Rene Magritte-Research

Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.

These two paintings really drew my eye because of how simple and minimalistic they are, yet they are very surreal. The meaning of the painting is cryptic, but one can extrapolate some meaning from the words of Magritte himself. He spoke specifically of that feeling of human curiosity, where one seeks to see the hidden things that exist behind the other objects that we see, but one is often frustrated in this pursuit. The painting appears to capture this frustration or “conflict,” as Magritte put it by allowing us only a slight glimpse of the man’s face behind the fruit.

The process of covering the subjects face is very powerful in the terms of creating a meaning of surrealism in a photograph. The main points I can take from this is that I can use props, model and surrealism in one photograph. I can also take the very minimalistic approach of this image and only use very few subjects.

Landscapes without memory

One of Spain’s most prominent artists, Joan Fontcuberta is best-known for his exploration of the intersection between art, science, and illusion. In Landscapes without Memory, an exhibition of forty large-scale works made between 2002 and 2005, Fontcuberta harnesses a piece of landscape-rendering computer software designed for the military, which creates photo-realistic three-dimensional models based on two-dimensional sources. For his Landscapes of Landscapes series, the focus of the Aperture exhibition, Fontcuberta feeds the software images of famous paintings and photographs by Turner, Cézanne, Rothko, and Carleton E. Watkins, among others, forcing the program to interpret the landscape masterworks as “real.” The contours and tones of the pictures are transformed into three-dimensional mountains, rivers, valleys, and clouds—baroque, fantastical landscapes void of human existence that tap into our desire for unattainable paradise. Thumbnails of the original images are shown next to Fontcuberta’s work.

Through his artistic process, Fontcuberta creates new landscapes that, despite their “postcard perfect” resonance, are purely fictional­ and can never be experienced in nature. The result is “landscapes without memory.” It is this exploration of the artificial and the natural, the imaginary and the perceived, that Fontcuberta brings to the art of photography. As a conceptual artist, he questions the boundaries of the medium and its iconic status as the presenter of unquestionable truth. Landscapes without Memory is accompanied by a book of the same title recently published by Aperture, which also presents the series, Bodyscapes, in which the artist uses the same software to reinterpret photographs of his own body parts.

The way that Fontcuberta creates these surreal landscapes to make them look realistic is influential for my work in creating a realistic surreal image using digital editing. I will be using found images to create surrealism in the studio just like how Fontcuberta used images to create his landscapes.

Berndnaut- Nimbus research

Nimbus
The Nimbus works present a transitory moment of presence in a specific location. They can be interpreted as a sign of loss or becoming, or just as a a fragment from a classical painting. People have always had a strong metaphysical connection to clouds and through time have projected many ideas on them. Smilde is interested in the temporary aspect of the work. It’s there for a few seconds before they fall apart again. The physical aspect is really important but the work in the end only exists as a photograph. The photo functions as a document of something that happened on a specific location and is now gone.

Here is a video of Berndnaut Smilde making clouds https://vimeo.com/67729669

Berndnaut creates cloud indoors and out but only for a precious moment and in the moment he photographs the phenomenon. Im inspired by the impossible way he creates clouds from nothing and how he uses photography to capture these split seconds of time and freezes them. With photography this is possible to capture these moments. Im inspired by the surrealism of the photographs and want to create my own version of this in the studio. I probably can’t create my own cloud in the studio but I can recreate a cloud in different ways, such as in post-production.

Philippe Halsman- Research

Capturing the essence of those he photographed was Philippe Halsman’s life’s work. So when Halsman set out to shoot his friend and longtime collaborator the Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, he knew a simple seated portrait would not suffice. Inspired by Dalí’s painting Leda Atomica, Halsman created an elaborate scene to surround the artist that included the original work, a floating chair and an in-progress easel suspended by thin wires. Assistants, including Halsman’s wife and young daughter Irene, stood out of the frame and, on the photographer’s count, threw three cats and a bucket of water into the air while Dalí leaped up. It took the assembled cast 26 takes to capture a composition that satisfied Halsman.

The above image is a contact sheet of the shoot for ‘Dali Atomicus’ this shows the steps and tries it took Halsman to capture this iconic image. Without the use of post-production Halsman had to use props to create a surrealist photograph. Being in the modern day I believe given the chance Halsman would use Photoshop to create even more surreal images, each one becoming more and more adventurous than the last.  I will begin by using post-production to create my images but given the chance I will use props just like Halsman to see the comparison between both images.

Salvador Dali Surrealism-Research

Dalí’s painting, The Persistence of Memory is a striking example of a surrealist artwork: the ants and melting clocks are familiar objects placed in a strange and odd setting.  Dalí wants to twist our usual ideas about what is ‘normal’ and ‘accepted.’

Dalí was interested in Freud’s writings on psychology. Freud was an Austrian psychologist  who wrote about the theory of subconscious. According to Freud, dreams are coded messages from the subconscious and Surrealists, like Dalí, were interested in what could be revealed by their dreams.

