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We looked inside some of the posts by daniellerutherfordwestminst-blog and here's what we found interesting.
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Evaluation
Project Title (Thinking about the title of your project, how does it articulate what the project is communicating?)
I found it quite difficult thinking of a name for my project as there are so many things I could call it. I decided on ‘The Feeling Of’ because my project has been about the inner feelings of a male suffering with depression. Apparent in my research, a lot of men find it hard to express their true feelings and emotions, which I had tried to represent through my images.
Subject (How does your research inform your project?)
My research has been very helpful within my project and given me an insight into the statistical figures and facts of male sufferers of depression. It has made me aware of how serious it is, and how society shouldn’t expect men to be the stereotypical ‘macho’ man. Through my project, with the inspiration of my chosen photographers and this research, I wanted my images to express the emotions that men shouldn’t fear to show, and almost raise awareness.
Aims, Objectives, Concept (Do you think you have successfully achieved what you set out to convey in your work?)
I believe I have successfully achieved what I wanted to convey through my work creatively. I didn’t want to take typical images, and so used my own experiences with the people I care about to make it a very personal project. By using someone in my images who has and still is suffering with depression, it became a very honest project about opening up. I wanted to show that it is very common amongst men and that they shouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed of that. The stigma of mental illness and this expectation of a ‘masculine’ man stops many men embracing how they feel, and I hope my images show acceptance of male depression.
Form, medium, presentation (How did you present your work and why? Consider the sequencing and arrangement of images. Can you suggest where it might be seen? Gallery, Magazine, Advert etc)
I decided to print my images on Lustre paper, purely because I prefer a matte effect, but as my project was based around a serious and emotional subject, I don’t think a shiny gloss paper would’ve suited it. I made my images with a small border because I think it highlights the importance of my topic, and I mounted them on foam board using a cold press. I have 5 images and arranged them closely together, four of them in a square and one underneath. I did this because my last image almost represents a summary of the four images above, and combines all the expressed emotions into one because of the many exposures in the one image. I think my images could be seen in a gallery because of the topic of my photos, and I think they would look better presented hung up on a wall against a white background.
Research Methods (Specify where you researched e.g. use of the library, internet, theory books, monographs.. what you have looked at)
A lot of my research was based around personal experiences and people close to me, which pushed me into researching statistics and facts. I used the internet for the majority of my research. I found my two chosen photographers on the internet as news articles, and then looked them up separately on their websites or social media pages. I found a lot of my depression research on newspaper articles such as The Telegraph. I used a couple of graphs, which I found from these articles or data sites.
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Printing the Series
The negative I decided to print was negative 18. I did a test strip on f/11 at 3 seconds each, and 10 seconds was the best amount of time.
These are a few of the test strips I did. I didn’t have to edit any of the colour, it was just a case of getting the exposure right so it stayed at 30Y 80M. As there are a lot of highlights in this image, I had to dodge the left hand side for an extra 7 seconds.
The next image I chose was negative 26. I did a test strip on f/11 for 11.3 seconds.
At first the print was too blue so I took away some yellow, then it was a little cyan and then a little green. Eventually it was just a little yellow so I added yellow and got a perfect print at 23Y 72M.
While I was testing for exposure, I accidentally knocked my paper while it was being exposed and it created this extra silhouette around my model. I really liked the outcome and it worked with the idea, so I decided to keep it for the final print. While I exposing my final print, I moved the enlarger to the right and then to the left to create this effect.
Once I finished this printing session, I realised I didn’t have any more images that I liked enough to print. While printing I also had a few more ideas of what I would like to shoot, so I wanted to go home and shoot another roll of film.
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The Copy
This is my copy image compared to the original.
I am quite pleased with the outcome as it was a very hard photo to compose, to try and get everything completely the same. If I had to do it again I would make the background darker as the original looks black, and I would’ve toned down the highlight behind the model.
The angling of the body was very hard to imitate as I couldn’t get the arms or shoulder to make the exact same shape as they’re two different people. The head could’ve been lifted slightly higher to get that stretch of the material across the face, but overall I’m glad I changed my copy image to this one and I enjoyed creating it.
