Image inspired by Rinko Kawauchi

Above image by Rinko Kawauchi - Illuminance series.

My own work inspired by Kawauchi.

Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer, shooting mostly in 6×6 format. Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life. She produces images that are soft and dreamlike with the use of lens flare, brightness, haze and pastel colour, the images are almost intermit. Many of her images have a blue over tone giving them a fresh and natural feel. She focuses on life, death and nature. Here i have looked a many   different bodiesof her work but chose the image shown at the top which is referenced. I focused on how the long exposure has captured the lights creating this over powering beam within the centre of the image. I then thought about how she captured her surrounds around her, i then decided to capture my own surrounds in a similar way. I took a photograph on the big tall buildings with the right shining though the centre as it does in her image but on the road thoguh the trees, as i had my camera around F8 and pointed my camera towards the direct sunlight i was able to capture lens flare within my image which is something that Rinko also does. I then added offset to my image to create the dazed effect, almost portraying looking back at a memory. Then i changed the temperate if the image to give it a blue, purple over tones, i also changed the temperature of the highlights within the image giving them a yellow brighter shade, this also helps the colours look softer and give a pastel effect. I didn't use a medium format 6x6 camera but i have cropped my image to the same shape and format as 6x6 given this square format.

http://www.rinkokawauchi.com/main/index.html

Rinko Kawauchi: Approaching Whiteness (video) @

http://blog.rosegallery.net/tag/rinko-kawauchi/ 

http://vimeo.com/59380078

Image inspired by JH Engstrom

Above image by JH Engstrom - Trying to dance series.

My own image that has been inspired by Engstroms work.

"JH Engstrom’s Trying to Dance is the body, the self, the essence, the mind… the awareness, the alive… the heart beats… so, the opposite of dead. No, not the opposite… alive but also there is the part of the self that thinks it is dead, the imperfections, the flaws, the pain. The presence, the touch, the feel… the dance. As if looking out from a hardwired view into the head… fragments of nakedness, fragments of touch, cold and hot, the world, the dream that is jammed into the cracks. The structure of this JH work is to paint from the psyche, let the psyche bleed it’s colored memory shards on to your face… feel the drum in your head, in their head, in our heads, feel the smell of the fluids dried on the bed, memories shared, choices shared, the physical, the life… our lives.

Traps of the body…. traps of the head… trying to dance."

Jh Engstrom is a photographer from sweden, i have looked at a piece of his work from the series 'trying to dance'. often uses 5x4 large format cameras but also uses film throw away cameras. He is known for his powerful striking imagery containing nudity, human forms, nature and natural beauty, a lot of his photographs are shocking and very intermit. He uses a lot of soft lighting creating a natural light surrounding creating a neutral feel within his images. The way the images are capture and because of the soft film feel it portrays almost a fragile feel. After looking at his image i decided to take an image inspired by his own image which is referenced above, as he captured a city landscape from afar i though i would capture a view that i see everyday, i shot this image on a very misty and cloudy day which enabled my to capture it as if the image has different tonal layers. I also edited my image adding warmer soft tones and increasing the brightness slightly. I also then crop my image to a 5x4 format procuding a image that would be to scale if printed on large format.

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/03/jh-engstrom-trying-to-dance.html

http://www.vice.com/read/a-chat-with-jh-engstrom

http://www.jhengstrom.com/ex.html

http://www.jhengstrom.com/ttd2.html

http://www.weareoca.com/photography/jh-engstrom-on-becoming-a-photographer/

Image inspired by Alexander Rodchenko

Above image by Alexander Rodchenko

My image that has been inspired by Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design. He is best known how his striking images taken from obscure and strange angles. The perspectives he uses foreshorten objects and intimate close-ups, creating a illusion, he also often didn't involve people within his image which allow all the proportions of the image to be questionable. He used a film camera for most of his like his most common being a Leica. His images where shot in black and which and had a lot of shadows and highlights and a lot of dark and contrasted areas. After looking at his images i chose to take an image of my own using the same technical aspects as Rodchenko used within his work. Firstly i photographed a building from around the same period as Rodchenko's work around 1930s, i decided to look at the buildings he may have photographed to be grand and modern in todays society are old and worn. I then shot looking up from the floor i felt this angle helped to create an illusion as it is unclear wether you are looking down or up only the sky gives it away. I also tried to capture some symmetry within my image as this is also an aspect that Rodchenko considered when photographing. I then change my image to black and white and dodge and burnt some aspects of the image to enhance the signs of wearing on the building.

