Format case study: Bruce Gilden

I've chosen to look at Bruce Gilden as my Format case study photographer, as we had to relate it to our essay topic, I think he fits in well, due to his paparazzi style of photography.

Gilden is well known for his, sometimes, crazy approach to capturing his subjects. Using the ..."Pretend like im a tourist, im going to walk almost completely past you, then jump in front of you hold my flash in your face then photograph you" ...approach, he captures some interesting subject matter.

He scouts out 'personalities' and 'quirks' within people who are simply walking down the street going about their daily business, once he has seen them he uses the above approach, pretending he is looking at something nearby then quickly jumps in front of them and uses off camera flash to capture and freeze his subject.

The aesthetic of his work is obviously not the same as Jessica Layton, my essay subject, but they have quite alot in common in terms of their work. Both Gilden & Layton aim to show peoples personalities within their images, Gilden capturing them off guard with his spontaneous approach and Layton with her, dress up in their clothes and photograph herself in their house surrounded by their possessions.

They both satisfy this voyeuristic side of the world and the curiosity we possess and the urge of NEEDING to know about other people, and what happens behinds closed doors.

Gilden's image from streets of derby 

Laytons image 'The House Sitting Project' Portrait as Mimi taken by Sue Chow'

Contextual Artist Statement Task

Chris concentrated on the theme of the art of tattooing, documenting the rising popularity of the culture that has entered the lives of the masses in the 21st century. Shadowing the four artists, it was apparent that tattoos aren’t just drawing and ink: they are artwork. Exploring the entire process, from the initial sketches to the final pieces, Chris aimed to produce a professional series of images fitting both a live commercial brief and the ‘Getting Modern’ documentary project.

Furthermore, Chris’s images also fulfil, somewhat, Jacques Lacan’s theory of ‘The Gaze’. Most apparently, the art of tattooing is relevant to the Mirror Stage and the Symbolic Order Stage. The Mirror Stage allows one to give subjectivity to one’s self and create an ideal ego within culture. Tattoo’s can be viewed as achieving and cementing one’s position within culture; for example following tradition. Tattoos, however, can also feed one’s egotistical and narcissistic tendencies, which is compliant with the Symbolic Order Stage.  This can be fuelled by the validation of others, for example the complimenting on a piece of skin artwork. 

06 - TASK - Globalisation Research

Globalization is a term which describes the act of an economy or society spreading 'globally'. A prime example of this is the sushi chain 'Yo Sushi'. There are hundreds of these eateries popping up all over the UK, and yet this was something that up until recently was a japanese thing. Japan pushes out alot of its cultural and societies to the world.

A photographer who has visually commented upon the issue of globalisation and hints of capitalism is Andreas Gursky. Producing, incredibly large scale, colour imagery, he often shows scenes of great gathering in multicultural gatherings, mainly in business and economical matters. An example of this is his piece of the trading on the stock exchange floor.

He shows hundreds, thousands of people, all going about the daily business, but with it being on such a large scale, individuals are still indistinguishable. They appear tiny within the image and make you look at the entire scene rather than focusing on the individuals and what they are doing. These images seem as though they could commenting on several things, with the main being it could be commenting on the unimportance of the individuals in todays society, wether your in or out, somebody else will be there to step in and take your place, if you die only members of your family are affected, the world still continues as if you never existed. Or he could be commenting on how we all need to come together and enforce/embrace globalisation to ensure that together we can all move forward, together, as one.

Lesson 06 - Globalisation

Lecture 05 - Hyper reality

05 - TASK - Repetitions

Repetitions

Ed Ruscha was a photographer i remember looking into in Year 1 contextual studies. He produced a book entitled "Twentysix Gasoline Stations". The book was exactly what it said on the tin, on each page was an image of a gas station, beneath it, text detailing the brand and location.

He has been very methodical for this project apart from one or two images. All of the gas stations are on route 66 from west to east, LA to Texas. The images are taken from different angles, but still maintain this repetition link, which enables them to flow well together in the book. 5 stations are moved out of order that you would encounter them driving along route 66. 3 of them were taken at night, 1 of them out of a car window and only 1 of the images has a human presence. 

