Bibliography

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Books:

  • Alexandrian, Sarane, ‘Surrealist Art’ Thames and Hudson 1992, pp.136-138 Accessed 11.02.15
  • Antin, Eleanor, ‘Historical Takes’ San Diego Museum of Art, Prestel, 2008 Accessed 26th February 2015
  • Billings, Rachel and Jill Dunkerton, The National gallery, ‘Beyond the Naked eye’ Yale press 2005
  •  2014, Shore, Robert, “Post Photography- The Artist With a Camera” Laurence King Publishers, London, 2014
  • Cooper Phillip, ‘Cubism’ Phaidon Press Limited 1995, pp. 5,48,50,102, Accessed 11.02.15
  • Cotton, Charlotte
  • HIRSCH, R. 2012. Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age. 2nd Edition. Elsevier – Focal Press, pp.1 – 31 (Chapter One) 27.01.15
  • Musco Angelo Shore, Robert, ‘Post Photography: The Artist With a Camera’, Laurence King, 2014,  pp128-131, Accessed 27th February 2015
  • Shore, Robert, “Post Photography- The Artist With a Camera” Laurence King Publishers, London, 2014
  • Shore Robert, ‘Post Photography: The Artist with a Camera’ Laurence King, 2014 pp.74-77, accessed 09.02.15
  • Shore Robert, ‘Post Photography: The Artist with a Camera’ Laurence King, 2014 pp.86-89, accessed 09.02.15
  • Shore Robert, ‘Post Photography: The Artist with a Camera’ Laurence King, 2014 pp.94-97, accessed 09.02.15
  • Shore, Robert, ‘All the world is Staged’ Post Photography: The artist with a camera, pp105 23rd February 2015

Journals

  • Aperture 195 Summer 2009, pp36, Talyo Onorato and Nico Krebs ‘From Barnhard Willhelm Lookbook’, 2005
  • Aperture 217, ‘Lit’ Teju Cole pp43
  • Charity, Ruth, Portfolio #27 June 1998, ‘Curiosus Naturae Spectator Jorma Puranen’ 2nd feb 2015
  • Fontcuberta, Joan Portfolio #27 June 1998 pp30
  • Irvin Sherri, ‘Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art’ Draft. For definitive version, see British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (2005), 123-137. http://www.ou.edu/ouphil/faculty/irvin/Appropriation.pdf viewed 02.02.15
  • Portfolio #30, December 1999, ‘Bedsit’ and Celotape Wall’
  • Portfolio #29 June 1999 Hannah Starkey pp.23
  • Portfolio #28 December 1998, Yinka Shombare, pp22-23
  • Portfolio #32 Petra Creffield ‘Going Home’ pp46-47
  • Portfolio #37 John Goto ‘High Summer’ pp6-11
  • Portfolio #33 Deborah Baker ‘Ghosts of the Nursery’ pp32-33 and pp71
  • Hotshoe issue 188, summer 2014 Hannah Whitaker pp10-21
  • Hotshoe issue 189, autumn 2014 Roger Ballen and Asger Carlsen pp68-79

Exhibitions/Talks:

  • Brian McClave Solent Showcase Gallery – Southampton – UK – 13th Feb / 21st Mar 2015
  • Briggs, Jonny, Creative Art Conference, Below Bar Southampton 11th May 2015
  • Grayson Perry ‘Who Are You?’ Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, 25th October 2014- 15th March 2015, Visited 4th February 2015
  • National Gallery Visit 4th February 2015
  • National portrait Gallery 4th February 2015 (type from leaflet names of exhibition visited)
  • Paris Photo 2014, Photography Fair, Grand Palais, November 2014
  • Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2014, National Portrait Gallery, Visited 4th February 15

Internet:

A Statement and A Image

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My Final Image for Submission

My Final Image for Submission

Growing up as a girl in today’s society is a challenge. With the media telling you how to look and how to act. In every magazine girls are set high expectations, expectations that they take upon themselves to be ‘perfect’. Well what we are presented with isn’t real, if anything this project has accentuated that fact, there are endless techniques to edit and beautify imagery. Being within their target audience I have grown frustrated with the pressure they place upon us. My intention was to deface using colour in this project. Using appropriated images cut from magazines I would both hand colour and digitally colour on top with the intention of making them less appealing.