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The Copy: Scanning and Photoshop
After getting my transparency film back, I scanned it into the computer so I could edit it in photoshop.
When we scanned the transparency film, it looked really dull so we had to edit the reds, blues and greens in the histogram to make sure they were balanced.
I was really pleased with the outcome, and how well my lighting had turned out. I needed to add a few highlights and edit the darkness of the background of the image, which I did in photoshop.
This is a screenshot of how I edited my scan in photoshop.
I made several different layers so I could edit the background and model separately as the model needed less adjusting than the background. The colour balance and hue/saturation was altered as it was looking a bit blue. I edited the curves on both parts to adjust the highlights, and added highlights to the face and tip of the shoulder, which you can see on the screenshot. The background was cleaned of any specs of dust so it had no markings.
I had a little help from my tutor as I’m not so confident on editing in photoshop, as I find it a little complicated because there are so many different tools to use. I eventually got the hang of it and managed to finish editing the photo in the class time.
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Postmodernity and Photographic Postmodernism
Modernist Architecture
Rational substitutes for traditional patterns..
Walter Gropius, Serial Houses, 1921-27
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2011/09/09/industrialism-and-the-genesis-of-modern-architecture/
Le Corbusier: homes as ‘machines for living’
Social Utopianism: architecture as social corrective, and systematization as the key to changing behaviour.
Ernst May, ‘zig-Zag Hauser’ Social Housing, Frankfurt, 1927
https://www.northernarchitecture.us/town-planning/the-stretching-and-the-dissolution-of-the-block-concept.html
Institutionalization - Dehumanization
Bruno Traut, Housing Developments, 1930′s
The Death of Modernist Architecture
Demolition of Minoru Yamasaki’s Pruitt-Igoe housing development, St Louis, Missouri - July 15, 1972, 3:32pm
http://twi-ny.com/blog/2012/01/20/the-pruitt-igoe-myth-an-urban-history/
Postmodern Architecture
Colin St John Wilson & Partners, British Library, 1971-99
http://central-hotel-london.com/hotel-gallery.html
Co-op Himmelblau, UFA Cinema Center, Dresden, 1993-98
http://www.coop-himmelblau.at/architecture/projects/ufa-cinema-center
Richard Hamilton, What is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, 1956
http://www.avenuedstereo.com/modern/images_week15.htm
Paul Strand, Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1916
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1987.1100.10/
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Printing the Series
Before I could print any individual images, I had to print a contact sheet to show exactly what images I had chosen for my project. To get the correct exposure, I did a few test strips first.
The aperture was set to f/8 and I tested 3 seconds each. 9 seconds was too exposed and 12 seconds was slightly underexposed, so I chose 10 seconds. My colour settings started on 70Y 65M, and the first test strip was really cyan so I had to adjust the settings.
Throughout my first printing session, I kept a data sheet to note down all my results and what needed to be corrected. Once I changed the settings the first time, it was then too magenta and then too cyan again. I got a colour correct print at 43Y 80M.
The first negative I decided to print was negative 10. I did a test strip on f/8 at 3 seconds each, and found that 8 seconds was the best exposure time.
From the exposure test, it was far too cyan so I took yellow away from the image. It was then slightly pink so I added magenta, and eventually I got a perfect print at 30Y 80M.
During the first printing session I found it quite difficult as it involves a lot of tweaking, which doesn’t always go your way. Changing the colours to get the perfect print can take a long time, and that’s why I only managed to get one print and a contact sheet done.
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Shooting the Series
After having a discussion with my boyfriend about his feelings and thoughts during the worst of his depression, I got him to summarise in a small paragraph how he felt, so we could work on ideas together for the shoot.
