alienation in these sorts of spaces and society as a whole. She is putting herself in these spaces in a vulnerable position and wearing only a nightdress and in all her images she was only asked three times if she was ok. She received little empathy. The images explore the passive nature of people that move through these spaces, again something that myself and Mishca Rhys Hill have discovered for ourselves firsthand. People have an incredible ability to block out what they dont want to see...what they fear exists or they dont understand. This series highlights this capacity strikingly.

We live in a culture now that fears the non conformist, it fears those that act without total rationality. Yet the paradox is that a culture of fear and conformity is simply breading irrationality...

Satisfying my enjoyment of the Bizzare...

Fred Muram:


Thanks to Katy for throwing me this and other links!

I really enjoyed this guys work, in particular the series "Kissing the Ceiling" (2008) The way in which the figures defy our usual spatial orientation for them by being raised up on something and within the frame is really interesting.

To say the least these images prompt a range of questions !? Why kiss the ceiling? How did you get up there (for the one on the door handle) I feel that the bizarre nature of the images is heightened by the way in which they are shot from approximately head-height (our normal view) but they show people doing something that is very abnormal haha. They float above our normal perception of where people should be. this is nicely offset in some of them by the figures who are where we would expect them. There is a comical nature to them as well...I enjoy the bizarre.

Some notes//

Larry Clark
Bill Henson
Nan Goldin
Polaroids
Tension_
Tiny Vices.com
Masao Yamamoto
Mixed media works. I need to sort this out. I need to get on with this project with Mischa.
The Edge of Vision - The Rise of Abstraction in photography - Book

-The distortion of space and referential size in my images. Suspended above the available horizon lines.

Some Photoshop playing...

I really like how i have kind of vanished in this one...i like the ambiguous-ness and how i look like I'm going to break my face open...
Fuck this is going to sound so incredibly narcissistic but i like the way my arms stick out, the flesh colour compared to everything else and the way my veins are sticking out. It kind of links to the physical aspect that goes into creating these images.




So i started playing with this HDR stuff and i quickly realised i actually don't know how to do anything cool with photoshop! In terms of making images epic anyway, not just fixing them and what not..So here are some of the shots iv been playing with, there cheesy as hell but yea I am interested in getting much much better at this!

Wellington City Council...what the hell?!

Thanks Ange for throwing me this link. The wellington City Council have just installed 4 "high resolution" ( how high, i want details dammit!) CCTV cameras in order to track parking offenders and issue tickets based on details pulled from the camera feed. The 3 News article (linked off the image) talks about how they will be recorded continuously and allow the number plates of people parking illegally and in particular, cab drivers causing delays and problems on weekend nights.

The best part of the story is when the specifically say that the Council sort legal advice to ensure that the cameras are not a breach of privacy! The common rule seems to be that if you are in a public place then you are subject to being photographed at any time but this whole argument falls on its face when you think about how public space, as have often said, does not truly exist!
This sort of camera system smacks of the style of CCTV surveillance that is now commonplace in London and other parts of the UK; Ubiquitous and Orwellian...

HDRI

My first attempt at playing with HDRImages. This was shot handheld so not as good as it could be with a tripod. Plus not the best subject matter hah but yea its an attempt...

A Countryside Experiment...

Another Shot...

Another garage shot from two days ago...we had to abandon ship due to the heat. I am disappointed in the quality of the images. I was forced to shoot at ISO6400 and F2.8 because of the light conditions. I need to organize this but with my own light sources...

Re-Blogging...its like Re-gifting but better right>?

Here are a few people that i have found very influential in the last few days as i have been thinking seriously about what i am up to.

I had not come across these images of Sam Talyor-Woods until i found one of then on Annette Habel's blog. They are amazingly orchestrated and incredibly ambigous. They pose more questions than they answer...


These images are loaded with a power and an incredible sense of movement and risk. To quote the BalticMill website I pinched the images from Taylor-Wood's work "...focus['s] on the extremes of human emotion, ranging from desire to anger, and loneliness to boredom, she presents enigmatic situations loaded with latent but explosive energy."

