Deconstruction

I have been trying to 'build' a nude body with the images of myself that I made with a scanner last week as I haven't had access to a studio to shoot photographs with a model of body parts to use. I spent a long time cropping individual fingers, eyes and lips to arrange into something that resembles a body, but I feel like it looks like something that would've been made 25 years ago when artists were just starting to use Photoshop. I don't want to worry too much about being original and contemporary because that could stop me from creating something great, but sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself whether the piece you're working on is actually going anywhere. Also I think using a programme like Photoshop can lead to overcomplicating a piece and ending up with a big mess.

To refresh the work I'm creating with the scans, I created rectangular frame in which I placed a few parts of the scans of my mouth, and blended them together using the 'spot healing' tool on Photoshop.  I did the same with images of my fingers. For a while I thought I might leave the pieces like this, but still wanted to tie these new images into the ideas I have been looking at surrounding the human form. From found imagery I traced female figures and cut out the silhouettes from plain sheets of white printing paper and stuck these over the collages of my mouth and fingers. If viewed from a certain angle, the silhouette cut-outs form shadows over the prints of the collages which gives the final images three-dimensionality, which I would like them to have if they were to be displayed in an exhibition space. I like photography pieces to have an unexpected physical presence in a space, because it breaks the two-dimensional barrier that photography is often stuck behind.

In contemporary art the frame has become simpler, or non-existent because frames are no longer so commonly used to create the illusion of another world, but simply to protect what's in them. Pinning photographs to walls and displaying canvases without frames has become common practice in galleries as the function of the frame becomes more questionable.

In my mouth by me

Fingers by me

The ideas for my body of work have started to towards the representation of the body. Naturally I look at this from the perspective of a woman, therefore I've been tending to think of the male gaze on the female body. However, I'd like to not narrow my research to just looking at the female figure, because I'm also interested in the female gaze on both the male body and female body. I would like to think that, in my circle of friends at least, the "recurring theme of male disgust at female sexuality"*  isn't nearly as prevalent as it was maybe 10 years ago. I don't think it's "cool" to have such narrow minded views these days and to me it's not something worth arguing about, because maybe if we stop talking about how gross boys think we are, and start talking about how it's okay to be 'gross', this negative opinion will go away. Maybe I'm being very naive but I think telling boys off for calling girls disgusting is a self fulfilling prophecy.

*- Matthew Collins "Sarah Lucas" Tate Publishing, 2002.

Assemblage

Scanning myself really drew attention to the two extremes of accuracy and inaccuracy than can be achieved when scanning a three dimensional form. The images hold a surreal quality, given by the short focal length of the scanner. To advance from what I've done over the last couple of days today I plan to use scans of individual parts of the body to build up an image of an artificial figure.

Through my work I am hoping to question the structure of society's views on the human figure by investigating the difference between nudity and nakedness. Physically and visually these two states may be exactly the same, however the intent, concept and conscious states - of the artist, model or viewer - are arguably very different. If you look up the definitions of the two words there is a distinct difference. 'Naked' not only means to be without clothes (or usual covering or protection), and being undisguised, but it also expresses an exposure to harm and vulnerability. The definition of 'nude' on the other hand refers more to the depiction of the bare human form in an artistic context ("a naked human figure, typically as the subject of a painting, sculpture or photograph"/ "depicting or performed by naked people"). The fact that the definition of nude that I found used the word "naked" suggests that nudity is a form of nakedness with artistic intent. So what does it then mean to simply be naked?

Freya Jobbins is an Australian sculptor and print maker who primarily uses discarded childrens' toys to assemble busts and portraits, exploring the relationship between consumerism and the culture of up-cycling and recycling. Jobbins arranges the parts of the toys in such a way that the expressions and body language the sculptures posses can be quite particular. I am really interested in the process of creating a humanoid sort of nude figure with images of inexplicit parts of the body. The fact that the parts of the body which the figure is made up of are not explicit should, in a literal sense, mean that the figure isn't nude, however, if I create all the visible forms of the nude figure, is it then nude? Is it naked?

