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As the final order for my images, I had already considered the dinner table scene as the centre piece in a triptych style because of the sizing as well as because it is the most uniform and direct section. I debated on whether I should put the double exposed images on each side of the triptych though then decided on having a more vertical, though still almost diamond-shaped arrangement to the images, since the diptych would be at the top. At first the series was arranged very close together, as seen on the left, though through feedback from my tutors and classmates, decided to separate each element farther apart in order to distinguish them more.

Overall, I am very happy with the final result and I believe it tells exactly the concept that I wanted it to, since in many ways it pushes the viewer to question what I did and why I did it. On multiple levels this was a sort of goal, since that is the nature of experimentation and abstracted performance. As my subjective experience is the visual language itself rather than a story or telling of the experience, I was able to expose the power and spectacle of analogue photography. Although there was so much I wanted to do and to take it in many further directions, I think this arrangement and choice of images kept the project simple but still compelling in that way.

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As a diptych, I wanted to relate it to the double exposed images as well as the dinner table scene in the way they all included objects, and in fact had them as a crucial component, like the bread, wine, mirrored spheres on the dinner table, or the scarf and fabric on the double exposed images.
I think these two specific photos worked because they had a difference in contrast as well as in subject, since one has darker tones while the other has greyer ones, and one is an image of objects and the other is a close up of a body.
Since the double exposed images were more abstract, I knew that for this specific self portrait I wanted it more clear and naturalistic, as just a representation of both together as they stand beside each other rather than merged.

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Photos and art by Claude Cahun - queer surrealist photographer working with self portraits and collage

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Research and exploring concept of subjectivity 

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Research and exploring concept of subjectivity 

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Throughout my project and the development of my idea I did a lot of research not only an artists but on historical and cultural values around photography as it started to emerge as an art form. I think this was very helpful for me to create my own subjective perception of the way photography is used, seen and experimented with throughout time and social change. Especially when recognising that nowadays there is a conscious effort and appreciation for analogue photography as it had been taken over by digital photography, especially in the art world and among art students. This in many ways shaped the type of photographs I knew I wanted to create in terms of experimentation and playfulness as well as reflections on the medium of analogue photography.

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example photographs/films by Nobuyoshi Araki, Shuji Terayama, Daido Moriyama, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin and Pre/Early 1900s photography

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Nan Goldin is known for her candid photography, and the content of her photographs being of her friends as they are, naturally. Although, I think in a lot of ways her photos are staged and there is some construction to the scenes she represents because as an artist, and as someone who increasingly gained notoriety and attention from art institutions, Goldin had to keep up a certain look or feel to the images and in general had to approach photography with a plan or intention. This doesn't mean it's inauthentic or fake, and that her friends aren't represented as they are, and rather I think enables the photographs to create even more impact and power, and even closeness between the subject and viewer.
For my project, I wanted to approach the constructed scenes I wanted to create through also the feeling that what you are seeing is real, candid and genuine in terms of depicting a specific group of people or way of living. Although a lot of it is heightened and fabricated, that fabrication is representative of the way artists work and live, which is the main content I wanted to focus on.

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Because of one of my rolls of films failing, I had to improvise my idea of doing only constructed scenes of a community, using friends and people around me since after that first shoot mine and my friends’ schedules didn’t align. From there I decided that I would keep that constructed scene in the studio, and have that as a center piece. The constructions then manifested in deciding to do self portraits both in realism and abstraction flanking the scene vertically. There was a lot of uncertainty surrounding this as I never knew how the self portraits or the double exposed photos would turn out and in fact I had to improvise as it took a while for me to get the exposure and focus correct. Although I did feel like I had a lot of freedom to experiment because of the content and themes I decided to portray and in the end it worked out. Although, I do wish I had more photos of my friends in domestic, familiar places rather than just myself.

