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While looking at his work, Sultan was left feeling uncomfortable and brought up negative emotions. He struggled with how his father was presented in relation to his work due to a difficult past between the two. Sultan has to face issues that surfaced while displaying his family in his photographs - he had to deal with these problems by watching home videos extracting elements of his past into his photographs. During his time working on this project, Sultan found he was able to build a further connection with his parents - specifically his father - as using them for subjects in his work founded new common ground between the two, allowing them to collectively comment on their past relationship. There are two threshold concepts in photography that I think can apply to the work Sultan created in this project: number 8, which brings up ideas of storytelling in photography having being subjective and personal, and also number 10, which comments on the photographs being a way to not only document the present but also revisit and alter views of the past.
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This picture, "Talking by Car / 1986", is my favourite in Sultan's Pictures From Home collection. The picture holds the purpose of revisiting Sultan's past and confronting any negative feelings he might've harboured towards it. In the picture you can see Sultan's parents having a conversation with each other, clearly very off guard and relaxed, but behind them we see a crew gathered around an neighbouring house with what looks like lighting equipment, presumably for a shooting a film. Although picture looks very naturally candid, as if Sultan and his camera aren't even there, this picture is very intentional and used to show the person nature of taking a moment in time and displaying the people in it so close to the artist for everyone to see. As much as this project is a public expression it is also a personal document - Sultan himself has written that Pictures from home is "the wish to take photography literally. To stop time. I want my parents to live forever."
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Still life
Inspired by how Larry Sultan frames his subjects in tune with his lighting decisions, we each picked an object out of a collection of plant pots and glass spray bottles, then went out to photograph them. I wanted to experiment with different aspects of Sultan's work, in some pictures I prioritised shadows and highlights and in overs I wanted to use interesting framing and and environment around the subject.
Pictures from home
For homework we had to take images of the small spaces at home that are personal in meaning that we notice. I walled around my house and took pictures of the things I look at when I'm in certain rooms (E.g., the corner of a cupboard in the kitchen, the clock in the living room and the markings in the paint by the front door handle). I also wanted to use symmetry so I'd use the rule of thirds and try to match the structures I was photographing to the frame that I saw on the phone I was using to take pictures. Some of my pictures display the random places in my house where I would see my coat hung up or my dogs sitting; places that I expect to see when I think of what home looks like to me.
As the next step was to take pictures around the school that reminded us of home. This was a challenge at first as I don't often see links between my life in school and at home so I started simply and went to the music department to take pictures of the drum kit as I have my own set at home. I also took pictures of a sign that said 'Tallis Media Productions' because most of my time is spent in that department whether its for my courses or any extra curricular work I do.
Delfina Carmona
Carmona is a Argentinian photographer who's work experiments with colours and light in in her own self-portraiture. In some images, she uses the natural light and shadows formed from windows to cast shapes over her own body or household objects like flowers pots. She also utilises a very unique use of colour, commonly using bright blues and reds that vibrantly compliment each other in the warm softer tones of the natural sunlight.
This is my favourite of Carmona's work. I think every aspect of portrait photography that Carmona tries to embellish in her work - such as the lighting and use of colours - are displayed well and compliment with each other. The light that initially draws the eyes attention into the picture lies on her shoulder in a thin line that then either directs the eye up to her head and the background behind her, or down to the colours of the fabrics in of her clothes and the bedsheets she sits on. The first aspect of this, the shadow and highlights cover the white background, forming an identifiable silhouette. Carmona is turned away from the camera in a dramatic position facing the her own shadow, creating the illusion of two people that share the centre of the frame. The shadow's natural shape with the natural light provided by an uncontrollable source. Looking at this staged picture in this way, focusing on the shapes formed by the lights, starts to push the conventions of elements are candid and what are staged. In the bottom third of the image, drowned out by the shadows but still saturated the colours compliment each other as well as the orange highlights that cover sections of her arm. It's not clear what the purpose of a photo like this is but it is clear it is a very personal image; Carmona is loosely clothed and quite literally staring back at herself in her own shadow. As she sits on her bed here we can assume looking at this picture that if it were taken to represent any moment in time, it would be the the morning as the sun rises and Carmona wakes, a very personal time when one is typically alone and by themselves, in the image we see visually that she is. She says that she uses "self-portrait as a way of telling and saying things that happen to me or things that occur to me".
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Windows and reflections
For this task we had to take pictures through the windows in our homes. The subjects we had to take could be anything in a standard photograph worth taking (e.g, an interesting building or a nice skyline view) but they had to be framed and taken through a window. There was also the option to create portraits by photographing people's reflections in these images, but as there was no one around to photograph, I started taking pictures of the windows in my home from the inside looking out. After a short time doing this, I realised that all of these pictures showed windows that looked onto the same view only from different heights and there is no point in taking such similar pictures - so I left my house when it started to get dark and walked around where I live knowing that I could take pictures of other interesting windows or various lights seen through the windows. I knew a few locations that I remember seeing colourful lights or interesting reflections on windows before so I knew where I was going and what to take. On my way around, I not only walked down roads that I knew but I also took shortcuts or went longer routes to see if I could find anything I could take a picture of without planning ahead, doing this I did find a few windows with coloured LED lights that fit in well with the ones I knew I was going to photograph, as well as the reflection of Christmas decorations on a seemingly uninteresting window.
Olivia Arthur
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In Arthur's work, the frame often includes reflections, lights and shadow. She uses shadows to create shapes in the picture that aren't physically there, creating an image within her actual picture with only the highlights and shadows she utilises. Her images also seem simple in the fact that the subjects aren't very complex, some of her work are nothing more than portraiture or architectural photography, made visually unique or abstract by the using the shape of the lights. When I responded to these images, I wanted to use the shapes in my own home to create boxes
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I took these pictures inspired by Olivia Arthur's work all on the first floor of my house. I wanted to see how many shapes with the shadows I could create using different angles to make the dark or light areas change in size. At some point during my work, started to create portraits of my own shadow using the light behind me. This is something I might want to look into developing more as I think there is a lot I'd be able to do with shadows on different textures and surfaces.
Out of my whole series, these 10 were my favourite images, I think they are varied in the sense that the shadows aren't all similar in their size or composition. some are hard and straight projections and other are softer and blurrier. I think as a whole collection, I think the pictures all look quite similar as they're all quite dark and some of the shadows aren't as distinguishable - so when I tried to narrow it down to these, I focused on the different tones and lighting to create a varied collection.
Like mentioned before, the portraiture in the shadows are interesting to me as it can create a picture within a picture, in this case the doorframe's silhouette acts as it's own boarder to my shadows portrait. When taking this picture, I had to turn the exposure down a lot compared to the others as the shadows wouldn't have been as prominent in the frame as it is now. Because of this, the empty space in the photo around the shadows appear darker and fade into the lower exposed atmosphere.
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Exhibition from Home
To curate my Postcards from Home exhibition, I have decided to trim down what I have liked taking from these previous projects into its own collection. When I print my work I want to use a mix of still life and portrait work that I have taken, but mostly focus on the portrait as that is the genre of photography I enjoy exploring the most.
During the editing process I made this plan on photoshop using the images I had chosen to guide me later on what size I wanted each picture to be and how I would position them on the wall.
After unveiling my exhibition I took feedback from the class. I plan on visiting my exhibition and remounting it onto a wall with new printed pictures. I also was told to re-photography the wall showing other part