I think it's interesting that traditionally we would think of 'a nude' as a figurative artwork, whether that be painted, sculptural or in the form of a photographic print, and that although some of these may have been somewhat erotic, and perhaps shocking at the time they were made, but generally they are not frowned upon. However, the accessibility of cameras has created a boom in the production of images, and photography has been put into the hands of all members of society. Over the last couple of decades or so, 'a nude', in pop culture has come to obtain another meaning. Generally it is known as a photograph taken by oneself, of oneself, nude. And typically these pictures are shared with lovers, and in some cases 'leaked' (meaning the someone obtained and shared the photograph without the owner's permission). Leaking nudes has been all over the press this year with many celebrities taking the hit. The victims of this, now, crime used to commonly be the first ones to be slated, being condemned for creating nude photographic images of themselves, but recently we have seen a huge shift in the from the victim being blamed, to the criminal being blamed. Laws have been written against the act of 'revenge porn' and some activists have started to leak their own nudes in an effort to 'reclaim their bodies'. See: Molly Soda and Alexandra Marzella (@artits6666).

Freya Jobbins sculpture

Digital Interventions Workshop Outcomes

Initially, I was uncertain about the scanography part of the Digital Interventions workshop because when I was introduced to this process a couple of years ago it seemed fairly childish and useless. It still seems childish, but a lot less useless. You can use a scanner to create some funny, disgusting and thought provoking images. I experimented with touching the flatbed scanner, licking and kissing it, dripping water on it, using a sheet of clear or orange acetate to keep it clean / change the colours. I also put my phone on top of the scanner to scan a photograph that I posted of myself on Instagram. When I did this, my phone case scanned in its true colour, but the image on my phone screen showed up in grayscale. I'm yet to find out why this is and hope it doesn't affect the scanner. If it does, it wasn't me.

Scanning my fingers - contact with the flatbed gives the illusion of shine on the nails

Orange acetate used to add colour filter

Orange acetate used to add colour filter

Licking flatbed with acetate on top, and water drops

Moving while scanner is in action

Scanning my phone

Digital Interventions

Digital photography is different to analogue photography in many obvious ways, but one major difference is that the tones in an image have steps. A digital image typically is made up of pixels, each of which is a different tone/colour. These steps are recorded by a CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor which generates an electrical impulse. No light - no reaction (0), light - reaction (1). There are a range of reactions which translate into a binary code to give a scale of shades. A CCD has to compress continuous tones and continuous lines into discrete packets of information, whereas analogue film can record this information continuously. Compression leads to loss of information. For example, if you compress a large RAW image into a .jpeg, all detail invisible to the naked eye will be lost.

To explore some of the basic ways of how digital photography has dramatically changed the way we can create images we had a digital interventions workshop in which we experimented with flatbed scanners and stitching. We used the stitching aid on Lightroom to make panoramic images using multiple continuous images of the same area.

Andrea Gursky is an artist who uses this sort of technique to create huge photographs such as "99 cent. 1999" (207 x 307cm). Because it is made up many images, the photography has no single vantage point and is geometrically flat, compared to the distortion a wide-angled lens may give due to its concave form.

My attempts of stitching, at first were hideously unsuccessful, with the middle of the panoramic being pinched in and single image being places separately from the rest of the panoramic. When I learnt to stay in one space while taking photos the end result was much better. At the moment I'm interested in works by Freya Jobbins, an assemblage artist who uses parts of dolls and other plastic toys to make portrait and figural sculptures. This gave me the idea of photographing parts of different people and digitally stitching them together to create either a sort of idealised figure, like the ancient Greeks using different models to create each part of a figural sculpture, or abstract images built up with different body parts.

Artists Aziz and Cucher created a series of images between 2004-2005 called "Dystopia", in which they removed the eyes and mouths of the people in their portraits by cloning skin over them. Taking away the eyes and mouths of people gives a sense of taking away their ability to communicate. The images appear silent, and perhaps are a comment on a culture losing their identity to modern technology that promotes anonymity and conformity. When Photoshop first became accessible to artists they began to experiment with it doing things they either couldn't have done in an analogue process or that would've been far too time consuming. The idea of distorting the face by digital means is what inspired the way I worked with the flatbed scanners.