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I decided to do double exposed images because I think they would accomplish the type of movement and abstraction that I wanted some of my images to have. This method can create ghosts, mirrors and surreal or symbolic components to an image, allowing me to portray
The process was particularly challenging, as placing the two negatives on top of each both in a way that looked right but also keeping the edges of the negatives out of frame always took a lot of caution and time. I did feel as though I was really experimenting and challenging myself with the way I was using the skills I had just learned.
Getting the images correctly exposed was also a challenge and took a lot of trial and error, as some came out completely washed out. For example, the print in which I exposed a photo of a draped scarf over a candid photo of a friend kept making the latter photo very washed out and without detail. In the end I got the final print to the point that even though the two exposures had a difference in brightness, still provided an interesting juxtaposition and look to the image, almost as if the frame got caught in the middle of a fade between cuts of a film.
By the second print I made, I think I got the hang of it more and was really happy with the outcome.

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All of the photographs which were not in the studio had to resort to being self portraits, as there was no time between me and my friends to shoot at each other's flats. I did initially want to explore self portraiture and I'm glad I got to do it for this project as much as I did even if I had to change up my idea at first. I used a shutter release cable for the first time which was very satisfying as I could go in front of the camera, move how I wanted and press the cable at whatever moment I felt right. It was very playful and candid as I definitely relied on instincts rather than posing or with a clear idea of the way I wanted to move. Most of the photos were awkward or blurry, but the final image I chose to print out I think worked really well as a close up of a sort of indiscernible action I was doing. In relation to this, the bathroom setting as well as the candid movement comes into conflict with the bright sequins and decorativeness of what I am wearing, as well as the fact that it is not clear what I am doing in order to create contrasts in meaning as well as to confuse the viewer as I am subverting their perception.

The photo beside it, which eventually I made to be merged with the other since I glued them together, was also intuitive and candid in a way because I just picked up objects that I had on the floor of my bedroom and took a photo of them as I shined a light on them. I had a fake flower clip, a bundle of ribbons and a test strip, which I think all work really well with the other photographs in my series, since the test strip is one of another image I used, and the ribbons and flowers relate to the use of fabric which is present in both the Dinner table scene and the double exposed photograph of the draped scarf. In general this definitely showed that I payed close attention to the use of varied materials and textures within the whole of my series.
Even though I did line the objects up vertically in a way that looks staged, I think there is still a quality of authenticity and candidness to them.

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For this series, I collaborated with three of my artist friends, one of which created the dress and designed the set. They made it so the dress would become the table cloth of a table which would be low on the ground.
I decided to shoot this from a very high angle in order to emphasize the difference in height and dimension of the scene.
I then placed a very focused spotlight in between the two subjects to create high contrast between the black background and bright light.
Using the studio in fact was very fulfilling in terms of really creating the exact perception of the scene as I wanted as well as the emotional tones within the slight hints to religious imagery (the wine, bread and fruit, and the difference in height between the two figures)
I initially had the camera on a stand, though then quickly realized I really needed to work freely with my hands to get the handheld, candid feel for the images. This in fact created the juxtaposition between construction and realism which I took from Jack Smith and Nan Goldin.
I didn’t intend this to become the center piece of the project but since I ended up cropping and ordering the prints in a way which resembled a triptych in a church, I think it would have worked as a focus which is representative of the control of aesthetics and the tension between the mundane and spectacular, which would then extend to the photographic experiences of the self portraits and double exposures.

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Although they're different mediums, photography and cinema can both contain similar intentions of creating or representing a specific moment in time, as it is really, whether it is fake or real. Especially, in early cinema, there was a high sense of spectacle and experimentation within its practice, as it was such a new and exciting technology. Using avant garde cinema from the 20s-50s as inspiration will allow me to get the high senses of movement that would effectively depict the aesthetic constructions of my surroundings, especially through high shutter speed as almost making it look like a still from a film.

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“There’s no intellectual theory behind my work. It’s all about the experiential, the emotional.”

Photography not as journalistic, opinionated or of personal conceptions, but rather a subjectivity which is not intellectualised and instead just felt and uttered.

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Kenneth Anger once said that filmmaking "is like making a painting out of real gold and jewels,"

Anger was aware of light's specifically powerful influence on perception and used it for what he would call "magickal" effects. He focused on creating moments of heightened perception when the viewer experiences light's power

He was part of communities which in their art used the occult, hallucinogenic drugs and alternative ways of working with nature, all which he experienced to create very personal films representative of them through cinematic experimentation and innovation.

