#phot203

[wulfprints]

Talk with Paul Fieldsend-Danks on the 28th February 19

Ever since Paul Fieldsend-Danks spoke to us in our first year, I’d had a fascination with his work. Especially his project ‘Kindly Light’, which includes themes surrounding the ocean and its danger to life which is often nowadays forgotten. I emailed Paul to see if he had any time he could set aside to talk to me about this project and his artistic work on the whole. Luckily, though he is the Academic Dean of PCA and therefore a busy man, we were able to set a time.

I found Paul to be an interesting and unique artist. He was very ‘materials-led’ as he put it. He used charcoal heavily in his projects not because he liked the way it looked but because it had numerous significances to his project thematically. For example, the charcoal was similar to the black of night that fishermen would have experienced in previous centuries. They had no radar, only their own knowledge of the area and perhaps some crude charts and a primitive compass. The black of night they experienced was so much more terrifying and dangerous than the night we experience these days. In addition, charcoal is made from carbon, which Paul described as a ‘basic substance, and strongly linked to life on earth’. Indeed, carbon is currently the only known substance to form life.

Another interesting topic was one around the emotion of a scene. If you’re out on a walk to take some pictures but, for instance, you’ve just had a nasty argument with your significant other, and you’re feeling down as a result, could/should/does this affect the images? In my experience, my emotion should and does heavily impact what I produce.

We also spoke about the experience of taking a picture. A lot of people see taking a photograph as a means to an end. Even some professional photographers see it this way. However, it really should be an experience. I like to take a breath before taking an image, I like to listen to everything around me, the leaves, the animals, the wind, and then let it go for a split second while I press the shutter. For me, photography is as much about the experience of taking a picture as it is seeing the picture, if not more.

Finally, we spoke about ambiguity. This is something I’ve always loved to see in photography and art on the whole. Revealing everything is never interesting, in life or in art. The act of concealing something makes it so much more interesting, whether or not the concealed thing is actually interesting.

[pippaphotography]

Artist review- Maurizio Anzeri

Maurizio Anzeri makes his portraits by sewing directly into found vintage photographs. The way he stitches into the images can create costumes for the characters or it can almost reveal emotions and feelings that he has created for the image. The lines the stitching creates are flowing and bold. They provide movement for the image and provide a new context to the original photograph. As well as giving movement, they also create a new texture making the image uneven and almost ‘interactive’ as they invite you to want to explore them and touch them. 

“I work with sewing, embroidery and drawing to explore the essence of signs in their physical manifestation. I take inspiration from my own personal experience and observation of how, in other cultures, bodies themselves are treated as living graphic symbols.”

His work has been part of many solo and group exhibitions that have been put on across the world. The antique images that he uses has a direct contrast with the colour and texture that he adds.

‘Round Midnight’ - 2009

The image used in Round Midnight is an early 20th century ‘glamour shot’ that at the time would have been considered titillating for both the girl’s nudity and ethnicity. The veil he stitched on creates an uncomfortable modesty, overlaying a past generation’s cross-cultural anxieties with an allusion to our own.

‘Nicola��- 2011

‘Mia’- 2014

[katiewattsart]

CV

Education 

2018 - A Level in photography, Truro College 

2018 : present -  ba (hons) fine art photography, Plymouth College of Art 

Exhibitions (group)

2020 - ‘Snapshot’, ba (hons) photography, Plymouth College of Art Students Union 

2019 - ‘Economy’, ba (hons) photography, Make Space Studio 5

Collaborations 

2019 - ‘Interdisciplinary Exhibit’, a collaboration with cross cohorts, Warehouse Space 

Work Experience

2020 - Creative Workshop (10-11years)

Competition Entries

2020- Photocrowd, Human hands and feet

2019 - Photocrowd, People

Selected Web Resources 

Website

https://katiewattsphotography.pb.online/home

Working Blog

https://katiewattsart.tumblr.com

[amypca]

PHOT203: Work Placement Reflection.

For this project I chose to work in marketing with augmented reality. Throughout this module beginning I have been motivated to improve my creativity through my work placement. I feel that this year has been a productive new beginning to my career sector as performing task’s and getting into the importance of teamwork has given me the confidence boost that I needed to go forward in my work. Not only this, but I have found useful skills along the way that that are valued in the workplace.

Over the course of the PDP I have learned to connect resourcefully with my surroundings, using what I have to embark of a visual narrative using not only photography as a form of product but also videography. This has allowed me to pursuit in other advances and broaden my knowledge of the photographic industry. I found that working with feedback from my peers gave me outside understanding & a second view to what my target audience might see, this let me adjust to other opinions of my work and feel more open to sharing publicly.