Another artist i have found really interesting is Pascual Sisto. I stumbled across this video piece earlier today and i found it really interesting."No Strings Attached" - 2007.
The power that is moving the chair remains invisible to the naked eye, we suspect some sort of filmic trickery as the video progress's but even so there is an interesting power inherent in this manipulation of a chair in space. I found it really interesting as a moving piece of work compared to all of the stationary and frozen photography that i have been looking at recently. The bizzare and erratic movement of the chair makes us wonder, just as much as Darzacq's still images, about how it is being done. The viewer experiances a sense of confusion when confronted with something like this, and when we cannot see the obvious answer we are left in a state of bewilderment. I like this state. I want to create it. Now.



Sisto feeds nicely into the work of Bas Jan Ader, another artist i only just discovered. He is a Dutch/American artist who produced several works that made use of gravity and discomfort before he vanished in 1975 trying to sail the smallest boat ever across the atlantic.
His two video works Fall I and Fall II show the effect of graivty on Jan Ader himself. First tipping fowards and falling down the roof of a Los Angeles house and secondly showing him riding a bicycle flat out into an Amsterdam canal.
Here is an actual website link, while the images will take you to youtube for his videos...





There is something so simple and, as many have commented, organic about his video performances. there is also a hint of absurdity to them which makes them all that more engaging with the viewer.
All of these artists have been working with the ideas of creating something that creates unease, tension and power in the mind of the viewer and it has given me a lot to think about in relation to where my work is going...

Annette Habel

Thanks Amanda for the link to this blog. The pic above goes to her blog and the one below her actual website//


She doesnt give a lot away on her website (understandably) but these images are shot with large format camera and only one frame is shot per fall. I like her ideas about how this records the moment in time when she actually pushes the button. A random moment is captured in the tightly controlled confines of the studio. She mentions this as a core theme to her work; "...falling itself eludes control."

She also alludes to her past in the circus/dance arena and mentions her use of acrobats falling from "real heights" in order for her to capture them. I am really blown away by her control of lighting and the contortions of the acrobats in the images. There is something very beautiful and powerful in the shots, and as she herslf points out, they confuse those looking at the prints as to whether the models are falling downwards or away and back from the viewer...What interests me is the difference between these shots and those below that are not of acrobats, but "of amateurs" . They look more 'natural' than the acrobatic images as they are people who have had to confront the issue of falling in her studio and overcome it in order to model for these prints. There seems something much more intimate (which i felt when shooting similar pictures of my friends) about this series but it the ideas that underpin them continue through into the acrobatic series.
All of these images, even Darzacq's and Yves Klein ring with a strong sense of intimacy. There is something incredible about seeing another human being suspended in a situation not otherwise seen. It is almost like they are exposing themselves to something that is otherwise unseen and personal...

After Rachel's very informative comment yesterday i now understand more what Denis Darzacq is trying to communicate in his works. The low saturation of the image, the placement of the people in front of such blank, urban spaces is a comment on the migrant population in France and the way in which the second generation of migrants has become even more displaced. They cannot return to their 'homeland' but they cannot call their new country home...

I think the works a very resonant with this feeling of displacement once this idea is unlocked to the viewer...

My work is approaching a similar idea but from a very different perspective. I am aiming to create an ambiguity in the mind of the viewer. Something that will force the viewer to question what it is that they are seeing. My ideas need more refining in this way but below are another group of test shots....and ideas to pursue...

Yves Klein, Harry Shrunk, Janos Kender

A very good friend of mine flicked me this link after my last post on Denis Darzacq. This is an awesome example and intersection of some of the points i am trying to discuss. The relationship of truth to the photographic image, the staging and creation of an event. And also the way in which the photographer(s) have created these questions in the mind of the viewer; "did this happen?"
"whats going on here?"



I almost don't want to explain whats going on in this image because its is so spectacular...and a little comical...

Denis Darzacq

La Chute 2005-2006


La Chute 2005-2006


Sans titre (Biarritz) 2006


La Chute 2005-2006

I have posted about Denis's work before but i feel that it has become even more relevant as more work progress's down a similar sort of path at the moment. Denis works with dancers and models to create these ghostly floating images of people in urban (and indoor) environments. I find his work really interesting but... i dunno it sounds really arrogant but i feel like there is something missing from them? perhaps it the flat colours of the works. There are no shadows and the outdoor works in the La Chute series are all shot in very flat industrial spaces. They contain very monochromatic colours, and perhaps this was the point he is making about urban space but i prefer images that have some sort of Pop... hmmm

Entropy Video Project

So...I have dropped my one theoretical paper in order to do a new paper created last week. Its a digital film and editing paper and our first project it to work on a one minute video based on the word "Entropy".