The images seem to have intentionally aimed to not have human presence in them, with as good as all images being empty, and shot from across the  highway.

The industrial simulacra transforms the natural world. Signs, as featured in Ruscha's work are mass produced on a large scale and originate through material production.

Lesson 05 - Repetitions

Lecture 04 - Communication Theory Notes

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Lesson 04 - The Rhetoric of Images Notes

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Task 4 - The Rhetoric of Images

Andy Warhol. Printmaker, Film Maker & Painter. He had a heavy and influential part in the Pop Art revolution in the 60’s. He is primarily known for his repetitive style of repeating an object / image several times but changing the colour range of each. The Warhol image of Marilyn Monroe is one of the most over used images of the art world. It is a screen print based on the original work of Gene Korman originally deriving from a promotional image for a film she starred in. Using his style, the work is rather dry & repetitive and could be described as reading 3 or 4 newspapers all from the same day, telling you the same stories just in a slightly different way. Each image in warhols ‘grid’ format, using slightly different colours for each of the images which doesn’t really help make this work anymore visually stimulating to me. Warhol was known for having abit of an attachment to his subject, in this instance, and as such, she became the inspiration for  several pieces of his work. There is no doubt that Warhol dramatically impacted on Monroes career through his work, in a highly positive way, and is why even younger people are aware of who Monroe is and have seen the Warol prints of her. I don’t personally feel as though the work has anything to say, although I’m sure you can pull meaning from it. You could say that Warhol put Marilyn on a pedastal and raised her up even further into the public eye, continuing to do so decades after her death.

Lecture 03 - The Gaze Notes

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Lesson 03 - The Gaze Notes

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Task 3 - Photographer Image Construction

Helmut Newton

 Original

YSL

In Helmut Newtons image for Paris Vogue in 1975, we see a breakthrough image of the time. There are two images that are very similar, the first is the original, featuring the nude woman ‘Rue Aubriot’ for French Vogue, Paris. The second is the one produced from the original, but used as an advertisement for Yves Saint Laurent called ‘Le Smoking’. If we focus on the original image first, it follows his style which a lot of people deemed ‘Porno Chic’. His work outraged feminists, which only increased the attention his work was receiving, and in one instance they destroyed his images being exhibited by splattering paint over them. The naked model has her arm on the model in the suit but she looks like she is made from stone, like the affection that the nude model is giving to her is not being felt, received or reciprocated. The nude model looks as though she has been trying to get through to the suited woman but is just about to give up, both faces are emotionless. We are given access to the top half of the nude lady and almost full access to the woman in the suit, she has quite a manly pose with the cigarette and the foot outstretched on the pavement. The aim, especially the YSL image, is to show the new tuxedo suit, which was the first of its kind to be accepted in the fashion world/popular culture. It began this style of clothing for women that was made popular by this image by Newton. It was seen to give women power as they now had the option to wear the clothes worn by men who were seen as powerful and influential, and by wearing these similar clothes they too would be perceived in the same way. The gaze within this work features in such a way that the woman expresses her own attitude to herself, and how she wants to appear to men. Wearing the suit and the stance she is presenting in the image, she is commanding the power that men receive. She is drawing power from being impressive in the eyes of the viewer and almost assuming the role and idea of the mans presence is dependant upon the promise of power.

Lecture 02 - Socialism Notes

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Lesson 02 - Mechanical reproduction Notes

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Task 2 - Documentary Photographer

Brian Walski

Brian Walski WAS a staff photographer for the LA Times magazine. However on the 31^st March 2003, LA Times magazine published his photo of a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to take cover from Iraqi fire in Basra.  After being published, it was noticed that several civilians could be seen twice in the photo which raised suspicions into the images credibility. Walski was telephoned whilst still in Iraq and he admitted to having used computer editing software to blend the two original images together, to create the one final image, taking the two moments apart to combine into an ‘improved’ image. The Times policy states news images cannot be edited and so he was fired.

Real Photos (Below):

Altered image (Below):

Above you can see the two top images are the originals and below the image that was created and published. You can see that on the left side of the COMBINED image you can see two civilians repeated in and around the soldiers legs.