I found it difficult to overcome some situations involving lighting equipment, but this is turn make me think of ways to tackle new obstacles, shining a light on what I need to improve on. Working with a team that I made tie’s with in my first year has fundamentally brought me permanent employment with a company I was once (at first) nervous to be a part of, now I couldn’t think of a better job to be involved in.  I am extremely grateful as they gave me a sense of acceptance throughout this experience. With the work they gave me I enjoyed the ‘doing’ of the promotional video the most, with the clear understanding through meetings that ARready had given me made it was easy to visualise exactly what they were looking for. I plan to move further forward with ARready & the team throughout summer and continue on my photographic carer goals.

[wulfprints]

Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’ - Exhibition Review

Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’ touches on something I think about a lot; the unstoppable force of time. Far too often do we lose ourselves in the rhythm of society, that we forget that it is finite.

When I walked in to the cinema at The Tate, I saw at least a hundred people sat on sofas watching The Clock, and I was surprised. I’m not sure what I expected, a white room with a projector on a wall? Maybe I’ve visited too many exhibitions for a twenty year old. I found the setting to be perfect for the installation, for it gave the impression that we were really seeing, not just a piece of visual art, but a story.

At one point two ‘city-folk’ and a countryman are in the countryside. One of the city-folk asks the time, and the other fumbles with his watch. The countryman simply looks at the sun and proclaims ‘two twenty’. This, to me, was an example of our ever-increasing detachment from nature. We used to look at the sun to tell the time, but who could do that now? Does this make us a better species, or a worse one?

In another moment, a man and a woman were sat down on a bench. The man was explaining to the woman that he thought time was more personal and emotional than scientific. He was saying that it flows at different rates for different people. For example; an hour skydiving feels like a shorter amount of time than an hour in an exam hall. He finishes by saying that when you’re in love time flies by like nothing else. There is a pause and then she suddenly stands up and says that she is late for work, and that she ‘totally lost track of time’.

This exhibition I feel, though very different from my current Hallucinations project, is also very similiar. Both projects struggle to understand time and its overwhelming strength. In The Clock Marclay does this by forcing the viewers’ attention to be set on nothing but time itself for a few moments. It is powerful in that it only takes a few seconds of concentration for the message to convey itself, and for the viewer to realise that time is ticking. In Hallucinations I try to convey to viewers that time is passing, and that in two hundred years people might photograph our derelict remains in a similiar fashion that today we photograph those from two hundred years ago.

To apply this to my work, I want to consider the restlessness of time even more. When pressing the shutter on any photograph for Hallucinations, this is something that I will consider beforehand.

Before seeing it, I was apprehensive about The Clock. I was worried it would be another ‘fine art’ installation that really only existed for the bourgeoise to pretend they cared about art, use big words, and wave their wallets around. I can say however that I came away from The Clock with a greater respect for the sanctity of human life, and its finiteness. I will be keeping an eye on the time from now on, but only so that I can savour every second.

Marclay, C. (2010). The Clock. London: Tate Modern.

[pippaphotography]

Brett Lockwood Talk

The project called ‘Finite’ was shown at the Brick lane gallery. The images that he took were displayed at an A1 size. He created miniature landscapes of growing bacteria. He allowed the Petri dish with the seeds to sustain themselves, then he pulled them out to represent humans destroying forests.

Lockwood then worked in retail and did freelance work until he began an internship with Karst where he took on a curator role. He got into Karst through a callout and he put ‘his stake in the ground’. He says that working at Karst helped him to ground himself. 

He had to revisit his project when Exeter Phoenix contacted him with an interest in him presenting his work in the cafe. His circular artefacts from the petri dishes were presented in the exhibition to see if people would take care of them the same way that we should take care of the rainforest.

[pippaphotography]

Matthew Raw - Tactile Change

Exhibition review-

“Doors, security fences and carved slogans are the tools used by Matthew Raw in Tactile Change to discuss the societal challenges increasingly faced in a culture rife with seismic attitudinal and behavioural changes.”

The exhibition, ‘Tactile Change’ was and idea that was inspired by Plymouth’s zoo in the 1960s. Matthew Raw took the idea from an Elephant which was a common animal that were held and then transported. He used the elephant as a symbol of journeying. The elephant was inspiration for his writing go a short story and then he asked students at the Plymouth school of creative arts to create illustrations of the elephant as a response to his story. Some of the drawings made were printed on tiles to be shown as part of the exhibition.

