Unit 2: Evaluation.
For this exam unit I chose the theme Ritual. This theme stood out to me because I knew that it would involve a lot of things I haven't experimented with before, making it a more difficult and challenging theme, but also more interesting. The theme of ritual can be looked at in many different ways, my initial response was looking at celebrations such as birthdays as it is such a wide spread tradition. I took my first set of images responding to this idea of me and my family on some of our birthdays. This got me thinking of all the other rituals that people have. My family have a ritual of climbing a mountain in Canada and taking pictures of the view. So I wanted to try and find these photos as a way of showing this ritual. I found pictures from 11 years ago and ones from very recently that I had taken, and this allowed you to cleary notice the changes that occurred after a long period of time. This is what first sparked my final idea and response to ritual.
I have looked and researched lots of photographers for inspiration in my own work. The artists that influenced my work the most where Christian Boltanski, Joachim Schmid and Annette Massager. I discovered these artists when researching artists linked to the theme Ritual on pinterest. Joachim Schmid was my starting point in developing my idea and refining it. His use of appropriation in his work really intrigued me as I agree with how he believes there are already so many photos in the world that aren't being used, so why not create something new out of them. This is what gave me the idea of not necessarily using photos that I've taken, but photos from the past. Another main theme of his work is portraits. I hadn't previously taken or used portraits in my work so this interested me further in his work and how it would influence my own.
This use of appropriation in photography really interested me after finding these photos of the view on top of this mountain, as the most recent pictures I had taken, but the ones from 11 years ago where not taken by me. My brother was also in these photos, which made them even more interesting as you could not only notice the changes that occurred in the surrounds, but how my brother had changed after 11 years. This was when I discovered Christian Boltanski as one of his pieces showed the development and changes of a boy into a man through the ritual of taking pictures over the years. This was when I began to think about the ritual of taking pictures, something that everybody does but it isn't usually seen as a ritual to a lot of people. I liked the idea of showing the changes in a person after time had past and a one way of displaying this idea was through passport and ID photos. I thought of this idea as it is something that everybody has do from a young age, people also usually do the same facial expression in these photos so this would make it clearer to compare old and resent portraits. This idea would also involve appropriation as I wouldn't be able to take these photos. However I would have to take some pictures my self as I wanted to experiment with the selphie Printer. This is a specialised photo printer that has a clear protective layer on top of the image, much like a passport or ID photo so this was a possible way of making these images as realistic as possible. I took some of my own portraits of people to experiment and see how they turned out, however I wasn't pleased with the outcome as the pictures came out very dark and no very good quality so I decided to think of other ways of displaying my ideas.
The idea of showing the changes in the appearance of someone through the ritual of taking pictures really interested me. So I wanted to find some of the ID photos taken of my family over the years. I wanted to be able to show the different stages and changes that people go through, and how this ritual of taking pictures allows you to notice them. I found a range of pictures of my mum and my brother from young children till now and wanted to display these in an effective way to show my idea and response to ritual. My first idea was to display them as polaroids after finding an app that would make any image you wanted into a polaroid. After printing them off I decided that this wasn't the most effective way of displaying my work as they where quite small and I felt didn't have much of an impact. My second idea was then to display them as a photobooth strip, with one strip for each person and as you move down the strip the person in each picture would get older. I liked this idea because, usually the photos are taken a few seconds after each other, whereas these photos have years separating them making it confusing and much moor interesting to look at. Also this composition is quite simplistic, and therefore not taking any attention away from the main subject and idea behind it. This was the display idea that I used for my final piece. I was very happy with how it turned out, however for my initial display idea of polaroides, I did want to add some information, about each photograph, like the time and place it was taken, and maybe the reason why it was taken and the polaroids allowed me to do this and the photobooth strip did not.
Overall I am very pleased with unit two and my final outcome. I really enjoyed all the experimenting that lead to my final piece and how my work has developed over the unit. I also liked the freedom we where given in how and what we could create as this made it much more interesting, fun and rewarding to do.
I have looked and researched lots of photographers for inspiration in my own work. The artists that influenced my work the most where Christian Boltanski, Joachim Schmid and Annette Massager. I discovered these artists when researching artists linked to the theme Ritual on pinterest. Joachim Schmid was my starting point in developing my idea and refining it. His use of appropriation in his work really intrigued me as I agree with how he believes there are already so many photos in the world that aren't being used, so why not create something new out of them. This is what gave me the idea of not necessarily using photos that I've taken, but photos from the past. Another main theme of his work is portraits. I hadn't previously taken or used portraits in my work so this interested me further in his work and how it would influence my own.
This use of appropriation in photography really interested me after finding these photos of the view on top of this mountain, as the most recent pictures I had taken, but the ones from 11 years ago where not taken by me. My brother was also in these photos, which made them even more interesting as you could not only notice the changes that occurred in the surrounds, but how my brother had changed after 11 years. This was when I discovered Christian Boltanski as one of his pieces showed the development and changes of a boy into a man through the ritual of taking pictures over the years. This was when I began to think about the ritual of taking pictures, something that everybody does but it isn't usually seen as a ritual to a lot of people. I liked the idea of showing the changes in a person after time had past and a one way of displaying this idea was through passport and ID photos. I thought of this idea as it is something that everybody has do from a young age, people also usually do the same facial expression in these photos so this would make it clearer to compare old and resent portraits. This idea would also involve appropriation as I wouldn't be able to take these photos. However I would have to take some pictures my self as I wanted to experiment with the selphie Printer. This is a specialised photo printer that has a clear protective layer on top of the image, much like a passport or ID photo so this was a possible way of making these images as realistic as possible. I took some of my own portraits of people to experiment and see how they turned out, however I wasn't pleased with the outcome as the pictures came out very dark and no very good quality so I decided to think of other ways of displaying my ideas.
The idea of showing the changes in the appearance of someone through the ritual of taking pictures really interested me. So I wanted to find some of the ID photos taken of my family over the years. I wanted to be able to show the different stages and changes that people go through, and how this ritual of taking pictures allows you to notice them. I found a range of pictures of my mum and my brother from young children till now and wanted to display these in an effective way to show my idea and response to ritual. My first idea was to display them as polaroids after finding an app that would make any image you wanted into a polaroid. After printing them off I decided that this wasn't the most effective way of displaying my work as they where quite small and I felt didn't have much of an impact. My second idea was then to display them as a photobooth strip, with one strip for each person and as you move down the strip the person in each picture would get older. I liked this idea because, usually the photos are taken a few seconds after each other, whereas these photos have years separating them making it confusing and much moor interesting to look at. Also this composition is quite simplistic, and therefore not taking any attention away from the main subject and idea behind it. This was the display idea that I used for my final piece. I was very happy with how it turned out, however for my initial display idea of polaroides, I did want to add some information, about each photograph, like the time and place it was taken, and maybe the reason why it was taken and the polaroids allowed me to do this and the photobooth strip did not.
Overall I am very pleased with unit two and my final outcome. I really enjoyed all the experimenting that lead to my final piece and how my work has developed over the unit. I also liked the freedom we where given in how and what we could create as this made it much more interesting, fun and rewarding to do.