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4975

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4975

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/rodchenko.shtml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3671028/Alexander-Rodchenko-A-man-who-took-life-lying-down.html

Image inspired by Eugene Atget

Above Image by Eugene Atget - Parisian shop windows - The streets of Old Paris

                                My image that has been inspired by Atget


Eugene Atget was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris. Atget was known for his black and white images that were shot among the streets of Paris. He often uses 5x4 format and focuses on the decaying equality, reflections and shops and shoppers."Considered the founder of documentary photography, Atget and his enigmatic images inspired numerous artists including Brassai, the Surrealists, Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott, as well as Man Ray, who collected some of the photographs included in the exhibition." After looking at his image i decided to take my own image taking into consideration some of the technical aspects of Atget's images. I photographed a shop window trying to capture the reflection of the sky in the window, making the models unclear as to wether they are real woman i feel by creating the illusion that they may be real reflects back to the images looking at what is society's ideal. I put my images in to black and white they weren't shot on 5x4 but have been put into a similar layout showing how they would look if to be taken on 5x4. I also increased the darkness within my images to create more of a contrast between light and dark tones.

"The pictures that he made in the service of this concept are seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious, and true.

from "Looking at Photographs" by John Szarkowski"

http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html

http://www.nga.gov/feature/atget/bio.shtm

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=229

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/eugene-atget/

Harvard referencing

As liz wells once said. "In a world overwhelmed by signs, what status is there for photography's celebrated ability to reproduce the real appearance of things." (Wells, 2000, 21)

- Wells, Liz, 2nd Edition, 2000, "Photography : a critical introduction, USA  and anad , Routledge.

Surrealism

Surrealism was very intermit with the minds unconscious, meditation techniques and word games, where used to help reveal a persons unconscious desires. Surrealists would try to get as close as possible to the inner world of imagination. (Warner Marion, 2002, 253)

This is a piece called super impression by Maurice Tabard 1931, which is a great example of surrealism work. Here 3 images have been put together of 2 different people, because of the way they have been constructed and placed together, it creates an illusion that although there faces are different people it almost look like one person, when viewing it from different angles.

Constructivism, Dada and Bauhaus

Hannah Hoch, "The beautiful Girl"

Dada -
Dada started in 1918 onwards, it was a group of all art types that came together to make anti war art work. Dada's idea was to go back to the beginning, simplify, strip art work back down to the basics, making images 2 dimensional. They had the idea that the body was like a machine. This is why in a lot of Dada influenced work there is machinery.

This is a image by Hannah Hoch, the image is made up of various picture clippings, that have all been put together as a collage. It holds a hidden message that is uncovered as the viewer looks at the picture in more depth. In the centre of the image there is a woman sitting with an umbrella, her face is then covered with a light bulb, on the right of her is a tire and on the left on side there is machine parts, such as gears, cogs and watches. In the top right there is picture of a woman's face, which has then had cat eyes layered over the top. The background is made up of lots of BMW car logos.  All these images juxtapose each other but link to the the industrial development and woman may be optimistic about the future and the upcoming relationship between technology and woman.

Constructivism -
A geometric style, which uses lots of shapes, colours and lines. It looks almost mechanical, some may say its not real art and that theres no craft in it. An artistic and architectural movement that emphasised art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism is a celebration of the development of the city, it can also be used for political meanings and messages.

Bauhaus -
German school of design, the building had amazing architecture lots of glass and the full furnishings on the building such as doors, window frames and sign all look very sharp and precise. They were all about simplicity and functionality, even the type face is without decoration. The objects that were made at the Bauhaus school of design, were always curved and had no sharp edges, everything had a soft finish and had a modern abstracting influence.