Unit 2: Ritual
Why I chose this theme?
I have selected ritual as my theme for my exam. I did this because I like the large range of different aspects and ways of interpreting ritual as it can relate to such a wide variation of topics and ideas, I think experimenting with all these different ideas based around ritual will be really interesting and its very different to anything I've done before and so It stood out to me. INITIAL PLAN:
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Initial Response to theme:
Here I was thinking about all the different rituals people experience. Birthdays, something almost everyone celebrates, seemed to stand out. Here I have some recent, and some old photos taken of me and some of my family on our birthdays. This ritual is celebrating your life and growing older and marks the day you were born. This ritual has small rituals within itself, such as cake with candles, gatherings with your family and friends and a song, these are small things we have added to this ritual.With the images that I took myself tried to capture the moment when they blow out the candles, and then pick others doing the same thing. This is a big ritual, to have candles on your cake, 1 for every year you have been alive, and blow then out and make a wish.
The ritual of taking pictures:
After initially thinking about the ritual of birthdays, and how we celebrate as we grow older, I began to think about the ritual of simply taking pictures of people. Not necessarily because of a birthday, or any other well known rituals, but taking them when you want for no particular reason. People take pictures everyday, and due to new technology it as been made even easier. These pictures can be used to capture memories, to remember things more clearly instead of relying on what you remember, and taking pictures of people as they grow older is something many people do, whether it be for a passport photo, ID card, oyster card or just to keep and remember. This idea really interested me so I decided to look through some old pictures and see if I could find anything to show/ represent this idea.
11 Years later...
After taking these pictures I found some old pictures that where taken 11 years ago. They are taken in Vancouver, Canada in the same spot, at very similar angles, however there is a 11 year gap between them. Whenever my family go to Canada it is a ritual for us to climb this mountain to look at the amazing view at the top, and this ritual has been captured with pictures. This allows you to not only remember the time that these images where taken but you begin to notice the differences and changes as they become easier to notice when put side by side. The most obvious change in these images being how different my brother looks after 11 years have past. I have printed these images out and mounted them on board. I like the fact that not only do the subjects of the pictures look different the the quality of them are also different, due to the development in technology. This piece reminds me of Christian Boltanski's work showing the boy as he grows up, however I have also involved a picture of the location as in Boltanski's work the focus is purely on the boy, but I wanted people to be able to notice the differences in the surroundings as well.
Mind Map: Ideas so far.
I wanted to think of an effective way to show the idea of the rituals of taking photos, and so I thought ID and passport photos would be good as they are and annual thing that everyone has to do. They also mean that the person in the Photograph will be in the same position with a blank/plain face. This will make it easier to compare the photos and notice the changes that occur.
Joachim Schmid
Joachim Schmid is a photographer who uses other peoples photographs to create his,own intriguing art work. He uses other peoples photographs that they either loose or throw away in public, especially if they seem to have been discarded angrily or with some strong feelings. |
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Obviously Joachim Schmid work focusses on portraits, something I have not yet experimented with before, and so this intrigued me to look at his work. I like the roughness and imperfect composition of his work. I decided to take my own set of portraits, and I want to experiment with them, with influence from Joachim Schmid's work. I wanted them to be quite blank faced, as if posing for a passport photo, to show this ritual of annual portraits taken for any kind of ID cards. |
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Set#1
Here I wanted to take some images in a similar style to ID or passport photos to experiment with.
Selphy Printer
After taking my first set of images, I wanted to print them or display them in a way that made them look like authentic ID or passport photos. so I decided to print them out on a cannon selphy, a printer especially used for printing small images around the size of a postcard. To print these images it goes through a gradation of different colours and processes.
To arrive at the finished product, the images have to go through several passes with the dye sublimation. The first layer of colour is yellow. This is the lightest colour used, as it can then be built on top of with darker colours. |
First you begin with a plain. postcard sized piece of paper with a protective layer covering it ( this is also what drew me to using a selphy printer as most pasport photos or ID card also have a protective layer). |
The next layer of colour is red, and here you can begin to see the images more clearly as more of the details are shown, as red will allow darker shadows and lines to appear more vivid. Lastly black is added and this is the finished product:
I don't think this outcome was very effective. The pictures came out very dark and slightly blurry, also the backgrounds of each individual photo are all different brightnesses and so when placed next to each other they look strange. The quality is not very good as to print from the selphy printer I had to take a picture of a picture and this made it hard to make them perfectly focussed. I don't think I will use this printer for my final piece as I want to experiment with other ideas and display strategies.
Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker. Self-taught, he began painting in 1958 but was first noticed in the late 1960's with his short films. In the 1970's, photography became Boltanskis's favoured medium. In 1986 Boltanski began making installations from variety of materials and media, with light effects. In these works he used portrait photographs of Jewish school children taken in Vienna in 1931, they acted as reminders of the mass murder of jews by the nazis. He would also fill entire rooms with items and clothing worn in concentration camps. |
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I am really interested in his work, and his use of portraits and how he arranges his work. I like the mass amounts of portraits he displays and his use of light and shadow.
I want to try and experiment with his style of display, within my own work.
I want to try and experiment with his style of display, within my own work.