This video is by someone called Oz on vimeo and is partial inspiration...

Current Work

ISO 1000//F6.3//1600th

ISO 320//F.5.6//640th

Uncropped//ISO 1000//F 56.3//2500th

ISO1600//F2.8//80th//Nikkor 20-35mm

Now i understand where Crewdson gets his lighting inspiration from. Have only pushed the colors balance towards the yellow as it was very blue before that.

The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art...By Night...

Check this Out...

Click here to Fight the horse (there some more piccas here...)

Mmm eye bleedingly good. Lowlight=6400ISO=eye bleed=tasty tasty...

More from The America's

Night time trees just outside the living centre.

Don's house (photo Senior) Wathcing an amazing locally made kids TV show called Whoop De Doo !

You gotta love what happens at 6400ISO with the wrong WB on. I had to take the saturation waaay down just to make this not rape your eyes.

Fash+Ography

Group Show under tutelage by Ute Mahler
Designer: Min Oliver
Model: Shona Skilton form Ali McD Modeling

'The Gathering Dark' - Final Prints

Haha sketchy pano's are fun! This is the river market looking back towards the main downtown of Kansas city (the skyline bit) This is shot on the far side of the sity area from where im living and where school is.

Super Amateur Pano...

This is from the lawn in the centre of campus. im shooting form the bottoms looking up towards the main buildings in the centre. The photo/new media dept and sculpture and woodwork are all tucked in behind the trees in the centre. the extreme left is the South Tower of the living centre and the building on the right i havn't been in yet! Its mainly the painting dept. and their studios.

First time using photoshop's automate stitch thing (thanks Viet!) ps it looks shitty but click on it and it looks sweet!

Mixtures...

Texture...

Having just put up the below post im having a bit of dilemma about blogs/workbook spacce.

I dont know whether to keep this long running blog as a workbook for myself, and to be marked on back home or whether it will just degenerate into ramblings and photos of all the weird stuff over here. I guess it can be both though....My surrondings are definatly going to have an impact on the path i am going to travel on for this semester so its seems fair to post impressions and photos from wanderings etc etc in this blog space.

Anything deliberately crazy can go through onto the Fighting Horses link...

See, writing about something does help think through it hahaha

The Land of the Americas

First real view of Kansas - Shot in the Airport after i flew in.


Hello from Kansas City! this is the first post in a while and also the first from the mighty US of A. I have been here for 3 days now and yesterday moved into what they call "the Living Centre" which is basically a hall as we would know it.
Its pretty cool, i share a dorm style room with one other guy and I'm on a floor that has mostly second year or higher students so that's pretty cool. I've met so many people who are all like "oh wow your from New Zealand!? thats amazing" which is kinda funny.

It was weird because living on campus and going to school in the same place (even if today and yesterday has been orientation kinda stuff with freshmen and other transfer kids) you kinda forget abut the world out there. It was a strange moment yesterday at like 6pm when, as i was standing on the grass in the insanely green and lush central quad of the school, i looked up and saw two very low flying fighter aircraft in perfect formation buzzing over the school. It was like "...oh yea America...guns and oil and war and stuff..."
Weird...


An American Yellow School bus!

Preparations...

Wow lack of posting....

Ive been slack in a way and ignoring this for posting stuff! I have been working over the last week for the University of Otago doing a whole raft of photographs for their upcoming add campaign...my photos are going on billboards yo! I'm going to post the images up here tomorrow. Stay Tuned.

Also...Thanks for that artist Amanda! Her images look amazing in this series below...

Rosmary Laing:





These works seem to be a series but i cant find the name...or her website. Going to look hardout soon.

This is her "Weather Series" that Amanda Recomended to me:





These are pretty dam cool. I like the total lack of horizon and the freaky nature of the space that these people are in...falling but what way? The paper(?) adds another crazy level to it. I makes the viewer wonder even more about what is going on here! I like the dark one as well...although there is something that seems creepy and inherently dark about these images.

Creepy Phone Boxes...

This is a test image shot i shot on a whim one night when the rain was falling. Plan to go back and conduct a proper shoot using these phone boxes and some creepy actors...

One Day in Auckland City...

The Falling Continues

New [Kind of]

Feet Post

Early Drawing Experiment....with feet

Waaaay overdue...