Walski, in my opinion knew completely what he was doing and as you can see chose to create a much more aggressive and confrontational image, where the soldier appears to be warning the man off with his gun, however the man, clutching his child is running to him for help. What is actually happening is the man looks as though he is moving away from the tank that is approaching in the background whilst the soldier is simply directing people out of its way and to sit down and stay still.

Dorothea Lange

The next image I chose to analyze is ‘Migrant Mother’ by Dorothea Lange, a famous image and probably the most well known from the ‘Dust Bowl’ era. The image was shot in Nipomo, California in March 1963 and is a perfect example of how the art of post production has progressed from this to something like the above image of the soldier.

A lot of people are totally unaware that this image has ever been touched in terms of editing and I must admit I didn’t spot the editing at first glance. Heres the edited published image:

And now here is a crop showing the original image and the edited version:

As you can see it hasn’t been completely removed as it is quite hard when using traditional darkroom film processes, but is still removed enough to make it almost invisible. It is of understanding that Lange removed the thumb as it was a distraction to the viewer and she wanted the viewer to focus upon the emotion within the face of the mother and her children.

Lecture 01 - Panopticism Notes

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Lesson 01 - Surveillance & Voyeurism Notes

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Task 1 - Surveillance

Image 1 – Jordan Crandall ‘Drive – Track 3’ (video stills)

I chose to look at one of the stills from Jordan Crandall’s ‘Drive – Track 3’. Drive is a seven piece video that contrasts the history of film against the history of war.  He deals with traditional ways of seeing and new technology image production. After having watched a few snippets and seen a few stills from the video, I can tell that one of the main issues Crandall goes into is paranoia. This whole big brother world is the modern version of the Panoptic theory of always being watched and controlled we see being used hundreds of years ago.

It covers one or two other emotions such as tension and how the atmosphere makes the viewer feel quite tense and cautious whilst watching it. The video was made using different video camera’s, including night vision.

Image 2 - Barbara Probst - Exposure #11A - N.Y.C., Duane & Church streets, 06.10.02, 3:07 pm

Probst, ‘Exposure’ series breaks up a photographic moment, of a place, person or event, into several different points of view. Using multiple camera’s and triggers, she wirelessly fires the multiple camera’s at the same time, combining these multiple images then together, side by side. These camera’s contain both black and white & colour film.

Probst works challenges what is traditionally thought of as the photographic image by dramatically breaking the frame, and ‘challenges the conventional ideas about photographic truth”. She isn’t bothered about what is represented, but more how it is shown and how the representation affects the viewer. I think that her images show a fluid representation of time, in an almost cinematic style by fragmenting these images.

Image 3 – Shizuka Yokomizo – Stranger No. 1

Yokomizo produced this incredible series of images entitled ‘Strangers’. By sending her subjects anonymous letters, she asks that they stand in front of a certain window of their house on a specified day at a specified time. At this point she will set up her camera and tripod, takes the image and then quickly leaves. The subjects are told to turn all of their lights on, wear their normal clothes and remain stationary. If a subject does not wish to participate they simply had to let Yokomizo know, by closing their curtains.

To preserve her anonymity, Yokomizo shoots at night so that the subject cannot make out who she is or what she looks like. The images really bring out identity and the environment where both the photographer and the subject come it contact anonymously, as strange as that sounds.

The images are truly brilliant, and the night time light and the subjects artificial light, work well to contrast with each other to produce this end image.

Summary:

I think that all three of these images manage to contrast with each other. The first image by Jordan Crandall, is actually the moving picture and show is obviously quite different in comparison to the other two, using night vision and quite sophisticated technology.

The second image by Barbara Probst, is similar in the way that she is using the technology of wirelessly trigger multiple camera’s. It is opposite in the fact that she is showing the exact same moment in time in several images all taken at the same moment in time and is a mix of both colour and black & white.

The final image by Yokomizo, is taken at night using willing participants in their own comfortable environment and have been asked for their permission to take the images.

All three images are similar in the fact that they are all very voyeuristic but are all portrayed so differently from the technology and type of film/camera used, to the medium of moving picture versus still images to, finally, the end result of both posed and candid, participants who are unaware of these images.