Term Dates

Just a reminder – term ends w/c 14 th December 2009, and we start again (yippee!) already w/c 4th January 2010.

I would like to see some work in progress from you during the last week of term – GCSE, AS and A2 – so plan for a group critique.  Images on memory stick, or available through Flickr will do fine….

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Le jardin d’ébène

Lots of good photography blog sites out there – tripped over this one this morning when i should have been working…  They are a good way of discovering photographers you might otherwise never have heard of through some more structured research.  I found a reference to Francesca Woodman in another photographer’s work – Sara Ramo – which I found while i was on the Guardian site.   Google did the rest.

Francesca Woodman

I wasn’t really up to speed with Jim Fiscus – this blog would make me go off and look him up.

Jim Fiscus

It’s all a bit dark – but that’s the idea…  http://ebonygarden.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/francesca-woodman/

Bad ideas … a detail from Sara Ramo's Invasion of Everything That Was Restrained

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Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs

Interesting article from Guardian based on exhibition of Victoria photography at the British Library.

Rosemary Hill writes:  “The early Victorians were the first generation to see themselves through the camera lens, but the idea of photography, the possibility of making an exact reproduction of visual experience, was one – like flight and the philosophers’ stone – that had haunted the imagination of inventors for centuries. The “camera obscura” or “dark room” that could project images on to a blank surface was known in antiquity, but a long hiatus followed. Then, at the end of the 18th century it was found that paper coated in silver nitrate would retain the image of an object placed on it for a tantalising moment before it faded.”

Captain Henry Duberly, paymaster of the 8th Hussars, with his wife Frances Isabella during the Crimean war, 1855. Photograph: Roger Fenton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Full article here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/28/british-library-victorian-photography-exhibition

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Paul Kenny

One of my favourite British B&W photographers – I found his work several years ago, then lost his name… found an article on him in a magazine this evening.  Large Format, very old kit, great simplicity and dramatic printing.

Paul Kenny - sea stone no 7

See how long it takes you to articulate a connection between his work and the three themes – edge, chaos, and identity.  Easy, isn’t it.

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Edge – Sophie Rickett

Suddenly remembered this from last year – can’t remember why we were looking – but  Sophie Rickett’s work is all about exploring things at the edge of light and dark.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/sophie_rickett/

Do keep me in touch with your ideas and preparatory work – I’m happy to give feedback by email in between lessons. Working on using Flickr as an easy way to have images to look at in class and get peer feedback – watch this space.

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London trip – possible exhibition for 2010

Jean Shrimpton © David Bailey for Vogue, courtesy of Bonhams.

Have just seen this – http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=871458 – a David Bailey 1960s retrospective.  If that works alongside the Deutsche Borse prize at the Photographers Gallery, we might have a rough time frame.

Can always fill in with Tate Modern or V&A, or just see what else is on closer to time.

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Chaos/Edge

Anyone out there doing something with rain patterns?  Just looking out the window at the squalls coming across Swanage Bay (OK, I have to squint between the buildings on the other side of the road, but the Isle of Wight is there some days…), and if you’re up for braving the weather, and take care to keep camera dry (thick bin liners are good), then there is much work to be done.  Lens hoods help keep rain drops off the lens too. really important – it’s very hard to clone drop marks off an image – just easier to keep lesn cap in hand and shut up lens in between shots.  that and keeping lens pointed down is good.

This would be a chance to practice with some Harold Edgerton high speed flash stuff – something Ross seems to have mastered, if you want to know how to do it.  Er – flash and water.  How can I put this…?  Keep everything very very dry – lots of volt things flying around in an electric flash. Maybe look for a puddle just by the door….

Patterns made and broken, colours and form distorted through vertical water on glass.  There is a part of Swanage beach where – if the swell is just swell – we get a cruciform wave, as two waves at right angles run through each other.  Ok – that’s not chaos, but just before or after?

Maybe waves have an identity too.  Wave forms underlay the identity of all energy and matter in the universe, apparently.

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It’s not the kit, but…

Technology just keeps going, doesn’t it?

It really doesn’t matter what sort of camera you have to make good photography – but some subjects do need special equipment.

