Our task for this assignment was to produce two images that had been inspired by our chosen Coen Brothers film. One image was to be shot on location creating a mood, and a second image creating a set within a location and introducing a figure. This assignment took me on a long journey.
I chose “Hudsucker Proxy” (1993) as my film, my thoughts centred on the Hula Hoop and how I could develop the concept as an idea for this assignment. I was transfixed by the idea of the circle and began to think about what it was that appealed to me.
I looked at Sarah Lynch’s work, I had researched her last year; she says of her work that “it is concerned with the philosophy of being. It questions issues concerning our existence with the “self.”(Newton: 35) This led to my questioning my own existence in the world and the circle depicting the cycle of life. Hudsucker Proxy was set in 1958/59 and I recorded the timeline relating to my family in the 1950’s. I looked at various aspects of 1950’s life, politics, history and toy crazes. It was a time of change; one of the film’s catch phrases was “the future is now.”
In thinking about my family, I came back to the cycle of life connected with nature and the landscape. I began to take photographs of the circle in nature, and the circle in any other place I could find it looking for inspiration. At the same time I had been reading David Campany (2008) and there was a quote from “Film” in a line spoken by Samuel Becket (1965). He said “we are doomed to live with our own self-awareness. The more traces of ourselves we destroy, the more acutely we sense ourselves.” I considered how much of ourselves do we really allow others’ to see. I do not always find it easy to disclose too much of myself, but as an artist I think that it is really important to release what goes on inside because it allows the creative self to develop and grow. I think that this is part of that process for me.
I continued to take photographs but now moving on to film. The assignment stipulated that we had to use medium format transparency or film or high end digital. My preference is medium format; I was using this for both FD201 and 202. I attended all lectures and workshops which I found useful and helpful, and began looking at other photographers and artists work as well as some philosophies concerning landscape and academic texts relevant to our chosen discipline.
During Reading Week I had decided to visit my family in Wales. This would give me the opportunity to begin photographing the landscape and begin to develop my photographic ideas. I had now decided that this would be a personal project about my longing to return to Wales; my first image would be a landscape shot and my second a self- portrait. I had considered using my daughter as a model for the portrait but felt that as this related to my own feelings that a self-portrait would be more appropriate.
The images I shot in Wales were a record of the places where I had grown up, places that I was familiar with and which depicted memory and nostalgia. They conveyed a sense of my return being “out of reach” and some showed a sense of loneliness and have certain darkness to them.
During my tutorial after my return from Wales it was suggested that I might like to look at Elina Brotherus’ work. I borrowed a book from the University Library titled The New Painting (2005). I found her work an inspiration and I responded to Brotherus’ ideas of “everyday things,” “beauty close up” and “home”(Brotherus: 7) as ideas that appeal to me because we can miss so much of what is around us if it becomes too familiar or we take it for granted. I am of the opinion that it is not always necessary to look very far from home to find a space where a photograph can be made that conveys an emotional response. Her landscapes are harmonious and painterly, using colour to depict mood. Her work is influenced by classical painters such as Vermeer and Caspar David Friendrich. “She goes to great lengths to study traditional painting right down to the individual brushstrokes.” (Brotherus: 5). I am very much inspired by classical painters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Piero Della Francesca and Vermeer though I have not yet studied them in any great depth. But I do think that classical art can contribute to contemporary art in a very positive way, and this is something that I am interested in researching further in the future. Brotherus’ interior portrait studies are reminiscent of Vermeer and I looked at these as ideas for my figure image.
I began to think that the process of an idea can take a long time to reach its true outcome. It can take many twists and turns. Usually what happens is that a thought can exist as something very small, and as the idea is developed, many different things connect with the original idea to help it to grow, and sometimes reach an outcome that can be quite surprising. The unexpected might happen to take you in a completely different direction to your initial thought. This is the beauty of being creative. You don’t really know where an idea is going to take you. I had begun with, in essence, the Hula Hoop from Hudsucker Proxy, which developed into the circle as the circle of life, and was now taking me into the realms of emotion. Where would I go next? “the act of artistic creation begins long before the camera is actually held in position and an image fixed, starting instead with the planning of an idea.”(Cotton; 21)
I was had been trying to depict longing and loneliness in my images. My next shoot took me to Dartmoor. After visiting a derelict building somewhere on the other side of Tavistock, Fliss and I headed on to the moors. By now it was very cold, I was shivering and it was very close to sunset. I had to shoot intuitively and in some haste. Thinking that it had probably got too late for a good exposure, I didn’t hold out much hope that these few images of a “lonely” tree would be successful. However, the finished prints were good, but my thought was that the image was just another tree on Dartmoor. When I showed these images at the Group Crit, everyone agreed that the third shot of the tree had the quality that I was aiming for. I looked at them again and realised that this had the mood and the essence of melancholy. The colours are subtle, the tree is lonely, there is darkness and coldness in the surrounding landscape, and I decided, that this could actually be my final image. I realised too that although I had been thinking about longing, isolation and loneliness, maybe the actual emotion that was at the heart of me was the true Welsh characteristic of melancholy. This was a kind of eureka moment. Cezanne wrote that “the landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness” (Wylie: 1). This quote mirrored the sentiment I was looking for at this time.
I shot two transparencies and one film for the interior self- portraits. Again the first two films were dark and I thought I wouldn’t be able to use them. I love ambient light and had not wanted to create too much controlled light on the images. I used only a large reflector which didn’t really make any difference to the finished images. I don’t think that I placed it in the right position to reflect light into the corners that needed it. For the third film I used a model light facing it into the darker areas of the room and slightly facing me. But this gave too much light and didn’t give the images the mood I wanted to create... But the same thing happened to these images as had to the Tree images on Dartmoor. When I showed the darker images at the Group Crit, everyone said that these were the ones I should consider using. I particularly liked the blurred image and chose that as my final to accompany the tree on Dartmoor image.
With my final images chosen I scanned them on the Hasselblad Scanner in the Digital Dark Room, lightened them slightly on Flex colour, sized them and handed them in to Creations for printing. With hindsight I think that I should have lightened the self-portrait a little in Lightroom or Photoshop just to bring out more detail in the corner. But they are printed now and there is nothing I can do to improve them.
I am happy with my final choices. After a little frenzied confidence crisis during last week, which I have promised myself will not happen again, I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and would have been happy to continue working on it for a little longer as I feel that I could have done more. But a deadline is a deadline; if I had been preparing work for an exhibition I would only have the time allocated to complete the work and no longer.
The biggest lesson I have learned from this assignment is that it is really important to shoot as much film as possible when I’m working on a project. I have to be prepared to start shooting as soon as I can when an idea materialises. Taking more photographs is the key to developing the idea. But I don't believe that the destination is more important than the journey.
Melancholy (1)
Melancholy (2)
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