“My struggles with depression left me feeling isolated, alone, helpless, hopeless, guilty, ashamed and filled with self-hatred. When I would look into the mirror, if I could bare to even look at myself in the face, I saw emptiness. I felt alienated from the world, and the only place I felt alive was on my computer where I could escape the real world. That lead to me feeling more guilty and ashamed because that wasn’t ‘normal’ and alienated me even more. The more guilty I felt, the harder it would be to drag myself out of bed, so most of the time I wouldn’t. At any time I would have to go outside I would be constantly playing with my hands or biting my nails to take my mind off of anything and everything. I felt sick with who I was, what I was, a failure. Then I would feel even more hopeless that these feelings wouldn’t go away, they just grew. I never chose to isolate myself, that was done by other people, but after I became isolated it felt safer to just stay alone.”
Lewis Simmonds
We both came up with ideas of how we could represent how he felt, by using certain sentences as starting points. Once we had a few ideas, I started shooting the film and as we went along we tweaked and changed certain things to suit the image.
I shot it in his bedroom rather than the studio, as it felt more personal taking photos of him in his own space. When telling me about how he felt, it made it clear to me that he was very vulnerable. To represent this feeling of being stripped back with nothing to protect you, he either wore just pants or pants with a t-shirt.
Before I began shooting, I had already thought of a few ideas for some images. These were mainly inspired by Christian Hopkins and Edward Honaker’s body language and creative editing apparent in their photos.
My roll of film started with him lying in his bed, looking in the mirror, and moving on to him sitting in front of his blinds. Each image was carefully thought out, with his input throughout the whole time.
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Photography, Memory and the Archive
Archive
a collection of records of an institution, family, etc
a place where such records are kept: from the Greek – arkheion, repository of official records
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers, Viviers, Belgium, 1983, and Goole, Great Britain, 1997
Personal and Social Memory
Memory is defined as ‘the faculty by which things are remembered’ (OED)
Social or ‘collective memory’ – the idea of memories shared within a particular society is associated with the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs
Jung and the idea of the ‘archetype’
Susan Sontag
“All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with pictures that lock the story in our mind”
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003, p86
Sigmund Freud and Memory
Freud writes that: ‘only what is important remains in the memory’.
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Pelican Freud Library Vol.l., Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1973, p237
“We prefer to forget what gives us ‘unpleasure’, or what causes us pain – but these memories can persist and return.”
Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Pelican Freud Library, 1975, p186
The Snake Pit, dir. Anatole Litvak, 1948
In his 1925 essay ‘A Note Upon the “Mystic Writing Pad”’, Freud likens the process of memory to those ‘magic’ writing pads used by children, where you write on a celluloid sheet and then make it vanish when you lift the celluloid so it can now take new impressions.
Freud, ‘A Note Upon the “Mystic Writing Pad”’ (1925)
Frances Yates
Yates details the history of ‘artificial’ memory first developed in classical Greece and Rome - an art based on the orderly arrangement of striking objects within an organised space.
Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, New York: Routledge, 1999 (1966)
Professor Timothy Bliss (neuroscientist)
“It’s been accepted really since the turn of the 20th century … that really the only place where memories can be stored is at synapses, the junctions between nerve cells”.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/01/british-win-neuroscience-prize-grete-lundbeck-tim-bliss-graham-collingridge-richard-morris
Thomas Demand
“Memory is amazing. We talk about pictures in our head, but of course no one has a picture in their head, we are constantly reconstructing things”.
And he adds:
“Photography and memory have a weird love-hate relationship, because on one hand if you have a photograph of something you aren’t going to remember it so well. On the other hand, you might remember things only because you have a photograph.”
Thomas Demand, interview with Diana d’Arenberg, 2015
Roland Barthes
‘Not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory … but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory’.
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, London: Jonathan Cape, 1982, p91
Anon., Portraits of prisoners, c.1880
Candida Höfer, State Archive, Naples, 2009
Hans-Peter Feldmann, 9/12 Front Page, 2001
John Stezaker, Love (XI), 2006
John Stezaker, Bridge (B), I, 2007
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Shooting the Copy
Shooting the copy was very challenging but it worked really well and I am very happy with the outcome.
I used Dan in my class to be my model and wrapped him in the material. This was very difficult to try and get it to match as much as possible to the copy image. So I clipped certain parts to make it tight enough, and angle his head and arms into the same position.
