Why have I chosen this subject?
I have decided to do this theme as I am very interested in playing around with different pictures through photoshop,collages or drawing to make a new picture. I also liked how much imagination the theme required to make the picture interesting.
My pinterest board
Set 1:
This is my first set of fragment photographs, I took inspiration from my pinterest board and cut out circles in a magazine and arranged them to make them look interesting. I played a lot with going in a out of focus and I wanted a shallow focus of the background or foreground of my pictures to give them a "mysterious" feel and an abstract look. I think that I have achieved this well and I very much like how these turned out as in some we can also see both sides of the magazine which also splits the image into different fragments.
My favourite pictures:
This picture is one of my favourite because the fragment theme is interpreted in quite a few different ways. for example there is a section of the paper which cuts off and goes into a grey and shallow focus background, I like this because it gives a abstract feel to the picture too and I like the mysterious effect that it gave the picture. I also like the small circle put into the smaller circle as it makes it look rather incomplete.
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This is another one of my favourite pictures because I like that the light from the other side of the window shines through and gives the picture more contrast.I also very much like the fact that the circles cut off the ending of the trees as you could think that it is never ending.
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David Hockney:
David Hockney is an english painter,draughtsman,printmaker,stage designer and photographer.He is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire, and Kensington,London.He is considered the most influential British artist of the 20th Century.
In the early 1980's Hockney started to produce collages which he called "joiners". First of Polaroid prints and later of 35mm, commercially processed colour prints. Using various numbers of polaroid prints or photo-lab prints of a single subject which Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. One of his first photomontages was of his mother. One of Hockney's |
major aim was cubism,discussing the way in which vision works. He took pictures from slightly different times and at different perspectives, the result gave it an affinity of cubism.The subject would actually move whilst being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer's perspective. Later when he had more experience with this method, Hockney decided to change his technique and move the camera around the subject instead.Hockney's creation of the "joiners" happened accidentally, in the late 60's Hockney realised that photographers were using wide lenses to take pictures. Hockney didn't like these photographs as they always came out somewhat distorted.He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in LA and he took polaroid pictures of the room and terrace and stuck them together not intending for it to be a composition of its own.When he was looking at the final composition he realised it created a narrative as if he was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this and even stopped painting for a period of time to really focus on this style of photography.
My response to Hockney's joiners:
WWW:I think that I have responded well to Hockney's joiner, I focused on one object and took many pictures of it from different angles like hockney to join them together and make a longer version of the tree which gives it a almost distorted look.I was also inspired by Baldessari's version of a joiner where he also used a tree (right hand picture).
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first set of fragment photographs:
The Desk- David Hockney 1984
In this photograph I can see many different pictures from different perspectives all put into a collage to make a sort of "3D" picture. To describe this photograph I will use the word "diverse" because Hockney used a variety of different angles to make a single picture. If I had to describe this picture to someone who couldn't see it I would say to them "imagine you are in a room with wooden floors and blue walls,in front of you is a desk with some pictures,a vase,books and dog biscuits on it, the only thing is that it looks like a collage and someone had taken many pictures of different things from different angles and put them all together to make what's in front of you." There are many recognisable things in this photograph such as the main subject which is the desk,the books,dog biscuits,vase,etc.However, Hockney has made the picture more abstract by arranging the picture in a certain way where the pictures overlay giving it a "jerky" effect making it more interesting.
Karl Blossfeldt
Blossfeldt's pictures were inspired by plants,however, it was very difficult for him to make those sculptures as the plants kept dying ; So Blossfeldt decided to learn photography so that he could make a still of the plant meaning that he wouldn't have to worry about the plant dying before he could finish his sculpture. He couldn't draw a picture as it simply wouldn't be detailed enough for him to make a detailed replica out of it, so photography was the only way for him to make a detailed replica of the plant so that he could make a detailed sculpture.
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A little more about Blossfeldt...
Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer,sculptor teacher, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things.He was inspired by nature and the way in which plants grow. He believed that 'the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.'Blossfeldt made many of his photographs with a home-made camera that could magnify the subject up to thirty times its size, revealing details within a plant's natural structure. Blossfeldt was a teacher at the Institute of Royal Arts Museum in 1898 where he stayed until 1930.he established an archive for his photographs. Blossfeldt never received formal training in photography. Blossfeldt developed a series of home-made cameras that allowed him to photograph plant surfaces in unprecedented magnified detail. In Berlin from the late nineteenth century until his death, Blossfeldt’s works were mostly used as teaching tools and were brought to public attention in 1928 by his first publication Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature), it was published in 1928 when Blossfeldt was 63 and a professor of applied art,Urformen der Kunst quickly became an international best seller and made Blossfeldt famous almost overnight. Other photographers were mostly impressed by the abstract shapes and structures in nature that he revealed.Blossfeldt’s objective and finely detailed imagery was praised by Walter Benjamin,he also ranked his achievements alongside the great photographers August Sander and Eugene Atget.
