Reading: Chapter 7
Prelim critique: 11/9
Work Due: 11/18 (revised)
Prints or Print files due: 11/18* (revised)
Final Critique: Monday 11/30 (retro critique of work turned in)
* If you will be printing individual letter size, tabloid or Super B size prints, please do your own printing. If you will need oversized, large-format prints (say of grids or panorama), please speak to instructor well in advance about setting up your files correctly and arranging for large-formal printing.
Prints or Print files due: 11/18* (revised)
Final Critique: Monday 11/30 (retro critique of work turned in)
* If you will be printing individual letter size, tabloid or Super B size prints, please do your own printing. If you will need oversized, large-format prints (say of grids or panorama), please speak to instructor well in advance about setting up your files correctly and arranging for large-formal printing.
Background
Cartier Bresson...example of "The Decisive Moment"
As photographers, the frame is perhaps our most important tool. With the camera, we "frame" our subjects, including what we feel is important for the picture, and excluding what isn't. Essentially, we are editing from the visual world with our frame. A common goal in photography is to try and get it all in one frame—to create a singular image that conveys our full expression, sharp, clear, with a single point of view.
Further, we capture single points in time, often orphaned from the longer story. They float, untethered without revealing what came before or after, or for that matter, what else was going on at that time.
There's value in all this—but it can also be limiting!
How can we extend the story of a photograph? What happened before our decisive moment? What happened after? What did the other person see? What about the fly on the wall? Sometimes we need multiple images, multiple frames to convey the breadth and richness of our visual story.
How can we extend the story of a photograph? What happened before our decisive moment? What happened after? What did the other person see? What about the fly on the wall? Sometimes we need multiple images, multiple frames to convey the breadth and richness of our visual story.
For this phase of the course, we will explore the following modes.
Narrative Sequence
Typology/Series/Multiples
Joiner/Cluster/Panorama
Digital Collage
1. Narrative Sequence
The first assignment is to explore the use of narrative sequence, or visual narrative, to tell some kind of story through time. Think about change and movement...what changes? What moves? What stays the same? How does this change tell a story?
Duane Michals used extended sequences of images to convey complex and (often amusing) narratives. Some of these visual story lines went in a straight lines, sometimes they made bizarre circles and spirals.
Grandpa Goes to Heaven, Duane Michals
Chance Meeting, Duane Michals
Countless photographers have borrowed his approach to make narratives of their own.
E.Sariozkan
elodie fougère
The Personal Telling of Story
Jennifer Shaw
New Orleans photographer Jennifer Shaw illustrates the trials her family faced during and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The images are told through the use of toys and figurines.
http://jennifershaw.net/hurricane-story/
Metaphoric narrative
The photographer Masaru Goto created a compelling narrative documenting the difficult subject of his mother's sickness, decline and eventual death. He draws a comparison between the life-cycle of cherry trees passing through the four seasons from the blossom stage through the shedding of leaves as extended metaphor for the phases of a human life, from full glory to eventual decline. The result is sad, but poetic and contemplative.
Ideas to get started:
- Create a character and story...depict this visually, telling the story through a sequence of images. Shoot in a way that links the images together in a coherent way.
- Choose or stage a sequence of actions and consequences that are related...show us the before, during and after in a compelling way. Even better, throw in a twist or surprise.
- Illustrate a recent (or current) news event using a fictional or illustrative approach. Instead of photographing the actual events, recreate the event in a compelling or believable way through a sequence of images
- Take a photo every hour for a day...document what you are doing or seeing. Or what someone else is seeing or doing. What stays the same in every photo? What changes?
- Same place different time...photograph the same place, the same way, but at a different time...vary by minute, hour, day, week...decide one method and keep it constant
- Same person different time...photograph the same person, the same way, but at a different time...vary by minute, hour, day, week...decide one method and keep it constant.
Thematic Conceptual Series
Bill Finger creates cinematic stories from photographs of constructed, miniature dioramas. Walkng the line between reality and fiction, these stories convey ideas about the process of memory, our trust in photography, and collective social fictions.
Andrew Moore captures how time and economic forces, seemingly beyond our control, can change a city. He depicts decaying structures related to the auto industry in Detroit, to tell a sad story of a city that was once a vibrant and thriving place. Each photograph carries an echo of the past, and is operates very tightly around the central idea. While each image is strong, the work should be considered the whole series, rather than the individual photos.
Andrew Moore captures how time and economic forces, seemingly beyond our control, can change a city. He depicts decaying structures related to the auto industry in Detroit, to tell a sad story of a city that was once a vibrant and thriving place. Each photograph carries an echo of the past, and is operates very tightly around the central idea. While each image is strong, the work should be considered the whole series, rather than the individual photos.
Denis Darzacq creates images of individuals in ordinary settings that appear to defy gravity. The project gains strength through repetition and variation within this theme.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HonzF8LbLE
Multiples (diptych, triptych, etc.)