Inspired by the theme ‘Hand and Eye’ I wanted to create a digital collage with hand made elements both honing my aesthetic and Photoshop skills. Drawing on the surreal hand painted work of Chen Nong originally I began using colour upon the images. Realising that I was only colouring the expected elements seemingly beautifying the images further like Joachim Schmid. I knew I had to change my dynamic. Feedback suggested looking at it from an infantile perspective with the addition of colour; using the wrong colours and colouring outside the lines. This unsuccessful development led to the use of the wrong colours. Although this did not deface the image as such the use of the wrong colours still made it unrealistic. Would you still aspire to be like a model that has blue lips and colours on their face? Accentuating the details with colour like Maurizio Anzeri. Adding text seemed like an essential part to connote my point similar to the work of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. But the text seemed irrelevant, and took away from the focal point. A focal point I found due to inspiration from Prince Lauder and the way he uses cut out imagery layered with colour and how he is playful with scale to create an unrealistic image. John Goto’s series high summer is also quintessential to the rough cut layered girls within my collage.

Overall I have learnt a fairly important lesson about why the media exploits this notion of ‘perfect’. Simply put in a philosophical way there is no market without a buyer. It is a world of supply and demand. Through my own work I have found that by defacing the images it was less appealing but by keeping to the details even in the wrong colour the image became a more aesthetically pleasing source and the more positive the feedback was. We are perhaps a society who likes the clean-cut edits in order to perpetuate the idea of perfection, whilst not considering the effects on teenage girls.

The contact sheet of sources:

Contact Sheet for Final Image

Contact Sheet for Final Image

Screen Shots of Composing image:

©samanthajaneriley

The Wrong is Right.

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So experimenting with the idea of using the wrong colours to highlight the unrealistic details has worked very well. Outlining some images also was evident in reducing the realistic impression that the models are perfection. Tackling the influence they have on girls and the preconceptions the girls conceive.

wrong colour and feedback elements

Combining these images together in a composite image still didn’t sit completely right.

I took the text away from the faces using the paintbrush tool and layer masks. This made the image less busy but even still it didn’t seem to have any effect on the image itself. The text becoming irrelevant to my point as it is used as an image instead of text in a way. It is also still a busy image with select areas of strength like the far left and bottom right. This got me thinking again about a focal point and framing like Prince Lauder considers in his images.

Placing the upon a wall and standing back really helped evaluate which ones were working and what could be done to improve them. Its a definite that the text has to be removed as it no longer serves my intention and now just takes away from the colour and detail of the images. By placing paper over select areas it allowed me to realise the potential of having a focal point and a composite image which purely contained just images. I think the ideal thing is to change the paper to a portrait orientation and then play with scale of the images of the models. Scale has become important as it again plays with the idea of realism. Reductive editing from pinning the images up, as well as the feedback I have received, has really helped me define my intention and formulate final compositions.

©samanthjaneriley

 

In Hindsight.

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So from my last feedback session I was advised into looking at ways to colour with almost childlike intention. By using the wrong colours and colouring outside the lines. In order to effect the realism of the images.

Childlike Colour

Childlike Colour

Using these images I created a composite image on photoshop much like my others.

Childlike Colour Composite

Childlike Colour Composite

Although the idea of defacing the image is better represented in this image it was very unpleasant to make. It hurt my brain to colour outside the lines. However through this experimentation I have decided to experiment with using the wrong colours but in a defining way. Highlighting the unrealistic features by making them an unrealistic colour.

©samanthajaneriley

Prince Lauder

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What I love most about feedback sessions is the fact that we get recommended new research in order to contextualise our work further. One of these was the intriguing Prince Láuder aka Carlos Guerrero. If working under a pseudonym wasn’t evoking enough his artwork is simply unique.

prince-lauder-forever-elizabeth-taylor

Prince Lauder “Forever Elizabeth Taylor”

Firstly he peeked my interest from the seemingly appropriated imagery he manipulates. Secondly it was his use of almost defacing beautiful women. Its clear that he doesn’t just use digital software to manipulate, also cutting traditional elements in which to add. Whats more so is he works for the magazines from which I have taken imagery. Producing work for Vogue, Givenchy and Chanel. Based in Mexico City he combines his skills in illustration and mixed media to produce works that are completely unique. Using colour and text to outline and define his subjects is something I can relate directly to my work. In fact it was mentioned that ‘I must of researched him before as my work is so similar’. Honestly I didn’t, but I have seen his imagery before and it is interesting how something you see can come out in your own art work subconsciously. The way his has composed Elizabeth Taylor is a controversial move, slicing someones photographed face can be seen offensive in some cultures especially in France. But still we find it aesthetically pleasing even though there is something ethereal about his use of wrong colour and his playfulness with shape and scale.

