I have learnt so much in the past 2 years i've spent on component 1. Going into it, I believed photography was just pictures. Learning how to use a camera and using them. But i've learned that its much deeper than that, its more philosophical, more meaning and photographs can hold a story, leave questions. There are specific concepts in photography, threshold concepts, that shape photography. With an understanding of the threshold concepts creates a foundation for a photographer to build upon. During the 2 and half years I've spent exploring photography, my deeper understanding has expanded. I began with small projects, the first being "wrong" and exploring what defines right and wrong within photography. Afterwards I created a photo safari, where I tried to find certain patterns and photograph them. I then continued to learn in more detail about different types of photographs. Photography is the capture of light, without light you won't have a photograph. Cyanotypes, photograms/rayographs and pinhole cameras hold this statement to be true. All rely on light to be able to create an image. I have also learned from this that you don't particularly need a digital camera to produce photographs. Within my edges project, I explored collaging and messing with the edges of pictures. Within an image there are multiple edges, the edges of the subject (for example, the edges of a table) and the edges of the Image itself. By collaging them you can manipulate and create more edges. Photography is a type of hybrid picture making, its not just taking pictures but its creating them.
This leads me on to one of my favourite projects, abstraction. All photographs are abstract, every image has some sort of abstraction to it. Even from the simple fact that it is an image, caught in time. If you add a filter, thats abstraction. I wanted to really play with this idea of abstraction, and where their limits to it? I tried to create regular scenarios and make them irregular. I explored some of Barbra Krugers work, 'Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist and collagist. A large sum of her work consists of black and white photographs overlaid with 'Decretive' captions'. I loved her minimalist abstraction, and she created regular images such as somebodies hand or face and made art. As the project continued, I began taking images of the irregular in regular life, I tried finding things that stand out, patterns, just things out of the ordinary. I created one final outcome where I selected my favourite images and overlaid them to further abstract them. However, I didnt like this. I wanted to create something different, something that stood out. I began exploring masks. It all started when I got bored and just drew and cut out a face shape, I started taking pictures of people with them holding the mask over their face. I began even more intrigued in masks and researched Ralph Eugene Meatyard, who referred to masks as ''identity and the ephemeral nature of surface matter.'' I refined my original idea by creating more abstract masks, not the shape of a face. I created a collage of colours and images onto mount board, then cut circles and triangles out of it. I then attached the cut outs onto wooden sticks and made subjects hold them over their face. This created focus on the mask, and blurred the background of which the person was a part of. This covering their identity in more than one way (through the mask and through the blurring of them) pleased me, the blur also added depth to the image. I felt I needed to do more with it though. I set up the "masks" I had created in a jar and photographed them under professional light. To finish it off, I placed the image of the masks on mount board, A1 and overlaid the images of the masked subjects, the images varied in size from A5-A3. I loved the outcome since its something I hadn't particularly created before, and it came out how had imagined it.
This project, however, is my absolute favourite. Throughout this project I have explored a variety of subjects to do with the human condition. The first being 'French kiss- A love letter from Paris' by Peter Turnley, an exploration of affection and companionship within a photo-book. I initially responded to this project by taking photographs to do with love, and relationships, wether the romantic kind or not. I analysed love in itself, and move further onto Keith Arnetts 'Notes from Jo' typology. A relationship between a man and his wife, a personal look into their lives through notes left by his wife. The intimacy of these images sparked an idea in my head 'What does it truly mean to be human', everything has the capacity to love, to hold a bond and create a relationship, so what truly separates us from our animal and plant counterparts. This is where Basjan Aders exploration of gravity caught my eye. How humans believe they are at the top of the hierarchy that we have created, but in actuality we are the weakest. We fall, and its in that moment we surrender to the universe, maybe without realising. We become the lesser. 'Its in the moment you let go.' Its how Aders failures are reflected in his falls, our failures are us giving into the elements, into gravity, into the universe. Is this what makes us human? Our belief that we are the peak of evolution but truly we are the weakest? After this, I decided to create a tiny typology of receipts. Receipts caught my eye because they could hold so many stories. Could what people buy tell you a story about them? I decided to collect receipts from multiple people and photograph them on a white background. I wanted to try to create more "professional" photographs, to explore the idea of making images other than street photography or portraits etc... I then began to question if this is what I want my final outcome to be? Is it something that reflects my style within photography? This is when I began creating my final outcome. I started to take photographs of my domestic life, things in my house, my mum, my dog, the lights etc.. things which define us, which differentiate us from our other living counterparts. For example, the picture of the dog can define ownership and the image of my mum can reflect relationships. Once I had the images, I refined them in photoshop by using auto tone, so the images where balanced, and printed them all out. Now I had to come up with an idea on how to display. I created a spider diagram to visualise ideas, and whilst creating that, I was always drawn to the conventional set up, pictures same size, same distance from each-other and in columns. I feel as if the conventional is becoming slowly unconventional since people always try to avoid it. So in essence I wanted to be different by being the 'same'. After coming up with my idea, I created a smaller version by creating a room shape using paper, and printing out smaller versions of the images and setting them up in the desired way. However, just that felt boring, felt like it was missing the cherry on top; then it hit me, I haven't used videos within photography yet, so I decided to project a slideshow of my images over my actual images. I upscaled my smaller scale model. I filmed myself during the process of sticking up the images and sped it up. Once completed I created the slideshow, brought in the projector and camera and projected it. I filmed the whole thing, then took pictures close up. I feel as if I have made a lot progress within photography, and found and became comfortable within my own style.