I used a dark grey backdrop and placed a spotlight on the floor facing the background. This was to create the slight array of light you see behind his body. A grey gel was put over the light so it wasn’t too bright. A spotlight was put just above his head to create the highlight you see on the face and the tip of the shoulder. I used a honeycomb filter on this to dampen the light a little so it wasn’t overpowering. I also had to figure out how much light I needed facing his body, without over doing it, so experimented with the softbox in different positions. It was a very long process as the test images were either too bright or too dark. Eventually, I placed one softbox on the left hand side of the camera, and used the large rectangular softbox above to light the whole image.
Throughout the day, I had been using my digital camera to test shoot and help me with my lighting and aperture settings. In a lot of ways it helped as I got a clear insight into how the image could look, without wasting sheets of polaroid film. However, one drawback of using a digital camera is that the settings aren’t the same as a large format camera, so when it came to testing on the polaroid film, the first one came out very bright. It probably took around an hour or two to adjust the lighting accordingly to suit the large format camera rather than my digital camera.
The next two tests on polaroid film were a few stops apart which lead to getting a range of how much brighter or darker each one was. Then I finally decided the best aperture would be f/11 at 1/60 and 100 ISO.
In conclusion, I am very pleased with how my transparency image came out and very happy with how similar it looks to the original photo. The lighting was the most tiring part of the process because it took so long to get it perfect, but I had no major setbacks and managed to finish it in the 7 hour class time.
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The Series: Male Depression Research
Suicide is now the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK, accounting for 1 in 4 deaths in men under the age of 35
Men more than three times as likely to kill themselves as women
5,981 suicides in 2012, 4,590 (76%) were men
6,233 suicides in 2013, 78% were male and 22% were female
Number of men currently in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse in Britain is three times that of women
Women might attempt suicide (attempted suicide rates are higher in women) men are ‘succeeding’
Many men see having a mental illness as a sign of failure and weakness
Stereotypical forms of masculinity – stiff upper lips, "laddishness" – are killing men
Almost a third of men would be embarrassed about seeking help for a mental health problem
Less than a quarter of men would visit their GP if they felt down for more than two weeks, in comparison to a third of women
“Psychologist Christina Hoff-Sommers has spoken of men not ‘valuing’ emotional talk purely for its own sake, in the same way women do. My research with teenage boys supports her theory, the consensus amongst them being that whilst they do sometimes want to talk about how they felt, they don't want to do it constantly “like girls do” (their words, not mine). They told me they thought it would be useful if environments existed where it was possible for them to speak freely about the things that were troubling them, but made it clear that these spaces wouldn’t necessarily resemble a therapists’ office. And whilst some said they actually felt more comfortable speaking to a woman about difficult emotional matters because they felt less judged, others said they were in need of a male mentor, something they felt their life lacked.”
Devon, N. (2016). The male mental health crisis is real – so why is it still being ignored?. The Telegraph, 4 February. Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/the-male-mental-health-crisis-is-real--so-why-is-it-still-being/ [Accessed 9 March 2017]
Suicide rates (per 100,000) among men, by age group, 2001-2013. Source: ONS
Suicide rates in the UK per 100,000 population, by gender, 1981-2013 (Source: ONS
Men make up over 75 percent of suicide victims in the United States, with one man killing himself every 20 minutes
Massive decline in traditional male industries such as manufacturing, forestry and fisheries, leaving large swathes of men in certain regions unemployed or under-employed
Many men are finding it difficult to fulfill a breadwinner role, leaving them without a powerful sense of pride, purpose and meaning in life
Very high rates have been observed in veterans, young American Indians and gay men. A common factor among these groups may be perceived as rejection from mainstream society, leading to strong feelings of alienation and isolation.
Evidence suggests that men are significantly less likely to use mental health services in response to a mental health issue in comparison with women. This is especially so for Black, Latino, and Asian men, who have much lower utilization rates than white men, as well as women in general.
It is often attributed to stubbornness in men, rooted in traditional American notions of masculinity that emphasize "true grit" doggedness.
http://ourworldindata.org/grapher/Male-Female-Ratio-of-Suicide-Rates?tab=map
The UK’s first male mental health centre opened in 2015 in Burton upon Trent by Alex Eaton after his dad died, who both suffered with mental health problems.
