My final Family assignment image

This is my final family assignment image, i finally came to the decision to choose this image as my overall image because i thought it best captured the essence of what i was trying to convey in these family images. My initial idea was to photograph "Saturdays" in my family, at the start of the assignment i thought that i had to photograph people in my family, but after realizing that i could take photos of family possessions and things that are in my grandmas house etc. I then decided to go with this idea, i decided to photograph some other photographs at my grandmas house and some things that are on the tabletops in her house. I am pleased with this image as my final, i chose it because it captures the spirit of my grans house without her even being in the shot herself. However, she is in one of the photographs on the side. 

I did have this photograph in black and white, but i made a decision to leave it in colour as i thought more details were added with it being kept in colour, for example.. the colour's in the lamp and the wallpaper and collective dolls etc. 

Overall this image looks fairly plain but when you look closely there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. :) 

Some of my photographs i have taken for this assignment

These are some of the images that i have taken for the family assignment, i went along with the theme of photographing things in my grandma's house that evoked the meaning of "Family" to me. All the things i have photographed are quiet personal, ranging from photographs and possesions in the living room and my "grandma's chair" that only she sits on, from inside her bedroom and dolls that she has collected which i used to love when i was a child. i am very pleased with the kind of images that i have taken and i am now just finding it hard to chose a final one for this assignment, so i am going to wait until i go to college and ask friends and tutors there opinions and then decided myself which is the best image.

My Decision

I decided that i was still going to go to my grandma's on saturdays but that i was not going to photograph any people within my images, purely because i did not want anything to look staged or false, so i decided to photograph things within my grandma's house that evoke memories for me of "Family".

Research - Sally Mann Images

Sally Mann

I have decided to research Sally Mann for this family assignment, i have researched her for many other assignments before as i really love her work.

Sally Mann is an American photographer who is probably best known for her large black and white photographs of her young children. The series is called "Immediate Family". This book contains 65 black and white images of her three children all under the age of ten. Many photographs were taken at the familys remote summer cabin by the river where the kids would play and swim in the river and have a great time.
The set of photographs explores typical childhood "Family" themes and moments, for example.. dressing up, having a nap, playing different games, reading and general funny moments that take place when you are a child. Also through these images though darker issues are also explores such as.. insecurity, lonliness, injuries, sexuality and even death is explored to some degree.
The controversy of these images was very intense because some people did not agree with certain message that the photographs were displaying through the young children. However, i think that she simply recorded spontaneous and carefree moments within childhood.

I really love Sally Mann's work i research her a lot of times for assignments and i never get bored of looking at and talking about her work, theres something about the photographs that are really moving and capture the essence of the place and time so well, i think they will stand the test of time and people will still be talking about them in years to come because they are simply beautiful images.

Initial Ideas

I have decided that for this assignment im going to stay close to home and photograph my family in my family home and going about there normal day to day business. I am also going to include my dog in the images as he is apart of my family just as much as everyone else is.

An idea i have had is photographing my family on a "saturday", every saturday my family all gathers together at my grandma's house and just chats and has some tea and watches television, all very normal, but this happens everyday and i just want to capture what goes on and take a back seat and look from afar at what goes on during "saturdays".

Another idea i have is just to photograph my mum and dad around the house and with the dog, just general family shots really. I will develop these ideas more after doing some research.

Introduction

For this assigment we have been asked to take photographs of our close family and explore what goes on in day to day life etc. We are asked to investigate the world of our family and by doing so have been given these words which we can respond to:

- INTRUDE
-AGE
-REVEALING
-VOYEURISM
-CHILD
-PRIVACY
-SOCIAL
-CLASS
-CULTURE

We have been asked to research and analyse the work of one photographer of our choice and experiment and evaluate our own images.

My Final Image

This is my final image, im really pleased with the overall look of my shot, it took a while to get it just right with the lighting and everything seens as i had not had a go at taking photographs at night before, but it was well worth it!

I decided that for my final image i would use a shot where you could still tell that it was a bell but half of it was smashed. I think this works well as people will still wonder what it is, but it wont be too hard for them to tell when they look at it for a few seconds.

Overall im happy with this image and may use it in my portfolio.

Some of my Images

Conclusion

After researching Picasso i decided to go with the idea of photographing at night, i bought my bell that i was going to smash from a charity shop and i was then ready to have some fun and smash away!! I went out after it has been dark for a few hours and i smashed the glass bit by bit and took photographs of this whilst i was doing it. I enjoyed doing this assignment and would like to try some more night photography in the future as it's very different to shooting in the day. I am very happy with the overall affect that i have created with my image by shooting it at night under a street lamp and using the Tungsten setting on my camera to get the lighting correct and so that it was not too dark.