The space felt very immersive and there was lots to look at and draw you in. There were fences that were covered in the elephant illustrations created by the students. The fences were there to create the illusion that you are being held in a pen. They force to walk around the exhibition in a specific order and they also restrict access to some parts of the room, almost making you feel trapped. Dotted throughout the exhibition, there are blocks of clay on the walls that have words carved into them. They had words like ‘taking back control’ and ‘where individuals become communities’. These words emphasise how little control that you have, especially while walking around in-between the fences.

The exhibition ‘Tactile Change’ is a complex idea displayed in a simplistic way. I feel that the exhibition relates to times now with Brexit and how the elephant he uses throughout is linked to migration and journeying. 

[pippaphotography]

Anna Fox- visiting lecturer

‘Basingstoke’

This is a student project that was divided into four themes. They are colour photographs with text captions, which are a critical observation of Basingstoke life during the late 80’s.

‘Work stations’

This is a project showing office life in London. She wanted this project to feel like a day in the office so she added time stamps under each of the photos. This project changed her perspective on photographer and subject.

‘The village’

This is a series of photographs that were accompanied by audio which helps give the project an immersive feeling. The project explores her Grandmas village in West Sussex.

‘Zwarte Piet’

In every Dutch city, there is a celebration of a traditional Christmas in which hundreds of black peters appear ‘played’ by majoritively white women. He was a historical figure, ‘Black Pete’ who plays servant to Sinta Klaas in the Dutch Christmas myth. 

‘Country girls’

This was a collaboration between Anna Fox and singer Alison Goldfrapp. It explores the lives of women growing up in rural England and the story of Fanny Adams. The images are quite disturbing and act as metaphors for the feeling of suffocation they both felt when they were younger growing up in the countryside.

‘Resort 1′ and ‘Resort 2′

Resort 1 and 2 are the result of the two years that Anna Fox spent photographing at Butlins, marking their 75th anniversary. Resort 1 presents families on holiday and resort 2 presents adult weekends.

[pippaphotography]

I completed another TFP shoot with a model after being contacted by them asking to collaborate. I feel that this shoot was successful and I enjoyed shooting with a model in and around the Barbican. This shoot has also allowed me to develop a connection with this model, who I can hopefully work with again in the future.

[pippaphotography]

TFP shoot that I did with a model. I was contacted by the model, who I've worked with previously, about shooting with them again. We decided to work on a TFP basis. I am happy with these images and I love how the fog in the background makes the model stand out.

[pippaphotography]

My work featured on the shops instagram page.

[pippaphotography]

Behind the scenes of the commission shoot with the vintage shop.

[pippaphotography]

Commission shoot for a vintage shop

I was approached by the manager of a vintage shop and was commissioned by her to photograph their new fashion collection. I’ve worked with the shop previously so it was good to work with them again and produce more images. I found this shoot to be helpful as it gave me the experience to work with a variety of different models. I was able to apply the skills I've learnt, like lighting, to this shoot which helped my images to look more professional. I was able to make connections with models as well as strengthening my connection with the shop. This will help me a lot in the future as I've already begun to get my name out there and started to establish myself. I think the images were successful and they fit the brief that the client gave me.

Here’s a selection of the images I took:

[pippaphotography]

Skills audit

I completed the skills audit form from the employability tools:

I feel that this was a helpful form to fill out as it helped me realise where I am in a professional sense. This has informed me with what I need to improve on to develop further.

[pippaphotography]

Exhibition- ‘Snap shot’

Our exhibition was called ‘snapshot’ and it showcased a variety of our work over the last few years. Work was presented in various different ways from hanging from the ceiling as well as displayed on tables. 

I was not part of the steering group for the exhibition, however I assisted in the organisation of the event like discussing how work would be displayed and how the room would be laid out. I was part of the brief meeting that we had with Stephen where we spoke about our options for showing our work in the SU. This exhibition made us all very creative as the space wasn't ideal for showing work. I think this worked to our benefit as it made the exhibition more visually interesting. 

[pippaphotography]

Mystery postcard sale

Poster advertising our postcard sale: (Made by Maria)

Our class decided to have a mystery postcard sale for our fundraiser. We gave out blank postcards to people around the college so they could create their own artwork on them and then seal them in the envelope. 

I assisted the steering group by helping them set up for the fundraiser. Our group sold the postcards for £5 each and raised £40 in total to go towards our third year show. I think that the sale was successful and it was a unique idea.