So I started working on the idea of 'body parts' to try and fulfill the assignment for Elements of Design. To begin with I took a few photos of my own hands and facial features with my phone and thought this may be the way to go - pictures of my own body parts - in fact I thought I'd take 43 altogether (the extra images for my own project) to signify my age. I got a bit nervous though as the idea of revealing intimate parts of my body was not exactly appealing and seemed utterly inappropriate too but there are only so many pictures one can take of their own hands and feet, and if you're going to go down the route of body parts it may seem remiss to leave out certain obvious parts! Despite having breastfed various offspring quite happily in public for years I was quite certain I am not really interested in exhibiting those bits and others in any photographs.
The idea of pictures of myself felt vaguely self-absorbed, although my reasoning behind that idea was in part due to the fact I'd inadvertently concentrated on loss, death and renewal throughout the exercises for this module. By focusing on my aging body I might begin delving into or expressing feelings about my relationship with the aging process, perhaps recognising and accepting my own form, and exploring this 'reborn' version of me following several difficult events and experiences over the last few years. As far as age goes, you have children and turn around seemingly a moment later and years have all of sudden sped by. The skin that was once firm has without you noticing started to wrinkle and develop blemishes associated with age.
I also felt that there was something about the modern 'selfie', a word I hate for it's sogginess incidentally, that might be explored with these photographs of parts of my anatomy - the antithesis of the selfie, no filters, no make-up, no supposedly 'flattering' poses or lighting. We live in a society where the individual is promoted and community is continuously eroded. Families live in units rather than collectives and people are far more isolated than they may ever have been historically, and we have created a culture of celebrating the self which I along with many, I'm sure, think whiffs of something needy and desolate. Please don't mistake this for some sort of superior value judgement on my part - I have certainly taken photos of myself before; often when I have wanted to try something photography-wise and there has been no-one else about, but also to stare into myself and see what I might see, or sometimes to communicate something about myself to the world and/or individuals. By looking at elements of my own body in this way I hoped to communicate ideas about the human body and how we differ or don't to other animals and plants, or any other organic collection of cells, chemicals, atoms.
I felt however, that I would be limited by only taking photographs of my own body parts. So I looked at including other people's. But I suspect I was hindered by thinking about the criteria in rather a literal way when I chose a friend with tattoos to try and capture 'pattern'. I took photos of a couple of friends to try and achieve the results we were asked to find but nothing I was doing 'lit my fire' as they say. Also I felt I was moving away from the concepts I had at the start and wasn't really happy with where I was going. In addition the photos started to look very different and not as if they were part of a cohesive collection.
Then I read an article about self portraits (here) which was very interesting and reminded me that there is a long history of artists painting or photographing themselves and that these works are very different to the modern image taken on a phone held at arm's length. This gave me permission to return to my original idea about using my own self for the assignment.
I have followed Phillippe Conquet on Flickr for a while now. I do not know who he is influenced by but I have always been very taken with the images he produces. I have tried in the past to create images with slow shutter speeds and some examples I took last year are included in the Flickr album below which shows some early ideas and discarded images for this project. In a previous blog entry which was mentioned in the last feedback, I spoke about how I felt that I could sense the sort of work I wanted to be doing but didn't think I was really getting there just yet. After looking at my earlier attempts I started to feel that maybe I just needed to accept that my work might reach a certain proficiency eventually but that it might never begin to explore the inner depths that I would so love to express.
Nevertheless, after a night of thinking about it all, I decided to put the work I'd done so far aside and try something else: natural light, slow shutter speeds, a skirt that would offer lots of shape possibilities and my own body. The photographs took a morning and the editing took the rest of the day (in between feeding children etc.)
Whilst I am not sure if I've gone a bit off piste here with regards the assignment, I do feel I have taken a step closer towards expressing something of the way I feel/am/see. In the end the actual photography and editing didn't take very long at all. But the inner journey has taken me as long as I've been doing this assignment; probably longer. Some of the images are a bit shoe-horned into the various headings that were requested for sure. And there may be one or two that I might not have used at all had I not been working to a very specific set of words and phrases. I have some that I would include instead. But the overall expression is one that I feel is authentic and current to where I am now.
The original set of photographs I took with stark lighting are still probably worth considering at a later date and perhaps I will return to them. But as they are they felt like sketches.
I recall that one of the comments in my feedback was that the thumbnail images couldn't be enlarged. I didn't understand this because if I click on them I am directed to a slideshow on Blogger where all the images in the post can be seen on a bigger scale. However, the presentation isn't that dynamic so I have created a web page where all the images from the assignment can be seen in a slideshow that fills the screen. (Since I have left lots of flaws and scratches anyone looking at the slide show will see them all!) The exif data can be viewed if you come out of the slide show but please view the images initially as a slideshow on as a big screen as you can as I think they work best that way.
As mentioned, so that you can see the development of this assignment, there are some earlier examples of things I tried out here.
As well as working on these images I have looked at Larry Sultan's work, and been to Matisse, Baily and Richard Hamilton exhibitions. I have also looked at work by Chris Killip and the book, Presumed Innocence, but have yet to write these up.
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