Playing with light and materials which manipulate and create light in different compelling ways is very important to me when considering the content for my series, as in the same was as Anger does, I wanted to use everyday objects in ways which heightened an entire situation, which melded with the subjects into abstraction as well as to

Light also is the main component of the way a camera works and the way a print is created, and therefore both using and manipulating light in my process allowed me to reflect on the medium of photography itself.

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Test strips and process of creating the style - Lighting, Contrast & Perspective

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Test strips and process of creating the style - Lighting, Contrast & Perspective

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To create the exact look I wanted for my photographs, I knew that while taking them I needed to take into consideration that I was going to use a higher contrast as well as that I was going to experiment with double exposure. I really had to think of ways in which this could work, so I gave myself as much room as possible to have trial runs.
Lowkey high contrast I think would allow me to carry out my concept as it is more compelling in the ways it heightened the feelings and tones of a scene as well as it draws closer attention to the way photography as a medium is used, since the shadows are clearly shown to be guiding the perception of the viewer, as does a photograph when it captures a moment. As I experimented, I decided to use a contrast setting in between 3 and 4 in the enlarger, and in the camera maintain a high shutter speed of 125 and an aperture set at around 8 - 11. For the shoots I did on location, in my bedroom, I also set the ISO at 800 while using a 400 ISO film, and made sure to push when developing.

Also, I made sure to see which photos had a sharper difference between light and dark in the negatives themselves when I would pick out which part to make test strips of and through which I would decide what the final selection of photos I would print out would be.

For the project I want to avoid as much grey as possible since I knew that would fulfil both the tone of the images and even just for the outcomes of the double exposed images, though that turned out to be very difficult when not in the studio, as I did not have much control over light and the only light I had access to was quite weak and did not create the sharp shadows I wanted. Regardless the final results turned out to have the exact feel I wanted, as the photos with a lot of grey still contained the juxtaposition of heightened abstraction and drama within realism. I think this is because of the choice of angles and perspective I chose. I am very inspired by Daido Moriyama’s use of perspective, as it looks like handheld and unstable with expressive tilts. Especially when taking self-portraits I really needed to pay close attention when trying to achieve this, as I needed to place my tripod in often strange places and it took a while most of the time. Instead, in the studio and when using models, I almost don’t think about it and rather try to be as expressive as possible with the way I hold and move the camera. In the studio, I tried using the stand, though ended up just wanting to have more freedom with movement by holding it myself.

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Aesthetic control through personal subjectivity 

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Aesthetic control through personal subjectivity 

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I am very interested in art which exposes the mechanisms and power of the medium in which it functions, and especially when artists work in self-reflexive ways.

Choosing to construct every single element of the image but also doing it in such a way which remains vague, candid and natural, will allow the images to demonstrate the way photography works, and also create a complicated relationship between the subject and the audience, since they are being presented with something in between convincing and not.

“Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.” Sontag

Aesthetic control and tension allows my photography to be a sort of performance and spectacle, as a lot of early experimentations of photography and film were, especially in marginal, queer spaces.

Acting the parts to a drama and sorting/deconstruction archetypes which emerge from other’s projections

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For my project I intended to create very ornate, elaborate and decorated aesthetics and visual compositions within candid approaches to photography and through which heightened, nonlinear or contradictory deceptions of my friends and people around me can be constructed, who are ultimately creatives and art students.

There are many conceptions surrounding art students, whether it be for their specific choices of self expression, their way of life, and general attributes associated with them. When certain projections are placed on specific groups of people, often those who these are directed towards either adopt them or create distance between them.

Through my series of photographs and as a creative myself, I wanted to subvert the power which these projections had to both distinguish and meld these two processes. In other words, depicting the dynamics between the aesthetics and attitudes associated the type of people which I’ve surrounded myself with and the nature and instincts that creative communities have as alternative and often marginal.

Multiple important artists have dealt with the representation of communities and alternative groups of people such as Nan Goldin, Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger, whether it be through candid realism or through theatrics and film drama, respectively. These three artists have shaped my own visions when it comes to this project, as they all treat their subjects as being visual expressions themselves.