Dafna Talmor
Dafna Talmor is an artist and lecturer based in London whose practice encompasses photography, video, curation and collaborations. Her photographs - included in private and public collections such as Deutsche Bank and Hiscox - have been featured in publications that include Camera Austria, ArtReview, Hotshoe, Elephant, IMA, GUP, BJP, Photomonitor, BLOW, Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera by Robert Shore (Laurence King Publishing) and Alternative Photographic Processes: Crafting Handmade Images by Brady Wilks (Focal Press). Talmor is the recipient of the Breathing SPACE Bursary (2016), Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Awards (2014 & 2013), Photofusion Select Bursary (2013), selected as a series finalist for the Renaissance Photography Prize in 2013, IV Daniela Chappard Biennale Photography Award (2007) and was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Artist Award (2005).
My Dafna Talmor inspired work
For our end of year 10 project we were able to have a workshop with Dafna Talmor, a conseptual landscape photographer who works with film photographs and manipulates them in a certain way to make them seem abstract.I think that she was a good photogapher for my project as I am doing fragments and she uses fragments from several different photographs to make a new photograph. During the wokshop Dafna showed us some of her work and we had to respond to her work using the same techniques and materials as her, this being a lightbox, scalpels, paint,coloured paper,permanent pens and many other things. These 3 pictures is my response to Dafna Talmor's work.We had a workshop with Dafna Talmor for the day and my main focus was to create something with old film pictures which was abstract but had some meaning behind it. I think that I have achieved this well because I have used the same techniques as Dafna Talmor. To make these photographs I used old family and landscape pictures. I have played around with someone's memories and almost made a new one by manipulating the pictures in the way that I did. For example in the picture of the woman
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standing.This was most probably a good and happy memory whereas I have made it into a slightly more obscure memory as I wanted create a feeling of almost fear from not knowing,I have done this by scratching out the face by using a scalpel and making a static effect giving that horror movie feel to the picture. I have also layed some darker films over the photograph to show that there was darkness around her and representing the struggles that everyone has to go through in their lives,however, I have also left some brightness in the background to show the good times people have during their lives too.I got inspiration from Dafna Talmors way of taking fragments from one picture to make a new one and I believe that I have achieved this well.My other pictures were much more experimental as they were my first couple of tries from responding to Talmors work before really understanding the meaning behind her work. For my first attempt I used the picture of the people in the forest and realised that most of the things were white or green and didn't really stand out apart from one of the people dressed in red and blue so I painted the photograph in a way which meant that the person was what made everything a little brighter and more interesting; I did this by using a paintbrush and acrylic paint however I didn't really think about where the paint was going to go so I have placed it randomly on the paper.I have also cut off some of the paper to let some light through and give a feel of brightness and happiness.With my second attempt I used a landscape picture of a river, I used the idea of the river being fast and sometimes quite dangerous and made the picture quite busy and almost as if there's too much to look at.I have done this by yet again using acrylic paint however it isn't as solid as I wanted the paint to be faint and almost blend in with the river,I also wanted it to go towards the same direction as the river is going however I don't think I have achieved this very well as it was very hard to manipulate the paint in a way which looked as if it's going in the same direction.With this photograph I wanted it to be a little more unusual than the other so I used some coloured paper and put some permanent marker on it, this was quite a random decision but it represents the weirdness of nature.
About A Boy
Here I feel that I have imaginatively made a piece inspired by Karl Blossfeldt I feel like this piece represents his work because it has a lot to do with edges and how refined the piece is, this tells the story of a boy who is growing older so the pictures are becoming less ripped up and used as they are not as old as the others which are old and scrunched up. However, the only reason we can tell which one is old and new is due to how refined and un-used the pictures are.
Michael Wolf
Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 where he worked for 8 years as contract photographer for Stern magazine. Since 2001, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, many of which have been published as books.Wolf's work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for Architecture, Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tampere, Finland, Museum for work in Hamburg, Germany, Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum Folkwang, Essen and the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt.Wolf also won first prize in the world press photo award competition on two occasions and an honorable mention in 2010, he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize.
Set 2:
I took this set of pictures with the aim of refining them further on and bringing them into my final piece. My main aim was to bring the abstraction theme into this two so that I could show my understanding of both themes and abstraction was also one of my favourite themes. With these pictures I tried to capture the abstract shadows of nature and I was also inspired by some of Wolf's and Blossdfelt's work and wanted to interperate some of their ideas into my work too.
Set 3:
With this set of images I decided to use the images I took of the tree's shadows and develop them in the dark room into a photogram and I also decided to use some inspiration from my first set of images and cut some circles out and put them into the the photogram.I also developed this some more and put them into negatives which I then refined and developed in my final piece.
Refined and developed photograms:
These are the finished but unmounted photographs, I have also added some pictures from magazine to give it some colour and variation.
My final piece:
This is my finished final piece and I am quite happy with the outcome as I think that I have demonstrated well that I understand the meaning of fragments, I have also taken inspiration from photographers such as Karl Blossfeldt and Michael Wolf. I was also able to play around with photograms and in the darkroom with making positive and negative versions of the original photograph.