This image, made by Christian Boltanski, shows the development and changes of a boy as he grows up. He is stood in the same setting and in a similar pose in each different photograph; the only thing that does change is the boy as he turns into a man. The actual images seem quite authentic like they have been taken by a family, not for the purpose of art or to be displayed, but simply for personal reasons. They are also in black and white and have writing around them perhaps saying the different years they where taken in. The fact that the boy is stood in the same place, surrounded by the same things in each picture is very effective, as it makes you focus purely on the boy and his physical changes and not where he is stood. The arrangement of his work also allows you to focus on the main topic of these images, the boy, as it is very simple. They are laid in two rows of five with nothing surrounding them but a black border.
I think the main purpose of this image is to capture the changes a person goes through as they grow up through the ritual of taking pictures as these developments occur, to allow you to not only spot the changes that happen but to remember what he once looked like. Christian Boltanski's use of appropriation in his work, could have been one of the things that drew him towards using these images in his work as he did not take them himself and they also fit in with some of the other main themes of his work. His previous work displays portraits of jewish holocaust victims, showing his interest in history. These images also continue with this theme of history and time this sense of trying to remember things, or as an attempt remind your self of things that happened in the past. Also Christian Boltanski's fascination of people through time would have also drawn him to these images.
I think the main purpose of this image is to capture the changes a person goes through as they grow up through the ritual of taking pictures as these developments occur, to allow you to not only spot the changes that happen but to remember what he once looked like. Christian Boltanski's use of appropriation in his work, could have been one of the things that drew him towards using these images in his work as he did not take them himself and they also fit in with some of the other main themes of his work. His previous work displays portraits of jewish holocaust victims, showing his interest in history. These images also continue with this theme of history and time this sense of trying to remember things, or as an attempt remind your self of things that happened in the past. Also Christian Boltanski's fascination of people through time would have also drawn him to these images.
Annette Messager.
Annette Massager is a French, visual artist. She is mainly known for her instillation work which usually involves photographs, prints, drawings and various materials. One of her most famous pieces is called 'The messengers' which involves a series of photographs, toys like hand knitted animals that are arranged on a wall. Some of the heads of the animal toys are sometimes replaced or swapped with other toys heads to represent the idea that people disguise there identities through costumes. What really interests me about her work is the amount of photographs she shows together and how she choses to display them, which is extremely effective and I want to try and display my work in a similar way. Her work also shares many similarities to Christian Boltanski's work. |
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Final Ideas:
After looking at christian Boltanski's image, which shows a boy as he grows older, I wanted to find some old images of a person, and then be able to compare them with more recent pictures. I found some old photos of my mum, and with them I want to experiment with this idea. I am also interested in Boltanski's use of appropriation as I have not taken these photos my self, but Im using pre-existing photographs and then creating something new. There are already so many images in the world that are not being used or shown, and I like the idea of making something out of them.
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Experiment #1
Here I have made a small time line of images showing my mum and my brother at the different stages in there lives. Having them put side by side allows you to notice the changes that occur. I want to somehow display these images effectively, and I think they should be placed close together and quite small, almost the real size of an average ID card. This way I think they will appear more realistic.
First display idea:
My first idea was to display them as polaroids. Due to the style and shape of a polaroid, the space at the bottom of the boarder would allow me to add the information about the photo, like the time, place and reason these pictures where taken. I made this set by using an app that made them look like polaroids taken on a real polaroid camera. With these I want to print them out and write directly on them, and mount them on card to make them stand out a bit more.
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Second display idea: (Final Piece)
My second idea is to display them as a Photo Booth strip. This would mean the would be placed close together and therefore be able to compare them easily. It also makes them more interesting to look at because usually in each photo taken in a Photo Booth strip is taken a few seconds afterwards, and not much change occurs. However these photos have been taken years apart from each other, therefore at first glance could be quite confusing and make you want to understand what is happening. I like the fact that there displayed in a simplistic way, this means that you focus directly on the subject of the picture and nothing else, also making them stand out more.
However 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.I decided that I wanted to display them not only in this photo booth style but also very large , so the faces are life size. This also makes it confusing as a photo booth strip is usually quite small and want to do the opposite to this. I wanted to make the actual images black and white, I think this makes them seem much older and realistic also because the backgrounds where different colours and this way they look more effective as a photo booth strip. |
Final Piece.
Before actually making and mounting this piece I wanted to make some practice versions so I was able to see what they would look like, these are shown above. To do this I used photoshop. First I need to create the background layer. This would be the size of the strip so I had to make it the perfect size to fit four images on each strip, therefore I made the width of the strip 800 and hight 3600. |
I then wanted to make sure that each image would be exactly the same size and fit perfectly on the strip. So I created a new guide, by splitting the strip into four equal sections. This way the images would fit equally. I kept the same guide for my second strip, so the process was much faster and they both where the same size. |
I then had to create the black boarder that would go around the strip. So I made a stroke that was 20% around the outside. To create the lines that would go in between each separate image I just used the line tool, and because of the new guide I had made I new exactly where to place them. This boarder is what would make them look like a photo booth strip so it was important that it looked a realistic. |
Making the Photo Booth strip:
I liked how my practice version turned out so I decided to go forward and make it. First I had to re-scan the images that I was using to make them a higher resolution, so when I enlarge them they wouldn't be too pixilated. I then printed them out separately in A3, so that they would be life size, and mounted them on to board. I then had to create the black boarder that goes around the outside of the strip and in between the separate images. At first I was going to make it out of black card but I decided to use black tape to do this instead as I think the slight shine that in on the tape makes them look more realistic, also tape would be quicker and easier to use.
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