Images

Freya-Narrative Image Making In Context

Task 1

Timeline Of Narrative Images

In this lesson we where given a worksheet and an image. This image was a work of art that included narritve in  it. This was the images that my group was given;

At this point we didn't know anything about this image.We where asked to fill in the sheets given to us, answering the questions using our first impressions of the image. The first question on the sheet asked us describe the image, the size, main colours of the image as what the image looked like and where there any people in the image. I started by looking at the colours in the image. One of the main colours is a sky blue colour, this is the colour that I see the most in the image as this is the background colour on the main wall. As well as the blue colour there are also a lot of yellow colours and shades. This is a very large scale image the whole of the room is painted from floor to ceiling. I thought that because this painting was so big there was no central subject to the painting, and if there was it would be very hard to identify as the painting was very busy. Another of my first impressions of this painting was that there where a lot of people in the painting for it to be based around one narrative. From this is started to think that maybe this was a religious painting, based around well known stories from the bible. I also imagined that this room/painting had been painted like this a long time ago, as the style of painting isn't one that is commonly carried out my artist today. I'd say that this painting fits in more in the time of the renaissance, most likely created by a famous artist of the time. 

After we had filled in the question and had our ideas about the painting, its content and meaning we where given iPads so that we could research what the painting was really about and how close our impressions of the painting where.

After searching on the internet, i found that this was the Sistine chapel in the Vatican city, the place where the pope lives. It was painted by Michelangelo in 1508-1512. The story behind this painting was religious stories. On the central ceiling on the chapel the 9 scenes from the book of genesis are depicted, the most well known of the paintings being The Creation Of Adam. Other religious stories being one like The Last Judgement. The Stories behind these paintings would be either mythical or historical, depending on your outlook. These paintings so a very detailed series of events rather than a single scene.

My interpretation of the image was very very close. I got the time at which the painting was created correct as well as the meaning of the narrative.

In our next lesson we built a timeline of all the images that people looked at. This timeline began at 1100 and ran all the way up to present day.

Photographs From The Timeline

We ordered all of out pictures in the date there where created. During this lesson we looked at different media's used in narrative image making, from painting and art to graphics and photography. In this lesson i learnt that there are many way to create a story, outside of photography. As well as this i learnt that narrative image making has been happening for a very long time and in many different ways.

Task 3

Compare Different Stories

In this session we where introduced to different types of narrative and the artists that created them. In groups, we where given a set of images in this group and asked to figure our the narrative and its order. we where able to look at a wide range of different styles of narrative.

One of the artists we looked at was Sophie Calle. She create sets of images showing people going around there daily, for example the set that we looked at in class showed a man walking around a town centre, carrying out a variety of activities. The time scales of the images is very hard to tell from the images as we don't know how long is is between image and have no way of knowing. However, one of the method's that Sophie Calle uses in her work is that she photographs her chosen subject until they realise that they are being photographed, or until they approach. After this happen Calle decides to stop photographing the person and the narrative ends. The order of these images are not very clear, neither is the meaning behind them. I think that this means that the viewer of these images can be much more inventive when trying the sequence the narrative for themselves, much like we had to in our group. As we didn't know the narrative of the images when we where putting them together, we where aloud to make our own series of events, create our own story behind the images. For a narrative I think that this is much more effective then a straight forward narrative as it engages the audience, or viewer, more. The style of imagery the Sophie Calle uses is a straight forward approach, one that resembles privative detective work. In each image it appears that she keeps her distance from the subject, trying not to be noticed, she also looks to hide,behind doors and post. I think that her way of shooting is very effective as it makes her work look very natural and private, rather than the subject has been staged. Although she keeps her distance she makes it clear in each image who the main subject in the image, even in crowds. 

Another artist that we looked at in lesson was Eadweard Muybridge and his work. He was most well know for creating series of images that show movements. weather it be people walking, taking off there hat or dancing. these narratives can differ in length depending on what he is photographing. The one that we looked at in lesson was a series of image depicting a man taking off his hat and putting it back on. The way that these images are taken is Muybridge sets up a line of 12 camera (or however many frames he wants). He then gets a subject to walk by these camera's motion sensors set of the camera capturing each movement frame by frame. This set is 12 frames long. The sequencing of these images is very straight forward and clear. By looking at the position the them man and at which points they are in there movements, its very easy to decide at which point in the set the image fits in. I don't really like this form of narrative, I find that it can be quite boring and not very engaging with the viewer, and I, personally, find it very dull to view. Although I don't like the actual content of the images, I find the idea very interesting. I like the idea of capturing something frame by frame I just think that he could have captured something much more interesting than a man taking his hat off or someone walking.  

Both of these narratives are too totally different types of narrative, from the content of the set to the way that these images have been taken. One artist demonstrates a very basic way of creating a sequence of images while the other creates one that is much more complex. I think that Calle work probably took more time and planning to create as she would have had to go out, find her subject matter and then photograph them for as long as possible without being caught. Whereas Muybridge created narrative image that is very easy to create. The way that he has created these image means that he could have put in self in these image, no in depth planning or thought really needed to create these images. As well as that the way in which they have been create is also completely different. Like I said Calle went out on location and secretly photographed people where as Muybridge did the complete opposite to this. As these too sets have been shot under completely different circumstances I think that this also heavily effected the look of the images, for example in Calle work it can be sometimes hard to see the main subject is as it been shot secretly there are a few distractions in the foreground of the image. However with Muybridge's work it is all very clear and easy to understand what is happening. 