Here some install shots of my final piece from last semester! Took way to long to post them up here but thats what happens when you move house etc etc

Check this guy out! (hes way to sneaky to let you pinch his photos so its an old fashioned link yo!)

And this dude an't to bad ether...flickR hunting...

Space Change

Due to the Walls not being the right um...size i have had to change the plane that is detailed in the below post. So i have modified the plan and turned it into a kind of dual wall/image cubicle. It will have a restricted entry corridor so it is hard to be outside and viewing the work. This means that you have to come all the way into the space to see the images and thus you end up obscuring the light...


Cubby-hole set up


My Obsession with Powerlines:
This project has morphed out of lots of other projects i have been working on so far this year. The overall idea i have been researching is the idea of truth and reality within the photographic image. The drawings i started doing using the projection began as a way to mess with this assurance of the photo as reality. They were also a rejection from doing all of my work, all of my image manipulation in photoshop. I found i could photoshop on the walls, mixing multiple images together and overlaying them...but in real life, so to speak.

Through this process i again started to play with causing discomfort in the viewer, and my final set up is a reflection of this frustration and discomfort i am trying to create. This is also why i have chosen to flip one of the images. As with the video works of Shaun Gladwell this has quite a different effect. The dislocation with the "real image" next to it and the interaction of the lines between the two causes further visual disruption has and toys with the notion of reality and disruption in the image.

The drawing process got me interested in large man-made structures, mechanical things that were complex to look at yet easy(ish) to draw using the projections. Powerlines, to me, are one of the most visually ignored objects in the suburban landscape. They are also literally a power structure, they transmit and carry power for our homes and offices. I really enjoy the visual aesthetic of these massive pylons, especially when rendered as hand drawings. Distorting such an image of power is interesting for me.

Video/Projector/Light/Drawings Presenting

So... i have spent the last two weeks sanding and painting (and sanding again) a couple of walls in the new studio space. This was in an attempt to make some of the walls into a nice smooth surface to do my drawings onto. After i did a trail run on one of the already painted walls it destroyed 5 pens because the surface was so rough so i thought it would be a good idea to prepare my own surface. It turned out to be VERY time consuming.

I have been really enjoying this process of drawing and using photos to create a combination of drawn and photographic works. I really like the way that the image reveals the photograph when the light is obscured by something, and playing with the accuracy of the drawings hidden under the projections.

WORKING DRAWINGS:
So this is a drawing of what i initially wanted to create for presentation...


This is the second diagram of the set up i wanted initially:

third diagram:

The diagonals are the path of people moving through the projectors beams.

I wanted to create a space where people who moved into the space would obscure the light from the projectors and thus reveal the drawings underneath. This also creates quite an uncomfortable feeling as you always try and get out of the way of the light/feel bad about obscuring it.
When i talked to Rachel about these drawings we discussed the frustration that is created when you cannot see all of the image at once as well as blocking the light. This made me think about having the drawings only partially finished, for example the power lines not all there, not totally drawn in. This would only be revealed once the projected image is obscured or blocked.

So there becomes a double frustration - you cannot see all of the projected image (if there are a few peopl in the space) yet when you block out all of the projection the drawing hidden underneth is not totally finished, and in fact varies in its faithfulness to the lines of the projection...

End of Semester...Projection Working Drawings

One of my last drawings, direct onto the wall. Will keep as an example for the presentation. This was the one that destroyed so many pens and lead to the 2 weeks of sanding and painting.

Some_new(ish) things

I always go out and take some shots of something i like, or something that looks good, or an idea that doesnt take off but sits on the shelf for a while. These shots normally never see the light of day until i go on a hard drive purge...so i thought id put them up here instead!

These three are from a series of blurred and out of focus stuff ive been playing with...









These images are shots iv taken of the tv in mid program....some overlayed in camera some not

Aaron Hobson - Cinemascapes

The pictures below are from a series of "cinemascapes" by Photographer Aaron Hobson. He is not only the photographer but the star of these works. The works are full of complex detail and as Hobson says on his website, they are very hard to do justice to when reproduced on the web ( as opposed to 4o inches long on a gallery wall)

The images are not overtly shocking (bar one or two) but they have an energy that draws in the viewer and provokes them, providing the dark and in some ways sensual undertones of the images. Hobson has an amazing eye for the detail and cinema-like panoramic quality to these works. It is also amazing that these are predominantly 'self-portraits'.