I'm definately doing to try more night photography!!! I am very happy and would not do anything differently if i was to do this same assignment again.

My idea following my research of Picasso's work

After researching into Picasso i have decided that i am going to base my work around the key work "Broken". From seeing within Picasso's work that he used alot of shatterd fragments and shapes within his paintings i want to create something involving those things within my photograph.
Using the word "Broken" i have decided to focus on glass as my main object, as when broken i think glass would be a good choice for an interesting object with different shapes that will be made from the broken fragments of glass.

After going out today and looking in various charity shops i have found a piece of glasswear that is red and i thought this would add extra effect to the image rather than just plain glass. I am going to buy this glasswear from the charity shop and then smash it into fragments to get an interesting look. Earlier on in my blog i said that i wanted to try my hand at night photography as Picasso liked to work at night, so i have decided that i am going to place my shattered glass object under a street lamp at night and see what effect this gives to my image as i think it will make it more interesting that just being taken in the daytime.
The project is called "Signs of Life" and i think this will refer to signs of life in a way because you see smashed glass alot in communitys these days on the floor and around the streets so photographing it on its own and from a different perspective will show that there has been people there because of the smashed glass but there are no longer people there within my images.

My Conclusion on my reseach of Picasso

After researching Picasso's work i have really been influenced by his Cubism movement and the way they look at fragments and different perspectives of objects. He also look at there shape and the way objects look from different viewpoints. I am very keen to explore this within my photography. Although Picasso did paintings and i am going to be taking photographs he has still influenced the way in which i was to construct my images. After finding out that Picasso worked on his paintings during the night i am also interested in doing my shots at night and trying my hand at some night photography as i have never done this before i think it may be quiet a challenge for me and will help give me images more of a difinitive out of the ordinary look to them. although within some of his paintings you could tell what the objects were they were still very abstract and fragmental i would like to try and achieve this within the subject that i photograph.

Links to Cubism - Piet Mondrian

Some work that links with the Cubism movement is Piet Mondrian who linearized Cubism in 1912 with his painting of "The Apple Tree" this led to the first really none figure paintings which was known as pure abstract art from 1914 onwards.

Links to Cubism - Piet Mondrian's Apple Tree

More of Picasso's work

Picasso - Cubism images

Research on Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a spanish painter, draughtsman and sculptor. He was one of the most recognised figures in 20th century art. He is best known for cubism and also the variety of styles that he used within his work over the years.

I found out that Picasso slept during the day and that he worked at night, this had made me think about the possibility that i could take my photographs at night to give them a different overall effect.

A portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler in 1910 by Picasso particuluarly interested me because it is all painted in squares and they almost look like shattered fragments of glass or an object of that kind. This has inspired me again and i think that i like the idea of working with shattered fragments to create an interesting yet visually pleasing image to the eye.

I Looked at Cubism which Picasso was very famous for, there are two types of cubism Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.

Analytic cubism (1909-1912) - this is a style of painting that was developed by Picasso himself but also by Georges Braque one of Picasso's good friends and fellow painters. It was developed using monochrome, brown and neutral colours. They took apart objects and analyzed them in terms of there different shapes and the way that they looked from different angles and viewpoints. This also interests me alot by looking at the shapes of certain objects and how they look different from different angles. The second type is Synthetic Cubism, this was a further development where they would use wallpaper or newspaper cuttings, this was known as the first use of collage in fine art.

Alot to do with Cubism is making use of several different viewpoints. Analytical Cubism lasted until around 1911-1912 and was generally characterized by unemotional paintings that depicted usually very uneventful subjects, for example still lives.

Many paintings i found out were faceted, a technique that allows the artist to disect and reconstruct images however they want, in a way that depicts the essence and feel of the subject rather than just the appearance, this was very much abstract but you could still tell what the image was.

Picasso marked the beginning of a new era in the art world!!!

Initial Ideas

For this assignment we have been asked to take photographs of still life objects, we have been given nine words to focus our photographs upon and to give us some initial inspiration for the images.

These words are: Dead

Fragile

Broken

Delicate

Old

Memory

Time

Place

Structure

I found being given the words really helpful in starting me off with the project and giving me some inspiration for my image making. The first words that i initially got ideas for were "Dead" for this i thought of using dead flowers or plants and even dead fruit. The next word that sprung to mind for me was "Broken" and i immediately thought of broken glass or plates. I came up with ideas for "Fragile" and "Delicate" also but i appeared to be getting the same objects for these words too, such as broken glass and flowers again.

So from this i came to the conclusion that i wanted to photograph either broken glass or flowers. I then started researching into different areas of still life and different artists that are relevant to the subject i am most interested in which coincides with the word "Broken".