“I think it [male mental health] is a huge problem. It's like society puts on you as a man that you have to be strong. You have to fight through your problems. You can't be seen to be weak. When you have got mental health problems it's not that easy. When it seems you haven't got anybody to talk to... the problem obviously gets worse and worse. Negative things can come from it.”
Alex told the BBC the inspiration behind the centre, in hope that it will prevent male suicide.
“My dad suffered from mental health problems, depression and addiction. When he left my stepmum his life spun out of control. He turned to drugs and drink. He went on a binge."
His dad died and Alex took it badly.
"It hit me really hard. I suffered with depression for about a year and I had to leave my previous employment. I didn't want it to beat me, even though at the time it looked like it was beating me. I'm too stubborn for that. One night me and my wife were just sitting and chatting and I thought what about if we started our own operation in the town to help people. So we bashed around some ideas around and then my wife jumped on the laptop and started making a website and from there it has just taken off. We've had a lot of funding local and national - like the lottery. They can see that our model is actually working."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34156025/this-is-the-uks-first-mental-health-centre-for-men
This research has really given me an insight into male depression and how bad it is all over the world. However, the reason for many males depression hasn’t surprised me. It’s really sad and unfair that men feel they have to live up to this expectation of a stereotypical masculine man, which is apparent in my personal life. From my own experiences, a lot of women find it very easy to talk about their problems and feelings because they can’t bottle it up. Whereas with men, it’s very hard to get them to express themselves in an emotional way because of this expectation of the male kind.
I am lucky that my boyfriend opens up to me and knows he can talk to me about anything, especially his feelings. This is why I believe I’ll be able to create a successful series using his thoughts and feelings as a starting point.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/the-male-mental-health-crisis-is-real--so-why-is-it-still-being/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-men/201702/mens-mental-health-silent-crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/15/suicide-silence-depressed-men
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/19/almost-half-of-men-suffered-from-depression_n_8591140.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-health/11533147/Men-need-to-open-up-about-depression-not-man-up-and-keep-quiet.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-health/11423068/Why-are-so-many-middle-aged-men-committing-suicide.html
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The Copy Update
I’ve had a lot of struggle trying to find the correct props for my chosen Basket image and have decided that it’s not going to be do-able.
I looked at lots of different websites and visited lots of different shops to find a basket that was suitable for the image, but they were either too expensive or the incorrect size, so I didn’t want to spend any more time looking for something that might not be correct and end up with a photo that I wouldn’t be happy with.
After researching into different artists for my series, I decided I wanted to do a copy of one of Christian Hopkins images from his series ‘Song of Myself’.
I really love this image and being from one of my chosen artists, I’m more interested in it. I also think it’s a better copy idea as it closely relates to my series, and it’s a lot easier to get the one prop I need, which I have already found on Ebay.
I am in the process of buying the ‘Dark Grey 4-Way Stretch Matte Nylon/Lycra Material’ and have already found a friend in my class to be a model.
I believe it will be a lot easier to compose this image in the studio, and with the right lighting and set-up, a great transparency image to work with in photoshop.
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Conceptual Art and Photography
Alex Farquharson
“Conceptual art is used too often these days as a byword for contemporary art in general, especially art that is ideas-generated.”
Alex Farquharson, Foreword to ‘Conceptual Art in Britain’, 1964-79 (exh. cat.), Tate Britain, London, 2016, p7
Philippe Parreno, Anywhen, Tate Modern, 2016
A site-specific exhibition that changes throughout the day and that will evolve during the six-month period of the commission. The exhibition is conceived as an automaton which guides the public through a constantly changing play of moving elements, light configurations and sound environments. The artist states that ‘the exhibition is a construction of situations or sequences in a non-linear narrative’.
Tinho Seghal, These Associations, Tate Modern, 2012. Performance
Broomberg and Chanarin, The day nobody died, 2008
Walter de Maria. Art by Telephone, 1969. Installation
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase,No.2, 1912
“I was much more interested in recreating ideas in painting … I wanted to put painting once more in the service of the mind.”