He has extended these ideas out into a new series of work entitled "femme verite". To quote Hobson directly:

"These works continue the artists personal narrative through self-portrait while bringing to the fore his female alter"

"chrissy's tub"

"pegs leg"

"answer the fucking phone"

Also look here SlashSeconds: an awesome videos compiled from tourist vids and promotional stuff..creepy as hell

Some more Non-Polaroided Images...

These images are more what i was looking for...but have unfortunately stalled...

This is an image again from the polaroid machine, of the group shot from the below post.
The Image beneath is made up of only two shots...patterns and stuff...hmm

Things I thought I had put up...but havn't....

Polaroid'd image of the below construction. Note the cropping of the polaroid program





Here are some of the images i was working on a couple of weeks ago with photoshop. They are all constructions from the images that i have been shooting in the studio in the last month and a half.

I am not that stoked on them. I dunno...i dont fell that this sort of thing is where i want to go with this years work at all. I dont know how to take this stuff and steer it back to what i want though...


This is an image again from the polaroid machine, of the group shot from the below post.
The Image beneath is made up of only two shots...patterns and stuff...hmm

Niklas Goldbach

Link to his work Here

Drawing/Realism/

Some more photos of the "photo" drawing that i have been doing. Im not to sure yet where i want to go with them but i am really enjoying the process and the creation of quite epic (in scale) drawings (for me anyway)

Yves Medam

These photographs take the construction of the photographic image one step further and playfully distort perspective and the image. There is a definite construction from multiple images of the same scene. there is a sense of time changing in some of the works, a movement of time. I really like the images because they artfully play with the notion the photographs are constructed and are only representations. On top of all this they are beautiful images!



Recherche personnelle Pont (Paris)


Quartier de La défense (Paris)

Aside from these constructions he also works in a reportage style, taking some amazing images.
There is a beautiful quality to the light that he works with. This comes across in the many layered images of the construction but is even more clear to see in these images from two different seires of his work.

Maroc


Cuba

Truth and Photography///

I am totally and ruthlessley stealing here from Emily's blog but i think that this photographer has relevance for what i am doing at the moment. (her post here - http://emilyhlavac09.blogspot.com/)

Jad Oakes - 'Preserving Time' series.




These images are created fromt he layering of static images (photographs) As Emily is looking at them they make an exellant relationship between the stillness of photography and the idea of the mooving image. The reason i ahve stolen them is that they also make an interesting reference to the idea of the truth in the photographic image. Because these images are several still shots layerd up onto each other, multiple "decisive moments" if you like, does this give them a closer relationship to the truth>?
Sure we dont see like this, but then we dont see in still images ether and we hold the still photograph as a document of the truth...

For essay

The follwing qoute is attributed to Cesar Romero, actor and TV star:

"They say the camera never lies. It lies every day."


Links for Essay in order of awesomness:
1

2

3

4

[Linkzoid]

This article is freaky. It goes back to Surveillance and the current changes and developments taking place in this field.
The article looks at a new computer system which is able to monitor the actions of retail staff on a checkout. The cameras and computer coupled together are able to register and analyse the movements of the staff member, in real time, in order to check if they are "sweathearting". This is a term for where the cashiers may deliberately obscure a bar code or not scan an item in order to give things away to friends.



The scary part is that this system can monitor an entire department store with no need for a human security guard (like the one in the pic) , it has replaced the need for many security staff memebrs to monitor the banks of screens that represent the hundreds of in store cameras. Instead, when this "sweethearting" is detected it simply alerts a single security guard who can then review the relevant piece of recorded footage and take action.

How long would it take to develop this system further? it has the very disturbing ring of Orwell's 1984 to it...cameras watching us, keeping our movements and behaviour patterns in check. Panoptical theory is also apparent, we would be altering our behaviour through fear of being watched. This is much like current surveillance theory but this seems to add a new dimension to it...What if the computer goes wrong? what happens if we come to rely to heavily on this sort of system for domestic and international security ( the arctilce mentions a similar system with audio being developed to go in aircraft) and it gets it wrong? Are we prepared to put lives at risk through use of a system like this....?

Article here...

Creepy Stalker with a 400mm...

The title says it all really...
Stalking, Fear, Paranoia, Suveillance, FEAR, Darkness, Grain, Hidden rooms and doors...