Prince Lauder 'Tania Carregha'

Prince Lauder ‘Tania Carregha’

The clarity of the work seems to be unintentional giving the feel that Lauder just threw it together but upon closer inspection the tiny details and perfected lines along with tones accentuate how skilled he is in digital manipulation. Masking off layers to work on others with varying opacities whilst playing with hues, saturation and colour. Illustrating digitally upon the images he creates adds a focal point which the viewer is drawn to something that in my work was lacking. The way he uses text as a title at the bottom of each piece is also quite manipulative of the viewer. More often than not just being a one word title, giving some influence to what experience he wants you to endure when captivated by his work. In my experience it is never to late for research as now, thanks to feedback I have an evident development point.

Lauder has inspired me to create a focal point using outlines and manipulation of colour. I also realise that although his work is not simple it is less busy than the composition of my own work and maybe that is something I could consider changing. It might even help when defining a focal point. Also the text in my image is viewed as part of the image which rewrites its purpose, possibly using just one word to influence the viewer could be better?

Lauder, Prince. ‘Prince Láuder’. Princelauder.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Mills, Charlotte. ‘FASHION156 Daily Blog / Collage Artist – Carlos Guerrero’. FASHION156. N.p., 2015. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Judgment Day

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First day back and we each brought an image to the session for a peer feedback and print critique. I happened to find this session the most helpful so far, with each person posting anonymous post stick notes around each image. Filled with constructive criticism to make our work better. Having Post stick notes made this process easier and more defined.

Choosing just one of the composite images I completed over the Easter was the greatest difficulty if I could get feedback on all of them I would as they are all so different. In the end picking one with the style I most wanted to develop and extend:

The Composite Image Chosen For This Session

The Composite Image Chosen For This Session

What often happens when feedback is received is that your project often takes a turn or changes completely, I went in with the final idea of ‘Appropriation of magazine images, which were hand and digitally coloured, originally trying to deface the preconceptions of how women are represented in the media. In fact all this did was beautify the image, with the addition of text and strips of layers which are rough cut’ was the caption below my image of which people could judge my work by. This idea has been developed throughout the past weeks and is tough to explain, twisting and turning into  what seems like a completely different project each week.

The Comments:

  • ‘Good skill with photoshop- the amount of layers and effort put into the image is clear and precise’
  • ‘Smoothen down the harsh lines to make the images flow together’
  • ‘If you are trying to deface the stereotypes of women wouldn’t you want to make the images look more natural?’
  • ‘The Layering of the furthest two images on the right is really effective’
  • ‘Well composed and digitally created as each layer blends together like a puzzle’
  • ‘Unsure on the image cropped with a straight line as it pulls the focus’
  • ‘Excellent use of layers, text over women adds a nice touch to the layering, but is possibly too busy’
  • ‘This is a really well constructed image. I think the idea of defacing using colour can be taken further by using more obtuse colours’ (Unnatural, Unexpected Colours)
  • ‘Impressive use of layering, really brings out the models within the image and stops it becoming flat’
  • ‘Try to make relevant parts of the articles used to stand out more with regards to gender stereotypes’
  • ‘Not sure how the addition of colour is defacing the media stereotype of women. perhaps if the colouring was more extreme and less precise you would start to deviate from ‘normal’. Think about how children go over the lines when they colour and use the wrong colours’
The Post Stick Comments

