The Miraculous - activity 1 ~ Who were the surrealists and why was photography important to them?
I believe that surrealists are people that see 'the miraculous' in everything, its like they have perspective of things when they look at pieces of artwork as they see it differently than what ordinary people do, the can see the story behind the photos, whereas ordinary people just see them as 'clever' pieces of artwork, they dont tend to read between the lines as much as surrealists do. For example, take the image to the right as an example by Clarence John Laughlin, this image sends a really powerful message, to an ordinary person they may just see this and they'll just see 2 people, a mannequin and a dull background whereas surrealists would see a story behind it, they may see the broken mannequin as a child that has died and the woman may be the mother crying, and the man walking away may be the father, or the person that killed the child, surrealists would think up a whole load of possibilities just like that; they bring in realistic ideas and link it in with the image.
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Photography was incredibly important to the surrealists as a camera sees things differently to what people do and when you take a picture of a memory it is there for keeps whereas if you try to remember something like a memory it is very likely that you are gonna forget some of the details whereas you wont if you take a photo, memories fade, photos do not. An example of this is to the right, this is something that you would not see on a regular basis, some surrealists would call it 'the miraculous' by taking a photo of it, it stores every fine little detail into one photograph so there is not a risk of forgetting anything, so that is in my opinion why photography is so important to surrealists.
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Activity 2 - What role did chance play in the work of surrealists?
Exquisite corpse is a game played particularly by surrealists due to the role of chance that takes place in the game, it is where an individual has a piece of paper and they draw on the first quarter of the paper, whether it be an animal, or a face or an object, it can be in as much or as little detail as they want, it is completely down to that individual, but without showing the other people what you drew you fold that section over then the next person does the same thing with the second quarter and so on until each section is complete, then someone opens up the folded image and looks at it. Chance plays a part in this game because you have no idea what the other individuals are drawing so it is near enough impossible to match the drawings together which is why surrealists like this game as it may not make sense but they let chance take over the game.
Here are some examples.With exquisite corpses I love the idea that you do not have to be good at drawing to play this game, It's the idea that you can either draw something wacky or you can really focus on fine detail, either way you have no idea what the other individuals are going to draw. On the right are some examples, some are not so good, some have been drawn by children, and some are completely Bizarre and brilliant, Chance has played a part in every single one of those Exquisite corpses.
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Surrealism home learning - Activity 3
Choose one of your own photographs. On a piece of paper, exactly the same size and shape as the printed image, write a very detailed description of the photograph - its subject, style, composition etc. Try to describe it exactly and in minute detail. When you have finished discard the original photograph, deleting it everywhere it appears or exists so that only the written version of the image remains.
This image isn't the clearest image I have taken however I can't help but feel happy with it, It was taken with my Nokia Lumia 635 phone so therefore the quality wasn't completely perfect. The background and foreground are both out of focus but you can still determine what the subject of the image is and what is in the background. It is like a landscape photo but with a specific subject; The subject of this image is reflection which is fairly obvious when looking at this image, The composition of this image is quite random as I didn't have a choice of moving the subjects as the style was landscape photography so this photo was quite anticipated as I had to wait for the sun to be in the right place to take this photo so I could get into the most suitable position to get what I wanted into the frame. In this image the aperture was quite wide so like i said before, the foreground and background both blurred, this was possibly due to the increased light in the photo because of the subject being the sun reflecting off of the water in a little pond. In the background it is quite basic, there is a large tree and it is quite centered but isnt completely align with the reflection of the sunlight bouncing off of the water which is also centered to the middle of the photograph. Above the light reflection and a little to the left there is a lens flare due to the internal reflection of the sun rays on the sensor of the camera on my phone, I quite like that, it gives the photo more colour. The ripples in the water create repetition, it also creates pattern and a sense of texture in the image, however that is the only form of repetition in this image. The darkness of the tree's creates contrast between the brightness of the sun's reflection in the water therefore casting shadows on the water. The arrangement in this image consisting of the formal elements pattern, repetition, texture and contrast creates a composition of balance and the elements seem to work together to give the photo meaning.
This image isn't the clearest image I have taken however I can't help but feel happy with it, It was taken with my Nokia Lumia 635 phone so therefore the quality wasn't completely perfect. The background and foreground are both out of focus but you can still determine what the subject of the image is and what is in the background. It is like a landscape photo but with a specific subject; The subject of this image is reflection which is fairly obvious when looking at this image, The composition of this image is quite random as I didn't have a choice of moving the subjects as the style was landscape photography so this photo was quite anticipated as I had to wait for the sun to be in the right place to take this photo so I could get into the most suitable position to get what I wanted into the frame. In this image the aperture was quite wide so like i said before, the foreground and background both blurred, this was possibly due to the increased light in the photo because of the subject being the sun reflecting off of the water in a little pond. In the background it is quite basic, there is a large tree and it is quite centered but isnt completely align with the reflection of the sunlight bouncing off of the water which is also centered to the middle of the photograph. Above the light reflection and a little to the left there is a lens flare due to the internal reflection of the sun rays on the sensor of the camera on my phone, I quite like that, it gives the photo more colour. The ripples in the water create repetition, it also creates pattern and a sense of texture in the image, however that is the only form of repetition in this image. The darkness of the tree's creates contrast between the brightness of the sun's reflection in the water therefore casting shadows on the water. The arrangement in this image consisting of the formal elements pattern, repetition, texture and contrast creates a composition of balance and the elements seem to work together to give the photo meaning.