"...photorealism..."

So this is what i have been doing whilst not putting thigs on here...

The title bit came from MaxO walking past me working on some of these and all he said was "ah Photorealism!" and walked off. Madman. BUT it was actually a really relevant comment considering all of the things i have been thinking about in the last few Weeks in regard to this essay and the ideas about truth and authenticity in the photograph...

These are projected images i have taken, they are just projected onto paper and then i have been drawing around them (tracing) and kind of photoshopping them together but in the real world...
More to follow that show this image manipulation better.




I also really liked the fluke i created when i half stood in front of the light...there is this nice interplay between the projected photograph and the line drawings. Its like erasing the image and being left with the lines...or filling it in depends what way you want to go...

What...

I havnt put stuff up here for a while. I have been thinking about lots of things and this essay has been chewing my brain.
I have been watching the people as they move past my flat. We are three storys up and it is a view that is seldom seen of another person (from almost top down) it provides a different and new perspective. Ihave also been trying to capture this in a photo and was surprised to find how surveillance orientated these images became...










Such an odd and different perspective...though not unlike what a store surveillance camera would see...

Trying to Think...

Iv been thinking a lot about this whole truth+photography issue/idea. After my meeting with Bridie last week it seems that i need to think more about the production of meaning in the photographs and the idea of Verisimilitude...

Verisimilitude:
1. The appearance or semblance of the truth; likelihood; probablity:
"The Play lacked Verisimilitude."

2.Something as, an assertion, having merely the appeance of truth.

Does a photograph have a semblance to the truth? do the people in it look like people? I think what Bridie was trying to tell me is that whether the photograph is strictly "true" or not is irrelevant. The model may or may not be "true" - s/he could be photo shopped skinnier or more tanned etc.
It is more about how a given photograph relates this appearance of truth; and if this appearance of truth creates the emotional response that the photograph is designed to create.

So an assumption i kinda skipped here...that all photographs are designed, are set up to create a specific feeling or response. This is so true of advertising and the more i think about it....of press images, war images...design, fashion...hmmmm

I found this quote yesterday:

"Photos are representations, nothing more and nothing less.”- John C. Dvorak (Writer for PCMag and tech geek)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2014593,00.asp

So if all images are a representations where does that leave the images makers? It goes from being a discussion on whether an image is "true" to whether the image has verisimilitude and if the images are carrying out there designed purpose. So truth becomes a VALUE of an image...and varies for each and every image?

Hold on...

...think of that family picture album. There's that photo of you and Uncle Bob in front of some lake somewhere. You 12 and pulling this goofy face that makes you look like and inflatable chicken. The person that took the photo is stoked cos they caught your goofy face. But you were only like that for 1/125th of a second while they took that shot. You don't look like that the whole time (i hope) in the next 10/15/20/whatever years of your life you were only ever making that face for that 1/125th of second. So HOW much truth value does that image have?

Its you in the picture, its clearly Uncle Bob cos you know he looked like that back then...the background is that lakeside spot you went every year as a kid...you know all this cos you were there....but how much a of a semblance of the truth does this image have because you don't look like that when someone sees you on the street...

But this image appears to be true, all the other visual clues (need a better phrase...) in the image make this image to at least appear true.

my brain hurts i'm going to go lie down...

The beginning of something...maybe....

I like this...its kinda beautiful. Something really serene about it...More so than the one out of the camera?
Technically: This is the image below but a JPEG copy run through a piece of free software iv mentioned earlier called "PolaDroid". you have no control over the cropping of the image from its JPEG form and it randomly adds the colour adjustment and vignetting! Much like a real polaroid.

Persesus Project...

These images are from a Shoot i did on the weekend with the help of my lovely assistant (read: girlfriend) haha. Continuation of the Jumper images which i am slowly building up a stock library of. Im not really sure why yet but its helping me think about things and process some ideas.

I also wanted to take some images using a screen in front of the model. This was to help distort the outline of the model and was an idea i could see in my head using the shadow and the figure together to create something somewhat bizarre and creepy. I also wanted to keep the whole vulnerability thing there as well so i used a side light to highlight a bit of skin showing through the cloth...


Also had a play with black and white versions of this....



There is also something very very voyeuristic about these images...viewing something hidden, but not entirely so, by a curtain and the whole naked/skin/vulnerable aspect as well... creates a real peeping tom aspect. Almost feels like surveillance omcing full circle!!