Marcel Duchamp, cited in Tony Godfrey, ‘Conceptual Art, London: Phaidon, 1998, p27
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, 1915-23
Man Ray, Elevage de poussière (Dust Breeding), 1920
Wolfgang Tillmans, I Don’t Want to Get Over You, 2000
Jackson Pollock, Number 29, 1950
Clement Greenburg
“subject matter or content becomes something to be avoided like a plague.”
Clement Greenburg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (1939) in Greenberg, ‘Art and Culture’ (1961)
Barbara Rose
Barbara Rose identifies a shift in art occurring around 1967, that she characterised as an ‘assault on the dogma of modernism as an exclusively optical, art-for-art’s-sake, socially detached, formalist phenomenon that inevitably tended toward abstraction …’
Barbara Rose, cited in Rorimer, ‘PHOTOGRAPHY – LANGUAGE – CONTEXT: Prelude to the 1980s’, p129
Victor Burgin
Victor Burgin has recently referred to his early work as ‘anti-optical’ and has reiterated that: ‘I’m constantly struggling against the art world’s reduction of the image to the optical’. For Burgin, the image is also psychological, as with ‘the memory image, the fantasy image’.
Victor Burgin in conversation with David Campany, ‘Other Criteria’, Frieze, no.155, May 2013, p206
Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963
Ed Ruscha, Various Small Fires, 1964
“My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of ‘facts’; my book is more like a collection of readymades.”
Ed Ruscha, in Ed Ruscha and Photography, Whitney Museum, 2004, p122
Sol LeWitt
“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. … The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. […] It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman”
Sol LeWitt, ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’, Artforum, summer 1967
Adrian Piper, Catalysis III, 1970
John Hilliard, Camera recording its own condition, 1971
John Hilliard, Distorted Vision (A), 1991
Susan Hiller, Dedicated to the Unknown Artist (detail), 1972-76
Julian Charrière, For They That Sow the Wind, Parasol Unit, London, 2016
Julian Charrière, Polygon III, 2014
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The Series: Artist Research
Christian Hopkins
Christian Hopkins is a 24 year old photographer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who discovered photography at age 16 after being diagnosed with depression, and thanks the art therapy for saving his life as he never knew how to express his depression with words, but through his images he portrays the effect the mental illness has on him.
The photos of decapitated heads, shrouded figures and bleeding ghosts sum up what depression feels like to him.
“Throughout my life I’ve had these demons that I’m battling against, just really negative thoughts that I couldn’t control. Whenever I had to describe it, I had nothing to say, but I had images, I had ways to express myself through pictures, to fight against my depression.”
“Whenever I felt controlled by a particular emotion, I wouldn't be able to think or concentrate properly until I took that emotion out of my head and trapped it in a photograph.”
After a bout of depression and subsequent suicide attempts, Hopkins discovered Flickr which helped him to find his own surreal style of photographing.
“[Photography] became a form of therapy that I could use to fight my depression. I would create an emotion that I was feeling so that I could see it. Once it was on the page, it was no longer in my head and that was incredibly relieving.”
"There is a lot of stigma surrounding mental illnesses, but once we fully accept that these illnesses are just that, illnesses, then more people will be willing to seek treatment and more people will discover that they are not alone in their suffering."
The images reveal a vulnerability that speaks to everyone. While Hopkins’ mental and emotional state may be heightened at different intervals, there’s an incredibly relatable sentiment in his work that mirrors bouts with depression, loneliness, lethargy, and a mental battle with oneself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3168234/Depicting-depression-Photographer-22-documents-daily-battle-inner-demons-haunting-thought-provoking-picture-series.html
http://www.refinery29.uk/depression-photo-series-christian-hopkins
http://mymodernmet.com/christian-hopkins-photography/
I really like these images and I love how different each one is. I think they portray what depression feels like extremely well, and they’re very creative in how they show emotion.
The images really depict loneliness and isolation, which I would like to portray in my own images by looking at the way Hopkins shapes his body.
