Unit 1 Evaluation
For unit 1 I researched a lot of artist's to help me get ideas for example; Man Ray, Jill Freedman, Vivian Maier, Eric Staller and Jasmine Deporta. I looked at how all of these photographers took their images and some of their ideas in my own work. Francesca Woodman was one artist that I took the most inspiration from her use of shadows in her photographs inspired a lot of my contrast images. I also took a lot of inspiration from David Shrigley I used normal everyday signs and gave them an absurd situation to go with them.
I looked at four different themes disguise, abstraction, contrast and absurd. I started disguise by just taking some images having peoples faces covered by objects and then I looked at David Szauder who edited his images to distort peoples faces which I experimented later on within the project. I stuck with my original idea and kept covering peoples faces however this time I used masks and made an attempt at photoshop. Shortly after I went on holiday and whilst I was away I took some images of my family members I had them arranged in all different ways and made sure all the images were framed perfectly. I used things around to cover up parts of their faces. I also liked the work Viviane Sassen she had a lot of work similar to what I was doing simply covering parts of peoples bodies so in my next set of images I tried to make my images more like hers so I framed my images better and tried to have plain backgrounds. I took most of these images using a DSLR camera apart from the first set of images and my holiday ones which I used my phone for.
We then did the project abstraction I started to investigate some artists so I first looked at Paul strand he used a lot of the formal elements within his work like line was heavily shown within his work, my first set of images were very strongly based on the work of Paul strand I liked the way he took his images they were always framed really well and had backgrounds that fitted the image really well. So my images all show line within them they also have been framed quite carefully however I could of had other formal elements as well. I then begun to focus on light and line together I liked the way you could show lines with light and focussed most of my images on that my first final piece was strongly influenced by this.
The next project was contrast which was my favourite project I looked at a lot of example of contrast photography and saw that you could do so much so first I started by using a DSLR camera with a black background and having people involved making sure that they were lit up really well and shown really clearly in contrast in to their dark backgrounds. I looked at the work of Rene Burri who used people in his images and made them look out of place or contrasted to the situation they were in so I tried to base some of my first images around that which didn't work very well. However, I then begun to use more light in my images which I preferred. I then started to use shadows within my images which was my favourite to do because you could have someone do anything and make the image look interesting as you could also have any background you wanted for it. So for my final piece I used my favourite shadow images.
In the most recent project absurd I was able to experiment quite a lot with different ways to take images and ways to make an image look. I started by looking on Pinterest and making a board to help me understand what was meant by Absurd. I then found the artist Erwin Wurm who did a lot of 'One minute sculptures' which were quick images he used with any objects and people he could find. I took a lot of my second set of images like this just grabbing weird things and making my family wear them however, I didn't like how these images came out as they were very busy and could have been framed a lot better. But my first set of images used the idea of covering peoples faces so with masks or hiding them in other ways like using a mirror. I then looked at the artist David Shirgley who made and used signs within his work. At first I didn't make any templates for my signs and the images didn't look as good as you can't see most of what they say. But when I took images at home I used templates of everyday signs in a different situation. After sings I went back to the use of the mirror I liked that I could make someone look different so giving someone a different torso or legsand I framed all the images really carefully. Then aas my final piece I took images of people having conversations talking about two totally different topics which were really interesting. But then I also did pictures of peoples facial expressions looking at somebody with a different head like a football.