Pain...Jumpers...Things...

I had a rapid 5 min talk to Rachel on Monday. She mad ethe point that i probably know what i am on about with the whole issue of truth in the photo and that i need to stop getting hung up on trying to figure out how to show this pictorially. Rachel made the point that these ideas are so ingrained in me right now that they are going to be present and come across in anyting that i photograph right now...so heres some stuff:



Nikon D3 50mm 1.8mm. Studio lighting.
Captured split seconds after he was hit in the face...capturing the look of pain as he was hit...




Falling? or not...?



Nikon D3, 50mm 1.8 Self timed.
Creepy light/shadow/curtain action///

Milton

These Pictures are image shot by Mishca Rhys at the Correctional facility. I shot Medium format black and white images and he experimented with my Nikon D3, documenting what we were doing and capturing the extremely surreal and haunting atmosphere of the facility at dusk.

Barbara Probst

Just realised i didnt have any of her works up on the blog...

I think Probst's works are amazing becasue they exmine this idea of reality and the staged within photographs. They also help dismantle and change this idea of the 'decisive moment'. What if there are many of them>? what if they are synchonised to be extremely close togather?

Each of these works presents the same scene, in fact the we must assume the same split second from upwards of two very different viewpoints. How does this effect our relationship to the frame and to the images?> Is it more real because we see the same scene/person/people from many viewpoints and we can make a more complete picture from this? or does it help us work through (and overcome) the most basic of photographic editing devices- the cropping of the frame-so we "see more".
I love these images for several reasons. They present a scene and a moment in time and space in a very different way and they also alter how we think about these moments. The undermine the concept that there is only one of these moemtns as we push the shutter. These multiple frames are so much more effective than a single still of the below scenes/. This use of many viewpoints alters this whole concept of the truth in the image... it makes us realise how much the camera can be manipulated...which camera is the "true" one? and how would we know?

_Inside the Fence

These Two images are from when myself and Mishca were granted access to the Milton Correctional Facility (prison) We were allowed inside the grounds in order to photograph the fence and some of the security arrangements of the prison. This was an extension of ideas we have both been working on that relate with control and power structures and systems. It was a very weird experience.
We wernt allowed to photograph the buildings and as little of the surveillance (camera) equipment as possible. What we got were a lot of pictures of the big scary fence that surrounds the whole compound. We were kept well away from prisoners and only came into contact with a few of the guards.
we spent two hours there Images mishca shot can bee seen here: http://electart.blogspot.com/
The controlled and heavily regimented atmosphere of the entire place had quite and impact on us...we were both grew more and more reluctant to ask questions and became quiet as the facility had an impact on us...standing on the wrong side of a 20ft reinforced concrete wall topped with razor and electric wire and an 8 foot high inner electrified fence has quite an impact on you...


Both images scans of Ilford FP4 120 roll film, Shot on a Mamiya 6x6

Link theft - Denis Darzacqs

Need to reference this dude...Stole hm from Jesse's blog:
He takes these amazing floating people shots with professional street dancer people. really interesting to see there reactions to the photos that he takes of them in the video.

Denis Darzacqs
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2008/07/07/denis-darzacqs-floating-people/

MIlton_Round_One

Images form several weeks ago that i have finally scanned in. These were shot in the middle of the night from across a field. At this stage we had no permission and no idea how legal this was...we got quite spooked by a massive sign at the driveway entrance detailing all of the rules and laws against photography etc...

Mamiya 6x6cm (medium format) with a 150mm lens on Ilford Fp4 120

More...

BlackBag...BlackImage...BlackMail...Black(Wo)Men...Black...its a sweet (lack of) colour

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.

The Perseus Project_Poladroid!

Holy, after a sweet tip off i found this program that recreates all of the awesome things about Polaroid cameras and film! Its called Poladroid and it processes your files (even lets you 'shake' the image to speed up development) giving them the crazy hues and vignetting as well as a faux texture that real polaroids had!
See below:


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Also you get the sweet cropping of the image to make it a square format...coprring the edges like the one below __>


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.


And...The cropping of the image is totally random! this kind of goes back to some of the ideas i was looking at last year with removing control of the image making process from (me) the photographer...
\
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Yar! Lost to theroy...

But here is something else awesome that i found:
http://www.lapp-pro.de/
Madness and amazing!