What does this say about photography’s role in revealing detail not just to scientists but to the rest of us?  Painters hated the specificity of detail that photography brought along – just at the point where they were starting to paint again in near perfect detail.

“These incredible images show dazzling Las Vegas from the sky at night.

For the first time, incredibly detailed pictures depicting the glitzy location – using technology that has only been developed in the past 18 months – have been brought together in a book, called Las Vegas At Night.

The stunning series was taken by renowned aerial photographer Jason Hawkes, from Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in March.”

Etc. – Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1229539/Lighting-Las-Vegas-Stunning-night-time-pictures-Sin-City-gaudy-glory.html#ixzz0XXOG6NMn

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Photo Competitions

I have seen quite a few photographs coming over the desk that would be worth submitting to a competition – this one might be just the thing for those traditional landscapes.

http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2009/11/20/118826/FW-Photography-Competition-2009.htm

If you want to have a go, but are not sure what to choose, I’ll help you go through a selection…

PS – if you are still not receiving emails to let you know about new articles on the blog, go to the Subscribe to Posts page and add your email address there.

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And finally – workbooks/portfoliios GCSE/AS

Can you please bring in what you have in the way of notes/workbooks/etc for w/c 23/11 – I need to have a look to make sure you are on the right lines….

Optional for A2…

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DIY film processing

Photography is technically very simple.

It has to be – people don’t suddenly invent complex processes – they start with simple ideas that get refined over time and use to be complex.  Fox Talbot was a country gent experimenting with very basic equipment and ideas – by our standards.

We have already looked at how simple a camera can be – the processing the film uses very basic ingredients too.  How basic? How about processing both B&W and colour film in caffeine?

I looked these site out this morning for an ex-student who is now at the AUCB – thought you might be interested.

http://www.shutterbug.com/techniques/film_processing/0903sb_coffee/

http://www.lomography.com/magazine/tipster/2009/03/21/diy-c-41-film-coffee-process

http://www.foundphotography.com/2009/05/receipe-for-processing-film-with-coffee-aka-caffenol/

Have also dug out some links for older processes – it may seem irrelevant, but some of these vintage techniques have a great sense of style, and many of them are coming back. Easy enough to recreate the feel of many of them digitally, too.  Some reference to older and experimental processes also useful in your workbooks…  If nothing else, you should be aware of Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre.

A really good site is part of the V&A website -  http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/ – I often subject new classes to this, so you may well have got off lightly.   It isn’t just historical – some good contemporary work too, but it does include brief explanations of historical processes.  If you are tempted – and some, like cyanotype – are very easy and safe to do, and for which the materials can be bought in kit form – many of the processes are described at http://www.alternativephotography.com/index.html.

Kits for processes like cyanotype (seaweed, anyone?) can be found here.  Have a look for Anna Atkins in the V&A website.  (Susan Derges and Adam Fuss for more up to date work).  Photogrammes can be created with digital scanners too – just remember to clean the glass afterwards!

Anna Atkins

Next week – making your own scanning electron microscope for those really quite close up shots….

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Martin Bogren

Martin Bogren

Let’s see what you make of this – continuing the line of Scandinavian photographers… I would be interested to hear what you think makes up his style, and what might make up his working practice.  What sort of camera do the image proportions of some of the series  suggest? How does that fit with the movement?

The short essay ‘Ocean’ charts the first encounter with the sea of – hang on, let’s hear what the Guardian has written:

Martin Bogren’s Ocean (2008) is the photographic equivalent of a great short story: 16 black-and-white images of a group of Indian men frolicking in the sea. Bogren’s introduction tells you all you need to know. “There is no sea in Rajasthan. The journey from the inner [sic] of India took almost one day and a night. Thousand miles on lousy roads. The bus arrived an hour ago. A new day breaks over the Indian Ocean. It is the first time they touch the sea.”

The Guardian article is worth a look too – http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/nov/16/conceptual-photography-prizes

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Right – I’m back…

Sorry about last week – some sort of unnamed viral infection, apparently. Hope you all got the message in time, and managed to do something profitable.