The Post Stick Comments

What I can take away from this session is that I need to clean up the text as marks were still left visible on the print, also with the text I need to narrow the amount down as the image appears to busy and make the key concepts stand out. I need to be more experimental with colour and the way I add it to the image, possibly looking into the way that in childhood we aren’t told right and wrong colours or bothered by the preconceptions we do it naturally, subconsciously. I do find it interesting that despite wanting to deface and use colour to make images ugly in the very first image from the hand and eye theme all I did was make it more beautiful. Beautification seems to be almost natural to me, the way I have been influenced to colour in a certain way and have an eye of what it should look like is my subconscious creative style. I will look into using a childlike mindset whilst colouring in. But Im warming to the idea of just highlighting the influence that the media has on us and the way we see women, it even seems like its subconsciously there, hot-wired into us from the age that we start using proper colours and defining normal as the thin and beautiful women we see. This session has helped me recognise what needs to be done in order to improve my work and the comments are generic enough to apply to the other 7 images I have created if necessary.

©samanthajaneriley

Over Easter

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Whilst on our three week easter break, I completed research and started to formulate how my chosen elements could be composed. Creating these composite images in photoshop was at first daunting due to the amount of images I had selected. Letting the creativity flow seemed to narrow down the images I used. All of the composite images are different in spacing, layering and colour.

Whilst adjusting the composition I also decided I would add colour digitally as well as using my previous hand coloured images. The digital colour is more luminous and tends to exaggerate the detail rather than beautify it. I experimented with the removal of colour but found that it didn’t have the desired effect I wanted, as my project is all about the use of colour.

Refreshing all the tools of photoshop in my mind improved my skills especially with the lasso tool and layer masks. I am really proud of my images, but they still need a lot of development. I learnt that you can add smart objects into photoshop and they don’t have to be from a RAW file, Jpegs and scans work as well, just by dragging them into photoshop from the original file space and remembering to rasterise them before adding layer masks. Naming each of the layers made my workflow quicker and also helped if I needed to correct a layer or go back to the psd at a later time.

©samanthajaneriley

John Goto

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With the readiness of imagery available today the temporal spacial landscape is disappearing. A preconception that John Goto works directly against. Appropriating images found across the media to create imaginary landscapes mixed with modern culture, he hones what is considered by the art world to be unique digital skills. Influenced mainly by painting his imagery is reminiscent of pre-raphalite paintings but more modern and appropriate for todays use. VISociety

Taking the staple of the pre-raphalites painting which is the architecture which is the focal point. Stitching together other images to make a landscape. Landscapes that come from 17th and 18th century England. Then he infects the landscape with human presence or the reminiscence of. Making sure that they are bright in colour or are big in scale to really attract the viewer. Alluding to a serene place which has been ruined by the presence of people. These landscapes although fictional are based upon the social events in todays society. These typical cultural events seem very out of place in the seemingly nostalgia the landscape creates. Tackling the delusions our culture and event are intercepted by.

VIIIDeluge

I am most interested in the digital skill. The flawless composition and seamless editing making it surreal yet relatable. Having so much refined detail like the reflections in the water and the scale in the background adds depth and infinity to the image. Its directly representational of the 17th century paintings he is trying to imitate and modify. The modern twist makes it more relatable. I am intrigued by the amount of various sources he adds to the image. Yet its not busy. quite the opposite we seem drawn to each element because of the small scale in relation to the size of the architecture. I want to experiment with using many sources and composing them into a composite image using flawless editing and layer masks like Goto.

Goto, John. ‘John Goto’s High Summer’. Johngoto.org.uk. N.p., 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Portfolio #37 John Goto ‘High Summer’ pp6-11

Joachim Schmid

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When exploring an exhibition like Paris Photo sometimes you see things that catch your eye but that don’t become relevant until you are set a brief. This is exactly what happened when I stopped and stared at the work of Joachim Schmid in November 2014 at Paris Photo. I knew it was beautiful from the outset but I wasn’t sure why I liked it so much. Its another link to the idea that the subconscious holds on to things and they come out later in our creativity. What made me want to colour the images in when appropriating them for the hand and eye workshop? A feeling of ‘I just did’ is the basis of all art forms. We respond to things in our own way and create things that are unique to us, weather thats by appropriation or originality.