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The Series: Artist Research
Edward Honaker
Edward Honaker is a 23 year old photographer from California who was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in 2013. He decided to take up photography and document his personal experience by taking black and white self-portraits to express his internal suffering and raise awareness.
“It's kind of hard to feel any kind of emotion when you're depressed, and I think good art can definitely move people.”
Honaker’s face is blurred or covered in all of his images, which are meant to portray the helplessness felt by someone who is battling a depressive disorder.
“Your mind is who you are, and when it doesn't work properly, it's scary”
Honaker said about the project:
“Mental health disorders are such a taboo topic. If you ever bring it up in conversation, people awkwardly get silent, or try to tell you why it’s not a real problem. When I was in the worst parts of depression, the most helpful thing anyone could have done was to just listen to me – not judging, not trying to find a solution, just listen. I’m hoping that these images will help open up conversation about mental health issues. Everyone is or will be affected by them one way or another, and ignoring them doesn’t make things better.”
He hoped that his images would help combat the stigma surrounding mental illness and encourage people to seek help.
'You never really know what others may be going through so all you can really do is be kind and non-judgemental.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3240571/Photographer-suffering-depression-captures-mental-illness-haunting-series-self-portraits-raise-awareness-disorder.html
https://www.ignant.com/2015/09/24/photographer-edward-honaker-documents-his-own-depression/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/edward-honaker-photography-mental-illness_us_55f0759ce4b03784e2777fbb
I really like these images and love the techniques Honaker has used to make creative photos by editing certain aspect. I usually like to combine my work with art and physically edit the printed image, such as scratching it, using charcoal, weaving pieces in and out of the image and blurring images in the darkrooms.
In my images, I would like my models face to not be showing mainly for his privacy, but also to represent his loneliness and the feeling of ‘not really being there’, so I like the idea of scratching the face out and will experiment with this in my images.
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The Series Proposal
As we could choose anything for our series, I decided I wanted to do something very personal to me in a documentary style. I have chosen to focus my project on depression.
I’ve chosen this topic because my grandad was admitted to a mental unit (6 months ago) suffering with severe depression and anxiety. This was due to the worries and strains of caring for my disabled grandmother 24/7. My boyfriend also suffers with clinical depression and has done for the past 10 years.
I know this sort of topic can be seen as corny and typical, but it’s very current in mine and my family’s life at the moment. I wanted to try and represent how one with depression might be feeling, particularly male. I want to capture the emotions that they feel, using my boyfriend as a model.
Obviously I don’t want this project to make him feel worse by using him as a model, so I have spoken to him thoroughly about what I want to portray through these images. I’ve left it to him so he can decide completely how he wants to represent his mental health.
I really want to make these images creative, and combine art with photography by physically editing the images while printing or once they are printed. I also don’t want my models face showing mainly for his privacy, but also to represent the emotions and feelings of loneliness and isolation within the image.
My grandads depression started to stem from this idea that he didn’t need any extra help and had to do everything on his own. He comes from a generation where ‘men don’t cry’ and ‘men can’t be weak’, and I think that is a massive reason why a lot of men suffer with depression. They are ashamed to say that they can’t cope or feel very sad and that it’s not the masculine way to be. After being offered more help by carers that he had come in every few days, he said ‘it’s my job, I have to look after her, I’m her husband’, which clearly indicates this ideology.
The things my grandad have said, and the discussions I’ve had with my boyfriend have inspired my topic of research. I’m going to look into the statistics of male depression and photographers that have produced work representing this.
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Barthes - Boltanski - Sugimoto
Reading Barthes’s Camera Lucida
Close reading of a text
Points to consider in a close reading:
Content/argument – what is the argument or content of the text
Form/structure – how is it structured?
Use of images – what is the role of images? How are they deployed/analysed?