This week I need to catch up with whatever progress you have made with your theme ideas (GCSE and AS/A2), then look at  a group critique in a couple of weeks.  I really want to look at your burgeoning portfolios too!

Speaking of which  I would appreciate anyone who did the GCSE last year letting me borrow a portfolio or two as example for current class.

Some of you will have heard of the New Topographics – well worth a look.  The original exhibition has been recreated – commentary is accessible, and does set out what this exhibition identified – a radical mood swing in how we photograph landscape.   http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-photos15-2009nov15,0,6215740.story – link to some photos at top right of their page.

Also having problems with this blogging software – can’t get it to accept any more email addresses for some reason, so some of you won’t be getting the email alert – sorry.

And – just heard that BAl has had another virus problem, and method of loading your images will now be long and tedious – so worth considering other ways of showing and sharing work.  in the Spring term we will need to be able to bring in large image files for printing – but we can get away with small web versions for now.  Some of you use Flickr, and I did set up a Flickr group three years ago that no-one used.  How would you feel about using Flickr to share images across the class? It would be private, although I’m tempted to mix GCSE and AS/A2.  Let me know this week please.

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Responding to a Theme

This website is quite fun – www.visualthesaurus.com – it creates a sort of mind map from a thesaurus.  You could try this sort of thing yourselves – visual is good for photographers?

Was wondering this morning – might ‘Edge’ imply a contrast between two things? Light:Dark, Life:Death, In:Out?

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Diane Arbus – the movie

Folks – this is probably far too late, but I’m sat at PC and the TV behind me has announced the Diane Arbus biopic – so if anyone is out there, try tuning to – hang on – Film Four: Fur – an imaginary portrait.
Mind you – it does say ‘highly fictionalised’…

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Possible London trip

Would anyone be interested in trying to get together a group visit to some photography exhibitions in London?  It would have to be either a Friday, a weekend, or out of term time – and probably impossible to get a date that suits everyone.  It would also have to be ‘unofficial’ – so not a minibus job orgaised under auspices of BAL – I’m envisaging either coach or train with everyone managing their own transport arrangements.

Hard to choose when to go, but something significant like the  The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize – 12 February – 17 April 2010 – might be a target around which other things might be fitted.  This might help – www.spoonfed.co.uk.

Let me know if you are interested in principle, and I’ll see what we can sort out…

PS – Line of Lividity

I know at least one of you out there (you know who you are…) has talked about a body of work based on death and dying.

www.primoalonso.com

This is not a challenge…

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test gcse content

test GCSE page content

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Text Portraits

Remember that newspaper advert last week? Don’t know who created that, but Ralph Ueltzhoeffer works in this arena – mixing portraits created by other photographers with biographical data on the subject drawn from the internet. Their life is writ large not just on their face but is their face…  Their is a computer element to what he does too – a deliberate play upon the potential of the digital medium to go beyond the mere removal of the need to have a film processed.

Identity, anyone?

Ueltzhoeffer Ralph -Textportrait - Jenny Holzer

There is an English version of his website if you look hard.

Jenny Holzer, whose portrait this is, also works with text – projecting ‘truisms’ onto scenes and then photographing the result.

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100 years of great press photographs – Guardian

It would be a shame if we couldn’t get the complete set together…

“Honest. Gritty. Raw. Or just plain beautiful.

From striking images from the front line of conflicts to the moving social documentary of every day events, see the greatest press photographs of the last hundred years in our nine-day collectable series, free every day in the Guardian and the Observer, starting this weekend.”

(6th November)

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Markus Amm -Photogramme meets Vortograph

I was taken by Jeff’s comments on Alvin Langdon Coburn and his later Vortograph photos – I tried to work out how these had been done last year, and failed – so well done.

Then, in one of those serendipitous moments i really enjoy, this popped up today.  Markus Amm isn’t creating anything like a Vortograph, but i think there is the sense of a parallel road being followed…  See what you think.

Marcus Amm - Untitled, 1999

Don’t forget you can create photographic images without a camera, and digital photogrammes with a scanner.

PS – I found him from a mention in this article – you might look up the Wolfgang Tillmans  ‘Mental Pictures’ too.  They are better than you might expect…

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