Exhibition Visit
The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection focuses on the first half of the twentieth century, often referred to as photography’s ‘coming of age’. Artists at this time were transforming how photography was used and their experiments and innovations still impact how we see the world today.
"Each of these photographs serves as inspiration for me in my life; they line the walls of my home
and I consider them precious gems. I want people to think, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,
never knew this kind of thing existed’ – just as I did when I first saw these photographs."
— Sir Elton John
"Each of these photographs serves as inspiration for me in my life; they line the walls of my home
and I consider them precious gems. I want people to think, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,
never knew this kind of thing existed’ – just as I did when I first saw these photographs."
— Sir Elton John
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Document your visit
Either scan each page of your booklet and upload the pages to your weebly or, for the very top grade band, expand your research and analysis of individual photographers or the work that you saw. The worksheet document is on the right.
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Starter Homework:
Create an account on Pinterest (https://uk.pinterest.com). This is a brilliant way to search for inspiration. You simply search for different, related themes, photographers or techniques and 'pin' them. Here is the link to Ms Powell's board for the exam theme: Environment
Zoom out, screen shot your collection of images and present on your weebly as an image and/or embed as a link (you will have to make the 'board' public to do this). We will come back to this once the set tasks are complete. Keep adding to this board over the course of the project. You will see more and more A2 students and teacher boards on Pinterest as the project progresses. |
Class Task 1: Public Places
How often do you look at the fabric of the school building? The regimented layout of the tables, chairs and desks lacks personality. It is only when there are people in these spaces that they come alive. Look at these images by ex-student, Ben Ransley. He photographed the school 'after hours'.
Scott Fortino also photographs residential and institutional spaces. Click here for his website.
Fortino developed his approach to photography out of experiences directly related to his position as a Chicago police officer. 'In his photographs of institutional spaces, Fortino explores the psychology of confinement and protection. Observed with an almost clinical formality, his pictures of Chicago public school classrooms and police station holding cells, both highly structured and regimented environments normally filled to capacity, resonate through the absence of human presence. Fortino works with methodical precision. By selecting scenes in which fields of colour and line flatten out space, he confines our attention to the interior details that the rooms’ occupants have left behind. Brightly coloured walls and graffiti evidence attempts to reverse the deadening and leveling affects of the bland institutional environments, as well as the very human need to assert independence and individuality in the face of restriction and impersonality.' |
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What do you need to photograph?
Photograph empty spaces around the school. Your teacher will have a list of empty classrooms but also consider the halls, toilets, kitchen, offices, corridors and outside spaces that appear redundant when there are no people in them.
Consider wide shots as well as details- is there any evidence of the people who usually inhabit these places. Take a tripod- some of the indoor locations will be too dark. You should attempt to achieve an extensive depth of field.
Consider wide shots as well as details- is there any evidence of the people who usually inhabit these places. Take a tripod- some of the indoor locations will be too dark. You should attempt to achieve an extensive depth of field.
Next steps
In addition to presenting your work on your weebly (contacts, selects and edits) we would also like you to explore these separate developments.
Development 1: High Contrast
Keld Helmer-Peterson was a Danish photographer who was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the experiments at The Bauhaus in Germany and by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Chicago. He achieved fame for his colour photographs but he also published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrasts of tone.
In some, we are only presented with images that are black and white. All mid tones have been removed. He created and found these images, using both cameras and flat bed scanners to achieve the effects he was looking for. The books encourage us to consider the space around the image and the accompanying text as integral to the meaning of the work. |
(Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School / Photopedadgogy)
Photographer link and potential way forward....
Following his apprenticeship to William Klein, an American photographer living in Paris, Jean-Marc Bustamante abandoned painting for sculpture and photography. In 1989 he began a series of large photographic images silkscreened on clear acrylic / perspex and mounted about two inches from the wall on metal brackets. Being partially transparent, the Lumières, as the series is known, seem to glow with an inner light because they are illuminated by light reflected through them from the wall behind. While each construction has an austere and undeniable corporeality, the images floating on it are oddly tenuous. Like film suspended in air yet substantial enough to cast shadows, these works have a presence bordering on absence and resonate in the viewer's mind like memories.
The schoolroom, rephotographed from an anonymous photograph, is common to all systems of Western education. If its utilitarian architecture, serial patterning, darkness, and anonymity are freighted with overtones of incarceration, no particular regime is implicated. Rather, the way the desks glow like individual wells of consciousness, their illuminated tops rhyming with the windows, suggests the dichotomy between inner and outer realities—a principle concern of Bustamante—and hints at the ability of light and imagination, impalpaple transgressors, to commute between these states. |
Development 2: Measurements and Angles
The graphics company, Parachutes, created this film illustrating everyday occurrences with formula, equations and diagrams.
BEAUTY OF MATHEMATICS from PARACHUTES on Vimeo. |
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music." Bertrand Russell |
Nikki Graziano is a photographer and mathematician. Here she discusses the series on the right:
Q: In your Found Function Series — are all your mathematical formulas correct? We’re terrible at math, but curious to know if you ever play with the viewer in that sense? On that note why do some of your photographs not have formulas? A: Yes, they’re all correct. One of them slipped by me for a while actually and I didn’t realise it was off until about a year later. I had copied the function down wrong and consequently typed it wrong. It’s fixed now though. It wasn’t intentional. I’ve never thought about playing with my audience like that. Although it is interesting how for that one that was wrong for a year no one even questioned it. Too much trust in images, perhaps. The images that don’t have formulas are the three-dimensional graphs. When I was making these I had originally put the function as text in there but it didn’t seem to click as well. The graphs were too graphic (no pun intended) as soon as they became three-dimensional, they sort of became part of the image rather than being a layer on top of it. The text was just an eyesore. |
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Technique
Use the brush, pencil and line tools in Photoshop to draw grids. Look at these examples by past students:
Development 3: Dissect
Delete and erase parts of your images, removing the context and essential parts of the image.