The synonym/antonym exercise is a good example of this kind of work.
On more of a documentary, story-telling mode, Lucia Ganieva, creates rich biographical portraits of people relating their persona to their vocation, past, workplace, etc. using diptychs and triptychs. Notice how the frames work together to build meaning.
On more of a documentary, story-telling mode, Lucia Ganieva, creates rich biographical portraits of people relating their persona to their vocation, past, workplace, etc. using diptychs and triptychs. Notice how the frames work together to build meaning.
Uta Barth is a photographer of place. Instead of creating visual descriptions of places, like a traditional landscape photographer would do, she is more interested in evoking or suggesting how we experience places. Often working with multiple frames, she changes the scale, plane of focus (in some she focuses on the "space between" foreground and background), in an attempt to more closely mimic the process of human perception, as well as the passage of time.
Jeffrey Milstein creates a typology of aircraft.
Bernd and Hilla Becher are particularly associated with this mode of art
Artists like these are concerned with cataloging and "collecting" with their camera. For instance, Brouws isn't interested in singular train cars, but the almost endless variations between numerous cars. Working with a mode called typology, he creates grids that simultaneously show similarity and contrast.
Idis Khan quite literally quotes Bernd and Hilla Becher's work with industrial architecture, but layers the multiple variations of structures within a single frame instead of a grid.
There is a long history in photography of objectification based on race, gender, stereotypes and notions of the "other". African Americans have been notably objectified in this way. Photographer Myra Greene turns the tables on this history with her clever and effective series: "My White Friends".
Grids
Keith Johnson now works almost exclusively with grids, exploring the hidden language of forms found in the natural and human landscape.
Joiners, many-make-one, panoramas
Susan Bowen implies what we might see over the course of a long walk...the visual wanderings of our curious eye. She uses plastic cameras, only partially advancing the film between exposures to create one long, continuous flow of visual stimulation.
Robert Richfield has an interesting take on the panorama. Instead of stitching together a seamless expanse, he presents it with the frame divisions. How does this affect the meaning of his work and how we "read" it?
For examples of Contact Sheet Sequences, look at Thomas Kellner.
Essentially these are a form of what the book author terms joiners, or many-make-one, extended images that functions like fragmented panoramas both vertically and horizontally. David Hockney is well known for working this way. The following images, by Hockney, show some variations of this approach. How do they differ?
Atta Kim compresses different moments of time within a singular frame, using extended exposures. Something similar can be accomplished with multiple exposures and layers.
Margaret Hiden is explores how family histories can be told through narratives that blend the past and present to form richer tapestry of telling. Here, images function much like memory... where our present is continually colored by the echos of the past.
Michael Taylor explores how light and time relate, creatine some very interesting abstracted imagery.
Directorial Mode
Kelly c. Tate and Kelli Connell are both artists that explore the dynamics of human relationships and interpersonal communication. In Tate's work, the artist plays the roles of the subjects depicted, while Connell uses a friend. The final images are staged digital composites that suggest narrative while engaging social questions. When images are staged for the camera, this is referred to as directorial mode... the photographer directs the scene like a director would do on a movie set. This of course all began with Cindy Sherman...
Project Description
For this project, create imagery in an extended format that engages a strong concept.
For this project, create imagery in an extended format that engages a strong concept.
Possible formats may include digital books, sequences, series, grids, diptychs, triptychs, etc. Choose one format for the whole project to best explore your subject and what else you are trying to convey about the subject. Use examples presented above as well as ideas from the book, or even use the class exercise exploring congruency/incongruency to help you get started. This is a fun one—the more adventurous you can be with your subject matter, the more exciting it will be.
Turn in:
Now remember that when you are assembling your multiples (grids, diptychs or otherwise), save out flattened versions of your work files just to keep things manageable. But make sure you are not losing your layers; after flattening, always "Save As," rather than "Save"
- For series and sequence, a digital book can be a nice format. Digital books from blurb or Apple would represent your final prints
- For grids and multiple images, generate large file that includes all the supporting images. If you are doing a grid, this would mean one file depicting the grid. For diptychs, this would mean building one file that contains two images, like the class exercise.
- Jpeg versions: jpeg, quality 10+, sRGB, no longer than 1500 pixels in one direction (use image processor to set this up)
- How much to do? If you are doing diptychs or triptychs, turn in at least 3 separate ones. If you are doing a large grid, one would be fine. It depends on your project—discuss with instructor. If you are doing a series, aim for 8-12 images.
- All of your individual photos that go into this project should be edited appropriately in photoshop. This includes the skills covered so far in class: WP/BP, global tone adjustments (brightness and contrast using curves and/or camera raw), color adjustments, local adjustments (dodge and burn, blending mode curves with masks), sharpening. All Raw conversions must be smart objects.
Some Student Work:
Prelim critique: Wednesday 3/4
