My class collages
In class we had many books spread across the table and our job was to tear out pages according to random numbers and dates, we had to pull out pages for our birthdays, so i pulled out page 6, 3, and 98 because my birthday is 6th march 1998, and then i pulled out the page numbers according to my mobile number and so on until i have a mix of different images from all different books that were about different topics. Then after i made the first collage, i got 2 die and i rolled them both at the same time and if i got 4 on the first die and 6 on the second, i would tear out page 46, and i did this ten times until i had ten pages chosen by chance and then i then picked our all of the photos that i thought either linked or were just completely random and didn't make sense, above are the results of these processes.
The 'bizarre' homework.
For the 'bizarre' homework everyone was asked to bring is their hairbrush that had hair in it and a bag of dust from their hoover at home to make photograms with, i experimented with putting the hair in the lense of the enlarger and i also messed around with the focus of the photograms too and below are the outcomes, some are better than others because the more i made the quicker i found out that the light exposure had to be much shorter, so the photograms got better with the more i made.
Messing with chance.
In this lesson we each had to get a book and flick to a random page without look at its content and we had to point at a random word on the page with our eyes shut, we repeated this process about 6 times so we had at least 6 words in total and we had to make a sentence with those words, above are the words I received by chance and sentences I created using those words.
Marcel Duchamp - 3 standard stoppages
"In this work, Duchamp took metre long lengths of thread, and let them fall onto a canvas covered in glue. He then made these wooden measuring tools based on these new "standard" shapes that he had randomly created."
3 standard stoppages is a great example of a piece of famous artwork that involves chance, Below I tried to re-create this piece of artwork but in my own way but still involving the role of chance. I measured several parts of my body with a 30cm ruler and then I cut off a piece of string that was that length, I then held that piece of string at the same height as the size of the piece of string, and then after the string landed in a completely random place I outlined the shape it landed in an stuck it down with glue and sprayed over it with spray mount so it was secure on the black paper, it was a great contrast having white string and black paper. |
My take on Marcel Duchamps 3 standard stoppages - 'subjective characterisation'
This experiment gave us the chance to make our own 'self portraits' from cutting off pieces of string at the length of certain body parts, i liked this experiment because it was unusual and if you told someone that is was a self portrait of you they would have a hard time believing it.
Experimenting with the contrast
This original images were quite light and I wanted the images to be a lot sharper and toned. I also wanted both of these images to be of the same tone so when I did merge them together the image wouldn't look odd, I didn't crop these images at all either.
Merging them on photoshopmerging the two images into photoshop was pretty easy, I just opened up both images in photoshop and copy and pasted one onto the other and then i simply just changed the contrast and the opacity because as you can see, in the left one it isn't completely a black tone, i thought that it looked quite murky and dull so i changed the tone and contrast of the image to make it a darker black and i sharpened the image again slightly to make the edges more clear.
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Alfred Stieglitz - Equivalents.
Alfred Stieglitz is an american photographer whose work includes the 'equivalents' displayed below, Alfred Stieglitz photographed clouds from around 1922 going into the early 30's, these were very abstract and they were deemed to be 'equivalents' of his own memories, thoughts, emotions as well as past experiences. Stieglitz made sure to emphasise the abstraction in the series of photographs, he believed that the different patterns, colours, lines and its purest form were 'equal' to all of his emotions, ideas and inner thoughts, he believe these kind of photos were able to show all of this.
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia was a french painter and leading figure of the Dada movement in the early 1920s, he enjoyed producing work filled with hidden messages, double meanings, puzzles and jokes. I really like his images they are quite like collages and the meaning of the images aren't that clear so there is a sense of mystery behind them, they are fun images.
My take on the 'Equivelents'
"The power of the equivalent so far as the expressive-creative photographer is concerned, lies in the fact that he can convey and evoke feelings about things and situations and events which for some reason or other are not or can not be photographed. The secret, the catch and the power lies in being able to use the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera for their expressive- evocative qualities." Minor white, 'equivalence: The Perennial Trend' PSA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 7, PP. 17-21, 1963.
Equivalents photoshoot no.2
3 photos that went well
I think that these photos went well because they are all completely different and they are all pretty random, I like the them all because they all represented my mood at that point in time which was slightly angry and ill, The first one it looks like someone has been scratching off the black decoration on the pole, this could show irritation so I captured this image because it represents the angry side of how I was feeling, the second image, represents angry and ill, as it is a crumpled up piece of paper, it represents my mood because a random individual has crumpled it up themselves and chucked it on the floor and people are standing on it making it more crumpled up, so that represents ill as I feel like im gradually getting worse, just as people keep standing on the piece of paper, it represents angry because the creases just give the impression of aggression. The last image represent anger too, Its a pretty image on a sticker that was stuck on metal bars and then when you look the details close up, its all scratched up and it emphasises the aggression inside me.
Equivalents photoshoot no.3
In this photoshoot I took photos of things in my bedroom, I didn't worry about the angles and I didn't worry about the object I was taking photos of, Some of these are really interesting as you don't know what they are.
John Baldessari - Sequences
I really like these images as it shows the progression of each image and each image shows tells a story of the object being used, even though some of the images look the same as others they are all completely different, they were just taken ever couple of seconds so the change in each image was gradual and it wasn't obvious of what was going on in the image.
Rules of the game
I did like these images however, they looked a bit messy, the angle needed to be changed as the perspective was the thing that was making the images look so messy as I wasn't keeping the camera in the same place as I was looking down so it was pretty hard to do. I then re-took the photoshoot with the same objects but at a different angle, the images are shown below.
The re-take
I feel like these images are much better as the camera is facing the tip of the shoes so I feel as though the images are now more refined and having a backdrop behind the shoes made the images much more appealing.
Rorschach Blots
The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a psychological test consisting of 10 inkblots printed on cards, there were originally five in black and white, five in colour and these were created in 1921, below are some examples of a few of the cards that the test consisted of.
My own Rorschach Blots.
I really enjoyed doing this as when I finished folding the paper I was excited to see what the final result would turn out like, in a lot of these images I could see animals, the first one I could see a cow, the second I could see a clown, the third I could see a deer's skull, the fourth also looked like an animals skull, in the fifth you can see a little lobster at the bottom, and in the sixth one I could see a mix between a zebra and a giraffe. I loved doing this so much I wanted to do more to these images.
Editing them on photoshop
when editing on photoshop (shown above the end results) I did some in black and white and some in colour, I put some of my equivalent images behind the Rorschachs by selecting all of the dark area and replacing them with the image, I feel like the black and white images looked much better as the Rorschachs were black and white so I didn't want to change the style too much, I still wanted them to look like Rorschachs, the chosen six for my first final piece is shown below.
My first final piece.
On photoshop I cut out the black part (the ink blot) and replaced it with another image that I took from when I was making the equivalents, I did this with all of the inkblots, however when I made half of them coloured and the other half black and white I didn’t think it looked right, so I decided to make them all black and white so I had a series of them. I decided to use these as my first final piece but I wanted to present them differently, I didn’t want to just mount them because most people were doing that so I went out shopping and bought about half a dozen photo frames and framed them.
I am so happy with how these turned out, when i showed them to my friends and family i had really positive feedback, they said that they thought they looked really professional and that they would put them on their wall.
I am so happy with how these turned out, when i showed them to my friends and family i had really positive feedback, they said that they thought they looked really professional and that they would put them on their wall.
More experimentation in photoshop
Even though I had already used these Rorschach images for a final piece but I still wanted to edit the images in a different was to shown that I do have other ideas to refine the images in a different way.