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Jack Smith & The Bodily Senses of Community & Creativity

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Jack Smith & The Bodily Senses of Community & Creativity

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Visions of alterity and distance produce a new sort of liberty of expression, iconic imagery and body figures

Alienating any indication of standards, not giving any context, keeping things vague, situations that “float”

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“Vivid” - not in terms of color but in black and white photography

Chaos - a mix of abstract, clear, and double exposed images

Theatre and tableaus, presentational vs domestic and familiarity

Visual non linearity - exposes domains of influence

Handheld camera - shaky but functional - gestural expression

Shooting downward from high angle - disorients and flattens the scene into abstraction

Daido Moriyama - extreme high contrast, tilted angles

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German contemporary photographer
Working with still lives and natural landscapes though through darkened atmospheres.
Parts of contemporary photography have been characterised by showing the monotony of everyday life.
Helfrecht uses this though shifts these sights towards more grotesque, discomforting images, therefore bringing the internal to the external.

She has said to be concerned with post-memory, inheritance and generation, making her work highly autobiographical and symbolic
Staging on location & digital black & white - tool for incorporating iconography into her images, making the subjects or scenes more abstract, exposing the vagueness of memory and intergenerational trauma.

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Darkroom - First contact sheets & prints

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Darkroom - First contact sheets & prints

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The first contact sheets and prints I made were from the lighting task, and I chose a photo which was low-key and which from the negative I could make out to have darker shadows. I decided to immediately experiment with the contrast on the enlarger, making it increasingly more magenta as I exposed so that I could get the high-contrast aesthetic I wanted.

The contact sheet showed that a lot of the photos ended up having more grey tones than I would have wanted, so for the final print, I chose a photo which I think had the best angle and light so that I could increase the contrast and exposure time accordingly. While doing the test strips, I knew that for my project I needed to have slightly longer exposure time and a contrast set between 3 and 4 so that I could get very dark blacks and light whites. Although, my final print showed that I may have set the contrast slightly too high as some details of the subject’s mouth were washed out.

I never knew that there would be so many different combinations of techniques to use in the darkroom, as I just assumed the outcomes of prints were very limited. Instead, through the making of different test strips, I realised how much control I could have when it comes to brightness and contrast.

Although we weren’t able to tone or process the photographs ourselves, using the enlarger still allowed me to really understand the ways in which I could change the final result of a photograph.

I think this was really fulfilling precisely because I intended my project to reflect on aesthetic control and of my practice as being a fully experimental and process-based one.

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Postmodernism & Feminism

Postmodern art - looking at American culture through irony and  "the banal eroticism of advertising copy and the repressive conformity of the postwar era"

Wordplay and using "low" materials (like chewing gum in 'SOS')
- Posing in common positions women are seen in on TV and magazines while also incorporating forms resembling genitalia and other taboo images and concepts to subvert the idea of femininity and the domination of women's bodies within consumerism.
- Postmodern approaches to the male gaze and the objectification of women's bodies and using subverted power to shift the object of desire.
- Wilke received criticism, with other feminists calling her narcissistic and sexualising herself, which ignores the postmodernism that is present in her own photographic representation
Overall she dealt with what it means to live, desire and work in the female body.

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Artist, self-portrait photographer and performance artist working in 1970s-1980s New York City
- alongside artists like Duchamp
- 70s - second wave feminist movements - main focus on women's sexuality and sexual liberty, vaginal imagery in art was common in feminist art at this time.
- Wilke did sculpture, drawing and found-object art before focusing on photo and video art.

Photography & photographing performance art
- self portraiture as an exploration for self representation.
- portraits in studio to create paradoxes with women photographed in fashion and advertising
- body as visual language

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Self portraiture & questioning the notion of identity

As seen in this photo, Sherman takes common archetypes of women in Hollywood films and creates still images out of them, ones which could look like to be taken from real films. The scenes are highly constructed and made to look to be almost too perfect, with clear indications of a main subject, a secondary one in the foreground as well as clear awareness of space and movement as Sherman is stepping out of a room.
This is an aspect which I am very interested in and through which I think photographic subjectivity is able to be fulfilled through personal politics and reflections of gender dynamics and the female experience.