Patrick Cornillet
In this series, elements of architecture were taken out of their environment and reconstituted in the form of objects on a white background. The infinite nuances of concrete, make us aware of the wealth of the material and of the remains left by the humans and by Time passing by. Even if the architectures seem austere, spaces seeming uninhabited, dehumanised, Cornillet creates a particular poetry and a mesmerising mysticism.
In this series, elements of architecture were taken out of their environment and reconstituted in the form of objects on a white background. The infinite nuances of concrete, make us aware of the wealth of the material and of the remains left by the humans and by Time passing by. Even if the architectures seem austere, spaces seeming uninhabited, dehumanised, Cornillet creates a particular poetry and a mesmerising mysticism.
Homework 1: Public Places and Personal Spaces
Continue with recording empty public spaces.
In the early 1990s Martin Parr collaborated with Nick Barker on a documentary on the subject of taste in the British home.
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Photograph the way that you, your family, friends and neighbours have personalised their homes.
Class Task 2
Restrict your viewer using the rolls of paper and the mdf flats. Begin by using the Penn images and the images on the right (Photopedagogy @ Tate Exchange) for inspiration.
To move away form these points you should also consider:
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Around the school site
Fit yourself into confined spaces around the school site. Austrian artist Willi Dorner squeezes human bodies into nooks and crannies for his Bodies in Urban Spaces project. Groups of dancers, climbers and performers wearing brightly coloured clothes run through busy shopping centres and high streets, cramming themselves into doorways, alcoves and any gap they can find in public buildings.
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Whilst these are extreme, consider simplified versions with the subject engaging with the camera. You should still be attempting to create a 'portrait'. How does the location make the subject feel? Can that feeling be conveyed through the photograph? Does the photographer have to get into particular position to capture the best angle / composition?
Class Task 3: Fake Environments
Aaron Farley
These are not real photographs of real things. The original photographs are of water and clouds and these are photographs of those photographs, turned on their side, moved, reshot, reprinted, cut and folded, and reassembled to create a different scene which still looks familiar.
What do you need to photograph?
Fold, crease and layer the images and paper provided to create a fake landscape. You may need to put some space between the different components to achieve the appropriate depth of field. Fold or curve the separate elements in half so they can stand independently.
Depth of Field
The primary control of depth of field is the aperture, or f-stop, setting on your camera. Smaller f-stops, such as f/4, will allow faster shutter speeds and produce images with shallower depths of field. Focal length can also effect depth of field. The higher the magnification factor (eg 300mm), the smaller the depth of field will be, even with large f-stop settings. Much like lens strength, subject distance, plays a big part in determining the possible depth of field in an image. The closer you are to your focal point or subject, the less depth of field is possible. |
depth_of_field_pics.pdf | |
File Size: | 1609 kb |
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Other photographers to inspire
Change your angle when photographing the city. Look for opportunities to look up and look down.
You can interpret this task in different ways. Choose one from the three options below...
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1. Back of people- what are they looking at?
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2. Look for / stage a moment where a person is caught, abstracted in thought.
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3. The body in the landscape.
Look at the small spaces and other areas in your home environment. How can the people interact with the space in a way they wouldn't usually? Does this reveal anything new about the space or the individual? Here are examples by Anna Di Prospero, Willi Dorner and past students to inspire you.
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We recommend Wolfgang Tillmans at the Tate Modern
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The clip on the right is particularly interesting in terms of how Tillmans curated the exhibition. The gallery space is an environment too that is designed to support the work and our journey through it. It's also fascinating to see an artist / photographer's studio space. It is a reflection of the internal workings of their minds and gives us a window on a process.
Do you know of any spaces belonging to someone you know that gives us a similar insight?
Do you know of any spaces belonging to someone you know that gives us a similar insight?
What's next?
When all the set tasks are complete you need to explore three strands. When you present these on your weebly you must include a rationale linking your idea to the theme, a photographer and a set of observations. Use the resources below to inspire you but don't forget your own pinterest board from the beginning of the project.
Whilst researching the PP above I came across a great deal of interesting information that I have included below....
Project Expectations
Ensure that you have satisfied the following Assessment Objectives tasks by the end of the project:
AO1 - DEVELOP
Make sure all set tasks are completed. By the end of the project, we would like you to have analysed three images by artists relevant to your ideas using the Form, Process, Content structure. A good response does not mean an exact copy.
AO2 - EXPERIMENT
In order to show a good range of experimentation, start by taking 3 sets of different observations in response to 3 ideas based on your research. It is important to show refinement of ideas and techniques throughout the project. Make sure annotation considers subject, concept, approach, technique, formal elements etc as appropriate.
AO3 - RECORD
Remember that we are looking for a good technical and compositional understanding in your work, along with a clear explanation of ideas. This is where you can gain marks for your control of media. You can also gain marks for research and collecting of resources however, only collect what you need to move on practically.
AO4 - REALISE
Develop and refine your best ideas further working towards an exhibition outcome, which will be completed during your examination period (12-hours) at the beginning of the Summer Term.