According to the Oxford Learners Dictionary: the noun "Evidence" is "the facts, signs, or objects that make you believe that something is true"
EvidenceThough the definition is very finite, I think the term evidence can be changed and altered to fit different messages being visually presented in art. "Evidence" is a collection of photographs taken from Californian business archives, compiled by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan. The book is a 1977 collection of un-captioned images that weren't taken by the artists who published the book. A photograph without context or a caption is completely different to a photograph with oner. The context with a picture can change the entire perception of a piece of art as it means something certain and linear. When the captions are taken away, pictures become so much more subjective and the interpretations of every image becomes entirely personal to each individual who views the work.
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We were told to randomly pick an image out of a pile of black and white photographs, and then were given a sheet of instructions on how to take pictures of these prints. The first couple were easy to do as the room I worked in had books lying around and I found a pane of glass that I could layer on top the print. A difficult one to do was photograph a photocopy of the image as I tried to photocopy it in an interesting way but didn't get the positioning right and just photocopied a green version of the image onto a monochrome copy - I didn't try again as I thought this looked interesting and was a subtle change to the original picture. When I went outside to take the third and sixth picture, I struggled with trying to hold up the picture against the window so I used my phone to lean against it. This gave me the idea to use my phone for the last picture as my phone screen protector has bubbles and cracks that normally disrupt the image I see on their so if I took a picture of the picture to then take another picture of it, at some point in that process the photograph will become disrupted.
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This task took me about 40 minutes as I kept having to retake pictures due to manual settings on the camera I used as well as wanting to have multiple options for each instruction I followed. I wanted to get the reflections in certain pictures and the framing in the pictures to be thought through.
This work is partially inspired by the work of Jiro Takamatsu, a Japanese conceptual artist who during the early 70s commissioned another photographer to take pictures of his family photographs that he had in his album. The only instructions he gave the photographer was that they must all be obstructed by a reflection over the photograph. This project really pushed the boundaries of physical art as even though someone else composed and shot the image, it was Takamatsu's instructions and idea that formed the collection called Photograph of Photograph.
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I liked this task as it made me think about what a photograph can be when the process of creating the image is spread across different stages and different artists. The image was bought off ebay and randomly chosen by me but while taking the picture I followed the instructions of my teacher, who got the idea from a collection of photographs taken by a photographer under the instruction of the named artist. After all that, are my results even conceptually mine?
Refining the experiment
The next week we wanted to refine some of the pictures we took by using new prints that we were given. I went outside to get a more diverse set of images, placing them in different grates or sliding them into strange places. These were the best four from the refinement, the first two were fairly simple I just wanted to decrease with the distance between the camera and the picture - but the last two were chosen carefully from a collection of very industrial looking frames with the sheets of paper half hidden or covered in various versions of each photo I took.
Narrative in sequenced photographs
We each in the class printed out four of out favourite instructed photos that we took. The next lesson we were split into three groups each with a pile of photos. One pile had the photos we had printed, another were photocopied pages from the 'Evidence' book, and the last were numerous industrial looking prints that were already in the classroom. I was put in the first group and we were told to order the pictures, using a link between each one.
We had to compose them as if they were in a photography collection much like the one we have been basing out experiments off. To order them in this way, we paired them up based on colour, or tone, or composition, or subject, it could have been anything - but the link has to be between the individual pairs, not the whole collection. After we had paired them up, the odd numbered pages layered above the even numbers that followed them. After we did this, I had the idea to move each picture on the top row two places to the right - to further remove the context from both the individual pictures and the collection as a whole, removing any reason.
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For this work, I had to produce 10 images that tell a story. Fitting in with the theme of evidence and linking back to Takamatsu's work, I wanted to document something I did with my friends after school by going out and having the camera float around for the evening allowing anyone to take pictures of what was in front of them. I then chose what I thought were the best 10 and ordered then chronologically of when they were taken; the first being when we arrived at the driving range we visited, the 7th being when we left and the last taken on the bus leaving.