Although these too narratives have a lot of differences there is one distinctive similarity that they share. They both tell as story. Weather is be as simple as a man taking is hat off or following someone around these both tell stories all the same. Either way they can be interpreted by different viewers in a variety of different ways, which, I believe, is the most important part of narrative photography for each person to come up with there own meaning.      

Images

Tom Banksy research

Banksy's work closely relates the of La Rat as they both use stencils to create graffiti. There work is so closely related that bansky has been accused of coping La Rats work. Bansky is a very well known British street artist how, like La Rat, uses stencils to create graffiti.  I can relate my work to the work of bansky in the same way as I did La Rat, I could adapt there techniques.  Creating graffiti cartoons to over lay on to my images.  As well as this I could physically intervene with an area in the same way banksy does. I could pyhsically go out to a location,  holding the image of s cartoon over someone, without them knowing. I think that this woukd be much more intresting and challenging for me too do. This will also be much more time consuming, however, more effective. 

Research-Howard Snowden

Howard Snowden is one of my college photography tutors and is one of my main inspiration's for this project. Howard created alot of work based around his mother. One serise of images documented him taking his mother's ashes to burried. He documented the different points in the journey, from being at home with a plant for his mum, to the car ride to the grave site. I really liked how personal his work was and I wanted to base my work around something as personal as this. I thought, from seeing Howard's work, that I could create something similar based around my grandmother. I could create a serise of images based around my childhood and my memories with my grandma.

Howard showed us another set of his images based around his mother where he took images of her empty house. Around the time of being shown these images my grandma had jusg been moved in to a care home. I thought that it would be nice to record her home,  as she kept it and the way I remember it, before everything changed.

In Howard's work I like how he draws on personal matters such as his mothers death. By doing this he creates alot of emotion in his work, which I something I want in my own work. The way in which be photographs also makes his work very personal. For example the images of his mothers house, to anybody unknowing looking at them they would just look like pictures of an empty room. To him these pictures of these empty rooms hold alot of memories, both of his mother and his childhood. This us the format that I want to add into my own images, personal meanings and memories.

Howard Planning

I have one day to shoot all of the images that I need for my narritive, this is the only time that I will be able to go to my grandparents house. I thought that it would make the process much easier and faster if I planned what I was going to do for this photoshoot. There are different parts of the house that I want to photograph, my grandma's sitting room, the dining room and some features of the house. I think that these places of the house hold the most memories of my grandma/grandpa.

I want to start in the sitting room. In this room I want to photograph the furniture because it is really old and is something that comes to mind when I think of my grandma. I want my series of Images to be filled with content like this because I think that this will create a very personal narritive to me and the people in my family.

As well as the furniture, something else that I relate closely to my grandma are photographs. These are all over her house, of her children and grandchildren.  These are really old photo', when I used to go and see my grandma before she got ill, we would always sit and talk about my dad and his siblings when they were younger. She would also show my photos of them.

After I have photographed all the features and things that remnind me of my grandma in this room I will move onto the next and follow the samr pattern.

For now these are the only room I have planned, however if I have extra time in the day I woukd like to wander around the house to find anything else that i could photograph that I haven't already thought of.  Hopefully,  by planning this out I will have some extra time to spare.

Howard Key Stages

After I gathered all the images I wanted from this room I moved on go to the next room. My grandma's sitting room is split in half with the dining room. Like in the last room, I wanted to start by taking images of the room as a whole and in the same fashion as the last room, I used a wide angel lens to make sure that I could fit the whole room, and the contents into the frame. I thought it important I capture this room as it was a large part of the family. This was where the  whole family would gather on a sunday, for tea. As my grandparents got older the family, sunday tea started to stop and this was the most promanent memory of my grandparents.

Much like the last rooms i thought that it was important to record some of the key details of the room, to make sure that the images followed in a series, aesthetically. In the dining room there was alot of momentios  things from my childhood that reminds me of my grandma. While I was searching through this room I found a really old photograph, from my dads first wedding day. I really liked the look of the photo and thought it woukd fit in well with the concept of my photographic narritive. I decided to take an image of this where I found it, on top of a sewing machine. I thought that this also relfected the type of people my grandparents are, very sentimental. There are alot of pictures around the house, from old photographs to paitings.

One of these images is a paiting by my grandma's favorite artists. Like everything else that I decided to photograph, this painting held alot of memories and meaning to it. I remember the day my grandma was given this painting, it was a day that  holds alot of memories, which is clear as to this day I can still remember it. For many of the close up images I used a 40mm lens. The 50mm was unavailable at the time of my photoshoot, but by using the 40mm I could still get the effect that I wanted with the 50mm. I don't think that the some of the images from this room worked as well as what they did in the last room. There was alot less to photograph in this room. However I think that I gathered some good images to go into my narritive.

That was the last room that I wanted to document but there was still some features that I wanted to capture that weren't part of the room that I had already photographed. I decided to go around the house, inside and out, taking some more images of key features. I went into the garden and decided to take some image of the clothing drying line. When I was younger my grandma would make me her peg girl, this involved me putting in a red apron and holding the peg while she hung the clothes. To take this image I used a 40mm lens, set the aperture to around F.18 as there was alot of sun that day.

Another aspect of the house I wanted to photograph was the front and back door, I think that this would have been a good way to start and finish my narritive. At this point I still hadn't worked a sequence to put the images into, to create a narritive set of images. For these images I used the wide angle lens as this made it easier to get everything I wanted in one image, the door with some of the surrounding house.

The last part of the house I wanted to photograph  was a wall of photohgraphs leading to the upstairs, I thought that this tied in well with some of the photos I took earlier. I managed to get all the images I needed in one day which I was very pleased with as I meant that I was able to work to a short time frame.