It seems like fate that his work is illustrated in the book set in our brief. Between pages 22-27 of ‘Post Photography the artist with a camera’ in the first theme of appropriation Schmid’s various work is explained. The beauty in the variance between books and exhibitions is that at Paris Photo I only saw this select work:

From Estrelas Amadas (Beloved Stars) 2013

From Estrelas Amadas (Beloved Stars) 2013

This set ‘Estrelas Amadas’ was made by hand colouring the lips of treasured photographs of Hollywoods finest from the 50’s. Like my own work he took his imagery from magazines from the 1950’s. The magazines were second hand and the previous owner had coloured all the lips in bright red. This inspired this set and his later interest in hollywoods black and white movie stills. The attention to the detail in the alteration of the magazine image was so precise it drew him in enhancing his love for the way a photograph can be personalised so that it now has a different use to what it was first intended. Th notion of adding colour is not a new one and historically it pre-dates the evolution of colour film. People wanting to enhance their black and white memories with colour before the introduction of the technology of colour in photography, painting and drawing upon their own photographic prints.

However in the book, compared to the one set of work I was exposed to at the exhibition, I now know that he has a vast collection of altered appropriated material in his work. He doesn’t stop at simply colouring in the mere details but his pre-dated work was all from found imagery that he was given when expressing his desire to rework the photographic medium. In fact his earlier work ‘Statics (women’s Fashion Catalogue) from his series ‘Photographic Drafts’ interests me too. As it is similar to the exhibition of Time and Place and the work exhibited by Brian and Gareth McClave.

Statics (Women's Fashion Catalogue) 1999 from Photographic Drafts.

Statics (Women’s Fashion Catalogue) 1999 from Photographic Drafts.

The reason for my interest is the horizontal strips, like Brian and Gareth McClaves vertical strips in their time-lapse. They are quite surreal and you can’t make out what the image is until further reading. Simply put its a composite image of all of his re-worked imagery. Expressing Schmid’s interest in the ability for photographs to be recycled. Shredding them and reworking them into a new composite image. Carefully gathering them together to create an abstract with a white noise feel. I like the repetitiveness of the strips and how it intertwines with the colour to give an surreal almost methodical texture.

As I am looking into how the subconscious seems to effect the way creative people do things I can’t help but find links between my intention and his. Being a leading artist in appropriation since the 1980’s Schmid has expressed his doubts in the established processes of photography and how the need to rework a range of vernacular sources is buried in his brain (Shore, 2014, pp22). Formulating his work around what society collects and discards as imagery and what we preserve as samples of our times and cultures. Very much the missing link between the creative process and the everyday imagery. The notion of ‘Buried somewhere in the unexplored clefts of my brain’ (Shore, 2014, pp22) is essentially what I have intentionally tried to explore. What and why we do things? What experiences and research fuel our photographic practise?

Paris Photo 2014, Photography Exhibition, November 2014

Shore, Robert. Post-Photography. Print. Pp22-27

Strips of Manipulation.

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As a teenage girl I remember being bombarded with images that made me question my very being. The flawless skin and size 2 models was positively detrimental to my development as an early teen. When all you see is perfection its easy to get lost in the why don’t I look the same. Normal is not good enough. Originally I set out to deface these images with colour. Colouring directly on to the surface using felt tip pens making them ugly as I go.

Being inspired by the work of Brian and Gareth McClave, the way they use time lapse in images, and wanting to still work traditionally. I decided to slice the images I had coloured into strips and align them together with the non coloured images. Creating quite a surreal effect. Just like the lines of passing time in the McClaves’ work. In reality they still look beautiful but the strange effect makes them just the tiniest little bit of centre and therefor slightly more relatable to the average person, as the distortion seems more accurate than the photoshopped, airbrushed, unnatural look we are all used to seeing.

I like the effect that the repetitive strips make. Distorting the view. Especially with the addition of colour it seems to work really well, seems to highlight the key features more when there is only a small amass of illuminated detail. Bright pigmented colours seem to work best when trying to highlight the detail, especially on the normally black and white images. Using printed images from magazines has created a nice texture when colouring on top of the images. The stripy effect of the texture adds to the surreal effect of the hand cut stripes.

The geometric pattern created by the hand cut strips is also reminiscent of the rough cut shapes in the work of Jonny Briggs and how he covers detail using crude cut geometric shapes. As much as I have enjoyed this hand layered technique I would like to experiment with creating strips of images digitally as a first step toward my composite image. I also want to see how I could extend the cubist notion by using layers and masks in Photoshop.

©samanthajaneriley