Aziz and Cucher "Maria", C-Print, 40x50"

David Hockney "David Hockney ('Self-Portrait with Charlie')", 2005, National Portrait Gallery, London

This painting is one of a series of large-scale single and double figure paintings made in Hockney's Hollywood Hills studio in 2005. Hockney paints directly onto canvas, letting the surface of the canvas show through the paint in areas and become a part of the painting's aesthetic. The work was created without preparatory sketches or photographic reference. Hockney presumably looked into a mirror for this piece, which gives a sense of distance between the plane of the viewer and the subjects. It feels as though the viewer is in the space behind the mirror, rather than taking the position of the mirror because of the distance Hockney would have had from the mirror. 

The work sets up a triangular exchange of gazes between the figures and the viewer; Charlie looks at Hockney, Hockney looks out at the viewer, and the viewer may look at either figure, or both. The tangible energy an exchange of gazes in an artwork can generate is something I may look to reimagine in my own work.

Summer Show Crit

On our first week we were asked to bring in something we had been working on over the summer, however unfinished it was. Panicking that I hadn't created anything over summer that I considered to be very 'me' I organised a shoot with a friend. This shoot came about much like a typical fashion shoot: mood board, cast, style, shoot, edit. I was excited about the shoot at the time, and even after I'd selected my final edit. However, when it came to putting up work for the summer show it felt wrong to display the work. Instead I showed a series of photographs that I'd shot of my friends and the landscapes in Ibiza this summer. This series more truthfully represented me in that it was showing the viewer what I saw. The work was totally different from the shoot that I had organised, but it had the potential to open up many different pathways to explore. Primarily I am interested in the figure and human behaviour so it made sense to show these photographs that were as much an observation of human behaviour as they were a record of my behaviour.

Planned shoot photos:

Ibiza photos:

The Ibiza photos felt even more special because I thought I had lost the roll of film. I spent two months wondering how I had lost it, until I found it in the back of the camera I shot on. 

The feedback I received surprised me a little. I chose this work to partly to play down my interest in fashion, but still the tutor said it looked very fashion and as though the photographs could be seen in an editorial form. I displayed the photographs in a square (pictured below) with different sections formed by the 'categories' of images. It was suggested that spacing out the categories could have made the piece flow better. Many of the photographs are of my friend Dean, who, as it was hot, was topless in most images, which draws connotations of the female gaze on the male body. Context can change the perception of a body of work dramatically. One of the images of Dean was a soft-focus tight crop if his face as he took a deep breath with his head tilted back. It was pointed out to me that this would fit just fine in an erotic magazine, but in this series the photo didn't come off as erotic at all.

We also discussed the lines that are formed across images by the subject matter, such as telephone wires, cloth, horizons, and that when arranging images it you can line these up to create a more interesting composition.

xox

Year One

My name is Annie (Annabel) and I've just started a BA in Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts (UAL). With this blog I plan to write about artists and works that inform my work, new processes I try and how my work develops throughout the course.

I studied Fashion Communications on my art foundation course at Central Saint Martins, and instead of being accepted into the BA of that pathway, which I applied for, my tutors recommended I study photography. It felt like too much of a risk to take a year out and try again, and I quite like the idea of studying fine art, so I followed their advice and came here. Camberwell couldn't be more different to CSM. It's a total culture shock to start the year with a few lectures and workshops and laid back building up, I still feel very much like a first year, and it's not overwhelming. At times I feel like I'm giving myself more work by doing little write ups for exhibitions I've visited and creating a blog, but these things will help to pull all aspects of my practice together and keep me focussed.

I'm interested in the male gaze, the female gaze, the nude figure - and all the taboos and politics around it, abstracting perspective and sense of space in visual imagery. I want to develop more of a continual practice that I can immerse myself in rather than kind of dipping in and out of different things. It's not easy to let go and be 'an artist'. There's always that lingering worry that I won't be able to support myself via my creative work. The next three years though, are an opportunity to get to the point where my practice can lead to a sustainable income. As a student you really have nothing to worry about, except £40,000 of debt that you will probably never really pay back, so it's a good time to experiment.

xox