The Grey Area
Why are we less trustful of photographs at this point in history? Because with the rise of photo editing software like photoshop, illustrator or lightroom - it has become easier and more accessible to a larger group to alter and adapt pictures in any way someone could see fit. This is challenging for documentary photographers as the general belief that pictures are used as indisputable evidence has lessened over the generations. The 'grey area' between fact and fiction an interesting space for photographer to explore as it bends the conventions that photographs have perviously abided by, traditionally they were used as a scientific tool for documentation but moving around the standard use of a camera to create a more abstract and subjective view of the world seen through the lens of an individuals camera. The phrase 'documentary uncertainly' means the lack of trust in a piece of evidence due to context surrounding the production of the art or evidence.
I went out to take 12 pictures around the school which I think effectively communicate the phrase 'grey area'. While I took my pictures I actively looked for bridges connecting two places; a physical grey area between two rooms or two floors of a building of properties of land. The grey area in this series is a border between two planes, some more abstract, like the space in between two tables or the mixed focused layers of leaves on a tree, and some were simple like a large gap between two buildings or a spinning door that leads to another room. While I was editing the photos, I thought that I would create a new sense of the grey area in the most straightforward way possible: making the pictures black and white to visual create a grey area in the tones.
Exploring the Grey Area
Over the weekend, I went out and took pictures while on public transport to explore the (grey) area in between the two locations on my journey. Some of these I took through windows to get the reflection or create borders around the subjects of my image. I did this to show another layer in the way of my camera and my subject, presenting another subconscious type of grey area in my pictures. With my favourite three pictures, I made them mono-tonal as I like this visual motif across this topic because I think it best represents the tonal difference in a normal picture and my work based on the concept of the "grey area".
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Jack Latham
Jack Latham is a British modern photographer who focuses a lot of his work on exploring conspiracy theories and collecting evidence to support them. In the start of his career. His first collection was very documentary styled, providing evidence of communities and people in America. Lathams two following books, "Sugar Paper Theories" and "Parliament of Owls" were based on the Guðmundur and Geirfinnur case, and Bohemian Grove respectively. Some of his latest work has been more abstract in meaning and differs to the documentary styled projects he has worked on before.
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Sugar Paper Theories
On the left is a narrative I had made using pictures from Jack Latham's "Sugar Paper Theories", experimenting with how the order of pictures in a sequence can effect their meaning of the previous and establish context of the next. Sugar Paper Theories is a collection of pictures and newsprints that focuses around a conspiracy theory about an wrongful incarceration of six Icelandic men who were later proved to be innocent for the murder of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur Einarsson in 1974.
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To the left is an interview with Jack Latham where he explains the purpose behind this collection and what it means as a piece of evidence even when being produced a mere possibility in the form of a theory. He comments on the need for multiple perspectives by talking about his uses of his own evidence and photography as well as taking older pictures from police files dated back to the initial incarceration in the 1970s - forming in his work, a fusion of older evidence being displayed in a new light, and new documentary photography of how a community develops and evolves from an incident like this.
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Parliament of Owls
Another similar, conspiracy based collection is his book called Parliament of Owls. This book explores a much more infamous theory, known for it's apparent link to how the American government and modern world is ruled and dictated. Latham travels to and around the area of Bohemian Grove, where the rich and powerful have gathered routinely for years to participate in rituals and allegedly decide how the world is to be run. Though these photographs don't hold much power in terms of what they depict - after all there are just benches and trees and names-less people - the act of exploring and exposing this place creates such an eerie and rebellious atmosphere to the images. The pictures don't show much but they create a presence of evidence that activley defies the group who aren't shown in the work.
Below is an annotated copy of a picture from Latham's collection "Parliament of Owls", where I write my first impressions of what the picture could be and why it's composed the way it is. In the notes I made, I have commented on the composition and how all the lines and tones naturally lead to the very centre of the image, which is the woman's face.
Wanting to experiment with the effect context has on a collection of images, we went out to take pictures around the school. I was careful not to just take standard pictures of the buildings and site, as that had been done probably 100 times before - the pictures we took had to have meaning. I circled all the places about the school that I remember spending a lot of time around in the lower school years. Revisiting these places made taking these pictures easier, as I just had to look around and remember what might have caught my attention a year ago while I sat around with my friends.