Dali would create paintings that you would find in the dreams of ordinary people. In dreams there is nothing that cannot happen and from this Dali created such surreal painting in which anything could be painted. This inspires me to be more creative in my work in surrealism, because of the fact that I will be able to create anything from a creative aspect and with tools such as Photoshop I will be able to create such images myself.

Rhine II- Andreas Gursky-research

Gursky works with a medium format camera, taking pictures which he then scans into a computer where he can manipulate them. His aim in using digital technology is not to create fictions but rather to heighten the image of something that exists in the world. He has described the genesis of this work, saying, ‘there is a particular place with a view over the Rhine which has somehow always fascinated me, but it didn’t suffice for a picture as it basically constituted only part of a picture. I carried this idea for a picture around with me for a year and a half and thought about whether I ought perhaps to change my viewpoint … In the end I decided to digitalise the pictures and leave out the elements that bothered me’

Gursky digitally erased buildings on the far side of the river from his picture. This manipulation enhances the image visually, giving it more formal coherence. Rather than the sense of a specific place, the picture conveys an almost Platonic ideal of a body of water traversing as landscape. Gursky talks about this image in terms of its contemporaneity, saying, ‘I wasn’t interested in an unusual, possibly picturesque view of the Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it.

The Rhine II is one of, if not the most famous photograph because of how much it was sold for, it was sold for £2.7 million. Gursky used post-production to digitally edit the photograph so that it would look more aesthetically pleasing.  This gives me a more viable reason to allow digital editing in my work and have my work a viable piece of photography. The images is minimalistic in the way that there isn’t much distraction and very little of subject used in the image. Its more minimalistic because of the fact Gursky edited out buildings from the image which would be a distraction for the viewer.

Man Ray Surrealism-Research

Man Ray’s most famous photographs combined non-traditional photographic techniques with surrealist principles. As a result, he created images that bridge the line between photographs, which were seen as inherently truthful, and otherworldly dreams. For example, in “Observatory Time: The Lovers,” he utilizes a montage technique that combines his own painting with a photograph of his lover, Lee Miller.

Man Ray confronts the surrealist focus on eroticism more directly with works like “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.” Utilizing another non-traditional technique, the image is made up of multiple exposures depicting a nude female with her arms raised over her head. Again, there is an otherworldly element to this image. The face is partly obscured, proportions are distorted, and the solid black background forces the viewer to directly experience the overlapping line and shape of the body; special attention is drawn to the exaggerated breasts and contrasted genitals. The nude form, nearly always female, appears regularly through Man Ray’s and other surrealist works.

Man Ray is a pioneer for surrealism photography, and his work in inspirational not only to be but for all photographers. Man ray uses techniques that was in his day the best, however in present day thanks to post-production applications such as photoshop, photographers are able to create more creative surrealist photographs. I will use photoshop as a tool to help me create this illusions in photography and create surrealist photographs

 

Jacob Aue Sobol- Research

“When I photograph, I try to use my instincts as much as possible. It is when pictures are unconsidered and irrational that they come to life; that they evolve from showing to being”

– Jacob Aue Sobol

 

In the summer of 2005, Jacob traveled with a film crew to Guatemala to make a documentary about a young Mayan girl’s first journey to the ocean. The following year he returned by himself to the mountains of Guatemala where he met the indigenous family Gomez-Brito. He stayed with them for a month to tell the story of their everyday life. The series won the First Prize Award, Daily Life Stories, World Press Photo 2006.

Sobol’s style of high contrast, black and white photography, is the style that I am very interested in using for my first shoot. The harshness of the contrast strips away any “beauty” from the photograph and leaves only the truth. The same goes for the black and white style of photography. Black and white takes away the colour and creates a minimalist photograph. I want my portraits to be minimalist but also ver detailed and high contrast so that they become a unique photograph.

David Hockney- ‘Joiners’ Research

Hockney’s creation of the “joiners” occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography.

↑ This is an interview Hockney had with the telegraph, of how he is influenced by Picasso.

They way Hockney presents these images to create an abstract portrait is very influential to my work. To photograph a subjects face from different angles and zoomed into a specific area of their face, to then ‘join’ them together to create a portrait.  I would try a different approach to this process by starting up close and photographing the subjects nose and zooming out and photographing their area around their nose and so forth until I will have a portrait.

What does “Identity” mean in photography?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare wrote these lines for Juliet to speak in the play “Romeo and Juliet” and the question they pose is sometimes relevant to the cataloguing of a photograph.

Images such as “Migrant Mother,” “Powerhouse Mechanic,” and “Afghan Refugee Girl” are familiar to us by these acquired names, sometimes merely descriptive, sometimes alliterative and even poetic ones

 

Identity can be broken down to multiple meanings. It is a broad spectrum, which can be interpreted into different influences of identity.

To many identity means who they are and what they stand for and believe. In photography you can photograph identity in the multiple ways as shown above, it allows the photographers to go in-depth in their work and through that show and tell the audience what their subject identity is.