Tracey Emin

"People think that this kind of work is everywhere, work with the journey of the mind, their own personal journey, some people are derogatory towards it, saying we are myopic people constantly thinking about ourselves, but we are not, we are constantly trying to resolve problems, and actually not think about ourselves by working through stuff."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8330442/Tracey-Emin-how-Ill-bring-some-edge-to-No-10.html

Desmond Muckian

Just found these beautiful images

http://www.desmondmuckian.com/music.html

My Little Spark

Someone once told me that sparks do not exist, and that I may never find one. This project follows all the little sparks I see in everyday life, that keep me going, creating, living, seeing. See, they do exist.

David Lynch Interview Project

What a great, simple idea

http://interviewproject.de/en/about

Inner Knowings

"Heart and the mind working together to make an inner knowing" - David Lynch

Outtake

This image was created for my current series "My Little Spark"
Ive decided not to use this as a final piece, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
The mirror here is acting as a extension of the landscape in the frame.

Primary Subject

These stunning images by Hannah Laylock were creating using mirrors and a subject. The idea behind the project is to question the role of mirrors and how here the mirror is in fact acting as a barrier rather than  a clear visual reflection of ourselves. I find these fascinating and like the way we are allowed to see something that is actually outside of the frame, this references the viewer. Power relations are important here too, I like how Hannah has thought about this and attempts to make us question this relationship.

Windows of discontent

Im looking at this image thinking about my inner thoughts and feelings at the moment, I'm playing with the bright becoming the dark.

Play Me Something

Recent shoot for two musicians. More details soon, I like something different.

Photography as Submission

     The Great Unreal

Visually these images make me question everything , it is not clear what the intent or meaning of the image is.  Which is why I love it. Was the photographer clear or this and how does this effect the practice.  Does it free them of the need to create 'meaning' which in itself makes it a much less honest/cathartic act? I am very interested in how these images act as a submission, that this moment and scene is worth consideration. I find these compositions and arrangements simply amazing and Ive not seen anything for a while that has really challenged my perception of the image and its creation, but most importantly giving me more questions than answers.

http://www.tonk.ch

Dazed and Confused

  

               Björk | September 2004

I just spotted this cover, I love it. They seemed to have folded paper on top of the image itself, I am unsure. This idea of not knowing quite how or what the image is trying to say is something which I quite enjoy. The power of perception.

FREEDOM - Progress

What does a sense of freedom mean for you?

So my current project is going really well. Ive been exploring and creating some quite obscure compositions. I have been shooting objects, places and anything that I am instinctively drawn to, sometimes I cannot explain why. I have been experimenting with water and its symbolic visual qualities on top of my work.

It seems the image is never enough for me, in previous projects I have torn my work, this physical connection is something which I want to explore and question further. Why is it I feel the need to delve further into thought about my images and alter them, distort them. I think my work is in a way autobiographical. I do in a sense feel free, where as before I felt trapped.

Image making is cathartic to me, I never know where its going to take me and its this what excites me so about it. What is real about these images and what isn't? Where is this going to take me? By pushing my own boundaries of image making?

Any thoughts?

Shadow Catchers - Camera-less Photography

I like forms in my work to raise questions.
Is there a spiritual element to being alive?
                                                      Is there a spiritual element
                                                      to my past experiences?

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography - Adam Fuss from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

Nigel Doll in Paris (Waiting for Aaron Doll...)

I feel lucky to be at the center of one of Nigel Grimmer`s latest pieces. Meeting him last month was also a delight. I think this image is beautiful, as is his approach to his other projects which you must check out here.

http://www.nigelgrimmer.com

Village of the Dolls

Just watched this documentary and it was so moving, art being created not to be ironic or wink an eye at the audience, art being used to create a world of escape and give Mark Hogancamp his freedom back. 

                                                                 "Everybody has a dream"

Pass Through

pass through

Image 3
120 ISO B/W Illford

At Work

        "We spend the better part of our lives
          on the job in a factory, an office or
                                 somewhere else in the assembly line
                                 of service and commerce."