Critical interpretation – need to read critically
Semiology/Semiotics
From the GK. sēmeion - a sign
The study of signs and symbols
In particular, the relations between written or spoken signs and their ‘referents’ in the physical world or in the world of ideas
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida 1980
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/36/batchen.php
Camera Lucida and ‘death’
Barthes writes of the sense of ‘becoming a specter’ – that in the photograph he experiences ‘a micro version of death’
And he adds that ‘I have become Total-Image, which is to say, Death in person’
‘Ultimately’, says Barthes, ‘what I am seeking in the photograph taken of me … is Death: Death is the eidos of that photograph’
‘eidos’ is a term used in philosophy – it can mean ‘essence’, ‘form’, or what is visible
Studium and Punctum
Studium: the ordinary, everyday meanings of an image that anyone would recognize
Punctum: contained in those far rarer images that Barthes says move or ‘wound’ him
Responses to Camera Lucida
Victor Burgin’s essay ‘Re-reading Camera Lucida’ (1982)
Margaret Iverson’s essay ‘What is a Photograph’ (1994)
Marjorie Perloff’s essay ‘What Has Occurred Only Once’ (1995)
Geoffrey Batchen (ed), Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s ‘Camera Lucida’, London: MIT Press, 2009
James Elkins, What Photography Is, London and NY: Routledge, 2011
Victor Burgin, ‘Re-reading Camera Lucida’ (1982)
Burgin rejects the idea of the book marking some radical shift in Barthes’ ideas on photography
Burgin reads Barthes’ analysis of the Van Der Zee image in terms of desire, death and sexuality – ‘the very substance of psychoanalysis’
Victor Burgin, ‘Re-reading Camera Lucida’ in Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, p.85
Margaret Iverson ‘What is a photograph?’ (1994)
Iverson insists that the book is ‘psychoanalytical through and through’ and she too reads it in terms of Laconian psychoanalysis
Margaret Iverson, ‘What is a Photograph?’, Art History, Vol.17 No.3, September 1994, p.450
Marjorie Perloff ‘What Has Occurred Only Once’ (1995)
Perloff does engage with Barthes’ approach in Camera Lucida, without trying to claim it for any particular theoretical position
She engages with the book’s main theoretical arguments, and in particular with the idea of the photograph as evidence
Christian Boltanski, Les enfants de Dijon, 1985
https://blog.zhdk.ch/farblichtzentrum/beispiel-seite/
Christian Boltanski, Reserve: The Dead Swiss, 1989
https://www.pinterest.com/cub1000/christian-boltanski/
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Movie Theater Canton Palace, Ohio, 1980
http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/database/hiroshi-sugimoto/movie-theatres-theaters/hiroshi-sugimoto-movie-theatres-theaters.html
Idris Khan, Every Bernd and Hilla Becher Prism Type Gasholder, 2004
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/59602395041402913/
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Texting the Image
The use of texts, titles and captions to inform the viewer about intended meaning and interpretation:
Photojournalism
Gallery wall
Photographers websites
Photobook
Rene Magritte
http://www.libertaepersona.org/wordpress/2016/05/corriere-famiglie-gay-felicita-e-frottole/
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs 1965-67
https://www.pinterest.com/Wollahstone/conceptual-art-design/
Semiotics - The Study of Signs
Sign: Signifier & signified
Sign: material object & the mental image
Putting text alongside an image really changes the way the viewer sees it, as you’re giving an insight into what you are trying to represent. If you don’t put text alongside an image, you leave the viewer to make their own interpretation.
The Sweet Flypaper of Life, 1955
https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/race-and-diversity-in-art/deck/5975266
Use of fictional text by Langston Hughes
The Photobook
Primary message carried by the images
Photographs not used as an illustration or text
How images narrate through the sequence
Collective meaning of the images more important than the individual image
The book as a tactile object
The gallery as public viewing space
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/talks-and-lectures/photobook-history
W.G.Sebald, The Emigrants
Stories of Jewish exiles, tells the life of 4 migrants
http://www.wgsebald.de/writing/writing.html
https://sebald.wordpress.com/category/emigrants-ausgewanderten/page/2/
Themes of the book:
The exploration of the way exiled individuals confront their past as they reach old age
The classification of the book a fiction, memoir, biography, travelogue
The use of photographs to verify the characters and events in the stories
Use of photograph as a document to authenticate events that may well be fictional
Our investment in the photograph as readers
Sebald as narrator, historian, nomad, witness and archivist
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