Only the Germans...

All the images are single long exsposures so there is an huge performative aspect to these works....

Rant

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I feel like my work is slipping away from me in some respect. The whole panic-and-hand-in-an-essay-proposal thing after a week off has made me think about stuff a lot. Is this whole truth in the image how do we trust photographs thing is really interesting me but...i dunno theres some sort of nagging doubt...that its not what i am really interested in and maybe should be focusing on something else?

The surveillance project at the start of the year has kind of made me think like this but...maybe its just that i cant quite see how to integrate the two yet. Surveillance is key to the whole idea of truth and trust in the image but it was something that i think i struggled to talk about in my essay proposal due to the panic. I don't want to be stuck researching something thats very different from what i am taking photos of...

Post_Surveillance_project

What do we trust now>? How do we trust an image? How do we know what is fake and real and what is staged and what isnt?
In the article by Kelli McClusky Tracking the Truth which appeared in Photofile magazine in 2006 she discusses the changing relationship between the documentary photograph and the surveillance camera image and the relationship that both of these have to "the truth". She questions whether documentary photography still has a role in recording the truth or whether we have become to suspicious of this type of image.
She then talks about the events that preceded the then-called "Redfern Riots" in Australia in 2004. The images are taken from a surveillance camera at a train station and show a bag snatch in process. The important point here, is that as McClusky notes, we must rely heavily on the captions that were printed in conjunction with these images. Without these captions the photos become de-contextualized and the image ambiguous. The image as it sits below, without a caption (much like the image of James Bulger she mentions earlier in the article) is unable to explain the 'full truth of the situation'.

So who do we trust? the caption writers?

She then compares these to photographer Dean Sewell's images of the same area in Redfern that the rioting happened in. these images are needless of captions and speak themselves. BUT the point McClusky makes again is do these images actually show and unbiased truth>? or do they just attend to the truth>?




She ends by saying that in terms of showing the truth that surveillance systems come out on top - "you cant get more impartial than a machine" but is this how we want to interact with people? is not the eye of a person better to view the world through than the eye of a machine>>>???

Olaf Mertens

These images and the Room 107 series are of a big influence on the style and ideas that i am working on at the moment. I like the use of colour and the contrast between that and the models surroundings as well as the sense of beauty in these images. It is this sense of beauty that i would also like to capture but change it and manipulate it to combine with some of the fear/violence/death/sex that we see in Lyndon Wade's work...

The Perseus Project...continued

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.

These images were created in response to Lyndon Wade's work. I wanted to create images that looked the fear, violence and general dirtiness of Wade's Room 107 series.
I also wanted to experiment with backlighting the the use of silhouettes...

Models: Mishca Rhys Hill and Jess Covell

Lyndon Wade

Images from Room 107 Series.










This guy is amazing. The whole engagement with a space of transit, one that is not purely public or purely private _ The hotel room _ is amazing. These images capture this transient nature really well through the use of exactly the same frame and set but with different actions/events/people within this frame. Its many snatches of a possible reality...does this happen? how would we know if it did or didn't??
These images resonate with sense of society's problems...the shotgun marriage, the dysfunctional wild children..violence, greed, power, sex...The spectacular glorification of these ideas is powerful in Wade's work. The beautiful lighting and saturated colours make us forget for a second what we are looking at...and what effect it has on us.

As the artist says : "This is were people come and leave; leave wet towels on the bathroom floor, leave half-full beer bottles on the nightstand, leave the bed unmade, hair on the toilet seat, stains on the ceiling, glitter in the carpet, holes in the wall, leave their wives, their lives, a mess for the morning maid. An after an hour, a day, a month, they leave all that they have left. And you check in."

Daniel Crooks

Intersection No.4 (vertical volume)’
2008


Daniel Crooks
Static No.9 (a small section of something larger), 2005, still from DV/DVD (detail), 13:23 minutes

Daniel Crook's work deals with ideas of time and movement and there relationship to both photography and digital film making. These works are still shots from video installations where he has used custom mad equipment to capture many actions and events. He has then edited these together using a splicing technique (time splicing) What he creates are extremely multilayerd images that move and change...

Stephane Sednaoui

Rachel found this guy, uses a scanner camera system and combines it with an another image/

Link to an image of his: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jifexqu0ldde

Website: http://www.stephanesednaoui.com/