Shot over a period of 16 years, Friedlander captured American workers in locations as diverse as factories, offices, telemarketing centers and corporate offices. The images examine the relationships between objects, people and places and connect together the mundane bits and pieces of our lives in new, surprising and often  comedic manner. I find them both alluring and slightly odd. The banality of the framing works well with the message that the work we do shapes us into the people we are today. Work gives us the freedom to grow, earn, meet new people and develop in ways we sometimes don't expect, the other side to this is one can get trapped into a position which stops the very freedom we need to grow and full fill our true potential. The expression or lack of in these images reflect this, these people look lost and robotic, have they forgotten who they are or where they really want to be?

V For Vendetta

"By the power of truth, I, while living
                                                       have conquered the universe."
         - V

Ai Weiwei

Hong Kong (Top)   Mona Lisa (Bottom)  -   Study of Perspective 1995-2003

Photographers interjecting their presence in front of the viewfinder. The photographer wants the viewer to see how they are in a way 'claiming' the landscape, in relation to how the freedom of  people is being claimed unfairly around the world. The Mona Lisa image is even more stirring, the aura that is held by this piece is unquestionable as it is recognized world wide, however what I think Weiwei wants to get at are the constraints now faced by artists such as himself  for speaking the truth.  People must understand that the very art they consume is at risk, Weiwei is rejecting the establishment. His own studio was demolished without warning by the Chinese government as it was said to be 'illegal'.  He could be going as far as saying that people should concentrate on a matter which is so vital, at our doors, understand that today works of art are creating a much different kind of aura. His finger represents the anger and freedom he seeks to find. The very freedom we seek to explore is being crushed. Where peoples own freedom of self expression is being silenced for creating work which questions the norm, the familiar, alas how free are we really?
Weiwei whereabouts is unknown

"you constantly ask yourself if physically
                            or mentally you are strong enough for jail"

Felix Gonzalez-Torres - LETTER - PERFECT LOVERS

Perfect Lovers, 1987-1990

This made me cry! This minimalistic piece of work is accompanied with the letter above which represents the artists love for his late partner that passed away from AIDS. The cold conceptualism is complimented by Torres putting the heart back into his work. The two clocks started at the same time and run at he same time, however fate will have it that one will stop before the other. Representing the loss of his lover. He finds a way to make the personal engaging to "his public". The artist himself later passed away of AIDS.

The way in which Torres exhibited is so inspiring and eye opening. I want to challenge the way I exhibit my final pieces to challenge conventional methods. It is sad to also think about how one can feel free when in love, but when it is lost this feeling can change and free may be not the world to describe the latter.

Challenges to Freedom/Freewill from a Scientific Perspective

1.24 Onwards

                                                  We must solve to problem of freedom, finding room for choice and
responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.

Laws govern our behaviour in the world.

"Worried about how we can be free, if God already knows in advance everything that were going to do"

"Basic physical laws governing everything"

Not alot of room left for freedom. Its a question without an answer? 

Individuality. FREE CHOICE, FREE WILL.

Process is govern by chemical physical law?

Circle of question comes back on itself.

Modes of control.

Blank Slate

Sage Sohier, Man with Woman's Shoes, 2003

At birth, are we given a blank slate?
How does the past shape your future?

Emancipating achieves Equality in ones mind, achieving freedom?

If you haven't been given a choice and are literally brain washed into a mode of thinking, how can you ever be free?

Pioneers of the Downtown Scene New York 1970s - Barbican Art Gallery

Trisha Browns Performance Art is both stunning and mind blowing. Trained as a dancer at the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater in 1962. This influence is clear, she uses public spaces as a stage for  a piece of work. This interaction takes somewhere familiar and changes how we see and perceive it. Roof Piece took place on 12 different rooftops over a ten-block area in New York City, each dancer transmitting the movements to a dancer on the nearest roof. Browns work makes me think of the mental and physical concept of place. Her juxtaposition of place and simple movement styles offer a  tongue-in-cheek humor which brings an intellectual sensibility that challenges the mainstream "modern dance" mindset of this period.It could be said that Trisha Brown is freeing these banal places, renewing them in targeting our thoughts to do so.

Maurizo Anzeri - Saatchi

Weird, strange compositions, but brilliant if you ask me. These images caught my eye at Saatchi last month. I love the way Anzeri has transformed these found photographs. He carefully sews directly into the photographs, altering them. He has come up with a way to bridge the future with history which I find fascinating. What also caught my eye was how Anzeri edits into the photographs, he trys to never completely cover the faces and as a rule always leaves one or both eyes open. As they say the eyes are the 'pathway to the soul of a person".