Normally, when I upload work that i have done, I'll cut out the ones that I don't like. There are reasons, some could be the lighting wasn't the best in an image or a picture is too similar to the one before it and not as good. Either way for this task I had to upload all the pictures I took into one collection and then create another using these pictures, experimenting with the context and the order. I had to actively decide which pictures I liked enough to stay and which ones I had to leave out - which proved to be harder when a section of the initial collection would become repetitive or similar. I didn't like all of my original pictures, the majority of these I think are the best of a bad bunch.
Nico Froehlich
Froehlick is probably one of my favourite photographers outside of the ones we look at during this course. As he is very local, his work often depicts the places and buildings I regularly see week to week. I often find myself out in public, looking at his story on social media like instagram and seeing the very place I'd be standing around on his story the day before - or I few times before I have been walking around and come to recognise shops or streets around me from pictures that I've seen from him before. When I think of photography depicting London, I automatically imagine these massive landmarks in Westminster or big arenas in the West of the city. I don't usually ever think of pictures of South East London and if I were to, I'd picture areas in Greenwich Park or the Cutty Sark - I think that seeing these pictures of somewhere I'd walk around with friends over the weekend is refreshing and innovative. There's not only this personal connection to the areas he photographs but his actual technique and aesthetic that appeal to me. A lot of his portraits tend to be simple and candid in their tone but seem obviously staged like the subjects have been instructed to "act natural". I also like the grain on some of his pictures, it's subtle but film has always interested me though I've never used it, I think if I were to respond to Froehlick's work in anyway, it would be a good opportunity to use a more traditional form of photography.
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Clocks for Seeing
For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing.
-Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
For this next part of this project, I'm going to be working towards creating a small magazine using the best of a large selection of photos I'll be creating. When I think about what I like to take in photography, I'm always drawn to portraits so I listed that and any other genres that my pictures could fall into: documentary because I want to document a theme or story behind my portraits; and fashion as often when I take pictures of my friends without spending a lot of time planning ahead, the main focus falls onto the clothes or colours they wear compared to their environment. I think for subjects I'm photographing, I'll start with general friends around me and then later on into my shoots I will specific and focus mainly on one or two people in very specific locations.
First photoshoot
Environmental portraits
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This photographer, Niall McDiarmid, focuses his work on both meeting strangers then photographing them on the street and also has used a technique of pairing photographs together in diptychs or triptych. When McDiarmid photographs people on the street, he uses the colours of their environment as well as their clothes to create visual themes within the aesthetics of the pictures. He also physically adapts to frame his subjects moving his body and stature to match their eye level when he photographs them as to not tower above them and form an even ground between the artist and subject, McDiarmid is obviously not interested in telling a story or documenting a particular movement like other portrait photographers are, his focus lies in a simpler and more visually expressive piece of art that displays artificial colours in the natural world.
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After my first collection of portraits, I went around with a camera and took more portraits, matching the background and surrounding colours from the environment with the clothes my subject wore. In some pictures I'd be using similar colours to the ones she wore and in other pictures I'd be trying to oppose them. Some of these pictures I found to be under exposed and some I thought were too bright but that mainly was a product of the light around the subject as the cameras manual settings were mainly the same across each image.
While evaluating these pictures in contrast to how McDiarmid's work looks, I started to see a pattern in my work being that there is too much space above Iris' head in almost every picture. In some images I wanted this to be the way I shot them (like the first one where the blue and black background was in the frame), but in most picture's I had seen that the subjects eye line fell completely central in the frame when I should have composed it more in tune with the rule of thirds. I took my favourite image into photoshop and cropped the picture to bring her eyes a bit higher in the composition, I think doing this also made the picture less busy and helps to lead a viewers attention to the main subject and the connecting colours.
We also had the opportunity to shoot two pictures each using an older Fuji GS645S, a film camera. As this was my first time shooting with film it took me a bit of time to get my head around the manual settings of a camera from before the digital era. The settings I tuned the camera were an aperture of around F8 which varied down to 4 and up to 11 depending on any severe light changes (we had to use a light reader application on an iPhone to determine this). Also a shutter speed of 400/1 and ISO 400. Once I did this, I also had to follow the same sort of instructions as I did shooting digitally, matching or shooting colours. I found this interesting as I wanted to see how obvious the colours came out as similar as we were shooting on black and white medium format film, so I wanted to see how obvious I can make colours relate to each other presented as tones in greyscale.
