Summary of Journal

In this project I wanted to explore the concept of time, things that go unnoticed and how technology has come forward. Through this I have discovered what surrealism truly is and how to manipulate things to create a subtlely strange image. In keeping with the brief ‘Digital is about forgetting, analogue is about remembering’  I started by investigating the technology side of memory, finding originals of inventions and looking at how they have progressed; an old Nokia mobile compared to a smartphone. I was going to photograph these in a forensic sort of way, to accentuate the stark gap between the two's capabilities.
 I also wanted to use this as a starting point of exploring time; what is memory? What defines a memory that's worth holding onto? And for that matter what makes a memory so terrible we just want to forget it? For this I thought of taking completely random pictures and then heavily thought of ones, and see what the outcomes are. I also wanted to investigate the biological side of the memory and see if I could find any leads for a project in that.

My final idea so far is exploring moments in time that are forgotten, but which should be remembered, or those that don't mean anything but there's no reason for them not to be important; asking the question what makes this moment fleeting and not taking note of. When I watched films on the internet I kept frustrated when they were buffering and the fact that no one watching the film would be bothered to get up and refresh the page. A lot of the time the places the film would pause created a strange or humorous freeze frame; instead of just sitting there I decided to take pictures or print screen them while I was waiting.

I began to look at artists that utilise film as a medium or inspiration; Mitra Tabizian uses films stills  and re-creates them in a photograph, Cindy Sherman did the same but with herself as the main subject and J.R.Hughto works in film but takes pictures on set. I learnt how to mix film and photography in this way to create photographs that crossed both boundaries.

Next I collected the film stills I had taken so far and began to try and create a theme between them all and decide what feeling I wanted to portray through the images. I decided to install a theme that was dark, serious and off putting, making the viewer uncomfortable as to what would be going on in the image but at the same time not revealing it to them. From researching these types of images in film and photography I discovered the surrealist films of Kenneth Anger, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. These  films are hugely surrealist and have many moments that are worthy to create images I had been looking for, it seems they are either blatantly offsetting or a scene will appear normal until you look more closely and find something unsettling in the scene. I liked both of these concepts and wanted to bring that subtleness or strangeness into my own work. After reading Andre Breton’s ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ I discovered that surrealism was exactly what I had been looking for in my work, the aspects of dreams and sub conscious really appealed to me and I decided to try and work with these qualities.

After doing more artist research I turned my attention to the technical side of my project, how would I capture these images? I thought about using the original print screens from the internet and printing them out, however these would be very low quality and I wanted to something that looked professional; I also had the idea of photographing the freeze frames on the actual television or screen, but again the light from the television made the photographs look unattractive. Finally I decided to use either film or digital camera to recreate the print screens in a studio. I used a digital camera because it gave me more time to photograph the subject and review the picture straight away and make the relevant changes to the composition. I also experimented with different light sources; on camera flash, external LED Video light panel, natural light and studio lighting. After exploring all these light sources I decided to use natural light as this would give the feeling of the everyday but be offset by the subject and surreal content of the overall image.

After vigorously selecting the finally images to recreate, I decided on 10. To do this I looked at the surrealist masters like Lynch, Breton, Dali and Bunel to influence my choosing of the strongest images. These final selections must also have some sort of theme, I did not want the collection to have a disjointed feel as surrealism dictates, but I also want to have something going on underneath the surface which can only be found by looking at the selection as a whole, an incognito narrative.  

Portfolio

Here are the images from my portfolio that won't be shown in the exhibition but were part of the final selection.

Contact sheet #1

First shoot of the bed image.I wanted to have a plain background with a splash of colour with a bright red shirt in this image, however when I tried it out it just didn't work, I thought it looked to brash and too much like a normal scene. I decided to keep the colours to a minimum and use more formal clothes with a shirt and pants; by adding these different clothes it makes the image more eventful, the majority of the time these clothes are worn is when something is happened, but the event isn't explained here. I didn't like the way the clothes were laid out either, again folding them up and placing them carefully makes it feel like something important is happening that has required preparation, I also added the shoes because I think they add more body and interesting form to the subject. Now I turned my attention to the overall composition, playing with different angles I realised the wooden door in the far right was distracting to the image so I cut that out, also the door on the left was similarly distracting. Finally I experimented with using natural light and flash; I found that the flash gave the image too warm a hue and didn't have a moody enough lighting. I decided to use natural light because it is stark, sets a mood in the image and has a clean, stark and even forensic feel to it.

Final 12

These are the final 12 (plus an image I have planned without a print screen) that I plan to re-shoot for the exhibition. I have chosen this selection because I think they are the simplest images which have the strongest feeling of uneasiness. I also realized that they all contain people or forms of people, a theme in an otherwise random and chaotic narrative; here with some sort of running trend the viewer still feels like they are recognizing a constant, yet the overall chaos upsets that to just shy of the point where it is too unruly I think. I am now going to get some volunteers to pose for me and reshoot these images in colour using a digital camera and experiment with different lighting techniques; flash. LED Video Light Panel, a studio soft box and natural light.