Her own experience confronting issues of identity and the representation of women and public figures is a subjective approach to photography —as she is personally exposing all the archetypes attributed to women, which is her own perception of the world and something which dominates her approach to viewing too

At the same time,  the archetypes are objective — she is critiquing mass media. The content in mass media is in many ways objectified by nature whether that is the archetype of the person itself - or just women in general.

She has agency in her own objectification

Woman who is aware of the ways women are conditioned to view themselves through the male gaze, surveying herself through a man’s pleasure in looking -  she recognises how absurd a lot of the ways women are seen and because she is fully tapping into her own objectification in a over the top  way, her own image goes beyond any of that — It is so over the top and therefore destroys itself

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For the shutter speed and depth of field task, I decided to have my friend model with different metallic objects, specifically coins and mirrored spheres. I had her hold these in different ways, playing with them and making them fall at certain moments. I first used a high shutter speed to grab very specific movements she made, as well as made her change the distance and position of the objects so that I could play with shallow depth of field.
To practice slow shutter speed, I had her roll the silver coins down her legs and onto the floor, to hopefully create blurred movement which still caught the shininess of the coins.
Unfortunately, the whole roll of this shoot came out blank, as the film was not loaded correctly. Nonetheless it allowed me to really practice in what ways one I could construct a scene for the next series of images I was going to do.
The only photo which came out of the roll was one of some objects I had placed on the floor on top of silky, embellished fabric, through which I created a shallow depth of field. I wanted specific points in the sequins of the tassles so that their shininess would stand out and be in sharp focus, while the brass of the ash tray in the background would be more blurred. In general I really want to bring out the materials in the objects I am photographing, especially if they play with light in interesting ways.

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For the lighting task, I partnered with a classmate to create both low-key  and high-key images, meaning ones with a black background and high contrast of shadows, and ones with a white background where a flood light would illuminate the entire scene. We worked together to set up the studio, and in some decided to add a wooden rack to complicate the background slightly. It took a few tries to be able to use the double sided black and white panels to get the background completely dark or fully white as well as adjusting the light. I mainly used a spotlight with a very focused point as I thought that would make the photos more dramatic.

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Series of images of American cities around the year 2000
- Moriyama has always been interested in the americanisation of Japanese culture as well as the rise of consumerism and the relationship between the US and Japan
Snapshots while wandering around the city
- Being in the US, Moriyama was able to abstract and disfigure street signs, suburban lights and the corruption of American cities.

- Figures lurking, secluded urban corners as if his perception only considers the obscured and all that isn’t in plain sight, which has to be found, identified and mystified

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Born in Osaka under the social shifts of post-war Japan

- Moriyama's work always demonstrates an extreme sensitivity to place, representing hidden parts of a city as well as fleeting figures within their darkness and under their lights.
- Art in post-war Japan was characterised by the expansion of the definition of art itself - Moriyama changed what people considered photography

Use of photography as an experiment

- Using tilted angles, as if glimpsing and questioning what is being seen shows the impulsivity through which he approaches subjects
- Questioning in what ways photography captures things as they are and rather using it as a tool for an extension of personal perception

In the secluded streets of Tokyo —>

The juxtaposed textures, heightened grain, decentralised subjects and tilted camera clearly show that something catches his eye by chance and by a perceptive magnet

The destabilisation of social structures after the war also break down what is seen as fact, normal, important as well as what is and isn’t documentation

Highly subjective street photography which deconstructs notions of documentary

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Cindy Sherman  - Power,  Subjectivity and Objectivity (Week 2) 

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Cindy Sherman  - Power,  Subjectivity and Objectivity (Week 2) 

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Nan Goldin (Week 1) How to read an image

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Nan Goldin (Week 1) How to read an image

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Greer and Robert on the bed, New York City , 1982
Example of subjectivity in photography
- Candid image and realism
-"Snapshot" approach and technique
- Muted colours and blurriness
Techniques show that there is a meaningful relationship between photographer and subject, with the result being not merely representational
Goldin's photographs are debated to even objectify her subjects because of these aspects rather than depict closeness and appreciation. She has been called a voyeur and exploitative which indicates that subjectivity and objectivity are not separate dichotomies and can be complex and meld with each other.