Lastly I want to consider the ethical nature of what Anzeri is doing here,. These photographs were found and for one reason or another were selected and deemed to be 'interesting' to Anzeri. She then edited them further by creating a physical barrier. This portraits original context is unknown, as it has now been given a new one. What I'm trying to get my head around is if an image can ever reflect a open and free representation of someone when the act of photographing someone can be so very constraint (opposite). How can a photographer claim to create an honest image when the subjectivity of the act is so very vital in its creation. It is interesting as Anzeri makes clear she found these images, and then edited them, she makes no claims of who these people are, and in doing this it could be argued that the viewer is allowed to perceive them freely (in doing so the act of making sense of this is free).

Duck Or Rabbit?

Word & Image

W.J.T Mitchell

"Word and Image Like the concept of race, gender, and class in the study of culture, designates multiple regions of social and semiotic difference that we can live neither with nor without, but must continually reinvent and renegotiate."

Placing meaning to the world through subjectivity, the creation of images.
OBJECTIVE ACT
SUBJECTIVE ACT

Existentialism

The condition of human existence :-

Emotions
Actions
Responsibilities

Thoughts
Purpose of life

I want my photographs to target these.


Second Initial Image

Medium Format 120 ISO B/W Illford

Matthew Stone

OPTIMISM AS CULTURAL REBELLION

Rudolf Steiner

Freedom of Thought
Freedom of Action

Steiner attempts to define the Philosophy of Freedom from two sides of our existence, our experience works to make us unfree. Trying to find a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being.

"Freedom, he says, is only possible because these various constraining factors work in contradictory directions. Between the impulses of our two natures, neither of which is individualized, we find the freedom to choose how to think and act. By overcoming the dictates of both our 'lower' and 'higher' sources of experience, by orchestrating a meeting place of objective and subjective elements of experience, we become true and free individuals"

Eurythmy

LILY DONALDSON BY SHOWSTUDIO
Nick Knight Editorial Shoot

"Eurythmy's aim is to bring the artists' expressive
movement and both the performers'
         and audience's feeling experience
                              into harmony with a piece's content"

FREEDOM - Final Major Project

Initial Image

Medium Format 120 ISO B/W Illford

"Freedom is a state of mind, a simple feeling of gratitude,

and a divine happiness that one can find no matter

how dark and deep the pit is"
Inuaya Hodeib

Self Portrait. Yorkshire Sculpture Park. 'God's Own County'. 2010. Taken by Stuart Leckenby

   Me Age 20

    Me Age 5

601Artspace

                      601Artspace. New York.February 2011
                      http://www.601artspace.org/645724/Cultural-Memory-Matters

The 601Artspace featured powerful and provoking images by Joseph Rodriguez and Martín Weber. The images attempt to expose how cultural subjects are framed and naturalized. These images were striking and confrontational. There were elements of performance in Rodriguez work where his subject had been asked to hold signs which were translated in the exhibition, giving the people in them a voice. These people appeared vulnerable but honest in there statement and position. The images really spoke me to, engaged me with there simplicity and Rodriguez work is one of my personal favorites.

Barthes VS Benjamin

Orchestra of Disorientation

A film by The Photography Collective for The Collectives Encounter at Format International photography Festival 2011.

"The work is a catalyst for discussion on the validity, identity, reality and role of the Flâneur in society and the world today. Focused around a central thoroughfare for pedestrian in Birmingham UK, the work combined the photographs of 13 photographers in a wide variety of flâneurial guises. However the photographic work arguably only comes into its own as an edited film - creating an disorienting orchestra of the cycle of modern life that the editor chooses to conduct, or not."

Susan Sontag wrote that the flâneur 'is gazing on other people`s reality'

The format festival was a great source of inspiration. This piece was one which I couldn't stop watching,  I don't usually engage with pieces which include video, maybe because I mainly deal with the still image. But this piece challenged my idea of what the still image can achieve, when combined with space and media.