These are the two picture I took on film. I think they both work well but, like my others, there is too much space above my subjects head - also I think that I struggled with focusing both picture because I have never used that type of specific viewfinder on a camera before. I think the first is too dark and I prefer the second one but I feel it was underexposed, so I would definitely prefer to work more with film and familiarise myself with this medium of photography.
Experiments with film
More pictures developed from the Fuji GS645S, which we had each briefly used the week before.
Pictures taken on a Nikon FM2, these are standard 35 millimetre film, while the pictures we had taken on film previously were medium format.
There are pictures that I had taken myself using both cameras.
This picture is my favourite as I've taken as I had struggled with building a 3D space in the photo while using the focal right, I feel as though this picture has a very prominent foreground (that being the subject) as well as a very noticeable background which is out of focus. I'm aware that these features of a photograph are relativley straightforward, but
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Hiroshi Sugimoto
Sugimotos work initially gives an ethereal and transcendental feeling. He creates his images by exposing his picture to light over a larger amount of time than is unconventional for photography as a medium of art. A photograph can be and is often taken quicker than an eye can blink - Sugitmoto focuses on opposing this traditional method opening the lens of a camera for such a long period of time a that the image captures details and compositions that would never be seen simultaneously. This ideology of twisting the process of photography is seen in his various collections. I one project he travelled to various abandoned theatres, projecting a film and taking a picture opening his lens for the same amount of time that the film lasts. This would produce an otherworldly looking luminescence that spreads from the screen at the centre of the frame to highlight the finer details of the the theatre's interior.
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Sugimoto's work revolve around or have a deep connection to time. Whether it's intentional like in his collection of historical portraits of people like Napoleon - who he obviously did not actually photograph - or his collection of blurred landmark images such as his eerie picture of the World Trade Centre which now with hindsight and the passage of time creates a new atmosphere while viewing it.
Daido Moriyama
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "snapshot" was first used in 1808 by an English sportsman by the name of Sir Andrew Hawker. He noted in his diary that almost every bird he shot that day was taken by snapshot, "meaning a hurried shot taken without deliberate aim". Time has passed since then and with that the definition has also shifted, "an informal photograph that is taken quickly, and not by a professional photographer". As photographic equipment has become more accessible, the general consensus is that a snapshot is one of the standard uses of photography in the modern world, used by career photographers and the wider public using their phones. Moriyama's work reminds me of the term snapshot as his pictures display another approach to capturing time in the process of photography art - one that directly opposes an artist like Sugimoto's own style.
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Moriyama's pictures look as if they're taken instantly with a quick shutter speed and without much thought payed to them. Instead of symmetrically composed pieces they are instant snapshots of the nightlife in several Japanese cities. Moriyama's pictures capture an erotic and intimate side of his life and what he sees, whether they include a dirty or grimy atmosphere, a pseudo self portrait through a picture of a stray dog, or even a surreal looking room with lips covering the walls. Moriyama's work, though it will look immediately erratic or unbalanced
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Response to Sugimoto
While visiting the Hayward Gallery to see Hiroshi Sugimoto's exhibition. While there I wanted to take as many pictures as I could in the same style as Sugimoto does, meaning I then set my camera to black and white and started to take pictures, focusing on straight and central lines that clearly lead the viewers attention to specific points. I wanted to create a sense of symmetry in my pictures that are very present in the work of Sugimoto, but visually my pictures seemed quite different as the pictures that had inspired me more often that not were blurred or obscured by a lack of sharp details in the image. As I was taking most of these pictures going through the gallery, I just thought that I would edit the pictures afterwards, using a quick filter like gaussian blur to cheaply mimic the visual style of Sugimoto's pictures. There's four examples below of pictures that I had done this to demonstrate how this would look in the whole series.
After a while, I started reading into Sugimoto's methods and practice more. Doing this, I started to want to explore the actual practice of his work instead of merely copying what I can interpret the end result. My new approach to my response was to play with the slowest shutter speed that I could while taking images of the images displayed around Sugimoto's exhibition. I wanted to move the camera around, distorting the angle or zooming in while the picture takes over the course of one second - mimicking how Sugimoto uses his photographic practice to prolong moments of time, even when he wasn't there to photograph them. I made angles and corners very prominent as they
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