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