Created by The Photography Collective a group of 13 photographers who`s main aim is the challenge the concepts within photography and the format in which we exhibit them. Firstly the Flaneur relates to how we understand urban phenomena and modernity. These still images have been brought together and are presented as moving ones. With sound and movement the viewer is indulged with juxtapositions, I found this very engaging and an unusual experience. I think the group have definately achieved a piece that is disoriatating. I wonder what effect these images would have if they were placed in frames on a wall.

The question arises when we think consider the aura of these images, if alone would they have have the same effect? Barthes notion of the Punctum comes to mind here, and the question of the ability of these images to communicate actual events. He reflected upon the relationship that the obvious symbolic meaning of an image (studium) and that which was purely personal and dependent on the individual (punctum) Barthes considered the photograph to have a unique potential for presenting a completely real representation of the world, or here create an alternative reality. This piece implies a naturalistic truth to the viewer, that the cycle of modern life is something that can be experienced, however what is most interesting is how it manages to create a new reality, one in which allows us to question the cycle of modern life, day to night, the cycle of people. This representation is made even more real with the use of non-diegetic sound establishing an eerie atmosphere. The fact is, even without the sound, the movement the images still hold the aura to represent the world around us. Very fascinating Indeed.

The Rhetoric of Images

The City That Never Sleeps. February. 2011

This image creates a visual juxtaposition, which I achieved through a reflection. This multi layered image creates an interesting perspective, allowing me to bring together two perspectives challenging the association.   On one hand we can detonate that the image is of an advertisement for shoes, with the presence of a women also in the composition, taken in New York. The place changes how we see the image, we instantly think of New York and how it makes us feel. For me in awe of its grandeur, it isn't clear if the women is also part of the advertisement and if not who is she and where is she heading. I am playing on the idea that advertisements are as real as we make them by blurring the boundaries of reality. 

     

Aaron Hargreaves has explored his own personal experiences as he embraces the transition from boyhood to adult. Coming of age is something that we all at one stage in our lives go through and this project is a reflection of his own experience at this important time. It is the union of two journeys; the memory of childhood’s ideals and faith and one of the confusion brought by the beginning of adulthood. The broken images act as a confrontation between these two, one in which a Christian upbringing does not prepare for the realization and acceptance of your true sexuality.

Aaron is a fine art photographer who has dealt with many commercial commissions, he brings many of his own personal quirks and obsessions to an image to create an alluring visual sensibility.

Nigel Tomm

I was blown away by these stunning, unique and inspiring images. The way that Tomm has found a way to capture and present his subject is abstract yet he still manages to maintain the element of beauty, this is distorted but again this distortion provides a more truthful image. One which makes the audience take something very different away.

Gabriel Orozco

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco blurs the boundaries between video, drawing, installations, sculpture and photography allowing the audience's imagination to run wild. He gives value to objects which have no status, discarded and undervalued, not desired or part of the big idea of globalised culture. Globalisation is at the center and structure of his work making comment upon the 'fissures and anomalies' capitalism and 'integrated' culture has created. This interaction between audience and artwork is why Orozco is so critically acclaimed, because he managed to communicate effectively through such sometimes bizarre and abstract forms.

Orozco focuses on spatial production, he gives us something to make us feel at time unease with, challenging a normal perspective of a landscape like above. The phenomenological aspects of his work are what fascinate me.  Orozco selects places, objects, landscapes which are recognizable (in globalised culture we recognize them as repetitions and replications but accept them as the 'stadium') but then adds another element, creating a juxtaposition which means we are met with a globalised (naturalized) space alongside something that throws off our natural agreement. If we consider this to be the 'punctum' of the image. This smaller creation, sculpture I feel makes a comment and pierces the viewer that everywhere now seems to made in the image of something else, and most importantly cannot exist without it. Can we have an original experience of anywhere at any one time, or is there somewhere else and someone else experiencing the exact same flaneur.

Repetitions

                        Carrie

This image offers a two sided portrait, I wanted to take two parts of the image and treat them separately, repetitions and reflections are my photographic 'obsession'. I love how they bounce of each other and make each one stranger and more visually interesting. I want people to consider how these two identities coincide with one another, and question which sides of themselves would they chose to show? This is reflected through the black and white style of the image and the editing process where I pushed the boundaries of shadow and highlight detail.